A Call to Arms Read online

  “And she probably has sympathetic friends there,” Travis murmured.

  “Quite a few,” Lisa confirmed. “She and that new managing director of hers, Heinrich Hauptman, are quite well connected, especially after all of Hauptman’s work on the Casey refit. No, it’s going to be hard for even Breakwater to squawk on this one.”

  “I’m sure he’ll find a way.”

  “More likely he’ll just ignore it,” Lisa said. “He has enough axes to grind with the rest of the Navy without opening himself to unnecessary criticism.”

  “I suppose,” Travis said, scowling to himself. Chancellor of the Exchequer Anderson L’Estrange, Earl Breakwater, had been sniping at the RMN for at least the past ten years. Probably longer.

  Part of his motivation was obvious. The Star Kingdom’s home guard, the Manticore Patrol and Rescue Service, was under Breakwater’s authority. With a shortage of money and an even more critical shortage of trained personnel, the Chancellor had apparently decided that anything that decreased the RMN would increase MPARS, thereby adding to his own power and influence.

  Why Travis’s half-brother, Gavin Vellacott, Baron Winterfall, had allied himself with the man in that crusade was less clear. What was even more of a mystery was why Breakwater and Winterfall thought that leaving the Star Kingdom open to external threats was a good idea.

  Because there were threats out there, despite the denials that peppered Breakwater’s speeches. There were mercenaries, pirates, and other star nations, any of whom could suddenly decide that Manticore was a nice plum ripe for the plucking.

  Never mind that there was nothing on any of the Star Kingdom’s three worlds worth the trouble of conquering. The distant planet Kuan Yin wasn’t worth a full-fledged damn, but that hadn’t stopped Gustav Anderman from moving in, taking over the whole planet, and renaming it Potsdam. And then, for good measure, taking over five more worlds for his newly named Andermani Empire.

  Granted, some of those conquests had been in self-defense. And, granted again, Anderman had gained a lot of points with the original Kuan Yin colonists by rescuing them from starvation. But that didn’t mean he might not suddenly make a hard right-hand turn into full-bore despotism.

  Certainly some of his other neighbors had concerns about possible future expansion. Travis had heard rumors that Haven had sent a team to the New Berlin system to open diplomatic talks, and probably to also assess the situation. Other, closer systems were reportedly scrambling to hammer out defense alliances, though the fact that the last such alliance had wound up being absorbed by the Empire was probably giving them pause.

  Current wardroom opinion was that Potsdam was too far away for Anderman’s mercenaries to be a direct threat to Manticore. But that didn’t mean someone else wouldn’t take a page from his strategy and take a shot at the Star Kingdom.

  If enemy warships settled into orbit over Landing, it was unlikely that any of Breakwater’s high-minded speeches would deter them.

  “But that’s politics,” Lisa said into his thoughts, “and I try to avoid discussing politics with friends. To bring this conversation back to its launch point: my dog.”

  “Your dog?” Travis said, consciously disengaging his mind from his frustrations with Parliamentary politics. “Oh, right—the favor. What about him?”

  “Her,” Lisa corrected. “She’s a Scottish Terrier—tiny little thing. Anyway, with his usual exquisite timing, my ex asked me to take her while he goes off to Sphinx for some long-term research project.”

  “Sounds kind of presumptive,” Travis commented disapprovingly.

  “Not really,” Lisa said. “She was originally our dog, but he got her in the settlement, and I usually like taking her when I can. The problem is that the girl we used to hire to take care of Crumpets when we were both out has inconveniently decided to graduate high school and go to college—” she took a deep breath, huffed it out “—and I’m kind of up the creek. So. I know your mother has a business breeding dogs. Does she also board them?”

  “That’s a good question,” Travis said. “I don’t know, but I can certainly ask.”

  “Thanks—I’d appreciate it,” Lisa said. “There are a couple of other dog boarders in Landing, but I’d feel better if I had a connection with the people taking care of her. Even if it’s a second-hand connection.”

  “I understand,” Travis said. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she—what was her name again?”

  “Crumpets,” Lisa said. “As in tea and.” She shook her head. “Don’t ask.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Travis said. Actually, he had been planning to ask that very question. Now, of course, he couldn’t. “Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “You don’t know what this means to me.” She stood up. “And I’m sorry to chat and run, but I really have to be going.”

  “No problem,” Travis said, scrambling awkwardly to his feet. “Let me know when and where I need to pick her up. You have my number?”

  “I can get it,” Lisa said. “It’ll probably be the end of the week.” This time, she was the one who offered her hand. “Thanks, Travis. You’re a life-saver.”

  “You’re welcome,” Travis said, taking her hand. “I’ll have everything arranged by the time you call.”

  “Good. Thanks again.” With a final smile, she turned and left.

  The door closed behind her. Slowly, Travis sat down again, his brain spinning. Lisa Donnelly, back in his life. Even if it was over something as small and temporary as boarding her dog.

  He had no idea if his mother boarded dogs. In fact, he hadn’t spoken to her for months.

  But he would find out. And if she didn’t, he would take the dog himself. The Damocles’s mission had a five-month timetable—two months each there and back, plus one at Casca—and Travis still had a short stint at BuShips once he finished his post-grad work. He would be in Landing and Casey-Rosewood for at least the next five months, and could easily handle a pet.

  Meanwhile, there were a host of other matters to ponder.

  Matters such as what had happened to Lisa’s marriage, whether he’d been a fellow officer, and what exactly constituted being the wrong guy. Matters such as whether Travis and Lisa were now truly friends, or if she’d just been saying that, or even whether they both meant the same thing by that word.

  He had no idea what the answers were to those questions.

  In five minutes Lisa had completely upended whatever their relationship had been before, and it was all just a little bit scary. Uncharted territory always was.

  But he would get through it. He’d been walking uncharted territory for the past ten years, and he would get through this patch, too. Once he had, it wouldn’t be uncharted anymore.

  And when all of that was finally settled, he would make it his business to find out why a sane and normal person would name a dog Crumpets.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “In the history of every so-called crisis,” Breakwater intoned, his voice permeating every cubic centimeter of air space in the House of Lords assembly chamber, “there comes a point where one doesn’t quite know whether to laugh or to cry. Sadly, this is the point where I find myself regarding the Star Kingdom’s massive hunt for roving bands of elusive pirates.”

  Seated four chairs to Breakwater’s left, Winterfall eased his gaze unobtrusively around the chamber, his eyes automatically measuring faces, his brain automatically gauging the moods and attitudes behind those faces. He would never be as good at this kind of analysis as Baroness Castle Rock, say, or Breakwater himself. But ten T-years of practice had made him far better than he’d once been.

  Ten years.

  It had been an extraordinary decade. Toiling away at the bottom of the Parliamentary power pyramid, his presence in the House of Lords due solely to the serendipity of his grandparents being one of the first fifty investors in Manticore, Limited, Winterfall had been destined to be forgotten by history, just one more nameless peer whose only contribution to society and the Star Kingdom was to vote however the more powerful and influential of the Lords ordered.

  And then, out of nowhere, Breakwater had invited him into his inner circle. Had chosen Winterfall to be part of the group of Lords and Ladies standing at the Chancellor’s side against the resource pit that the Royal Manticoran Navy had become.

  Breakwater’s selection hadn’t been random, of course. Winterfall knew that. There’d been subtle but good political reasons for the Chancellor and his Committee for Military Sanity to pluck the young baron out of the mass, not the least of which was that Winterfall’s half-brother Travis Long had just joined that same Navy. If one had close family in an organization, after all, it must certainly follow that one would do only that which one believed to be best for that organization.

  Still, at the time of Breakwater’s offer, it had been clear that the Chancellor had assumed Winterfall would remain just another face and warm body to stand behind him in silent support of his policies and his convoluted bids for additional power and prestige. Breakwater and his circle had explicitly said as much.

  It was a role Winterfall would have been perfectly willing to play. Reflected glory and recognition were still better than no glory and recognition at all.

  But to everyone’s surprise, it hadn’t worked out that way. Winterfall had been asked a question at a high-level meeting, he’d answered the question and offered a suggestion, and suddenly he was being seen as a voice of reason and compromise by everyone from King Michael on down.

  Winterfall had expected the limelight to fade away quickly. To his surprise, it hadn’t.

  He’d weathered the Phobos debacle. He’d survived the fallout from Dapplelake’s investigation of the incident, which had implicated not only two high-level RMN officers
but also three members of the Lords who’d had information they’d failed to pass on to higher authorities. He’d even made it through HMS Guardian’s return from Secour, and the subsequent surge in Navy prestige that had followed Captain Eigen’s report of pirate activity in the region.

  In fact, he’d made it through that surge better than Breakwater himself. The Chancellor and MPARS had both taken a political double-punch, and while the loss of status had largely been kept out of the public eye Breakwater had taken the Navy’s new popularity very, very personally.

  But like the crafty politician he was, the Chancellor had bided his time, staying low and quiet and watching for signs that his opponents’ position was weakening. And once that erosion started, he’d been more than willing to grab a shovel and help the process along.

  And the shovel he was about to wield was a very hefty tool indeed. One that he’d been preparing for just such a moment as this.

  “Because the fact of the matter is,” Breakwater continued, “that while I say elusive, I might just as well say nonexistent. Because, really, that’s what they are. That’s what they’ve always been.”

  No murmur of interest or excitement ran through the assembled Lords. Nor had Winterfall expected one. Breakwater railing against the Navy and Defense Ministry was so commonplace that anyone who’d been here for the past ten years—which, with a very few exceptions, was pretty much everyone—knew what to expect whenever the Chancellor got onto this topic.

  But as Winterfall continued to look around the room he noticed that a few heads which had been bowed over their tablets were starting to come back up. Breakwater had a simmering fire in his voice, a passion that had been largely absent since Guardian’s return from Secour. The change in tone was striking, and the more astute among the peers were taking note, wondering where the Chancellor was going with this.

  “This isn’t just my opinion,” Breakwater continued. “In fact, it isn’t opinion at all. Ask First Lord of the Admiralty Cazenestro. Ask Defense Minister Calvingdell. Ask any of the hundreds of men and women who’ve gone on months-long patrols to neighboring star systems hunting in vain for signs of these alleged marauders. All of them will tell you there’s not a single scrap of evidence that any pirates were ever working this region, let alone that there are pirates working here now.”

  Winterfall smiled to himself. As always, it was all in the wording. There were certainly hints that someone was preying on merchant ships out there. There were vanished freighters, unexplained gravitic footprints that suggested someone might be coming or going at the edges of various systems, and even a couple of possible sightings by freighters whose sensors weren’t adequate to the task of distinguishing between real images and hyper ghosts.

  But evidence? As Breakwater said, not a scrap. No actual pirates or pirate ships had been caught in the act. No one had spotted or boarded the gutted, blood-spattered remains of captured freighters. No identifiable cargo from any of the vanished ships had turned up in local markets or, as far as anyone had heard, the more distant Haven or Solarian League ports.

  Though there was always Silesia. The Confederacy had started off as idealistically as Manticore, but there were signs things weren’t going to stay that way. They appeared to be settling into a client-patron arrangement that favored special interests over broader based policy decisions. While Winterfall was well aware of which side of his bread was buttered, he was also aware—more aware than certain other Peers he could have mentioned—of the downsides of that sort of system. More to the point at the moment, however, the Silesian government’s insularity, and disinclination to cooperate with its neighbors, even when known problems reared their heads, offered little reason to believe it would have any interest in dealing with piracy. At least, not so long as that piracy was afflicting someone else’s shipping. If Winterfall was a pirate, he’d mused on occasion, that was where he would go to peddle his stolen merchandise.

  It was even possible that someone in Silesia had set up a black-market system to buy and sell the pirated ships themselves. Certainly the ships were the most valuable part of the loot, assuming that the pirates managed to take them even partially intact.

  But of course, any such thoughts would undermine Breakwater’s argument, which was why he would never bring them up. What Winterfall found interesting was that no one on the other side ever brought up the Confederacy as a counter-argument. Probably they just realized that lack of proof was of no value in political arguments.

  “But the true, even frightening irony is that while the First Lord claims that all this is making the Star Kingdom safer, it is exactly the opposite,” Breakwater went on, his voice deepening in pitch even as it rose in volume. “Each needless voyage translates into many additional hours’ worth of maintenance, refitting, and replacement. Each useless trip into the void takes with it hundreds of men and women whose talents and skills could be used right here at home instead of locked away inside a metal tube for weeks or months on end. Each wild-goose hunt eats up resources that could be far better spent upgrading or maintaining miners, freighters, and other civilian spacecraft.”

  More heads were starting to come up now as Breakwater’s passion began to prick the notice of even the most oblivious or cynical Lords. The Chancellor was coming out of the shadows where he’d been nursing his wounds, rising again to challenge the Navy and its supporters.

  Some of the Lords would be pleased by that. Others would be dismayed. Still others wouldn’t much care either way, but would merely enjoy the break in the general air of legislative boredom that seemed to have settled around Parliament these past few months.

  “And the final paradox of all: if someday an actual pirate should by some miracle stumble upon the Star Kingdom, where will the very ships be that we would need to defend us?” Breakwater intoned, lifting his hand as if in supplication to an invisible protector. “Exactly. They’ll be scattered across the cosmos, completely and utterly useless.”

  He brought the hand down to slam the edge of his fist firmly against the top of the podium. “No, My Lords. For all these reasons, and more, this situation is unacceptable.

  “But that’s about to change. This very afternoon, I intend to meet with King Michael and First Lord Cazenestro to discuss the situation. And I’m confident that we’ll come to an understanding that will set the Star Kingdom of Manticore along a new and more sensible road.”

  With that, and with the entire body of the Lords finally giving him their full attention, he gave a little bow to Prime Minister Davis Harper, Duke Burgundy, and resumed his seat.

  Again, Winterfall hid a smile. It was one hundred percent pure Breakwater: a strong, eloquent teasing of the audience, culminating in a smooth halt just as they were starting to hunger for more. It was a flair for the dramatic that Winterfall unfortunately didn’t have, and knew he would never be able to pull off.

  Breakwater had it in double handfuls. More than that, he knew when and where to bring that flair to the forefront. The entire House of Lords was now aware that something significant was in the works, and within minutes of the session’s close the media would know it, too. An hour after that, all of Manticore would know. By the time Breakwater emerged from the palace this afternoon, the entire planet would be primed and ready for whatever he had to say.

  And no matter what happened in that meeting, they wouldn’t be disappointed. Breakwater would make sure of that.

  Winterfall almost felt sorry for First Lord Cazenestro. Almost.

  * * *

  By all rights, Captain Edward Winton would reflect later, he shouldn’t have been at the meeting. For that matter, he shouldn’t have been on Manticore at all.

  As usual with such things, it was all in the timing. He and his ship, the heavy cruiser Sphinx, should have been on patrol with the rest of Green One, the nine-ship task force assigned to protect the space around Manticore and Sphinx.

  But like every other ship in the Navy, Sphinx was dripping with maintenance problems, spare-parts issues, and short crews. This time it was the tuning on the Beta nodes of the aft impeller ring that had gone gunnybags, and the necessary repair work had been deemed serious enough for Admiral Carlton Locatelli to order it to be handled in space dock. Edward had brought his ship in, gotten the repair work up and running, and assigned his executive officer to ride herd on the operation. After that, invoking commander’s prerogative, he’d engineered a three-day leave for his son Richard from the Academy, then slipped off groundside to spend a couple of precious days with his wife, son, and daughter.