Winning Colors

Chapter Twelve

The more Heris worked with the local government, the more she knew about local resources, the more threatening the situation appeared. The mining colonies, most of them concentrated on the second largest satellite of the larger gas giant, Zalbod, had no defenses at all. Rockhounds, miners who worked the smaller chunks of debris, used little two-to-six-person pods for transportation; nothing could be mounted on them which would affect a ship with shields. There was one antiquated ore-hauler, large enough to mount both screens and weapons if they had had screens and weapons to mount, or if it had had enough powerplant to do more than crawl slowly from one orbital base to another.

“We have to hope someone’s listening back at Sector HQ,” Heris said. She could hope it, but she also knew, from experience, how civilian reports of trouble could end up at the bottom of someone’s stack. She didn’t have the current override codes that might have bumped their report up.

“Where’s Lady Cecelia?” Petris asked.

“At another horse farm, of course. I have no idea how it can take so long to pick out what she wants—particularly since there are genetic surgeons who specialize in equine design—she told me that. But now she’s visiting somebody she calls ‘Marcia and Poots,’ which sounds faintly obscene. She says she expects to be there several weeks, and I’m not to worry. Then she sent all these pictures—” Heris flicked through them on the display. “They’re just horses. Here we are in real danger, and she’s worrying about whether this one’s hocks are wiggly. I love the woman, but really!”

“Captain—” That was Koutsoudas, from the bridge. Heris leapt up.

“Coming now,” she said.

When she arrived, all the ex-military crew were clustered there, around Koutsoudas’s screen. They moved over so that she could see.

“It’s ours,” Koutsoudas said. He didn’t have to; Heris recognized the drive signature herself; she had commanded just such a cruiser. “And . . . another . . .” That, too, was familiar; although cruisers patrolled alone, this would not be a routine patrol. She expected three, cruiser and two patrol ships, and the final signature appeared even as she thought it. A ragged shift out of jump, or appropriate caution, depending on how much trouble the commander had expected to find.

“Find out who’s commanding, when you can,” Heris said. “I’ll let the Xavierans know—” She turned to her own board, and tapped in the code. They’d be relieved to know that the Fleet had finally listened, that help had arrived, that their survival didn’t depend on one armed yacht and its ex-military captain. And if they weren’t relieved enough, she herself was . . . those had been anxious days, wondering who would get here first. She knew her limits, even after roses and bagpipe parades.

“Captain, it’s Commander Garrivay.” Koutsoudas’s expression, which Heris was learning to read, gave some signal she couldn’t yet decode. She tried to remember a Garrivay, and couldn’t dredge up anything but the vague impression of the name on a promotion list years back.

“Which Garrivay?” Maybe the first name would mean something.

“Dekan Garrivay . . . Captain Livadhi had . . . uh . . . served on the same ship with him when they were both jigs. Sir.” Heris gave Koutsoudas a long stare, intended to remind him that she was now his captain, and this was no time to withhold loyalty. Koutsoudas sighed. “Right, Captain Serrano. Dekan Garrivay, in the opinion of Captain Livadhi, would require divine intervention to achieve the moral stature of a child rapist.”

“Even for Arash, that’s strong,” Heris said. More importantly, while Arash had colorful opinions of many officers, he didn’t usually—to her knowledge—share them with his enlisted crew.

“It wasn’t just that once, either; Captain Livadhi didn’t say much about the details of that cruise, but Garrivay was in the same battle group we were during that mess on Patchcock. Sonovabitch blew the second reactor station after the cease-fire, and it was only because the rebels came back with heavy stuff that he got away with it. Nobody noticed because they knocked out the command ship, and they had the scores—”

“But you had your own pet scans?” This was something that hadn’t made it into the briefings.

“Yes—I did, and Captain Livadhi wanted to make something of it, but the scan data were tricky . . . I’d just figured out how to—to boost the definition, and it was nonstandard. And he wasn’t commanding then, of course; he wasn’t sure how his captain would take it.”

“I don’t suppose you know where Garrivay has been stationed lately?” Heris watched the incoming scan data, but let her mind roll fantasy dice . . . the probability of a bad captain being in command of a strike group here, at such a time, the probability that she, and Koutsoudas, would be here to notice. . . . “Livadhi suspected this, didn’t he?” she asked, before Koutsoudas had answered the first question. She didn’t look at him, but made a private bet on whether he would answer, and if so in what order.

“He thought something would blow, yes.” Koutsoudas wasn’t looking at her, either; out of her peripheral vision she saw his profile, intent on the displays in front of him. “It’s true that I was in some danger; my modifications of scan technology had become a bit too famous. But he said you were the lightning rod, and you’d need some help—unobtrusive help. I don’t think he thought Garrivay, in particular. Garrivay was attached to Third Ward, Inner Systems.” Third Ward, Inner, where Lepescu had been for eight years before taking over the combat position that had cost Heris her commission.

Heris had the prickling feeling all down her back that usually preceded battle. “I am a lightning rod?”

“Serranos in general, he said, and you in particular. Your aunt the admiral told him—”

“My aunt!” Now the prickling sensation shifted to anger, pure and white-hot. “What was she talking to Arash for—DAMMIT!” Her vision blurred a moment, then she felt the long habit of control settling back into her mind like a rider on a fractious horse. She glanced around the bridge; none of her crew were staring. They knew better. Koutsoudas met her eye for a moment, as if checking to see if she was about to hit him, then looked away. “Never mind,” Heris said, to no one in particular. “I never have been able to predict Aunt Vida. Sorry, ’Steban. If you have any aunts, you’ll understand.”

“My Aunt Estrellita,” Koutsoudas said promptly. “Actually a great-aunt, on my mother’s side. She’s not in Fleet, or she’d drive me crazy . . . every time I’m home on leave, she’s promoting an alliance with yet another second or third cousin twice removed. She runs the whole family, except for my cousin Juil, who’s just as pigheaded as she is.”

Heris wondered if he really had an aunt like that, or if he just made her up on the spot. It didn’t really matter. What did matter was that someone—Livadhi, or her aunt, or both—had expected her to be in trouble, and had provided Koutsoudas, presumably to help her out—or get rid of her, a dark thought intruded. She shoved it back; no time to worry about that. Instead, she could worry about the choice of Garrivay for such duty as this.

Her worry translated into a discreet request to be included in the invitation to senior administrative personnel to meet the new military commander of Xavier’s defense. That amounted to a reception and meeting to follow, on the orbital station. Heris, who had met all but Garrivay before, mingled easily and worked her way to the back of the group as she heard the unmistakable click of approaching boots.

A large man introduced himself to the General Secretary as Commodore Garrivay, commanding a battle group. Heris did not let her eyebrows rise at that but wondered why he was trying to impress. True, commodore was the correct term for someone commanding a battle group, but a battle group was defined as a formation comprising at least two heavy cruisers. Commonly, battle groups had two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and three to five patrol ships. One cruiser and a couple of patrol ships could be a battle group only if you’d just lost the others in combat.

Garrivay had a strong-boned face well padded with flesh; if he had been a horse (she grinned to herself for picking up Cecelia’s habits of thought) he would have been considered to show a coarse, coldblood influence. She noticed that his gaze locked on the person to whom he spoke, a fervent intensity that, in other people, she had found to accompany both the ability and willingness to lie convincingly.

Still, his first questions to the General Secretary were reasonable, as he asked for clarification of the message that had brought him, and the raider’s attack. He listened to the somewhat rambling report the General Secretary’s aide gave—Heris winced at some of the inaccuracies which Garrivay patiently dissected—and then commended the Xavierans on their successful response.

“Captain Serrano helped us out when the raider attacked,” the General Secretary said. Heris wished he’d left her out of it.

“Serrano . . .” Garrivay seemed to consider, then his eyes narrowed. “Heris Serrano?”

“Yes, that’s the name.”

“You were lucky.” The emphasis could be taken either way; Heris waited to see how he would shade it. He still did not look at her, as if he had not noticed her among the others. “I never had the honor of serving in the same organization with Captain Serrano, but I believe she had a . . . er . . . distinguished record.” Again, an emphasis that might be taken more than one way; the pause suggested that another adjective had come to mind before “distinguished.” His gaze raked the assembly and snagged only briefly on hers before passing on. So he did recognize her. And had no intention of acknowledging her at this meeting.

“She blew that raider neatly enough.” A challenging tone from someone who recognized the ambiguity of Garrivay’s . . . Heris didn’t recognize the voice and dared not peer down the room.

“I daresay,” Garrivay said carelessly. “From what you’ve said, a cobbled-up mismatch of weaponry and hull . . . not much threat, really, though I understand your being anxious for the station. Even a gap-toothed wolf can bite.”

Heris blinked. They weren’t going to like that, neither the words nor the tone, not after the previous raids they’d suffered. And where had he heard about the raider’s design flaws? She didn’t think her crew had gossiped about that among the stationers—though she’d ask, before making the obvious connection. Sure enough, the General Secretary had puffed up like a rooster.

“I hardly think a raider capable of blowing our main station out of the sky could be called a gap-toothed wolf, Commodore.” He glanced around for support, and got it in the expressions of the others. “Those raiders have been at us for a decade, during which no one from the R.S.S. has seen fit—”

“But it didn’t blow your station, did it? Not this time, nor any other. So why do you think it could? Because Captain . . . er . . . Serrano told you so?”

She could feel the stubbornness as if it were a visible pall hanging smoglike over their heads. Surely Garrivay knew how they’d react. Why would he want them to react like this, stiffening into dislike of him? With a war looming, he should be doing what he could to rally the civilians behind him. Perhaps he was one of those officers who thought civilians were all fools, good only for providing the money to keep the Fleet going. Perhaps he assumed that if he dismissed their fear of the raider, they would then believe him when he told them something else was a threat. Whatever his intent, she knew it was a mistake.

When the meeting broke up, he made a point of coming to her side.

“Well, Captain Serrano . . . I never had the pleasure of meeting you before.” This close, the strong face with its bright green eyes had a raffish charm. His skin was a shade lighter than her own; his hair, clipped short, might have been any shade of brown. “My misfortune, I must say. Of course I heard—your family has branches everywhere, it seems.”

Heris decided there was no advantage to be gained by pretense. “Isn’t calling one cruiser and two patrols a battle group a bit much?” His eyes widened a moment, then narrowed as he grinned, squeezing the light from their green until they looked almost black.

“Surely you don’t feel an obligation to explain,” he began. Heris said nothing. “I thought it would reassure the locals,” he went on. “Convince them they weren’t forgotten. There’s not likely to be anything much here—certainly nothing to justify a real battle group—and if this satisfies them—”

Heris shrugged as if she didn’t care, and glanced around the compartment. “I merely commented. If there were veterans here, for instance . . . they might say something.”

“Barring you, I don’t expect to find any veterans. Xavier apparently sent few recruits to Fleet, and those old enough to retire chose more populous worlds. Not that I blame them.”

“It’s not a bad place,” Heris said, more to draw him out than in serious argument. She found it more than interesting that he had bothered to check on Xavier’s recruitment to Fleet, and where its veterans went.

“You think not?” Garrivay’s mobile face drew itself into a knot of distaste. “I hate ag worlds, myself. Dirty, backward, half of them free-birthers whose discontented spawn scrabble for a way offplanet and clog the ranks of unskilled labor hanging around spaceports. I like to eat as much as anyone, but we could subsist quite well without them.”

His venom surprised her; she wondered what had given him a dislike for ag worlds. Had he come from one? “It has strategic importance, at least,” she said.

“If the Black Scratch is crazy enough to attack through here, I’m not going to be able to stop them,” Garrivay said. “Surely you don’t think they will? It would be a very inefficient approach—”

“There’s the Spinner jump point,” Heris said. She had trouble keeping the edge out of her voice; he was treating her as if she were a combination of crazy and crony.

“That!” He waved his hand. “Fleet’s got a couple of battle groups on the other side—the Black Scratch can’t take it, and they must know that.”

Heris opened her mouth to protest this obvious idiocy and stopped. Why reveal herself? “I suppose,” she said, and added, as if without thought, “They used to have just a single cruiser—”

He relaxed a little; she recognized the shift in his facial muscles. “Ah . . . no wonder you worried. Of course you wouldn’t know the current dispositions.” That had a half-heard question mark on it, which she ignored.

“So you’re just here to show the flag, as it were?”

“Something like that. Perhaps snag another raider.” He grinned at her. He had a good grin, one she might have liked if she hadn’t known all the rest. “By the way, I didn’t mean to slight your accomplishment in there. Going after a raider—even a shoddy thing like that—with a rich lady’s yacht took guts. And you couldn’t know how incompetent the raider was until afterwards. . . .” Again, the hint of a question. Heris smiled blandly.

“No . . . to tell you the truth, I was more than half expecting to be blown away myself. The only advantage of being small is that you’re hard to detect in the first place, and hard to hit in the second.”

“Lucky for you the raider had no decent weaponry. Did he get off even one shot?”

“A couple,” Heris said, sticking to the facts that would have been reported by the distant watcher. “But inaccurate—as you say, he had no decent weaponry. He just looked dangerous.”

“And these poor sods have been paying tribute to that sort of trash. Well, I can take care of that. Tell me, how long do you plan to be in the system?”

“I don’t know.” Heris frowned as if it bothered her. “Lady Cecelia is visiting bloodstock farms; I think she expects to find the perfect horse genes somewhere and go back into eventing.”

“And you have to hang around until your owner is through? Lucky you. It’s almost like being back in Fleet, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Hanging around waiting on someone else’s bright ideas. Of course, your owner’s a Rejuvenant . . . she has plenty of time.”

Interesting. He didn’t know she owned the ship herself. It wouldn’t have been big news, not with everything else going on, but he might have picked it out of the datanet if he’d looked for it. Would she, in his place? Of course. On the other hand, never assume the enemy is stupid . . . perhaps he was just sounding her out. “I suppose so . . . but so are many admirals, aren’t they?”

“True enough.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose you could lend me your onboard weaponry . . . beef up this old clunker they’ve got here, use it as a decoy or something . . . ?”

“Sorry,” Heris said, not sorry at all. “It’s not much, and you’d have to take the hull apart to get it out anyway—you can’t imagine what it took to get it installed in the first place. Anyway, since Lady Cecelia paid for it, I suppose it’s really hers. Of course you could confiscate the whole ship, if it’s really an emergency. . . .”

“Oh no, nothing like that. Although if your employer is nervous, I would advise you to get her out of here.”

“I’ll speak to her,” Heris said. That pleased him; his eyelid flickered. He wanted her gone; he wanted her weapons gone. What was he up to? She itched to get back to Koutsoudas and his scans; she was ready to throw roses all over her aunt admiral and even Arash Livadhi. With any luck—and Koutsoudas made his own—he would have the probes in place and she would soon have an ear in this fellow’s private counsels.

“There’s never been a suspicion of treason,” Koutsoudas said when she told him about the conversation. “Overzealousness, misinterpretation of orders allowing him more leeway . . . but nothing to harm the Familias.”

“Adding to the mess at Patchcock harmed the Familias,” Heris said. “There’s more than one way to cause trouble.”

“I . . . hadn’t thought of that.” Koutsoudas looked taken aback; Heris grinned to herself. She had begun to wonder if the man was a genius at everything.

“We’re one of the logical places for the Benignity to strike. You’re sure there was a watcher out there when we took that raider—” Something that had bothered her while talking to Garrivay now surfaced. “And he called them the Black Scratch.”

Koutsoudas’s eyebrows went up. “So? Everybody knows that nickname.”

“Everybody knows it, but . . . think, ’Steban. Did you ever hear Arash use it during a briefing? I know I never did. It’s slang, and this may be war.”

“Now that you mention it . . . no. Commander Livadhi always said the Benignity, or the Compassionate Hand.” And Koutsoudas, for the first time, referred to Livadhi by his rank, not his position as captain. Interesting.

“You think he’s turned,” Petris said. It was not a question.

“I think . . . yes. I do. And I have no proof, and no one to tell . . . not within any range that would help.”

“Does he know what you think?”

“No. He shouldn’t. I played stupid for all I was worth. Accepted his judgment that the raider was almost harmless—” Ginese growled something incomprehensible at that, and Heris let herself chuckle. “Oh yes, he did. He knew about the mismatched drive/hull fit, too, which none of us told him.”

“That counts,” Koutsoudas said. “He couldn’t have found out about that any other way—unless it was in your report to Sector HQ.”

“No, it wasn’t. They had no need, and I supposed—I suppose I was looking for something like this. If this is what I think.” She didn’t want to think that. “It all boils down to data,” Heris said. “His . . . ours . . . if any of it’s trustworthy. How much of it’s compromised. If he knows who you are, what you are, then we’re in even worse trouble.”

Heris was working her way through routine reports when Koutsoudas called her to the bridge again.

“Captain, you must hear this—it’s what Garrivay and his senior officers have said—”

Heris touched the control. Amazing sound quality; she still wished she knew how Koutsoudas did what he did. Garrivay, sounding as pompous among his own people as with her. She was glad to know she hadn’t been given special treatment. It will work, he was saying. That Serrano bitch doesn’t know anything; she’s negligible. One of the others questioned that—a Serrano negligible? Garrivay laughed in a tone that made Heris want to smash all his teeth down his fleshy throat. As they talked on, their plan appeared much as she had expected. The Benignity ships would arrive to find a blown station and helpless planet. Garrivay would exit to another place to do much the same thing. Where else? Rotterdam . . . Rotterdam. Cecelia’s friends, that lovely place she had wanted to revisit . . .

“Not likely,” she muttered. Koutsoudas started, and she realized she had put into that all the frustration and anger she felt at the whole situation. She looked at the others. “We have to stop them.”

“Stop them! What—Garrivay, or the invasion?”

“Both, ideally. Garrivay first, of course.”

“How?” That was Meharry, blunt as always. “We couldn’t breach his shields if we put everything we have into his flanks sitting next to him in dock.”

“Actually we might,” Ginese said, looking thoughtful. “Of course, his return would vaporize us and the station.”

“There’s nothing in this system that can take Garrivay’s ships,” Heris said. “Except wits.”

“Wits?” Now it was Koutsoudas who gave her a startled glance. “You’re planning to trick him out of his ships? How—at the gambling table, perhaps?”

“No. I’m not going to gamble with his notions of honor. We will have to capture his ships, and since frontal assault won’t do, it will take wits.”

“You’re planning to walk onto his ships and just take over?” Meharry asked. “Just say ‘Please, Commodore, I think you’re a traitor, and I’m taking over’?”

“Something like that,” Heris said with a grin.

“And you expect him to agree?”

“I expect him to die,” Heris said. A silence fell, as her crew digested that. She went on. “He’s not going to surrender and risk court-martial—neither he nor his fellow captains. The only way to get those ships is by coup de main—and then great good luck and the Serrano name.”

“I was going to mention,” said Meharry, “that most crews don’t take kindly to someone murdering the captain and taking over.”

“You do realize the legal side of what you’re doing?” Petris gave her a dark, slanted glance.

“Yes. I’m proposing treasonous piracy, if you look at it that way, and some people will. A civilian stealing not one but three R.S.S. combat vessels in what will be time of war.”

“You won’t get all three,” Ginese said. “One, maybe. Two if you’re very lucky. Not all three.”

“That may be. I will certainly try to get all three, because if I don’t, I may have to destroy one.” She had faced that, in her mind. She could not leave a ship loose in this system committed to helping the Benignity invasion.

“If you’re wrong about any of it,” Petris said, “you’ll have no alternatives. If the Benignity doesn’t invade through here, if Garrivay is just a detestable bully, but not a traitor, if you’re not able to get the ships—”

“Then I’m dead,” Heris said. “I’ve thought of that. It means you’re dead as well, which is bothersome—”

“Oh, it’s not that, Captain,” Meharry said. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything, and it’s a novel way to die, after all. Trying to steal one of our own ships for a good cause. More fun than jumping that yacht out of nearspace.”

“If you try it and aren’t killed,” Petris said, “you’ll be an outlaw . . . you can’t stay in Familias space.”

Heris stared at him; he did not look down. “Petris, if you think I can’t do it, say so. If you think I shouldn’t do it—if you think I’m working with bad data or logic, say so. But trust that I can do elementary risk analysis, will you?”

He didn’t smile. “I know you can. But I also know how much you want to set foot on a cruiser bridge again. Have you factored that into your analysis?”

“Yes.” Despite herself, her voice tightened. She forced herself to take a long breath. “Petris, I do miss—have missed—that command. You’re right about that, and it is a factor. But I’m not about to risk our lives, and the lives of everyone in this system, crews and landborn alike, to satisfy my whims. There’s something I haven’t shared with you.” Before anyone could comment, she flicked on the cube reader; she had already selected the passage.

Her Aunt Vida’s face, an older version of her own Serrano features, stared out at them. She spoke. “I have complete confidence in your judgment,” her aunt said. “In any difficulty. You may depend upon my support for any action you find necessary to preserve the honor and safety of the Familias Regnant in these troubled times.”

“I don’t think my aunt admiral anticipated pirating Fleet warships,” Heris said. “But it gives me a shred of legitimacy, and I intend to weave that into something more than a tissue of lies.”

“How?” Petris asked bluntly. “Not that I don’t believe you, and not that I’m opposed, but—how?”

In the pause that followed, while Heris was trying to work out why Petris was being so antagonistic, Oblo spoke. “What it really is, Captain, is that we never had a chance to be this close while you were planning before. We enjoyed the result, but we never got to see the process.”

Petris grinned. “All right, Oblo. You’re partly right. It still seems impossible to me that she’s going to take over three warships all by herself—well, we’ll help, but it’s not much. The peashooters we have on this thing wouldn’t hurt those ships, and they’d blow us away before we could get a shot off anyway. There’s no way to sneak aboard, and even if we could, I don’t see how the four of us could seize control of the ship against resistance. She can’t just stroll over and say ‘By the way, Garrivay, I’ll be the new captain as of today.’ ” He made the last a singsong parody of the traditional chanty.

The delay had given Heris time to come up with the outline of a plan. “Like this,” she said. “You’re half right, Petris. We’re going to walk in peacefully, invited guests—”

“They’ll scan us for weapons—” Ginese warned.

Heris grinned. “What is the most dangerous weapon in the universe?” A blank pause, then they all grinned, and repeated the gesture with which generations of basic instructors had taunted their recruits. “That’s right. What’s between your ears can’t be scanned . . . and you’re all exceptional unarmed fighters.”

“So we stroll in for afternoon tea, or whatever—” Meharry prompted.

“Properly meek and mild, yes.” Heris batted her eyelashes, and they broke into snorts of laughter.

“Begging the captain’s pardon, but if you did that at me, I’d think you were having a seizure.” Oblo, of course.

“And then we jump Garrivay and kill him? It’s going to take all of us, and no one’s going to notice?”

“Petris, for a bloodthirsty pirate, you’re being ridiculously cautious. No, we’re going to walk into as many of the traitors as we can find gathered with Garrivay—Koutsoudas’s ongoing sound tap will help us there—and kill all of them. You notice that they like to gather and gab—Koutsoudas has them on three separate occasions already. I’d like to take out all three ship captains, but I doubt we’ll find them all together. Four or five traitorous officers, though, will reduce the resistance we face. Admiral Serrano’s reputation will do the rest. Or not, as the case may be.”

“Everyone knows you’re not in Fleet anymore,” Meharry said.

“Yes . . . officially. But suppose the whole thing was a feint—suppose I’m on special assignment.” They stared at her, this time shocked into silence.

“You’re . . . not . . . really, are you?” asked Ginese finally.

“See?” Heris grinned at them. “If you can think that, even for a moment—after what we’ve been through—then it can work.”

“But seriously—you didn’t resign because your aunt—” Ginese continued to stare at her with an expression blank of all emotion.

“No! I resigned—stupidly, I now admit—for the reasons I told you, and without hearing a word from my sainted aunt. But if she had intended something like this, no one would know. It is plausible—just—with the Serrano reputation. And it’s our chance. A slim one, but a chance.”

“I’ve seen fatter chances die of starvation,” Petris said, but his tone approved. He sighed, then stretched. “One thing about it, Heris . . . Captain . . . it’s never dull shipping with Serranos.” She ignored that.

“So now for the details. It’s tricky enough, so we’ll have rehearsals—and hope we’re not still rehearsing when the Benignity arrives.”