Ground control, p.1
Ground Control, page 1
Ground Control
Warlord of Yaumgan
Book 2
Blaze Ward
Knotted Road Press
Contents
Prologue: Heather
Prologue: Makara
Prologue: Veronika
Chapter 1
Date of the Republic January 21, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Kyulle Orbit
Chapter 2
Unification Hall, Kohri
Chapter 3
Date of the Republic January 24, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, JumpSpace
Chapter 4
Date of the Republic February 2, 417 Yukon Antares, On Patrol
Chapter 5
Fleet Carrier Transport Yong Hao, Middle of Flipping Nowhere
Chapter 6
Date of the Republic February 2, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Deep Space
Chapter 7
Date of the Republic February 3, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Mouth of The Passage
Chapter 8
Mission Brief: EM Shanhai Pass, Admiral of the White. Open Space
Chapter 9
Yaumgan Station, Yaumgan Capital Orbit, Kyulle
Chapter 10
Mission Brief: Forward Logistics Base Three-C
Chapter 11
Date of the Republic February 23, 417 EM Yong Hao, Deep Space
Chapter 12
Balhee Cluster Heavy Destroyer Stormhawk, DeepSpace
Chapter 13
Date of the Republic February 24, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Deep Space
Chapter 14
Balhee Cluster Heavy Destroyer Stormhawk, Scouting Duty
Chapter 15
Date of the Republic March 10, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Zerzan Forward Logistics Base 4-A
Chapter 16
Balhee Cluster Heavy Destroyer Stormhawk, Escort Duty
Chapter 17
Date of the Republic March 10, 417 Blackstone, Zerzan Forward Logistics Base 4-A
Chapter 18
Mission Brief: Forward Logistics Base Four-A
Chapter 19
Date of the Republic March 10, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Zerzan Forward Logistics Base 4-A
Chapter 20
Mission Brief: Forward Logistics Base Four-A
Chapter 21
Date of the Republic March 10, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Zerzan Forward Logistics Base 4-A
Chapter 22
Balhee Cluster Heavy Destroyer Stormhawk, Escort Duty
Chapter 23
Mission Brief: Forward Logistics Base Four-A
Chapter 24
Bridge, Tuloong, Enemy Camp 4-A
Chapter 25
Date of the Republic March 10, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Zerzan Forward Logistics Base 4-A
Chapter 26
Date of the Republic March 10, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, JumpSpace
Chapter 27
Date of the Republic March 12, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Point Roderick
Chapter 28
Date of the Republic March 29, 417 Mejico, Strike Location Crimson
Chapter 29
Fleet Carrier Transport Yong Hao, Crimson
Chapter 30
Date of the Republic March 19, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Forward Base Virgil
Chapter 31
Mission Brief: Forward Logistics Base Four-A
Chapter 32
Date of the Republic April 8, 417 Yong Hao, Strike Location Emerald
Chapter 33
Date of the Republic April 10, 417 Mejico, Strike Location Emerald
Chapter 34
Unification Hall, Kohri
Chapter 35
Shanhai Pass, Forward Base Virgil
Chapter 36
Mission Brief: Forward Logistics Base Four-A
Chapter 37
Date of the Republic May 3, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Checkpoint Triplet
Chapter 38
Mission Brief: Forward Strike Position Loong
Chapter 39
Loong Gateway Control, The Passage
Chapter 40
Mission Brief: Forward Strike Position Loong
Chapter 41
Imperial Founding: 195/05/06. The Passage
Chapter 42
Mission Brief: Forward Strike Position Loong
Chapter 43
Imperial Founding: 195/05/06. The Passage
Chapter 44
Loong Gateway Control, The Passage
Chapter 45
Imperial Founding: 195/05/06. The Passage
Chapter 46
Loong Gateway Control, The Passage
Chapter 47
Mission Brief: Forward Strike Position Loong
Chapter 48
Loong Gateway Control, The Passage
Chapter 49
Date of the Republic May 10, 417 RAN Warspite, The Passage
Chapter 50
Date of the Republic May 3, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Zerzan Forward Logistics Base 3-D
Chapter 51
Date of the Republic April 23, 417 Mejico, Strike Location Gold
Chapter 52
Date of the Republic May 3, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Zerzan Forward Logistics Base 3-B
Chapter 53
Dalou Empire Heavy Destroyer Stormhawk, Third Raid
Chapter 54
Date of the Republic May 3, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Zerzan Forward Logistics Base 3-B
Chapter 55
Mission Brief: Forward Logistics Base Three-B
Chapter 56
Unification Hall, Kohri
Chapter 57
Date of the Republic May 17, 417 Mejico, Point Roderick
Chapter 58
Date of the Republic May 17, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Point Roderick
Chapter 59
Shanhai Pass, Roderick
Chapter 60
Shanhai Pass, Forward Base Roderick
Chapter 61
Shanhai Pass, Forward Base Roderick
Chapter 62
Unification Hall, Kohri
Chapter 63
Unification Hall, Kohri
Chapter 64
Date of the Republic June 25, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Point Tellus
Chapter 65
Bridge, Tuloong, Retribution
Chapter 66
Stormhawk, Asouri Orbit
Chapter 67
Type Eight Light Tyche, Asouri Strike Orbit
Chapter 68
Date of the Republic June 26, 417 Mejico, Asouri
Chapter 69
Date of the Republic June 26, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Asouri
Chapter 70
Bridge, Tuloong, Goddess
Chapter 71
Stormhawk, Asouri Orbit
Chapter 72
Type Eight Light Tyche, Asouri Strike Orbit
Chapter 73
Date of the Republic June 26, 417 Mejico, Asouri
Chapter 74
Date of the Republic June 26, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Asouri
Chapter 75
Date of the Republic June 29, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Asouri
Chapter 76
Stormhawk, Kohri JumpSpace
Chapter 77
Date of the Republic August 17, 417 EM Shanhai Pass, Forward Base Roderick
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About the Author
Also by Blaze Ward
About Knotted Road Press
For the original “Heather Lau”
Prologue: Heather
Date of the Republic January 11, 417 Kyulle Station One, Kyulle Orbital Space
Heather took a moment to smooth down the front of her strawberry tunic and draw a deep breath. Focused herself. Centered everything.
Shoulders back. Head up. Chin neutral, though she knew it would jut forward angrily before this meeting was done.
She flexed her hands into fists, then as far open as they would stretch.
A glance down and she nodded. The last of the black tips of her hair, worn loose today instead of braided, were gone. Ritually cut off when she returned to Kyulle.
A statement of purpose. An ending, if she could be so bold, but also a beginning.
That black hair had been the old her. The woman who had stood at The Passage at Loong and defied Zerzan. Offered to annihilate them if they wouldn’t behave.
They had backed down in the face of Phil’s logic and her wrath.
Mostly, according to Donatien, her cold fury and the calm way she explained that there would be no Zerzan survivors if anybody on his side opened fire or launched a single aeromechia. Hunted down like rats and patiently stomped to death.
It had bought them three years of peace.
Until it hadn’t.
One more breath and she pressed the button, watching the hatch slide silently into the bulkhead, then crossing the threshold as though it might be the ancient Rubicon, when it was only the central meeting space of the Electors of Yaumgan.
As recently as four years ago, they had been the Domain, a timocracy of trained Scholars and philosophers seeking a higher standard and hiding from their ancient hunters, the Zerzan Unification. Such a concept had served them for four centuries.
Until it hadn’t.
Today, they had refashioned their entire civilization into something new. Not quite a republic, but leaning more that way. Still led by many of the same folks, but with a greater opening and new roles that allowed the general population to have a greater say in things.
Not that it mattered here. Not in this room.
Heather scanned the space, noting the folks on couches, chairs, or simply standing around. In Aquitaine, there would have bee n a vast conference table with everyone around it, but Yaumgan did things differently.
And, she had to admit, having space to pace in here had helped her on more than one occasion.
The Electors were a council of forty. An even number to force consensus. And rules about how large a majority needed to be in order to be carried, depending on the topic.
First Elector Li Chang Ling sat in the center of a wide couch, flanked by Ambassador to the Barbarians Hu Yating Kai and Old Man Wen. Wen Qing Jian, a charming rogue older than her parents and still filled with intellectual mischief.
The other Electors filled the rest of the space. Some had been here three years ago. Others were new. Everyone was on an even footing, though, because this group was required to define itself anew, and took that responsibility seriously.
Heather came to a halt in the center of the open space and fell to parade rest automatically. Some things went bone deep, and she’d been doing this for more than twenty-five years at this point.
Chang Ling, the First Elector, studied her for a long moment.
“Warlord,” she said with a nod. “I understand that you have news for us?”
Heather nodded back as a placeholder. She had briefed those three already. Most of this would be playing for the galleries. The rest of the Electors. The rest of the Electorate. The rest of the Balhee Cluster.
The rest of the galaxy.
Heather didn’t think she had too many enemies in this room. Most of them were still coming to grips with the fact that Zerzan had returned, and planned to kill every single person in this system if the Unification could catch them.
Starting with her. Or maybe ending. They might want to draw that affair out and make it last for days while she begged them to die.
Heather intended to go down fighting.
“First Elector,” Heather said, looking around. “Ambassador. Electors. I bring news of a tremendous triumph that your military forces have inflicted on your ancient enemies.”
A lot of them knew the truth and the rumors. The smiles at her words gave way to concern at her tone. Darkly apocalyptic, because there was always another shoe to drop.
“Go on, Warlord,” Chang Ling prompted.
“Zerzan gathered up a fleet that my sources suggest to be the largest collection of invaders assembled in centuries,” Heather said, still making sure to make eye contact with everyone in here. “Sixteen thousand aeromechia, poised to transit The Passage at Loong, where they would have easily destroyed the forces we have established. From there, a strike at any of the six homeworlds of Yaumgan, possibly beginning with Kyulle itself.”
She waited until the sound died back down. The explosions of disbelief. The first edges of panic.
“Zerzan has withdrawn that force,” she said simply, maybe pushing her voice enough to override everyone in here and force them to silence.
Such was her will today. Her duty.
“So they are not defeated?” Old Man Wen pressed, falling into his favorite role of Socratic gadfly.
“We did not kill fifty thousand enemy sailors, no.” Heather locked in on the goofball. However serious his tone, she could see the merriment in his eyes, but the man lived for articulate interchange. The fencing was often more important than the mere concepts to that man. “We did inflict sufficient material damage on them that they were forced to withdraw a significant distance rapidly, if they did not wish to starve to death slowly.”
“And what did that accomplish?” Wen asked, eyes shining with mischief.
“It bought time,” Heather said, returning her lighthouse gaze to the others. “They would have overwhelmed you, even with the assistance of the Aquitaine and Fribourg fleet elements here in orbit. The outcome would have been apocalyptic, but Pyrrhic. We would have lost. What have we accomplished? The game board will change. Not the war.”
“Do you propose waiting for them to return?” Ambassador Hu—Yating Kai—asked next, like some comedy routine he and Wen had practiced.
And they might have, from what Chang Ling had said. Old rivals turned old friends.
“No,” Heather said simply. “That is the recipe for a failure so great that Yaumgan ceases to exist.”
“What do you propose then, Warlord of Yaumgan?” Chang Ling—First Elector Li of Yaumgan itself—spoke up.
Heather took a deep breath and let some of the rage bleed out of her before she breathed fire on these Scholars. Few were equipped mentally and emotionally for what was coming. Yaumgan’s schools were excellent at identifying future Scholars and training them as far as they could handle. Similarly, warriors, merchants, artisans, and workers. Everyone had a space in this civilization. Most were happy. Few changed midway because the system generally worked the first time.
She was the only warrior in this room. The only person who killed people for a living.
Her job, as Nils Kasum had explained it in the boldest, baldest terms that had become his very legacy to the galaxy, was to stand atop the wall and hold back the night.
Or die trying.
To stop evil from conquering.
“If Yaumgan wishes to survive, the Unification must be destroyed,” she pronounced.
Again, the explosion of sound. Of disbelief. Of negation.
It would take most of them longer than a few minutes to walk the stages of acceptance.
She’d been there for months, but had had to save Yaumgan first.
Old Man Wen finally rose and turned in place, scowling at the rest of the room. A single finger came up and silence fell like a cleaver had cut the noise.
“Only the Unification?” he asked, turning back to face her. “Not all of Zerzan?”
“That is up to them,” Heather worked to keep her voice above a growl. “They can choose something better to replace it. Just as the Domain failed and was replaced by the Electorate, I leave space that Unification might yield an improved outcome.”
Wen nodded, eyes dark and deadly serious now in ways she’d only ever seen a handful of times from the man.
The warrior he might have turned into, had they decided he would be better as a naval commander than a Scholar. He had it in him.
“And if you only succeed in spawning something worse than the Unification?” he asked, his tone matching the angry apocalypse in her belly, demanding to be given flames.
“Then I will unUnify their worlds,” Heather promised. “I will end Zerzan entirely, just as my comrades and I once slayed a god and forced the Holding of Man to disintegrate before our wrath. That place is slowly coming into a new form, but you would not like to know how many millions of people had to die because of one god’s arrogance.”
“And your stubbornness in serving justice, Warlord,” Yating Kai interjected. “Without the black and green, we would all be dead now.”
Heather’s motion was somewhere between a nod and a shrug, because she couldn’t gainsay him.
Different forks in the road not taken.
Chang Ling rose now, towering over Wen. And Heather, because the First Elector was Phil’s size, physically as well as intellectually. Possessed of presence. She’d once thrown an iron ball on the end of a chain as a competitive sport.
And won.
“What do you need from us, Warlord of Yaumgan?” Chang Ling asked, emphasizing Heather’s title to remind the others why she was here.
“The Electorate must decide if it wishes to survive,” Heather replied.
