(29) To Be Named
The Crusader Campaign (132-1123 to 133-1123)
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Midnight Imperial is 16:00 local time (local day is
34:18
hours, or 17:09 per half day).
Breakfast at 08:00 Imperial is 6:51 local
afternoon.
Robert at -2.
Mich Saginaw's work shift finishes at 10:00 Imperial
time (8:51 pm local) after 13
hours on the shields with 14 hours remaining. It's definitely
time for him to get some sleep.
Kalida Siena, Marchioness of Nakege, has been
considering what could be the threat to the Duke of Adabicci.
Could it be a member of his family moving against him, or something
outside? What and how is Santanocheev's fleet moving to Caladbolg
is a hint to this?
She thinks she might visit the ducal palace
today. From what she can remember, it's a large building that
sprawls with wings and annexes, and various obscure corridors
connecting them. There's no fancy elevator system connecting it,
requiring everyone to walk around. The architectural style is
fairly classical, four stories built from a light yellow stone, with a
steeply pointed roof surmounting it. Crennelations surround the
top, but they are purely decorative -- there is barely half a meter
between them and the roof slop itself. Many entrances are
scattered around, contributing to the feeling of it being a maze.
Below ground is another matter; Kalida has never seen the bunker and
other sections down there, but she knows it's a very functional style
and very well served by grav elevators.
The grounds themselves are very extensive. The
palace is not associated with a town, but there is a gravtrain link to
a local village which has the necessary support functions. The
grounds are about 40 sq. km. Landing fields are maintained as
grass, and are carefully repaired after visitors leave. On Adabicci,
well maintained grass fields are a status symbol and expected of
nobility.
The grounds are less formal than Sir
Geoffrey's. The youngest son has surrounded himself with an
agricultural setting. There are sheep and fields, but very little
has been left to grow wild. The Duke has opted for a very natural
approach, woods and open grassland, and if someone were to breach the
extensive perimeter security they would have a fairly easily time
approaching the palace unobserved to within a couple of hundred meters.
Inside the palace itself, security is apparently
very light, and not at all obvious to the visitor. Among the
staff are enough people who know who is supposed to be there, and can
bring up displays to check who is supposed to be there. No-one is
there to stop anyone wandering around, although any really important
locations are subtly guarded by people in appropriate household staff
uniforms specially tailored to conceal the tools of their trade.
Getting into the palace and grounds is tightly controlled, but once
inside there is very little apparent security. Once Kalida had
been given permission to land her yacht inside the grounds, that was
her -- and her crew's -- approval for access to the palace and so
on. It is only very close friends and household members who get
to land on the grounds.
Kalida herself has not spent much time in this
palace. In the past, she's almost always been accompanied by
someone who knew the way. Still, through most of the house, it's
hard to go too far without finding some sort of lounge or drawing room,
where a lost visitor can sit down and relax for a while before asking
directions. Several art galleries provide plenty of distractions
for the casual visitor.
In local time, it's early evening; the Duke himself
lives on Imperial time mostly, and either way it's an appropriate time
to visit. After getting approval from Captain Sir Misha Ravanos,
she heads over to the palace with the goal of wandering around and
getting lost.
She indeed gets lost very quickly, enjoying the
occasional art gallery and other points of interest. At
lunchtime, she
has someone bring her lunch in some unknown lounge.
Back on board the ship, Robert Morris has been
busy. He's already given Jack all the information on the
encryption that he is unable to break. With no new codes to play
with, he then starts working with Helia Sarina on analyzing the last
misjump. Helia is sure her calculations were perfect, allowing
for all possible factors, and in fact neither of them
can find the slightest mistake. Everything is correct.
Helia is very glad to work with Robert on this, in the process
producing mathematics either way beyond Robert's capability or utter
gibberish. She is very concerned about what might have
happened. They make extensive use of sparkly pink on the bridge
to reduce the communications barrier.
Kalida continues her explorations of the
palace. Once in a while she reaches an outside room, overlooking
the grounds, and while that shows her where she is, it doesn't really
help her find her way around. The only sure way would be to open
the window and walk around the outside, but the controlled environment
inside the building doesn't allow for opening windows. At times
she comes across sections of the building that were obviously
originally intended to let in the outside environment, but these were
converted to a closed environment probably around a century ago.
At around 15:00, she gets directions from a servant
and finds her way outside and back to Nightshade. Finally
back on board at 15:30, with her mind clear, she goes directly to her
stateroom to contemplate the threads.
Some time back, she remembers there being threads
that came off from Santanocheev's path that went out in strange
directions that didn't make any sense. She returns to those now,
to see if anything has changed, and if so, what. Everything is
dominated by where the fleets were going, but she catches the edge of
important factors that split off that were not fleets. They seem
to be linked in with the Adabicci threat.
It's very hard to tell what those might be.
She picks out three, but she can't really trace them although they're
headed in the same general direction as the Calabolg fleet and
related to it. They started out before the fleet, perhaps getting
where they were to go about two weeks earlier, although it's very hard
to tell because the fleets dominate. Closer examination reveals
they are headed to three different locations within the Sword Worlds,
but it's impossible to tell now. They would have arrived about
three weeks ago. Any attempt to get more detail just loses track
of the whole area.
She switches back to the fleet at Caladbolg,
and again tries to confirm how long it will be there. What she
sees correlates with what Jack had told her in private. This time
Kalida believes it will be there for at least a month, possibly much
longer. It's clearly settling down for the long term.
By now she's been staring at it so long that she
can't get anything more out of it. She needs a break, perhaps a
drink, perhaps talking with someone else. She gets up and heads
to the lounge.
It's about 18:00 when Kalida arrives at Nightshade's
lounge. It's a perfect time for cocktails before dinner. In
addition, she gets a rare glimpse of Mich, who's leaving his stateroom
at about the same time for some coffee.
Jack is already there, but the Baron is somewhere
else and Teri is probably resting too after assisting Mich all
day. Jack is staring out the window nursing a cup of
coffee. Sir Misha too is there, also sitting quietly.
Kalida pours herself a whiskey, drinks about half of
it, starts counting on her fingers, looks confused, then
enlightened. She finishes her first glass, looks out the window,
and says aloud, "On 110, three small things arrived at destinations in
the Sword Worlds from Dawnworld."
Jack looks at her sharply but says nothing.
She swivels her chair around and pays attention to Kalida.
Kalida continues, "For anyone interested in a
timeline, that was about three days after we left Dawnworld,
after attacking the fleet there."
Jack speaks up, clearly not able to stand it
anymore. "Three things. Three what? What are they
doing? Where did you get this information?"
"The crystal ball in my head."
"So what's this got to do with anything?"
"This is connected to the threat I've been
following."
"OK. Got anything else?"
Kalida pours another glass of whiskey. "You
know, after a while it just gets all <<offensively>>."
"Are you the only one who knows anything about this?"
"That I am."
"That's a strange thought," Jack laughs, then says,
"Why three?"
"I don't know," replies Kalida, "And I don't know
what their destinations are, just that it was somewhere in the Sword
Worlds."
"The Sword Worlds take up a subsector. Doesn't
narrow it down a lot."
"No, but we can assume the threat will come from
close enough to actually get to Adabicci. They probably
weren't going towards the tail end."
Jack sits back and looks around the lounge.
Sir Misha just nods and says, "Sounds good to me."
Jack says, "So how does this affect anything?"
Kalida says, "This is a more direct cause of
whatever will be happening here in a few days." She doesn't
elaborate, but starts on dinner.
Vonish is on form tonight. He even produces
some special coffee for just Mich. Mich approves -- it's not
quite engineering coffee, but along the right lines.
During dinner, however, Jack can't leave the subject
alone. She asks Kalida what those three things might be doing
there. Is it an invasion, or what?
"Probably," says Kalida. "I don't know exactly
where they were going, but they were small and considerably faster than
a fleet."
"Kind of hard to invade with that."
"No, but it's not difficult to touch off an
invasion." Kalida muses silently that Winchester is supposed to
get here about 138 too. Things aren't so much knotted as
super-glued.
Of course the Sword World navy is technologically
behind the Imperium, but they are high quality forces from a
militaristic culture. They've certainly been a major annoyance in
the Frontier Wars, where they traditionally sided with the Zhodani,
dividing the Imperium's forces. They were a reluctant party to
the Treaty of Quar which sealed the peace between the Imperium and
Zhodani; it was their pre-war preparations being discovered that
allowed Norris to force that issue. They were certainly not happy
about it at the time.
They don't have the strength to invade the Spinward
Marches, but they can present a threat to border worlds and have a
substantial standing fleet within one jump of Imperial Worlds.
The current capital is Gram, which is further than a jump
away. In the past, the capital has been elsewhere -- stability is
not the Sword Worlds' strong point, although the capital has been at Gram
since 852, when it was rumored they had Zhodani support.
Mich asks if she wants to jump to one of those three
locations.
Kalida replies, "I don't know what locations they
are. I know they went somewhere into the Sword Worlds, I don't
know exactly where. I think I'll go have a chat with the Duke
first thing in the morning. It's like being Cassandra, except
that everybody believes me."
Baron Bridgehead finally wanders in. Kalida
briefs him on the new information. The Baron says, "Three places
doesn't make sense now, but it would 300 years ago. The Sword
Worlds were run by the Trilateral Alliance then. Have you ever
looked to see if the Sword Worlds will survive this without a
revolution?"
Kalida says she has not, and will take a look at
that tonight.
After dinner, Mich resumes work on the
shields. He starts at 19:00 with about 14 hours left.
Kalida goes back to her stateroom and considers the
Sword World systems
that used to form the Trilateral Alliance 300 or so years ago.
Those were Narsil,
Sacnoth, and Durendal. She's concentrating on the
connections she thinks are there, to Santanocheev and to Adabicci.
There are connections. It's hard to tell what,
because the whole area is swirling a bit, but in that area are indeed
direct connections to Santanocheev and Adabicci.
Next she tries to see what the Sword Worlds will
look like when this is finished. This is looking at the grander
scale rather than individual detail, which is always a little
easier. Nevertheless, she can't tell. It's very
fuzzy. It could get bigger, it could get smaller, it could swirl
around and end up different. The only thing she's sure about is
that it is not going to be the same. How it will change, however,
cannot be figured out -- not that she can't figure it out, but that
it's impossible to do so.
Next she looks for connections to the Zhodani.
There are none at present. They are not affecting that area, and
are not a factor in the uncertainty.
That done, she retires for the night.
Mich is done repairing the shields at 05:00, four
hours ahead of his estimate. Nightshade is ready to go.
Breakfast at is served at 08:00, as is normal in
port.
Mich arrives at breakfast, apparently refreshed from
some sleep too.
Kalida is talking to the Baron. She has told
him that she thinks the Sword Worlds will be changing in some way after
all this, but that she could not tell how. They will not be quite
the same as they are now. The Baron is doubtful as to why that
really matters, and to the vagueness of her predictions, to which
Kalida responds, "Now we know that the Sword Worlds are definitely
involved, which we did not before. I wonder exactly what game
Santanocheev is playing."
Bridgehead is not convinced. He says, "So this
is another one of your... visions, right? How did you figure out
that Santanocheev has something to do with the Sword Worlds?"
"It's all there. Everything is connected to
everything else. You just have to follow the links and see how
they work."
"So... the fleet in Caladbolg has something
to do with the Sword Worlds, which has something to do with what's
going on here? That almost makes sense. I'm not sure how,
but at this time in the morning that almost makes sense."
"Then you need more coffee," smiles Kalida.
Bridgehead takes her suggestion. He asks, "So
what will that fleet be doing, and what's happening here?"
"The fleet at Caladbolg is just going to be
sitting there for at least a month. It's not as directly involved
as the other three groups." She shakes her head and adds, "How
I'm going to explain this all to the Duke, I don't know."
Suddenly the Baron looks over at Mich. "What
are you doing here, Mich? I thought you were supposed to be
working on the ship?"
"It's done."
"You're done?"
"It's done. We're all red. We can leave
anytime."
Bridgehead turns to Kalida. He says, "Well,
there's your excuse not to have to explain it to the Duke."
Kalida says, "No, I need to see to the Duke before
we leave."
After breakfast, Kalida and Sir Misha visit the
Duke. Shark follows them with the remote sensors, so with some
luck everyone on the ship can listen in on the meeting.
Once in the palace, they ask to meet the Duke.
They are asked to wait about ten minutes, and then lead through various
passageways to a room overlooking the landing field. The room is
light and open, with a fine view of Nightshade. No-one
else is in the room.
Adabicci welcomes them in and offers them
drinks. Nakege is still in the mood for coffee.
Nakage says, "We were all sitting around dinner last
night, discussing the state of things, and it makes sense to us that
the threat to you is connected to the Sword Worlds."
Adabicci raises an eyebrow and says, "Well, they
certainly don't like me. What do you think is going to
happen? Can you guess what the nature of this threat might be?"
"I don't know exactly."
"So I'm still looking for that coffee table to fall
out of the sky on my head in five days time? What are the Sword
Worlds going to do?"
"I believe that Santanocheev sent ships directly to
the three systems that lead the Trilateral Alliance."
"Why?"
"That would be a question, wouldn't it? It's
connect to the movement on Norris. I could make wild guesses, but
I don't know that they'd be any particular use."
"I'll take wild guesses," says Adabicci quickly.
"Santanocheev and Norris fell out over the Treaty of
Quar, which was precipitated by information gained from the Sword
Worlds, more or less."
"Pretty much directly," confirms Adabicci, "Not that
they were a willing partner in revealing it. It all happened just
a few parsecs from here."
"So Santanocheev is essentially trying to throw down
Norris and take his place. It might be useful, having taken over
Norris' position, for Santanocheev to have an emergency to take care
of, and it might not hurt that it repudiates -- in a way -- Norris'
position."
Adabicci nods. "Do you think Santanocheev is
stirring up the Sword Worlds to invade the Imperium so he can fight
them back?"
"He's stirring them up in some way. All
indications are that some of it is going to directly affect you.
Now he could simply be influencing them to split apart, but that would
have more of an indirect effect on you, and I don't think that's quite
what's happening."
"So you think it's likely we're going to see a Sword
World fleet or two here in a few days?"
"It's possible."
"Enough of a chance for me to put things in motion
and set up a defence?"
"I think so."
Adabicci sighs, "Very well. I'll do it.
I'll look silly if it doesn't turn up. So what is the Caladbolg
fleet doing? Making sure they don't go too far, or helping them
out? Not that it matters directly at this point."
"As you say, it doesn't matter. I don't know
what their role is. I suspect they're more of a diversion than
anything."
"Well, let's hope Winchester's a day early rather
than a day late."
"And well prepared."
"Oh, he'll be well prepared. After all, he's
here to reinforce in the case of potential trouble."
"If nothing happens, you can always pass it off as
an exercise, after the fact."
"I don't think I can do that," says Adabicci.
"We'll call this a full military alert. When were you planning to
leave?"
Nakege glances at Sir Misha. "There's no real
reason for us to stay?"
Sir Misha says, "Unless you have any additional
tasks for us...?"
"No," says Adabicci, "I'll just lock down the system
after you leave. It'll save all the fuss and bother of giving you
special permission."
"Understood. We'll leave immediately. We
have things to do."
Adabicci nods.
Nakege says, "I think we've helped you as much as we
can."
Adabicci says, "Yes, you've given me something to
defend against. Even if it doesn't turn up, at least I'll feel
like I'm doing something." He smiles, then says seriously, "I'd
like to know if they're hitting anywhere else. Hard to believe
they wouldn't. Unless they're throwing everything here, in which
case we have a real problem. But you'll be well out of that,
which is not a bad thing. Spreading family and spreading friends
is a good thing to do in a time of crisis. If they're not going
to be with you, at least know they'll be safe somewhere else. At
least, somewhere else -- I don't think you people are ever somewhere
safe."
"Only under a very loose definition of the word."
"Well, I wish you the best of luck. I hope you
can find time to drop by when all this is over, and that there's
something to drop by to." Adabicci laughs.
"We'll be back," says Nakege. She looks at Sir
Misha, and he nods. It is time to leave.
Sir Misha and Kalida return to Nightshade.
The crew take stations to take off, headed for Tussinian and
whatever might lie there.