Hunting Party

Chapter One

Heris Serrano went from her room in the small but respectable dockside hotel on Rockhouse Station to the berth of her new command convinced that she looked like an idiot. No one laughed aloud, but that only meant the bystanders had chosen to snicker later rather than risk immediate confrontation with an ex-Regular Space Services officer on the beach.

Heris kept her eyes away from any of those who might be contemplating humor, the dockside traffic of the commercial district. Her ears burned; she could feel the glances raking her back. She would not have changed her military posture even if she could have walked any other way; she had been R.S.S. from birth or before, daughter of officers, admirals’ granddaughter and niece, a service family for all the generations anyone bothered to count. Even that miserable first year at the Academy had seemed familiar, almost homey: she had heard the stories from parents, uncles, aunts, all her life.

And here she was, tricked out in enough gold braid and color to satisfy a planet-bound admiral from one of the minor principalities, all because of the whims of a rich old woman with more money than sense. They had to be laughing behind her back, those merchanter officers and crewmen who didn’t meet her eyes, who went about their business as if purple and scarlet were normal uniform colors, as if two sleeves covered with gold rings didn’t look ridiculous, as if the rim of gold and green striped cord around collar, lapels, and cuffs didn’t tell everyone that an R.S.S. officer had descended to the level of carting wealthy eccentrics on pleasure jaunts in something far more like a mansion than a spacefaring ship.

Commercial dockside ended abruptly at a scarred gray wall with a lockgate in it. Heris inserted her card; the barred gate slid aside, then closed behind her, leaving her caged between the bars behind and a steel door with a thick window. Another keyslot, this time her card produced a human door-opener, who swung the door aside and held out his hand for her papers. She handed over the neat packet civilian life required. Master’s license, certifications in five specialties, Imperial ID, military record (abbreviated; only the unclassified bones), letters of recommendation, and—what mattered most here—Lady Cecelia de Marktos’s seal of employment. The human—Station Security or Garond Family, Heris did not know which—ran a handscanner over this last, and replaced the entire pile in its file cover before handing it back to her.

“Welcome to North, Captain Serrano,” the man said, with no inflection of sarcasm. “May I be of assistance?”

Her throat closed a moment, remembering the words she would have heard if she had gone through a similar lockgate on the other side of the commercial docks, where sleek gray R.S.S. cruisers nuzzled the Station side by side. Where her gray uniform with its glowing insignia would have received crisp salutes, and the welcome due a comrade in arms. “Welcome to the Fleet,” she would have heard, a greeting used anywhere, anytime, they came together away from civilians. But she could not go back there, back where her entire past would wrap around her. She had resigned her commission. She would never hear those words again.

“No, thank you,” she said quietly. “I know where the ship is.” She would not say its name yet, though it was her new command. . . . She had grown up with ships named for battles, for monsters, for older ships with long histories. She could not yet say she commanded Sweet Delight.

North, on all Stations, defined the environs of aristocracy. Wealth and privilege could be found anywhere, in the R.S.S. as well as the commercial docks, but always near something. Here was nothing but wealth, and its servants. This deck had carpeted walkways, not extruded plastic sheeting; the shops had no signs, only house emblems. Each docking bay had its own lockgate, enclosing two large rooms: one marked “Service Entrance,” lined with racks and shelving for provisions delivered, and the other furnished luxuriously as a reception salon for going-away parties. Heris’s card in the slot produced another human door-opener, this time a servant in livery, who ushered her into the salon. Heris made her way between overstuffed sofas and chairs covered in lavender plush and piled with pillows in garish colors, between low black tables and pedestals supporting what were probably priceless works of art, though to her eye, they looked like globs of melted space debris after a battle.

The actual docking tube lay unguarded. Heris frowned. Surely even civilians had someone watching the ship’s main hatch, even with the security of a lockgate on the dock itself. She paused before stepping over the line that made the legal division between dock and ship. The lavender plush lining of the access tube hid all the vital umbilicals that connected the ship to Station life support. Unsafe, Heris thought, as she had thought on her earlier interview visit. Those lines should be visible. Surely even civilians had regulations to follow.

Underfoot, the lavender plush carpet felt five centimeters thick. A warm breath of air puffed out of the ship itself, a warm breath flavored not with the spice she remembered from the interview, but with the sour stench of the morning after a very large night before. Her nose wrinkled; she could feel her back stiffening. It might be someone else’s ship in principle, but she did not allow a dirty mess on any ship she commanded—and would not now. She came out of the access tube into a family row; the tube’s privacy shield had kept her from hearing it until she stepped across the barrier. Heris took in the situation at a glance. One tall, angular, gray-haired woman with a loud voice: her employer. Three sulky, overdressed young men that Heris would not have had on her ship, and their obvious girlfriends . . . all rumpled, and one still passed out on a lavender couch that matched the plush carpet and walls. Streaks of vomit stained its smooth velour. As she came through the barrier, the chestnut-haired youth with the ruffled shirt answered a final blast from the older woman with a whined “But, Aunt Cecelia—it’s not fair.”

What was “not fair” was that rich spoiled brats like him hadn’t had the nonsense taken out of them in boot camp, Heris thought. She smiled her normal good-morning-bridge smile at her employer and said, “Good morning, milady.”

The youths—all but the unconscious snorer on the couch—stared; Heris could feel her ears going hot and ignored them, still smiling at Cecelia Artemisia Veronica Penelope, heiress of more titles than anyone needed, let alone more money. “Ah,” said that lady, restored to instant unruffled calm by the appearance of someone to whom it meant something. “Captain Serrano. How nice to have you aboard. Our departure will be delayed, but only briefly”—here she looked at the chestnut-haired youth—“until my nephew is settled. I presume your things are already aboard?”

“Sent ahead, milady,” Heris said.

“Good. Then Bates will show you to your quarters.” Bates materialized from some angle of corridor and nodded at Heris. Heris wondered if she would be introduced to the nephew now or later; she was sure she could take that pout from his lips if given the chance. But she wouldn’t get the chance. She followed Bates—tall, elegant, so much the butler of the screen and stage it was hard to believe him real—down the carpeted passage to her suite. She would rather have gone to the bridge. Not this bridge, but the bridge of the Rapier or even a lowly maintenance tug.

Bates stood aside at her door. “If the captain wishes to rekey the locks now . . . ?”

She looked at that impassive face. Did he mean to imply that they had thieves on board? That someone might violate the privacy of her quarters? The captain’s quarters? She had thought she knew how far down the scale she’d fallen, to become a rich lady’s yacht captain, but she had not conceived of needing to lock her quarters. “Thank you,” she said, as if it had been her idea. Bates touched a magnetic wand to the lockfaces; she put her hand on each one. After a moment, the doorcall’s pleasant anonymous voice said, “Name, please?” and she gave her name; the doorcall chimed once and said, “Welcome home, Captain Serrano.” Bates handed her a fat ring of wands.

“These are the rekeying wands for ship’s crew and all the operating compartments. They’re all coded; you’ll find the full architectural schematics loaded on your desk display. The crew will await your arrival on the bridge, at your convenience.”

She didn’t even know if she could ask Bates to tell the crew when to expect her, or if that was something household staff never did. She had already discovered that the house staff and the ship crew had very little to do with each other.

“I could just pass the word to Mr. Gavin, the engineer,” Bates said, almost apologetically. “Since Captain Olin left”—Captain Olin, Heris knew, had been fired—“Lady Cecelia has often asked me to speak to Mr. Gavin.”

“Thank you,” Heris said. “One hour.” She glanced at the room’s chronometer, a civilian model which she would replace with the one in her luggage.

“Philip will escort you,” Bates said.

She opened her mouth to say it was not necessary—even in this perfumed and padded travesty of a ship she could find the bridge by herself—but instead said, “Thank you” once more. She would not challenge their assumptions yet.

Her master’s certificate went into the mounting plaque on the wall; her other papers went into the desk. Her luggage—she had asked that it not be unpacked—cluttered one corner of her office. Beyond that was a smaller room, then the bathroom—her mouth quirked as she forced herself to call it that. And beyond that, her bedroom. A cubage larger than an admiral would have on most ships, and far larger than anyone of her rank ever had, even on a Station. A suite, part of the price being paid to lure a real spacer, a real captain, into this kind of work.

In the hour she had unpacked her few necessary clothes, her books, her reference data cubes, and made sure that the desk display would handle them. The chronometer on the wall now showed Service Standard time as well as ship’s time and Station time, and had the familiar overlapping segments of color to delineate four-, six-, and eight-hour watches. She had reviewed the crew bios in the desk display. And she had shrugged away her regrets. It was all over now, all those years of service, all her family’s traditions; from now on, she was Heris Serrano, captain of a yacht, and she would make the best of it.

And they wouldn’t know what hit them.

Some of them suspected within moments of her arrival on the bridge. Whatever decorator had chosen all the lavender and teal furnishings of the rest of the ship, the bridge remained functional, if almost toylike in its bright, shiny, compactness. The crew had to squeeze in uncomfortably; Heris noticed who squeezed in next to whom, and who wished this were over. They had heard, no doubt. They could see what they could see; she might be wearing purple and scarlet, but she had the look, and knew she had it; all those generations of command came out her eyes.

She met theirs. Blue, gray, brown, black, green, hazel: clear, hazy, worried, frightened, challenging. Mr. Gavin, the engineer—thin, almost wispy, and graying—had announced, “Captain on the bridge” in a voice that squeaked. Navigation First, all too perky, was female, and young, and standing close to Communications First, who had spots and the slightly adenoidal look that Heris had found in the best comm techs on any ship. The moles—environmental techs, so-called everywhere from their need to crawl through pipes—glowered at the back. They must have suspected she’d seen the ship’s records already. Moles never believed that strange smells in the air were their fault; they were convinced that other people, careless people, put the wrong things down the wrong pipe and caused the trouble. Gavin’s junior engineering techs, distancing themselves from the moles, tried to look squeaky-clean and bright. Heris had read their records; one of them had failed the third-class certificate four times. The other juniors—Navigation’s sour-faced paunchy male and Communications’ wispy female—were clearly picked up at bargain rates for off-primeshift work.

Heris began, as always on a new ship, with generalities. Let them relax; let them realize she wasn’t stupid, crazy, or vicious. Then . . . “Now about emergency drills,” she said, when she’d seen the relaxation. “I see you’ve had no drills since docking here. Why is that, Mr. Gavin?”

“Well, Captain . . . after Captain Olin left, I didn’t like to seem—you know—like I was taking liberties above my station.”

“I see. And before that, I notice that there had been no drills since the last planetfall. That was Captain Olin’s decision, I suppose.” From Gavin’s expression, that was not the reason, but he went along gratefully.

“Yes, Captain, that would be it. He was the captain, after all.” Someone stirred, in the back, but they were so crammed together she couldn’t be sure who it was. She would find out. She smiled at them, suddenly happy. It might be only a yacht, but it was a ship, and it was her ship.

“We will have drills,” she said, and waited a moment for that to sink in. “Emergency drills save lives. I expect all you Firsts to ready your divisions.”

“We surely can’t have time for a drill before launch!” That was the sour-faced Navigation Second. She stared at him until he blushed and said, “Captain . . . sorry, ma’am.”

“It depends,” she said, without commenting on his breach of manners. “I know you’re all readying for launch, but I would like a word here with the pilot and Nav First.”

They edged out of the cramped space; she knew the muttering would start as soon as they cleared the hatch. Ignoring that, she fixed the Navigation First with a firm glance. “Sirkin, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Captain.” Brisk, bright-eyed . . . Heris hoped she was as good as she looked. “Brigdis Sirkin, Lalos Colony.”

“Yes, I saw your file. Impressive qualification exam.” Sirkin had topped the list with a perfect score, rare even in R.S.S. trained personnel. The younger woman blushed and grinned. “But what I want to know is whether you plotted the final approach from Dunlin to here.” The way she said it could lead either way; she wanted to see Sirkin’s reaction.

A deeper blush. “No, Captain. I didn’t . . . not entirely, that is.”

“Umm. I wondered why someone who’d swept the exam would choose such an inefficient solution. Tell me about it.”

“Well . . . ma’am . . . Captain Olin was a good captain, and I’m not saying anything against him, but he liked to . . . to do things a certain way.”

Heris glanced at the pilot. Plisson, his tag said; he had been another rich lady’s pilot before he came here. “Did you have anything to do with it?” she asked.

The pilot shot Sirkin an angry glance. “She thinks she can shave time to the bone,” he said. “It’s like she never heard of flux-storms. I guess you could call it efficient, if you’re on a warship, but I wasn’t hired to kill milady.”

“Ah. So you thought Sirkin’s original course dangerous, and Captain Olin backed you?”

“Well . . . yes. Captain. And I expect you’ll stick with her, being as you’re spacefleet trained.”

Heris grinned at him; his jaw sagged in surprise. “I don’t like getting smeared across space any better than anyone else,” she said. “But I’ve reviewed Sirkin’s work only as combined with yours and Captain Olin’s. Sirkin, what was your original course here?”

“It’s in the NavComp, Captain; shall I direct it to your desktop?”

“If you please. I’ll look it over, see if I think you’re dangerous or not. Did you ever have any spacefleet time, Plisson?”

“No, Captain.” The way he said it, he considered it worse than downside duty. She wasn’t sure she wanted a half-hearted first pilot.

“Then I suggest you withdraw your judgment of R.S.S. operations until you see some. War is dangerous enough without adding recklessness to it; I’ll expect professional performance from both you and Navigator Sirkin.” She turned to go, then turned back, surprising on their faces the expression she had hoped to find. “And by the way, you may expect drills; space is less forgiving than I am of sloppy technique.”

Lady Cecelia noticed the shadow in the tube only a moment before her new captain came aboard. She could have wished for less promptness. She would have preferred to finish reaming out her nephew and the residue of his going-away party in the decent privacy afforded by her household staff. Bates knew better than to stick his nose in at a time like this.

But the woman was ex-military, and not very ex- by her carriage and expression. Of course she would not be late; even her hair and toenails probably grew on schedule. Cecelia wanted to throttle the condescension off the dark face that rose serene above the purple and scarlet uniform. No doubt she had no nephews, or if she did they were being lovingly brought up in boot camp somewhere. She probably thought it would be easy to remake Ronnie and his set. Whereas Cecelia had known, from the moment of Ronnie’s birth, that he was destined to be a spoiled brat. Charming, bright enough if he bothered, handsome to the point of dangerousness with that thick wavy chestnut hair, those hazel eyes, that remaining dimple—but spoiled rotten by his family and everyone else.

“But it’s not fair,” he whined now. He had expected her to let them all travel with him, all twenty or so of his favorites among his fellow officers and their sweethearts of both sexes. She ignored that, smiled at her new captain, thinking, Don’t you dare laugh at me, you little blot, and called Bates to take the captain to her quarters. And away she went, impossibly bright-eyed for this hour of the morning (no adolescent partying had disturbed her sleep), her trim figure making the girls in the room look like haggard barflies. Which they weren’t, really. It was terrible what girls did these days, but these were decent girls, of reasonably nice families. Nothing like hers, or Ronnie’s (except Bubbles, the snoring one, and the present cause of dissension), but nice enough.

With a last glance at the captain’s retreating form, she turned back to Ronnie. “What is not fair, young man, is that you are intruding on my life, taking up space on my yacht, making my staff work harder, and all because you lacked the common sense to keep your mouth shut about things which no gentleman discusses.”

Sulky. He had been sulky at one, at two; his parents had doted on his adorable tantrums, his big lower lip. He was sulky now, and she did not dote on the lip or the tongue behind it. “She said I was better. It’s not fair that I’m getting sent away, when she’s the one who said it. She wanted to be with me—”

“She said it to you, in the confidence of the bedroom.” Surely someone had already told him this. Why should she have to explain? “And you don’t even know if she meant it, or if she says it to everyone.”

“Of course she meant it!” Young male pride, stung, flushed his cheeks and drove sulkiness into temper. “I am better.”

“I won’t argue,” Cecelia said. “I will only remind you that you may be better in bed with the prince’s favorite singer, but you are now on my yacht, by order of your father and the king, and the singer is stuck with the prince.” Her pun got through to her a moment before Ronnie caught it, and she shook her finger at him. “Literally and figuratively: you’re here, and he’s there, and you’ve gained nothing by blabbing except whatever momentary amusement you shared with your barracks-mates.” He chuckled, and the odious George—who had well earned the nickname everyone in society knew—snickered. Cecelia knew the odious George’s father fairly well, and dismissed the snicker as an unconscious copy of his father’s courtroom manner. She supposed it went over well in the junior mess of the Royal Space Service, where the young sprouts of aristocracy and wealth flaunted their boughten commissions in the intervals of leave and training. “You’re the one who talked,” she said, ignoring the side glances of her nephew and his crony. “The . . . er . . . lady didn’t. Therefore you are in trouble, and you are sent away, and it’s my misfortune that I happened to be near enough to serve your father’s purpose.” He opened his mouth to say something else she was sure she would not want to hear, and she went on, inexorably. “It’s better than it could have been, young Ronald, as you will see when you quit feeling sorry for yourself. And I am stretching my generosity to let you bring these”—she waved her hand at the others—“when it crowds my ship and wastes my time. If it weren’t that Bubbles and Buttons were going to Bunny’s anyway—”

“Well—in fact they don’t want to go—”

“Nonsense. I’ve already sent word I’m bringing them. A season in the field will do you all immense good.” She gave him another lengthy stare. “And I don’t want any of you sneaking offship to cause trouble on the Station before we launch. It’s bad enough having to wait for your luggage; I shall have your father pay the reset fees for changing the launch schedule. I hope he takes it out of your allowance.”

“But that’s not—” She held up her hand before “fair” could emerge and decided to drop her own bombshell now.

“And by the way, my new captain is ex-Regular Space Service, so don’t try any of your tricks with her. She could probably tie you all in knots without trying.” Cecelia turned on her heel and walked out, satisfied that she had given them something besides her hard-heartedness to think about.

It was too bad, really. She lived on her yacht precisely so as to avoid family complications, just as she had avoided marriage and political service. They could have found some other way to keep Ronnie out of the capital for a year or so. They didn’t have to use her, as if she were a handy piece of furniture. But that was Berenice all over again: big sisters existed to be of service to the beauty of the family.

Stores. She would have to check with Bates to be sure they had ordered enough additional food—after last night, she suspected they might need more. Young people did eat so, when they ate. She reached her own suite with relief. That miserable decorator Berenice had sent her to insisted on doing the whole ship in lavender and teal, with touches of acid green and cream, but she had not let him in here. Perhaps the young people did prefer lavender plush, but she hated it. Here in her own rooms, she could have it her way. Brighter colors, polished wood, carved chairs piled with pillows.

She paused at her desk. Inlaid wood made a pattern of vines and flowers; until she pressed the central blossom, it could have passed for an antique of Old Earth. The desktop cleared, showing the floorplan of that deck, with ghostly shadows of the others. A cluster of dots showed Ronnie and friends, back in the lounge. A dot in her bedroom; that would be Myrtis, her maid. A dot for the captain, in her quarters; a moving dot that must be Bates, coming back. She touched her finger to that one, and his voice came out of the desk speaker.

“Yes, madam?”

“Have Cook check the quantities Ronnie and his friends consumed last night; they seem to eat quite a lot. . . .”

“Cook has estimated an additional fifteen percent over your orders yesterday, madam, and has the purchase order ready for your stamp.”

“Thank you, Bates.” She might have known. They were usually two steps ahead of her—but that was their duty. She flicked up the lower service deck on the display, found Cook’s dot, and touched it. Cook transferred the purchase order to her desktop, and she looked at it. Even with six additional people aboard, it looked like enough to feed them all three times over. It would serve them right, she thought, if she made them eat survival rations until they got to Bunny’s. Certainly it would cost less and take up less room. Cook had pointed out that they’d need to air up two more refrigeration units and set out another full section of ’ponics.

That would start another argument between crewside and staffside. The environmental techs were ship’s crew, under the captain’s command; Cecelia knew better than to interfere with her captain’s crew. But that part of ’ponics devoted to the kitchen came under the heading of “gardening,” which meant staff—her staff. Felix, head gardener, and two boys (one female), kept her private solarium in fresh flowers and Cook supplied with fresh vegetables. Felix and the environmental techs always got into some hassle which required her decision—one of the things she had not liked about her former captain was his tendency to let things slide until she had to quell an incipient riot in staff.

She found Felix’s icon, touched it, and told him about the ’ponics section. He wanted to use half of it for a new set of exotics he’d bought seedstock for; the pictures of the so-called vegetables didn’t impress her. Felix insisted, though, that if he could have seed available when they arrived at Bunny’s, he could trade with Bunny’s ferocious head gardener for her favorite (and rarest) mushrooms. Cecelia shrugged; Ronnie and his pals could eat the things she didn’t like.

“And what you tell the moles, eh?” he said finally, having won his main point. “You got to let them know it’s okay, whatever I grow.”

“I will tell Captain Serrano, our new captain, that I’ve approved your use of an additional ’ponics section for fresh produce.”

“They bother me, I’ll send ’em the halobeets,” Felix said. He would, too. He had done it before, when displeased with someone. A genius of his type—but like most such geniuses, a trifle tempery. She put up with him for the luscious fruits and fresh vegetables, the abundant flowers, which so amazed those who came to dinner. . . . No other yacht she knew of was completely self-sufficient in fresh produce.

She looked again for the captain’s icon, and found it moving toward the bridge. Best not interrupt her now; she would have had the crew assembled. Cecelia’s finger hovered over the control. . . . She could easily listen in on the captain’s first briefing . . . but she decided against it. Instead, she routed a message to the captain’s desk about the ’ponics, and called up a credit status.

The figures meant little to her; the reality was that she could afford to buy anything for sale on Rockhouse two or three times over. The desktop offered a bright-colored graphic which showed how much more she was spending to transport herself and six young people compared to herself alone. It didn’t matter, and Berenice had transferred stock to cover it anyway. She called up Ronnie’s status, and pursed her lips. Berenice had put him on the silver family line, and he had already used it. Hardin’s Clothiers, Vetris Accessories, Spaulding . . . Cecelia whistled. He had started with two cubes of storage, and at this rate would need another two.

Her desk chimed. “Aunt Cecelia?” came the plaintive voice. “Please—I need to talk to you.”

Hardly, she thought. He needed to listen to her. “Ah, Ronnie. Very good—I meant to ask you, did you bring your hunting tackle?”

“My . . . uh . . . what?”

“Your riding clothes, your saddles—”

“I—no! Of course not. Aunt Cecelia, just because you’re crazy enough to ride big stupid animals across rocks and mud—”

“I presumed,” said Cecelia, overriding his voice with a surge of glee, “that that was your rather large order at Hardin’s and Vetris’s and Spaulding’s. But since it wasn’t, perhaps you’d return some of that foppery, whatever it was, and get yourself some decent riding kit. We are going to Bunny’s, as you know, for the season, and since I’m saddled with you, you might as well saddle a horse and learn something useful.” She felt good about the pun; puns usually came to her four hours too late, if at all.

The fashion in invective, she was happy to discover, had swung once more from the rough crudities copied from the lower classes to an entertaining polysyllabic baroque style. When Ronnie ran out of breath (which happened more quickly, she noted, with the longer words and phrases), she interrupted again, before he could start another rampage.

“I do not care that you do not like horses, or riding, or that none of your set consider hunting a reasonable or enjoyable pastime. I do not care if you are miserable for the entire year of your exile. You may sulk in your cabin if you like—you will certainly not sulk in mine, or interfere with my pleasure one bit more than I can help. And if you do not order yourself the proper clothes, saddles, and so on, I shall do it for you and charge it to your account.” Although it would really make sense to wait until they were at Bunny’s—all the really good saddlers came there for the season. But her blood was up. So, it seemed, was his. She could order what she liked, he said angrily, but he was not about to pretend to copy the amusements of a horse-faced old spinster with more money than sense, and he would be damned if she ever found him on a horse chasing some innocent helpless animal across the dripping fields.

“If you think the fox is either innocent or helpless, young Ronald, you are more foolish than I think.” She was not sure which of them broke the connection. She did not care. She called her personal assistant at Spaulding’s and arranged everything as she wished—of course they knew all his measurements already, and of course they were happy to help a wealthy aunt surprise an almost-as-wealthy nephew. In a final burst of pique, she put the bill on her own account, and not Berenice’s. . . . She wanted no questions from the doting mother who had let the brat become so useless.