Chapter 14; Zia LXII
She shook her head slowly, “My brother and all of his children are now dead. You and your grandchildren are the only family I have left to me now.”
“You, then, are the last Menzi of ascendable age.”
“First, As I have never married, I can not be the true empress. And… fifty is a hell of an age to ascend to a position as dangerous as this one… No...”
“Okay…But, unlike you, I do get to choose… I am the Keeper of the Royal Key… General Z and his family knelt to hand her the Scepter. Taking it, she claimed the hearts and bodies of the remaining Loyalist troops. “Now, your Majesty, I have a gift for you to celebrate.”
“I have no wish to celebrate, so, no gift was necessary.”
“I assure you, Highness, that you will like this one. Actually, we have two hundred and thirty one gifts for you. Hold my hand, please.” She took his hand as he hit a switch on his belt. In a flash, they stood on the fighting bridge of the “Zia III”. They were standing next to his two daughters.
“What ship is this, General?”
“Your Highness, this is my daughter, Pedra. This ship, the Zia III, is her invention. She will tell you about its capabilities.”
The Empress turned her attention fully to Pedra. She began, “This ship has all of the armament found on a full Battle Cruiser. I have miniaturized the controls toward that goal. This black box over here is my reinvention of my sister’s jump tube technology. Instead of one transaction at a time, I engineered the buffers to stop in the middle and store that data and move on. It turned out that Keeth’s people had discovered a multi faceted crystal framework. A couple of hundred crystals merge to create thousands of storage surfaces.We think as many as four thousand Full Dressed Battle Marines can be held in buffer stasis and off loaded to a nearby target. The best is yet to say. This ship is able to stay fully cloaked at Jump Speeds and regular speeds. You can see out , but they cant see us.”
Zia finally got her voice, “But can it make a good cup of coffee?” The tension was broken with a good laugh.
Zia and the General returned to her suite to begin planning their response to the Admiralty’s attack. She had shown, as Warrion Commander, both ability and tenacity for defense and a great ability to out maneuver the opposing forces. Using her outmoded ships, she had cleaned the Admiralty’s Navy out of her sector over the last year, sending one Quadrant Governor after another back to Capitol City in defeat and disgrace.
As Empress, she now held sway over the remainder of the Crown Forces. The first thing she did was call an all out strike with her new ships in every Quadrant. Attacked on all fronts, the mutinous Admiralty forces were temporarily thrown into turmoil by the surprise attacks. Organized into wolf packs around these smaller faster ships, they were able to swoop in and do serious damage and then, escape before a response could be organized.
In this chaos, General Z lead a small force back to Base Two. He was able to rematerialize over two thousand Guardians in a strategic location. They attacked the Fleet Marine guard left there who, in their arrogance, were moving from house to house, drinking all the liquor they found. Catching them by surprise, they quickly killed them all. It was a brief, yet fierce, battle. General Z and his squad worked through that day and night burying the Menzi dead respectfully. The body of the dead Empress, Sashi, was prepared and moved on board. She was later buried in a blue star on the way back to Zia’s secret base with all the honors of a fallen Empress.
By concentrating his forces here and there and using their over whelming superiority in numbers, Keeth, over the next month and a half, was able to retake most of the positions lost in the first two days of fighting. He admits even he was impressed by the quality of fighting spirit shown by the Crown. Still, one thorn remained. In Zia’s quadrant, no advances were shown.
“My able opponent, who ever he or she is, is a great general,” he thought. Once he found out that it was Zia, he remembered that, even when they had been class mates at school, no one could beat her at chess.
What Keeth did not know was that Zia was now the sixty second Menzi to ascend to his throne. Had he known, he probably would have gone after her sooner. He concentrated on hunting for Sashi and the Crown Jewels. One by one, the Royal Wolf Packs within the other quadrants retired to lick their wounds and regroup. This allowed Keeth to bleed his own hunting packs of ships trying to find the central base. He was unable to make much progress at this, of course, since Base Four was in the only remaining quadrant to have active fighting going on.
Meanwhile, back on Arth, Admiral Keeth had a plan. His daughter knocked softly, “Admiral Zimmerand is here, father.”
“Show him in.”
“Good morning, Sire.”
“Sit down, here is your coffee, old friend.”
“Thank you, Sire.”
“I am assembling every ship available to go after Princess Zia.
“Actually, my spy net thinks she is Empress, now.”
“That explains a great deal. She has been a thorn in our side for too long. I want you to head this armada personally.”
“I would be honored.”
“One last thing…don’t bother coming back without her head.”
“I understand fully, Sire.”
Zimmerand was not with out skills of his own. With careful masking, he was able to add his ships to her Sixth Fleet without Zia finding out. They broke formation and attacked in a star pattern know as Borealis Minor. Keeth had brought all of his vessels to meet them there. They fought for six days. Zia continued to bring in every available Crown vessel. These ships now lay hidden among the many asteroid belts in this area, coming into the battle as Zia mover them all around like pawns on a giant chess board.
The General was at the back of their position in his new flitter, the General Z. He watched with amazement as Zia beat the larger force to each punch, taking their best shots and somehow out maneuvering the supposedly newer, supposedly faster Admiralty ships. Out numbered three to one, she fought the best fleet in the Admiralty to a standstill cleverly using the advantage of her own new ships.
On the sixth day, the two forces withdrew like punch drunk fighters to lick their wounds. She had been wounded more than once. On several occasions, she had jump tubed off vessels just before they were destroyed. Some of these explosions were used to take out Admiralty ships trying to board her vessel.
In the hiatus, General Z received a box by jump courier. He opened it to find the Crown Jewels once again in his possession. He immediately called her, “Your Majesty..?”
“Yes, General..?”
“Can you explain this?” he pointed to the box.
Zia floated before him in full holo scope as he knew that he floated before her. “You are my General of Guardians…You are the Exchequer of the Crown Jewels. Here are your Royal Keys, so, keep them. Once again, they are yours to protect.”
“Zia, please baby…You must get off that ship,” he pleaded.
She replied with a sad smile. “My darling child, please try to save your self!”
“My dear General, and even dearer father, you can see for your self that I will not even make it through my next surgery. There is no reason for me to try to escape.” She coughed, a deep red stain spread across her hand kerchief that she held to her mouth. “My bridge crew is committee with me to this last mission. All others have jumped to other vessels. My ship will only hold together for one more run. We are determined to make that last run straight at them. Besides, who wants to live forever?”
She hit the button to cease transmitting. Through teary eyes, he watched the external viddy screens. He and his bridge crew watched paralyzed while the flagship “Zia II” plunged full speed into the path of the flagship “Zimmer”. Zia II’s guns were blazing on automatic fire at all of the ships around the Zimmer as it was being towed to safety behind some other ships.
Caught by surprise by the suicide mission, some twenty ships in either direction exploded in a man made nova bri
ght as a new born sun. Both of the Battle Commanders died in the same moment. Glad to be far from this spectacle, General Z saw that seven Rear Admiral flag ships exploded with them.
Taking advantage of the turmoil, General Z ordered all of his ships to attack any Admiralty vessel within reach. Firing into the whirling mass of ships the Crown vessels blasted hundreds more of Admiralty ships into floating wreckage. At the battle’s end, they had captured six hundred of the newest ships the Empire had to offer and destroyed twelve hundred more. The hulks were welded together in chains and towed to a secret base being built at the far reaches of the galactic map known as Hazy Point.
The General knew that many more of Pedra’s new ships could be built from the scrap and usable portions of the motors and electronics he knew could be found on board. Also, they could provide a stockpile of parts to rebuild some of the new ships captured.