House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion Read online

  (ED: Lieutenant Winton is currently assigned to HMS Wolverine, serving as her executive officer.)

  —From “On the Event Horizon:

  Letters from the Deck Plates,”

  Proceedings of the Royal Manticoran Navy Institute,

  Issue number 3675, 12/10/249 AL

  CAPTAIN E. JANACEK—Lieutenant Winton’s comments on Commander Janofsky’s article (see “On the Event Horizon,” Proceedings, No. 3675) are as perspicacious and insightful as one might readily anticipate from a member of his family and an officer whose career to date has demonstrated not only intelligence and ability but diligence and dedication. Nonetheless, there are certain pragmatic realities to which he has attached insufficient weight.

  While it is true that the Navy’s current mission formulation rightly emphasizes the security of the home system, it is also true that the actual work of the Navy requires a concentration upon the mission in hand, and the mission in hand is, in fact, commerce protection, as Commander Janofsky so ably pointed out. At this time, there is no realistic threat to the security of the Manticore Binary System itself or to the Manticoran Wormhole Junction. The completion of the Royal Winton class will provide the Navy with a powerful, flexible deterrent force capable of holding its own against any projected threat. Lieutenant Winton is quite correct to underscore the invaluable advantage of our officer corps’ flexibility, initiative, and independence of thought. That advantage, coupled with the enormous increase in combat power represented by the Royal Wintons and HMS Samothrace and backed up by our older but still perfectly serviceable dreadnoughts, is fully adequate to the mission of protecting our home space and our fellow subjects from any realistic threat. And while Lieutenant Winton is also correct to emphasize that initiative and operational innovation are most effective when provided with the tools they require to concentrate combat power as flexibly as possible, the diversion of funds needed for critical expansion of our commerce protection capabilities into problematic quests for some sort of technological “equalizer” must be considered a questionable policy. The Royal Manticoran Navy is well informed upon the capabilities of other navies, including that of the Solarian League itself. At this time, it would be both rash and, in this writer’s opinion, quixotic to believe that what Lieutenant Winton correctly points out is a single-system polity could somehow single-handedly devise or discover a technological breakthrough (one hesitates to call it a panacea) which has hitherto evaded all of the galaxy’s other naval powers.

  The wall of battle we now possess—or will possess, when all units of the Royal Winton class are completed—will be fully adequate to our immediate security needs. Those security needs may, indeed, change in the future, as Lieutenant Winton suggests, and at that time a reexamination of our posture and capabilities may well be in order. Surely, however, considering that no navy in history has ever possessed an unlimited budget and that the fiscal realities (which must include a realistic appreciation of Parliament’s willingness to spend money) are unlikely to change in that regard in the case of Her Majesty’s Navy, it makes little or no sense to spend scarce dollars on capital ships we do not presently need. Nor can we afford to expend dollars urgently required for pressing presence mission requirements in Silesia on problematical, ill-defined, unpredictable, and dubious efforts to somehow short-circuit or telescope the inevitable and steady evolution of war-fighting technologies which has been clearly established over the last three T-centuries.

  With all due respect to Lieutenant Winton’s persuasively and eloquently argued position, it is neither reasonable nor appropriate for a single star system of ultimately limited resources to divert its focus from the provision of the best-tailored and most operationally potent force it can practically provide in order to pursue hypothetical technological “equalizers” to be employed against a theoretical adversary fleet which does not even currently exist.

  (ED: Captain Janacek is currently attached to the Admiralty, serving as Second Space Lord Havinghurst’s deputy chief of staff for Intelligence.)

  —From “On the Event Horizon: Letters from the Deck Plates,”

  Proceedings of the Royal Manticoran Navy Institute,

  Issue number 3676, 13/10/294 AL

  “AND THAT’S ABOUT IT, Sir.” Lieutenant Roger Winton flicked off his memo board and looked across the briefing room table at his commanding officer. “Better than I really expected it to be, but the delay on those missile pallets is . . . irritating.” He grimaced. “‘As soon as practicable’ isn’t what a good, industrious XO likes to tell his captain when we’re pushing a deployment deadline.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Commander Pablo Wyeth, HMS Wolverine’s commanding officer said judiciously. He tipped back in his chair, regarding his executive officer sternly, then smiled. “On the other hand, if that’s the worst thing that happens to us, we’ll be luckier than we deserve. And while I realize it’s likely to undermine my slave-driving captain’s reputation, I can’t see how I can reasonably construe it as your fault, Roger.”

  “As always, I am awed by your restraint, Sir.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  The treecat on the back of Lieutenant Winton’s chair tilted his head, ears twitching in amusement, and Wyeth shook his head, and found himself—again—wondering just why his exec had decided to pursue a naval career. Part of it was obvious enough. Lieutenant Winton had the talent, drive, and innate ability to succeed at anything he’d cared to turn his hand to, and his love for the Queen’s Navy was obvious. Yet he had to find it immensely frustrating, as well. Promotion was glacially slow, and likely to get more so as the prolong therapies began extending officers’ careers. There was more cronyism than Wyeth liked to think about, as well, although it was nowhere near as much a problem in the Royal Manticoran Navy as in some navies. (The Solarian League Navy came forcibly to mind, as a matter of fact.) And the RMN had its cliques, its little mutual-protection clubs, too many of them built on birth and privilege, which had to be especially frustrating for Winton.

  Thirteen T-years out of the Island, and he’s still only a lieutenant, Wyeth thought. Of course, I was four T-years older than he is now before I made lieutenant, but not all officers are created equal, whatever the Island likes to pretend. I can think of at least a dozen of his classmates who’re senior to him by now, and not one of them is as flat out good at his job as Roger is.

  And that, he reflected, was particularly ironic given the fact that cronyism, patronage, and raw nepotism accounted for most of those accelerated promotions . . . and that it was only the lieutenant’s own fierce refusal to play those games which prevented him from being senior to all of them.

  Once upon a time, I would’ve thought being Heir to the Crown would have to work in someone’s favor, the commander mused. But that was before I met Roger. I know some of the “upper crust” think this is some sort of silly hobby on his part—or that his refusal to trade on the family name is some kind of perverse hairshirt he’s chosen to wear—but that only confirms their idiocy. The Navy’s important to him, and at least he by God knows he’s earned every promotion that came his way. It’d take someone with big brass ones to blackball Crown Prince Roger Winton when his name comes before a promotion board, however it got there, but I’m inclined to think it would probably take a pronounced lack of IQ to go ahead and promote him just because of whose son he is. He’s going to be King himself one day not so far down the road, and Wintons have long memories. Somehow I don’t think the career of any brown-noser who “helped” his career along in hopes of some kind of payback down the road is likely to prosper when that happens.

  Oddly, that thought gave Commander Wyeth a certain profound sense of satisfaction.

  On the other hand, there was no point pretending Lieutenant Winton was just any old lieutenant . . . even if he had insisted his fellow officers address him as if he were.

  “I read Captain Janacek’s response to your letter to the Proceedings,” Wyeth said after a moment, his tone carefully
casual.

  “So did I, Sir.”

  Winton’s calm reply would have fooled most people, but Wyeth could watch his treecat, and Monroe’s ears flattened instantly at the mention of Janacek’s name. The captain was less than five years older than Roger Winton, but his family was deeply involved in politics, one of the movers and shakers of the Conservative Association, and they’d pulled strings mercilessly to speed along his promotions.

  Probably never even gave it a second thought, either. Hard to blame them, some ways. Promotion’s slow enough and plum command slots are thin enough on the ground to make just about anyone figure he’d better use whatever edge he can if he wants to get command of a major combatant before he’s too old and senile to remember what to do with it when he’s got it!

  It was an ignoble thought, and Wyeth knew it. Worse, he’d found himself thinking it more often as more and more of the officer corps became prolong recipients. The therapies had reached the Star Kingdom barely fifteen T-years earlier, and Wyeth had been too old to receive them. In fact, Roger himself had been close to the upper age limit when the treatments became available. But Pablo Wyeth was already fifty-two T-years old; the chance that he would make flag rank before his age-mandated retirement was virtually nil, whereas an arrogant prick like Janacek—just young enough to sneak in under the wire for prolong—would probably make it within the next five or six T-years . . . and then have something like a century in which to enjoy it.

  Calmly, Pablo, he told himself. Remember your blood pressure, you antiquated old fart!

  The self-reminder made him snort mentally, and he saw Monroe’s ears flick back upright as the telempathic ’cat picked up on his own amusement.

  “I thought the good Captain went out of his way to be gracious while he was stomping all over your suggestion with both feet,” the commander observed out loud.

  “With all due respect for Captain Janacek’s seniority, I’ve never been especially impressed by the scintillating brilliance of his intellect,” Winton replied. “He was careful about exactly how he phrased himself, though, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was,” Wyeth agreed with a grin. Then his expression sobered slightly. “On the other hand, you realize he never would’ve written that if he didn’t know quite a few other officers—especially senior ones—agree with him. I know you don’t really like me to mention this, Roger, but it takes a fair amount of chutzpah to publicly sign your name to something likely to piss off your future monarch. I don’t see Janacek doing that if he didn’t figure there’d be more than enough senior officers around to back his view of things.”

  And if he didn’t have a pretty shrewd idea of just how much you hate the family interest game, Wyeth added mentally. You’re right about his lack of brilliance, whatever he and his cronies think, but he’s not really outright stupid, however he acts sometimes. He’s got to know you’re not going to use your “family interest” to step on him the way he probably deserves, or he never would’ve opened his mouth.

  “I know there are. That’s the problem.” Winton reached up, and Monroe flowed down from the chair back to curl in his lap, his buzzing purr loud as the lieutenant stroked his fluffy coat. “We’ve been thinking in one direction for so long that two-thirds of our senior officers are so invested in it they don’t even realize they’re not looking at what’s really happening.”

  “Oh?” Wyeth cocked his head, raising one eyebrow.

  “It doesn’t take a genius to realize how juicy a target the Junction is,” Winton said. “Hell, Sir! All it really takes is a working memory! There was a reason I mentioned Axelrod of Old Terra in my letter.”

  Wyeth nodded, yet he couldn’t help wondering if there was more than simple historical memory involved in his executive officer’s position. Unlike quite a few of their fellow officers, whose attention was focused almost exclusively on the Navy’s commerce-protection duties, particularly in the face of the worsening situation in the Silesian Confederacy and the Andermani Empire’s increasing interest in fishing in those troubled waters, Wyeth tried to keep an eye on the broader picture. He wasn’t especially happy about what seemed to be happening in the Haven Quadrant these days, mainly because of the People’s Republic’s naval buildup, despite what most of the pundits believed had to be a rapidly disintegrating fiscal position. Still, there were possible explanations for that buildup that were relatively innocuous. It wasn’t the way he’d go about creating jobs and pumping money back into the economy, but he wouldn’t have done most things the way the People’s Republic’s political leaders had done them for the last, oh, two T-centuries or so. And whatever they might be thinking, nothing he’d seen so far suggested that Haven might be considering reprising Axelrod’s attempt on the Manticoran Wormhole Junction. For that matter, even if it was, and much as it pained Pablo Wyeth to contemplate agreeing even conditionally with Edward Janacek, the Junction fortresses and the new Royal Wintons and Samothraces—assuming the idiots in Parliament actually did go ahead and built the rest of the originally requested SDs—should be able to handle the People’s Republic’s battleships if it came to it.

  All of that made nice, logical, reassuring sense. Unfortunately, whatever his own attitude towards his birth, Lieutenant Winton was also Crown Prince Roger of Manticore, only a single heartbeat away from the crown. As such, he received regular in-depth intelligence briefings unavailable to any other junior officer. Or to the commanding officers of any of Queen Samantha’s destroyers, if it came to that.

  And he’s not about to let a single classified word slip, either, is he? Wyeth reminded himself. He wasn’t even willing to suggest obliquely in his letter that he might know something Janofsky doesn’t. He’s going to make one hell of a King one day.

  “Well, you’re young,” he said out loud. “You’ll have time to wear them down.”

  “I hope so, Sir.” His executive officer sounded grimmer than usual, Wyeth thought. “At the moment, though, I’m feeling like a character out of an Old Earth fairy tale.”

  “Really?” The commander chuckled. Ancient fairy tales and fables happened to be a hobby of his, and Winton knew it. “Let me see . . . If we asked Captain Janacek, I’m sure he’d be able to come up with quite a few. Like the little boy who cried ‘Wolf!’ for example. Or did you have Chicken Little in mind?”

  “Actually, Sir, I was thinking of the Three Little Pigs. Especially the last one.”

  “So you’re trying to convince the rest of the Navy that it’s time to build a house out of bricks instead of straw—is that it?”

  “Mostly, Sir.” Winton nodded, looking down at his hands as they stroked the purring cream-and-gray treecat in his lap. “Mostly.” He looked up, brown eyes dark and very level. “Except that if I’d been the third Little Pig, I’d have held out for something even better. I think steel would’ve worked very nicely, actually.”

  August 1850 PD

  “SIR CASPER WAS TALKING about you just yesterday, Roger dear,” Samantha Winton, Queen Samantha II of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, said as she looked across the breakfast table at her son.

  “I’ll just bet he was,” her daughter Caitrin said, rolling her eyes, and the treecat perched in the highchair beside Samantha made a soft sound that echoed his person’s mingled amusement and exasperation.

  “Don’t encourage her, Magnus,” the Queen told him, and spared him a brief, quelling glance before she turned her gaze upon her younger offspring.

  Almost twelve T-years younger than her brother, Caitrin looked absurdly young to someone her mother’s age, thanks in no small part to how youthful she’d been when prolong reached the Star Kingdom. She and Roger both had the Winton look—the dark complexion, the brown eyes, the strong chin—but neither of them were quite as dark as Samantha, who looked remarkably like a throwback to the days of King Roger I. Yet as similar as her children were to one another physically, there was an enormous difference in their personalities, the Queen reflected. Roger was the serious, thoughtful worrier—the sort who
was constantly looking to the future, trying to anticipate oncoming storms and shape his course to deal with them. Caitrin wasn’t really the mental gadabout she often liked to portray, but there was no denying that she was far more inclined to take things as they came rather than rushing to meet them.

  And she was far, far more . . . irreverent about the venerable traditions and responsibilities of the House of Winton. She took them seriously, but she refused to admit she did. Of course she wasn’t even thirty T-years old yet; there was time for her to grow properly stodgy, Samantha supposed.

  Not that Roger showed any signs of stodginess, but he’d always been a serious little boy, and he’d grown into a serious man. One his mother rather liked, as a matter of fact. She often wondered how much of that would have happened anyway and how much was due to the fact that he’d known all his life he’d one day be king? She’d tried to keep that from overshadowing his childhood, just as her parents had tried to prevent the same thing in her own case.

  And, like them, she’d failed.

  “And what, may I ask,” Roger said now, delivering a quelling glance of his own to his unrepentant sister, “did your estimable Prime Minister have to say about your scapegrace eldest offspring, Mother? No, let me guess. He took the opportunity upon the occasion of my birthday to once more point out that it’s time I began producing an heir to the throne. Annnnnd”—he drew the word out, considering his mother through slitted eyes—“he also took the opportunity to suggest it’s time I stopped playing and settled down to a serious career in politics.”

  “I see you know how Sir Casper’s mind works,” Samantha said dryly.

  “You mean he knows which ruts the mind in question—such as it is and what there is of it—stays stuck in.”