Manticore Ascendant 1: A Call to Duty (eARC) Read online

  There was another boom, a double tap this time and somewhat deeper in pitch. Travis started to stand up—

  “Stay there,” Blackstone ordered, shoving down on his shoulder as she ran past him, a small but nasty-looking pistol gripped in her hand. She reached the door, slammed to a halt with her left shoulder against the jamb, and eased the door open.

  There was another pair of deep booms, then another of the slightly higher-pitched ones as the first weapon answered. Travis jumped up, unable to sit still any longer, and raced over to join Blackstone.

  “What’s going on?” he breathed as he shoulder-landed against the wall at the other side of the door.

  “Sounds like we’ve got a robbery going down,” she said. Her eyes bored into Travis’s face. “Friends of yours?”

  Travis’s tongue froze against the roof of his mouth. What was he supposed to say?

  “I thought they were.”

  “Uh-huh.” She turned back to the door as two more shots echoed. “Well, I hope you’re not going to miss them, because one way or another they’re going down. The cops will be here any minute, and if they’re not gone by now, they’re not going. What was your part of the job?”

  Briefly, Travis thought about lying. But Blackstone had probably already figured it out.

  “They told me we had early reservations at a restaurant,” he said. “They said they were going to do some shopping and that I needed to be ready to head out as soon as they got back.”

  “Where was this supposed shopping? Aampersand’s?”

  “Yes.”

  Blackstone grunted.

  “Big mistake. Aampersand’s apprentice goldsmith is a retired cop. Why you?”

  “My mom has an air car,” Travis said. “I guess they thought they could make a faster getaway in that than in a ground car.”

  “Were they right?”

  Travis blinked. “What?”

  “Would an air car have made for a better getaway?”

  Travis stared at her profile, confusion coloring the fear swirling through his gut. What in the world kind of question was that? Was she trying to get him to incriminate himself? Hadn’t he already more or less done that?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Show me you can think,” she said. “Show me you can reason. Tell me why they were wrong.”

  Some of Travis’s confusion condensed into cautious and only half-believed hope. Was she saying she wasn’t going to turn him in?

  Apparently, she was.

  He took a deep breath, forcing his mind away from what was happening to Bassit and the others and focusing on the logical problem Blackstone had presented.

  “Because air cars are faster, but there aren’t as many of them in the city,” he said. “That makes them more easily identifiable.”

  “Good,” Blackstone said approvingly. “And?”

  Travis’s throat tightened as he abruptly noticed that the gunfire had stopped. Whatever had happened was apparently over.

  “And as soon as you get above rooftop level, you’re visible for five kilometers in any direction,” he went on. “The cops would have you in sight the whole time they were chasing you.”

  “What if you wove in and out between the buildings?”

  That’s illegal, was Travis’s reflexive thought. But of course someone who’d just robbed a jewelry store would hardly be worried about traffic regulations.

  “Well, if you didn’t crash into something and kill yourself,” he said slowly, trying to work it through, “you’d pop up as a red tag on every other air car’s collision-avoidance system. Oh—right. The police could just follow the trail on their readouts and have their pick of where to force you down.” He dared a wan smile. “They could also slap a dozen traffic violations on top of the armed robbery charge.”

  To his surprise, Blackstone actually smiled back.

  “Very good. What else?”

  In the distance, the sound of approaching police sirens could be heard. Again, Travis had to force his mind away from Bassit as he tried to come up with the answer Blackstone was looking for.

  But this time, he came up dry.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “The most basic flaw there is,” Blackstone said, turning a thoughtful gaze on him. “They picked the wrong person for the job.”

  Travis grimaced. “I guess they did.”

  “I’m not talking about your piloting skills,” Blackstone assured him. “Or even your loyalty to people who don’t deserve it. I’m talking about the fact that someone who’s not in on the plan isn’t exactly going to burn air when the gang comes charging up with guns smoking and pockets bulging with rings and bracelets.”

  She tilted her head to the side.

  “Especially when that person comes equipped with an ethical core. You do have an ethical core, don’t you, Mr.—?”

  Travis braced himself.

  “Long,” he said. “Travis Uriah Long. I guess so.” He tried another half smile. “Is an ethical core one of the requirements you mentioned for naval officers?”

  “If it was, the officer corps would be a lot smaller,” Blackstone said dryly. “But if it’s not a requirement, it’s certainly a plus. Shall we go back inside and get started on the datawork?”

  Outside, two police air cars appeared, their flashing lights strobing as they settled onto the street.

  “I don’t know,” Travis said, feeling a fresh tightness in his chest as cops began streaming out of the vehicles, guns at the ready. Blackstone was right—if Bassit and the others weren’t out of the neighborhood by now, they were done for.

  And if they were still alive after all that shooting, they were going to talk.

  “It can’t hurt to try,” Blackstone pressed. “The vetting process will take two to four weeks, and you can change your mind at any time.”

  And if part of their confession included such facts as the name of their intended getaway driver . . .

  “How about regular Navy?” he asked. “Not officer, but regular crew. How long does that take?”

  Blackstone’s forehead wrinkled.

  “Assuming there are no red flags in your record, we could ship you out to the Casey-Rosewood boot camp by the end of the week.”

  “You mean no flags other than armed robbery?”

  “Pretty hard for anyone to link you up with that one,” Blackstone said. “Especially given that you were in here with me when it went down. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go the academy route?”

  “Positive,” Travis said, wondering briefly what his mother would think of this sudden right-angle turn in his life. Or whether she would even notice. “You said there was datawork we had to do?”

  “Yes.” Blackstone took a final look outside and closed the door on the flashing police lights. “One other thing,” she added as she holstered her gun. “Back when I told you to stay put, and you didn’t? Bear in mind that once you’re in the Navy you’re going to have to learn how to obey orders.”

  Travis smiled, his first real smile of the day. For the first time in years, he could see some cautious hope beckoning from his future.

  “I understand,” he said. “I think I can manage.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I seek political asylum, the first man in the popular joke pleaded. Take a transport to the House of Lords, the second man retorted. That’s the finest political asylum in the world.

  There were days, Gavin Vellacott, Second Baron Winterfall, thought sourly as he strode along the busy corridor toward his office, that the joke was more fact than fiction, and not at all funny.

  Today had been one of those days.

  It had started with an Appropriations Committee meeting. Winterfall wasn’t actually on that committee, but Countess Calvingdell had double-booked herself again and asked Winterfall to sit in for her. Then Earl Broken Cliff, the Secretary of Education, had double-downed with a snap straw vote that had forced Winterfall to go racing across the building with all the dignity of a
low range chicken, and for absolutely nothing.

  Now, to close off the day, he’d returned to his desk to find a hand-delivered note from Earl Breakwater, Chancellor of the Exchequer, requesting Winterfall’s presence at his earliest convenience.

  And when the second-ranking member of His Majesty’s government said earliest convenience he meant now.

  Breakwater’s secretary passed Winterfall through the outer office with her usual perfunctory smile. He crossed to the door, gave it a brisk two-knock, and pushed it open.

  Two steps into the room he stopped short as his brain belatedly registered the fact that Breakwater wasn’t alone. With him were Baroness Castle Rock, Earl Chillon, and Baroness Tweenriver. All of them political powerhouses; all of them far above Winterfall in rank or status or both; all of them gazing at the newcomer with utterly neutral expressions.

  What the hell was going on?

  “Come in, My Lord,” Breakwater invited, waving to the empty chair beside Tweenriver. “Thank you for your time. I trust Jakob’s vote was illuminating?”

  “Not really, My Lord,” Winterfall said, ungluing his feet and continuing on into the expansive office. Whatever was going on, he was determined to maintain an air of casual professionalism, as if he was invited to top-level political meetings all the time. “It broke along the same interest lines as always.”

  Chillon snorted. “There’s a surprise,” he rumbled.

  “If there’s one thing Parliament has going for it, it’s consistency,” Castle Rock agreed.

  “The consistency of bull-headed stubbornness,” Chillon countered scornfully. “Nothing ever changes except which group is plotting to stab which other group in the back in the name of protecting their own little turf and their own little collection of cronies. And nothing’s ever going to change unless we can shake them up.” He peered intently at Winterfall from beneath bushy white eyebrows. “All of them.”

  Winterfall didn’t reply, pretending to be preoccupied with the complicated business of lowering himself into his chair. What was he supposed to say to a comment like that?

  Fortunately, Breakwater was already moving into the conversational gap.

  “Which is the purpose of this gathering, My Lord,” he said. “The four of us—plus a few others—have come up with a new proposal we hope will break the permanent stalemate that Parliament seems to have settled into.” He tilted his head slightly. “In a nutshell, Gavin—may I call you Gavin?”

  “Of course, My Lord,” Winterfall said, the unexpected familiarity again briefly throwing him off-balance until he realized it was probably meant to do precisely that. Certainly he had no illusions that Breakwater was offering any reciprocal intimacy.

  “Thank you,” Breakwater said. “In a nutshell, Gavin, we propose a complete restructuring of the Royal Manticoran Navy.”

  Winterfall felt a flicker of disappointment. From the buildup, not to mention the political firepower surrounding him, he’d expected something a little more groundshattering. As it was, plans and arguments involving the RMN’s future littered the Star Kingdom’s political landscape like the droppings that littered his mother’s dog run.

  “I see,” he said.

  “I doubt it,” Chillon said. “Because we’re not simply suggesting a variant of O’Dae’s tired old scrap-the-battlecruisers plan.”

  “And we’re certainly not going with Dapplelake’s perennial hope that Parliament will throw the entire budget onto his desk and let him take his fleet out into the galaxy and fight someone,” Breakwater said contemptuously. “No, we believe we’ve found a middle ground that actually takes political and economic realities into account.”

  That would be a first for Parliament. “Sounds interesting,” Winterfall said aloud. “I’d like to hear more.”

  Breakwater looked at Castle Rock, and out of the corner of his eye Winterfall saw her give the Chancellor a small nod. Apparently, she was the one who’d been tasked with reading Winterfall’s vocals and body language and deciding if he was the right person for the job.

  Whatever the job was.

  “I’m sure you know the RMN’s history,” Breakwater said, turning back to Winterfall. “From the four frigates that the Trust, had waiting when the colony ship arrived, it grew to nineteen by the time of the first skirmish with the Free Brotherhood, seventeen years later, then to a total of thirty-four warships over the next forty years.”

  “And now here we sit with twenty-eight of the damn things,” Chillon growled. “All of them draining funds from the treasury like giant blood leeches.”

  “And sucking off the workforce our civilian infrastructure needs a hell of a lot more than the Navy does,” Breakwater threw in. “We’ve still got enormous holes from all the people we lost during the Plague, and even with the Trust’s spadework before Jason got here, we’re still playing catch-up with the rest of the Galaxy as far as indigenous tech and industrial capacity are concerned. We don’t just need the money it would take to put the fleet back into the kind of service Dapplelake is fantasizing about; we can’t afford to waste that much trained, skilled manpower aboard ships that aren’t contributing a damned thing to the economy.”

  “Especially those nine utterly useless battlecruisers,” Castle Rock added.

  “Exactly,” Chillon said, nodding. “In service to nothing and no one except the officers and crew lazing around inside.”

  “Actually, two or three of them are officially in service,” Tweenriver murmured. “Depending on how you count.”

  “Irrelevant,” Chillon said with a sniff. “Being in service doesn’t mean they’re actually doing anything.” He jabbed a finger at Winterfall. “Case in point: Jakob’s deadlocked vote this afternoon. If even a tenth of the RMN’s budget was reallocated to Education, do you think there would be nearly so much acrimony on how to spend their funds?”

  Actually, Winterfall knew, there probably would. For one thing, there were some serious philosophic differences dividing the members of the Education committee. Without a drastic change in the group’s membership, that wasn’t likely to change, extra money or no.

  But of course that wasn’t Chillon’s point. His point was that, whatever the Star Kingdom’s bank balance might be back in the Solarian League, that money was a long ways away, and a sizeable fraction was already earmarked for the ongoing Assisted Immigration project. The resources available right here and now were far more limited. And, as Breakwater and his allies were fond of pointing out, part of Parliament’s job was to see that those resources were used as wisely and efficiently as possible.

  Of course, for all of the budget hawks’ focus on the Navy budget, it really wasn’t that large a slice of the Exchequer’s commitments. True, if the ships were all put back into full service, with the systems’ damage they’d suffered during their hasty demobilization at the height of the Plague it would cost a pretty penny. At present levels of spending, though, the burden was scarcely crushing, especially with the steady resurgence of the Star Kingdom’s economy, thanks to the immigrants who’d flooded in to provide the necessary workers.

  The charge that rebuilding the Navy’s depleted manpower was in direct competition with the civilian economy’s needs was a much more valid criticism, to Winterfall’s thinking. And there wasn’t much question that Dapplelake’s ambitious manning totals would push naval manpower costs up into levels which could become burdensome. Especially if he was simultaneously spending money bringing the RMN’s obsolescent vessels back up to acceptable levels of serviceability.

  On the other hand…

  “I’m not sure it would be a good idea to scrap the Navy entirely,” he said cautiously, trying to read Breakwater’s face. “The Free Brotherhood incident—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Chillon cut him off. “No one’s suggesting a complete scrapping. But let’s be realistic. The chances that anyone out there would bother with us are pretty damn small.”

  “As for the Free Brotherhood, that card was already decades out of d
ate the first time Dapplelake played it,” Breakwater added. “The dangers to the Star Kingdom aren’t coming from outside, Gavin. They’re coming from inside.”

  Winterfall felt his face go rigid. Was Breakwater actually suggesting—?

  “Relax,” Castle Rock soothed, an amused smile tweaking her lips. “We’re not talking about treason or Enemies Domestic, as the Navy oath so quaintly puts it. We’re referring to the ever-present threat of natural disasters to the transports, ore miners, and other ships that ply Star Kingdom space.”

  “Oh,” Winterfall said, feeling relieved and foolish at the same time. He should have realized it was something like that.

  And they were right about the risks of intersystem space travel. Only last month one of the ore miners in Manticore-B’s Unicorn Asteroid Belt had lost its fusion bottle and disintegrated, taking its entire crew with it. A nasty incident, and sadly not an isolated one.

  “Baroness Castle Rock is right,” Breakwater said. “At this point in the Star Kingdom’s history a navy bristling with battle-eager warships is the last thing we need.” He grimaced. “It’s the workforce—the people—putting our deep-space infrastructure back together that we really need. They’re an absolutely vital national resource, and the Navy would be far more useful protecting them than defending all of us against imaginary interstellar foes. The bottom line is that what we need right now is an expansion of the Em-Pars fleet.”

  “Yes, that makes sense,” Winterfall murmured. MPARS—the Manticoran Patrol and Rescue Service—was the group that patrolled the spacelanes around the twin suns of the Manticore System, focusing a lot of their attention on the asteroid belts where so much of the Star Kingdom’s resource mining took place.

  MPARS expansion was hardly a new idea—the Chancellor had raised such suggestions more than once during Winterfall’s years in Parliament. So far none of the proposals had gained traction, not just from monetary considerations but even more so because of the scarcity of trained personnel and the only gradually accelerating resource flow.