Against the Odds

Chapter Twenty

Goonar heard nothing from Bethya the next morning—or afternoon. Had she changed her mind? Was she trying to think of a way to let him down easily?

When the call finally came, he’d immersed himself in a study of the shipping figures for a colony Terakian & Sons was thinking of offering regular service to. He picked up the buzzing comunit absently. “Captain Terakian—how may I help you?”

“Goonar—” It was Bethya. His heart started to pound. “It’s done. I’m still at the hotel, and I’m really too tired to move tonight. But I’d like to have dinner—would you mind coming here?”

“Of course not,” Goonar said, dragging his mind away from the profitability analysis of the colony. “How formal?”

“Not very.”

Bethya looked very tired, almost wan in fact. He wondered if the execrable Dougie had been nagging at her and felt a strong urge to hunt Dougie up and push his face in.

“Are you up to this?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Don’t be fooled by theatrics, Goonar. I—came up with something.

“The problem,” she said, over the salad, “was money. It usually is, in theater. Money or jealousy, or both. In this case, both.”

Money Goonar understood. “They owed you?”

“They owe both of us,” she said. “We still—they still—haven’t paid for the passage, beyond the first segment. And when we founded the company, the four of us—Merlay, Dion, Sarin and I—all contributed equal shares. Merlay died five years ago—the most ravishing tenor you ever heard, and it was just a stupid traffic accident. Dion got an offer from his homeworld’s most prestigious school of the arts a year later, and we bought out his share. We being Sarin—who’s our set and costume designer—and me. Well, we were short two males, and Sarin and I decided to look for more partners. What we really wanted was another good male lead and a business manager, but the people you want don’t necessarily have the money when they’re available. Usually, in fact.”

“So . . .”

“So Lisa, already in the company, wanted to buy in. She had the money—an inheritance, she said. We couldn’t reasonably refuse. Dougie was working for the Greenfield Players—he’d pulled them out of a financial hole, and he said he wanted to travel. We still didn’t have enough capital, so we talked to the rest of the troupe, and most of them scraped up enough to buy a share when we restructured.”

“Is it equal shares now?”

“No . . . the way it was, Sarin and I each had four, and everyone else had one. I thought it was fair, as long as we were all together. But when I leave, I’ll want to take out my shares in cash, and they won’t want to pay it.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to a clinic, and came back looking the way I look now, and explained I’d had a shock.”

“A shock.”

“Yes. I reminded Lisa that she’d been saying my voice was not what it had been—I could have smacked her for smirking at me—and that I hadn’t wanted to tell them where I was going ahead of time. And the doctors had found a problem—that I was going to have to give up singing, and have surgery, and it might never be as good after. That it would be months—it was something difficult, which regen wouldn’t fix.”

“Is that true?” Goonar asked. “When Brun Meager’s voice was lost—”

“Goonar, what Lisa and Dougie know about medicine would fit in a single pill. They want to believe I’m over the hill, that my voice is going; they ate this up like whipped cream with honey in it. I said I’d decided to leave the troupe and wanted to buy out my shares. That’s when the haggling started, but since I was leaving for reasons of sickness, I had the high ground.”

“Did you . . . ?”

“Goonar, there’s truth and truth. I’ve known since before Lisa started carping at me that my voice isn’t as good as it was. I’ve pushed it to the limit in some of the theaters we’ve played. It’s time and past time for me to quit. This is a reason they can accept, and still fork over my share; if I told them it was to marry you, they’d say ‘Oh, he’s a rich trader, you don’t need the money.’” Her trained voice conveyed both the whine in theirs, and the scorn she felt for that whine.

“I’m not shocked, Bethya,” Goonar said. “We traders know about creative explanations.”

“Good. I’d hate to have burned all my bridges and then found I’d alienated you.”

“What about a wedding? Do we have to wait until they go away?”

“No. They saw us on the ship; they know I think you’re a fine man, and that you admired me. Lisa even had the gall to suggest that perhaps I should console myself with the nice Captain Terakian, if he didn’t mind the fact I wasn’t the same offstage as on.”

“So . . . this dinner . . .”

“Lets them think I’m working their suggestion. In the meantime, I have the bank draft.”

“You are a wicked woman, Betharnya,” Goonar said. “You might have been a trader born.”

“My grandparents were, in a minor way,” Bethya said. “If you count wholesalers in kitchenware and restaurant supply.”

“So . . . what about a wedding?”

“There are some I’d like to invite, including Sarin—we’ve known each other fifteen years—which means there’s no way to exclude the others without causing trouble.”

“Fine with me,” Goonar said. “At this point, we might as well wait for the Princess to come in—” He explained the crisscross of routes. “She’s insystem now. It will make the Fathers happier if we have another Terakian witness. What kind of wedding party do you want?”

They dove into wedding planning, and when Goonar came back to the ship that night, Basil looked at his face. “Did you ask her?”

“Yes, cuz, I did,” Goonar said, and grinned. “And she accepted, too. We’ll have the wedding when Princess gets here.”

“I don’t suppose she’s brought much dowry,” Basil said. “Not that it matters, really.”

“As a matter of fact, she has,” Goonar said. She had shown him the bank draft. “Or rather, she has some money of her own.”

“That’s what I meant,” Basil said. “I didn’t expect her to turn it over or anything.”

“That’s good, because she won’t. She’s investing it.”

“Trust you,” Basil said, “to find a second wife who is beautiful, talented, and rich.”

“She said we’re on our own.” The militia captain from Hospitality Bay glared at the militia captain from the home village. “Fleet can’t come, and we sure can’t fight off an invasion. My men know what to do with drunks, thieves, and stupid younglings who think it’s funny to cut the nets of fishing boats . . . not NEMs in battle armor.”

“So what are you saying, we should all take to the woods? Or just stand around to be beaten up or shot?”

“No—but I can’t see wasting any time on fancy stuff—pictures and books and that.”

“I’d like to save as much as we can. The Thornbuckles’ll be back some day.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You heard what she said. What if she meant it? Then it’s our choice.”

“If it’s my choice, there’s things in there I’d save,” the other man said.

“I don’t want to see war here,” said another. “I served in the first Patchcock mess, you know.”

“We know, Gordy.”

“You don’t realize what they can do from space. If we go hide out in the bush, if they don’t have time to bring us in, it’s a lot safer.”

“We can’t possibly move everything—that house is stuffed with treasures—art, books, furniture—”

“And the stables with horses—”

“Horses can move themselves, house furnishings can’t.”

“People first, then the animals, then things . . .”

“Yes, but—”

“We don’t have time for anything else.”

Much of the main landmass had been kept a hunting preserve, dotted with small camps and lodges here and there. Every flitter and aircar on the planet was pressed into service, moving family groups and neighborhoods out to the remote areas. When everyone who would go had gone, the same flitters and aircars descended on the home village. Already the staff had prepared what they could of the furnishings—the jewels, the old plate, the oldest and rarest books in the library, the pictures known to be family favorites. The heaviest went down the service lifts into the basements . . . maybe it would be enough protection. The rest went into the vehicles, to be dispersed as far as possible.

Meanwhile, Neil had organized the stable staff—first to move feed and supplies, then horses. The staff tacked up every rideable animal and set off with the others in a long, uneven string across the hayfields and grainfields that spread for kilometers south and east. Almost all the mares had foaled; Neil assigned the lightest riders to the mares, and the foals romped alongside. That group necessarily lagged, as they had to stop for the foal to nurse every hour or so. Lumbering along with them were the village’s milk cows and their calves; the sheep and goats skittered along in their own flocks, chivvied by excited dogs that had never had this much fun. The foxhounds trotted along in their couples, obedient to the huntsman’s horn.

The only animals Neil didn’t take were those that couldn’t travel; it broke his heart to leave them behind, but they would be all right in the home paddocks if the mutineers didn’t specifically attack them. He’d left his log—or what looked like his log—in his office, with the comment that he had sprayed for graylice, and evacuated the stable for 60 days. If the attackers believed that, they might not come looking. At least, not if they were in a hurry.

Harlis had interacted with Fleet only at the higher levels, when, as Seated Family and younger brother of the Speaker, he had been treated with great courtesy. He had gone aboard ships, certainly—ships docked at Stations, whose crews stood for inspection. He had been impressed with the crisp salutes, the obvious discipline, the spotless cleanliness, the deference accorded superiors. He had imagined himself as another admiral alongside Lepescu, commanding ships in battle . . . cool, imperturbable. Let Bunny play with politics: he would have real power, he had thought often, remembering the racks of missiles, the orderly arrays of power coils for the beam weapons. Of course, he couldn’t actually join Fleet, not with his Family responsibilities. But he could befriend admirals, and know that he, under his civilian exterior, was at heart a warrior.

The reality aboard Gaura Secundus was very different from his earlier brief experiences. Order, discipline, efficiency—yes. The crew, still in Fleet uniforms, with the Familias insignia removed, saluted crisply and moved briskly to their work. But the deference due him, as a Family member, as a Seat in Council, as the brother of the former Speaker . . . that was missing. They were coolly polite—they addressed him as Ser Thornbuckle—but they did not consider him one of them.

He had never realized before just how closed a community the military might be. True, Captain Sigind had never warmed to him, but he’d assumed that was Bunny’s fault. By the time the Lillian C. was partway to Millicent, he was wondering if he might have made a mistake. When his “hirelings” bundled him into a p-suit and pushed him through a docking tube from the yacht to their warship—to his eyes a vast black blot on the starfield—he was uneasily aware that he was alone in a crowd of men and women who had killed before, who enjoyed killing, who would kill him if he stood in their way. Right now, as the source of funds, he was useful to them. They respected money, in a way, as another form of power. But if they decided he wasn’t useful? If Brun or Stepan managed to cut off his access to the banks?

Harlis shivered in his little cabin, and realized that he did not want to die. He found himself rubbing his ears, and yanked his hands down.

He had never really liked the staff at Sirialis. They were Bunny’s people, and though they treated Family members with due courtesy, he knew they were not his. He had always wanted an empire of his own—his estates were not enough. He had thought hiring his own military force was a good idea. His private space navy, his private army—then he could have what he deserved, and forget about Bunny.

He had his meals with the officers, with Taylor always at one end of the table and himself at the other. It was here, even more than in the working parts of the ship, that the difference between himself and these men showed up most. He had grown up in a sea of politics, playing at power even as boy—he’d thought he knew all about it. When he’d pressured old Trema into leaving him her shares, he’d been, he was convinced, as straightforward and pragmatic as any admiral planning a war.

No. He had been held back, he now realized, by his own shrinking flesh. He had not himself gone to Trema’s house; he had not himself risked injury or discovery by any of the acts he’d hired. These people had no such scruples. They were as direct as a blow. The uniformity of their dress, which also excluded him (his best-cut suits looked slovenly next to their uniforms), proclaimed them.

Finally one day, Taylor commented, “I fear we alarm Ser Thornbuckle.”

“Alarm me?” Harlis said. He could feel his pulse speeding up. “In what way?”

“You’re looking at us like a deer at a hunter,” Taylor said, grinning. “Wondering what’s going to happen.” He licked his lips. “The difference between us, Ser Thornbuckle, is that I don’t worry about what will happen, because I intend to make it happen . . . my way.”

“It’s not always that easy,” Harlis said.

“No . . . war is not easy. Nor is hunting. But it’s that or letting the human race degenerate to a lot of parlor ornaments, unfit for anything but eating and breeding. Something has to clean the genome, Ser Thornbuckle, and we can’t all be Registered Embryos. But I don’t expect much trouble at Sirialis. If you’ve told us the truth, they have no system defenses worth speaking of, and no defense against armored shuttles. Morever, the shuttles stored at the three orbital stations will increase our transport capacity.”

“Unless someone back at Castle Rock thought to tell them we might be on the way,” Harlis said.

“And who would do that?” Taylor asked.

“It’s just possible someone figured it out,” Harlis said. He could feel himself starting to sweat. “My niece—Brun Meager—she was just named the Barraclough Sept heir. Stepan chose her. I was going to . . . to persuade her to come along. She has all the codes. But she and that disgusting woman from the Lone Star Confederation went out to dinner before we could—”

“You idiot,” Taylor said. “You said you weren’t a fugitive.”

“I’m not. I wasn’t, anyway, when I said that. And I don’t think I am now. She doesn’t know who—”

Taylor gave him a look that stopped the words in his throat. “Even if she’s too stupid to figure it out, someone will. And you left tracks all over the place—with Allsystems—”

“I told them I was going to Burkholdt and Celeste.”

“And you think they’ll believe that? After you made a grab for the girl and didn’t get her?” His face hardened. “You lied to me, Thornbuckle, and I don’t like being lied to.”

“It wasn’t a lie—” Harlis said. “At the time, it was true—”

At some signal Harlis didn’t catch, the two officers nearest him slid out of their seats, and before he could push back from the table they had his arms twisted behind him.

“I don’t like liars, Thornbuckle. And I don’t accept excuses. Is that clear?”

Harlis remembered the pain from childhood, when boys were forever tormenting each other, but this was worse . . . boys knew about twisting arms but not about the nerves more subtly available to skilled fingers. The pressure increased steadily, hot flares of pain in shoulders, neck, elbows, wrists; his mouth opened involuntarily, and he gasped.

“I asked you a question,” Taylor said, and someone grabbed Harlis’s hair and pulled his head back. Through the tears of pain in his eyes he could see Taylor and the others, sitting there calmly and enjoying his pain.

“Yes,” Harlis said finally, in a sort of grunt.

“Yes, what?” Taylor prompted. Harlis glared at him.

“I said yes,” he said. “I’m the one who hired you!”

A hard punch from behind rammed him into the edge of the table.

“You’re the one who lied to me,” Taylor said. “I’m not your servant, or your peasant. When you hire troops, you don’t lie to them. Not if you want to live long. Now, again: is that clear?”

“Yes . . . sir.” The sir was wrung out of him by a last twist of the arms that made it clear his shoulders would come loose if he didn’t say it. At a nod from Taylor, they released him, and he fell back into his chair. His shoulders hurt; his arms hurt . . . most of all, his pride hurt.

“Here’s how it’s going to be,” Taylor said. “You’re going to tell me everything you did, and planned, and thought, and heard . . . everything . . . and you’re going to do exactly as you’re told by me or by any of these officers. We will continue to treat you well, as long as you do not disobey us, or lie to us. But withholding information, or lying, or disobedience, will be punished.”

Harlis nodded, speechless, hoping he wouldn’t be made to say “yes, sir” again.

“Finish your dinner. We’ll talk afterwards.”

Taylor said, “We need money, and we need a secure base. You promised us both, and now you can’t deliver—”

“I can—I have the money, all I have to do is get it. I have the access codes for the family ansible, at Sirialis—that’s communication with anyone you want, free. I have the access codes for family accounts, as well as my own. There’s information—stuff Bunny’s wife had—about family businesses and things. And the place itself has money.”

“You’re sure you have the codes.”

“Of course I’m sure. Bunny was my brother; I’ve had the codes since I was in my twenties. Look, you’re worried about pursuit, but is there really any way Fleet could get there before we do?”

“No . . .”

“And even if they do, you could just hide. It’s a whole system—”

“That’s why we couldn’t. It’s too empty. But we could make a fast passage, see if your codes work, get some money, and head out.”

“You won’t need to,” Harlis said. “I keep telling you, I’m Bunny’s brother. Everyone on the planet knows who I am. They’re not going to give you any trouble.”

Over the course of the next several days, Harlis answered hundreds of questions about himself, his family, his fortune, and Sirialis. Taylor recorded all of it. Harlis knew how that would look to his family if they got hold of the cube. He’d heard that in storycubes the hero always managed to find some way of showing that he was being coerced. He couldn’t think of anything that Taylor wouldn’t recognize and punish.

When they arrived at Sirialis, Taylor called him in. “We need the ansible access code.”

Harlis handed it over. Taylor handed it on to one of his communications techs. “Strip the records and check our control,” he said.

“Sir.” The man turned away and fiddled with controls Harlis couldn’t see. “Someone did think we might come here. It’s a voice message from Brun Meager—warning the population Harlis might show up, and then that she couldn’t get Fleet to respond.”

“A trap?”

“Could be,” Taylor said. “We won’t stay that long. We can resupply anyway—it’s an ag world. With money on it, all concentrated in one place, right, Harlis?”

It still stung that Taylor had quit calling him Ser Thornbuckle, or even Thornbuckle. “Yes,” he said slowly. “The main banking outlet’s in the home village.”

“Just how fancy is that house?” Taylor asked. “Got a lot of things in it? Jewelry those women left behind?”

“I doubt it,” Harlis said. “They take it with them, or put it in the bank.”

“We might just take a look,” the man said. “Admiral Lepescu said this was a showplace. Gardens, lawns, stables—you ride, don’t you, Harlis?”

“I can, yes. I’m not that fond of it.”

“Not that fond of it.” Lately they’d taken to mocking him, repeating his phrases.

“Captain, I can’t get past the lockout. His password got us into the incoming queue, but there’s a traplink on the outgoing, and I can’t budge it.”

“That might make it difficult to get your funds, mightn’t it, Harlis?”

“Maybe it wants an ID check—sometimes it does—and I have to go to the terminal.”

“Well, then, I think we’ll take a shuttle down and see for ourselves . . .”

Harlis felt naked without even a p-suit when the others in the shuttle wore PPUs and armor. Six of them were neuro-enhanced marines, huge and bulky in their battle armor. At their order, he called down to the shuttle field. Someone answered—he didn’t know the name—and turned on the field’s electronic guidance system. He couldn’t see it himself; this shuttle had no windows. He felt the BUMP-bump-bump of the shuttle’s landing and roll in, then the hatch opened and the scent of Sirialis rushed in, the smell taking him back to a childhood that now seemed very far away.

In the midst of them, feeling small and vulnerable, Harlis walked across the field wondering why no one had come to meet them. The men looked this way and that, assessing, cataloguing.

“Piece of cake,” someone said.

“Find us transport,” said Taylor. But the hangars and shelters were empty. In the office, the only sign of occupation was the main control board, powered up and humming faintly. Taylor grinned. “They’re playing hard to get, are they? Want a hunt?” The other men grinned too, and nodded.

“We’ll see. Looks like we’ll have to walk—where’s this bank, Harlis?”

The village street, in early summer, looked like a travel poster: the neat stone buildings, the planters full of flowers, more flowers on the vines that clambered here and there. A marmalade cat raised its head from a doorstep, then slid down and into a flowerbed between cottages.

“Where is everybody?” Taylor asked. “Did they just run off in the fields?” One of the NEMs kicked open the door to the bank. “Some security,” Taylor sneered.

They herded Harlis inside. No one was there, but the autobank was on, just as the shuttle field power had been on. Harlis entered his access codes, and his credit cube, and waited for the light to come on. The autobank transferred the contents of his accounts to the cube. He strained to remember Bunny’s code—the bank would lock out for two hours if he made a mistake—but his first try worked. Bunny’s account balance, however, was zero.

“Get your offworld accounts,” Taylor said. Harlis entered the complete access codes for financial ansible transfers, and waited.

ANSIBLE ACCESS DENIED. ENTER CORRECT CODE.

“They changed the codes,” Taylor said. “They changed the codes.” With the word he backhanded Harlis across the face. “And all you had here was a lousy two hundred thousand—” He jerked his head at the others. “Let’s go.”

“I can get more,” Harlis said. “I know I can, if—”

“Shut him up,” Taylor said. One of the NEMs flipped his weapon over and tapped Harlis on the shoulder. It looked like a tap, but it felt like his shoulder was broken.

“Stuff at the house, Captain?” asked one of the men.

“Knickknacks,” Taylor said. “Probably all that’s left—the civs have run out, like the rabbits they are; they’d have taken the good stuff that was easy to move. Unless you want sheets and pillowcases and things they wouldn’t bother with—”

The man laughed. “Not me, sir.”

Harlis looked up the street, where the top stories of the house rose above the trees that edged the gardens.

“Want a last look, Harlis?” asked Taylor. “Think there’s something worthwhile they won’t have taken away, or locked up so you can’t get at it?”

“Pictures,” Harlis said hoarsely. “Books, tableware, furniture, weapons . . .”

“Weapons?”

“Hunting weapons, and old ones, antiques.”

“Worthless trash,” Taylor said. “I’m not getting blisters going up there for souvenirs.”

He led the way back to the shuttle; Harlis looked around, hoping against hope that someone would come to rescue him. There were only twenty mutineers in the landing party; he knew the militia could muster more than that. Couldn’t they see he was a prisoner?

No one came, and the NEMs shoved him back aboard the shuttle for its return journey.

When they got back aboard, Taylor had two men bring Harlis to the bridge. “I think this smug little world needs a lesson,” he said. “As does Harlis here. We’re going to break a few windows, knock down a few chimneys.” He looked at Harlis. “We’ll start with your house, Ser Thornbuckle.” He turned to his weapons officer. “You have the coordinates—drop one down the middle.”

Harlis felt his mouth drying. “No—don’t do that. Why destroy it?”

“Because I want to,” Taylor said. “Because I can.”

“But—they didn’t do anything to you . . .”

“They didn’t,” Taylor said. “You did. You lied to me. And it annoyed me, and when I’m annoyed I sometimes take it out on things.”

“But—but it’s mine,” Harlis said. “It’s mine, it always should have been, and besides, it’s beautiful.”

“Not anymore,” Taylor said. He grinned. “Show us, Leon,” he said. Up on the screen, the great house appeared, serene and lovely in its encircling gardens and lawns, glowing in the early summer morning light, as beautiful as Harlis had ever seen. He could almost smell the roses. Then the missile struck; the house bulged, as if swelling with outrage, and was hidden in a boiling cloud of explosive debris. “Good shot,” Taylor said. “So much for that one.”

The expanding cloud from the first explosion obscured the view of the stable, but not the second billow, the thicker, more boiling cloud. Harlis felt sick; his stomach churned. He had never liked horses that much, but he had never wished them harm, either, and he could imagine the terrified animals that weren’t killed at once, the shattered legs, the blood . . .

“We got what we came for,” Taylor said. “Now that we have the money.”

“Lob a few more at ’em?” asked another man.

“No. We may need our weapons for something else. But it makes a statement. Nobody’s going to think we’re playing a game.” His voice changed, turning soft and sweet and rotten. “Ser Thornbuckle seems unwell, Smithers. Take him to his cabin.”

Harlis lay staring at the overhead, unable to sleep, his mind running the sequence over and over and over. The house—his house—gone, utterly gone. Destroyed. The grand staircase, the ballroom, the fencing salon, the billiard room, the library, the morning room, the sunroom, his own suite with his personal treasures . . . gone, in a moment of time, a puff of smoke and surge of flame. Horror and grief and fear circled around the memory of what he’d seen, dread furies that screamed his name. Bunny would kill him for this—Bunny was dead—so many were dead—so much destruction—how could he? How had he? And what could he do? His body shivered, long shuddering quakes, as he remembered the hard hands that had hurt him, the cold eyes that had examined him and found him soft, contemptible, the feral smiles that had delighted in his pain, in his fear, in his horror at their capacity to destroy.

“Would you look at that, now,” Lt. Commander Coston said to nobody in particular. A patrol ship . . . two patrol ships . . . or something with that mass and drive signature . . . had just downjumped into the system. “Were we expecting anything?” he asked his exec.

“No, sir.” His exec, also a lieutenant commander, grinned. “Some excitement at last,” he said.

“Definitely.” At the angle the ships had entered, scan had picked up their location only eight light minutes away, with a rapidly lengthening “tail” aiming toward their entry point as the data streamed in. “Beacon data?”

“No beacons,” reported his scan tech. “Running hot—”

“And so are we—” Their orders were to prevent mutineers from reaching Aethar’s World—futile orders, he’d thought, since space was far to big to barricade. But sure enough, someone had come right past his picket, and the only ships that would run without beacons were those up to no good. He reminded himself that mutiny did not make people stupid, that these ships would know every trick he did. But he had something up his sleeve: Gorgon and Matchless, plus a tactical plan designed for exactly this situation.

“If they haven’t got a trailing heavy cruiser, they’re meat,” Coston said.

“All signatures confirm Fleet patrol craft,” his scan tech said. “No beacon, but everything—the weapons lit and all—”

“Fine, Kris. That just makes it easier.” He nodded to his Exec. “Put us on the plan. I’ll hail ’em.”

The hail was more for the record than anything else. Those could not be innocent merchanters out there, and only the largest private yachts had near that mass.

Before his message would have had time to reach the vessels, one of them fired at him.

“Good,” Coston said. “That makes it simple. No need to wait—”

Fremantle microjumped, halving the distance to the mutineers, then jumped again to only five seconds away. When they came out, the mutineers had fired a salvo at where they’d been. Fremantle microjumped ahead, to less than a second ahead of the mutineers’ computed course. Her own course, warped by the successive microjumps, gave only the smallest window for firing down the mutineers’ throats—but this was only the first such attack. Fremantle hopped out, to be replaced by Gorgon, and then Matchless, in a precisely timed dance that ensured they didn’t hit each other with their weapons. On the screens, hit after hit ablated the mutineers’ shields, degraded their ability to fight back. One of the two mutineer ships attempted to break away, microjumping five minutes out. But at that moment the first blew, and soon the trio of loyalists had caught and destroyed the other.

Coston grinned at his Exec. “This’ll make the admiral happy. Now if we can just get some ID on those ships . . .”

When Arash Livadhi returned to Sector VII HQ from the first convoy, and made his report to Admiral Serrano, she nodded. “Good work. I’m sure you have ideas now on training for the ships in convoy; I’d like you to brief the captains waiting for the next convoy as soon as you have them organized.”

“Of course, sir.” Arash explained his observations.

“Have you heard the good news?”

“Haven’t heard a thing, sir,” Livadhi said. “Somebody get a mutineer ship back?”

“Not back, no. But Heris located the mutineer flagship, Bonar Tighe, and destroyed it. We have confirmation that Solomon Drizh—he was bumped up to admiral minor, just like you—was the actual spearhead.” Livadhi’s stomach did a slow turn. He had avoided Drizh for years. “Apparently he was one of Lepescu’s proteges that we missed, and he’d reconstituted the Loyal Order of Game Hunters . . .” Admiral Serrano looked sharply at him. “You did know about that, didn’t you?”

“Heris told me,” he said quickly, feeling the sweat slicking his hands.

“That bastard poisoned everyone he touched,” she said, shaking her head. “Lepescu, I mean. But apparently Drizh was just as bad.”

Livadhi swallowed. He had to say it; he had to know what she knew. “I . . . served with Admiral—then Commander—Lepescu once, you know. I was pretty young.”

“I know,” she said. “You may be the exception to the rule. You’re lucky he took a dislike to you. He hated Heris, too. The youngsters he thought had promise—”

The youngsters he thought had promise he invited into his circle. Flattered them. Taught them. Urged them to become the elite, the best they could be. And then . . .

“He ruined them,” Admiral Serrano went on.

“It’s a shame,” Livadhi said, unable to think of anything else.

“If he were still alive, I’d strangle him myself,” Admiral Serrano said.

“Me, too,” Livadhi said, and meant it. He had been so young, so naive, so willing to be flattered, so honored to be singled out by a commander already known for his dash, his fighting ability, his high standards. He had admired Lepescu, had tried to copy him, even to what he preferred in music and food.

“It’s amazing,” Admiral Serrano went on, “how many people one bad apple comes in contact with. And yet there must be others, like you, who were around him and not part of his coterie, and what we don’t need right now is another witch hunt aimed at everyone who served under him, however far back.”

“I agree,” said Livadhi. He agreed with every fiber in him.

“Heris seems to be doing well with old Indy,” Admiral Serrano said. “How are you getting along with Vigilance?”

“Fine, sir. Though I’m sure Heris’s old crew would like to be with her—” Was this the time to suggest that they could transfer away?

“No need to worry about that. Not with a war on.” She went on. “Besides, she’s not coming back here; she’s over at Copper Mountain, with the debris she picked up. Chances are none of it is a complete personnel list of the mutiny, but the analysts there might find something.”

“Copper Mountain’s ours, then?”

“For the time being. The bad news is bad indeed. Mutineers hit a battle group over in Sector V, blew one ship and badly damaged a cruiser. They’re trying to blackmail some of the Families into hiring them—the old protection racket. There’ve been sporadic attacks on orbital stations and even planets. We just don’t have enough ships to guard everywhere, not and protect the borders. I expect any minute to hear that the Benignity has mounted an invasion; I can’t think why they haven’t.”