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

  And, of course, because of politics. Unlike the Royal Manticoran Navy, which was under the authority of Earl Dapplelake’s Defense Ministry, MPARS was controlled by Breakwater’s own Exchequer.

  Distantly, Chillon’s comment about turf-fighting flicked through Winterfall’s mind.

  “I imagine Dapplelake would argue that any new small ships the Star Kingdom gets should be warships,” he murmured.

  “Ah—but that’s the point,” Breakwater said. “They will be warships. The sloops we have in mind will be every bit as well-armed as the Navy’s corvettes and frigates, ready to take on any external threat that might befall us.”

  “But under the Exchequer’s authority.”

  Breakwater waved a hand in dismissal.

  “An accident of history,” he said. “That’s simply the way MPARS was set up. It has nothing to do with me personally.”

  “The point is that the sloops will be designed for in-system defense, not the kind of extra-system war expedition that battlecruisers are best suited for,” Castle Rock said. Her expression probably showed more scorn than she intended it to, but she was a long-standing member of the Parliamentary faction which distrusted Dapplelake and cast a leery eye toward the sort of foreign adventures they feared the Defense Minister might be tempted to use his Navy for. “In the unlikely event that another group of marauders like the Free Brotherhood ever tried anything, we could swarm them with at least the same number of missiles as we could now,” she added.

  “And when these new ships aren’t fighting mythical bogeymen,” Chillon said, “they’ll be available to assist with any real trouble that might arise.”

  “I see,” Winterfall said, feeling a small frown creasing his forehead. The idea made a certain amount of sense, as far as it went. But Breakwater and the others seemed to be ignoring the giant hexapuma in the room. “I understand how a fleet of smaller ships would save money in the long run,” he continued. “But at the moment, we don’t have them. So we’re still talking about building more ships, and I don’t see where the extra money would come from.”

  “Indeed,” Breakwater said with a nod. “As Chancellor I know more about the budget than anyone else on Manticore. You’re absolutely right—the money simply isn’t there. Unless.”

  He let the word hang in the air a moment. Winterfall leaned forward a few centimeters…

  “Unless these new ships are created from existing ones,” Breakwater concluded.

  Winterfall blinked. That was not the answer he’d expected.

  “Excuse me?” he asked carefully.

  This time, it wasn’t just Castle Rock who smiled smugly. It was all of them.

  “No, you heard right,” Chillon assured him. “Tell me, have you ever heard of Martin Ashkenazy?”

  Winterfall searched his memory. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Chillon’s lip twitched. Disappointment?

  “He’s a mining ship designer, working with civilian spacecraft and mostly under governmental radar,” he said. “He’s also the grandson of one of the officers on the original Triumph battlecruiser eighty-odd years ago. It turns out that he has copies of the diagrams and specs of that ship.”

  “And with a little prompting from us,” Breakwater said, “he’s concluded that each of those mothballed battlecruisers can be taken apart, reformed, rebuilt, and converted into a pair of corvette-sized ships.”

  “What?” The word blurted unasked-for from Winterfall’s lips.

  “And for a fraction of the cost of building those ships from scratch,” Breakwater continued, graciously ignoring the disrespectful outburst.

  “As we said: political and economic realities,” Tweenriver added.

  “So that’s the plan,” Breakwater said, his eyes boring into Winterfall’s. “Your thoughts?”

  “It’s…very interesting,” Winterfall managed, struggling to figure out how exactly this was going to work. He’d never seen a battlecruiser up close and personal, but he’d seen plenty of holos and vids, and no matter how he tried to visualize such deconstruction his mental image of the results came out looking hideously ugly, like spacegoing versions of the misshapen hunchbacked ogres of the Old Earth legends he used to read as a kid. An irreverent thought flashed through his mind: Hans Christian Anderson’s Ugly Ducklings—

  “Naturally, it won’t be simply a matter of cutting the ship in half like a banana and sealing all the openings,” Castle Rock said. “It’ll take some serious refitting, rewiring and replumbing.”

  “But there are a lot of repeaters and redundancy centers—environment, energy, and others—scattered around each of the big ships that can form the center of the smaller ships’ systems,” Chillon added.

  “We don’t pretend to understand all of it,” Tweenriver said. “But Ashkenazy is an expert, and he’s convinced the theory is sound.”

  “I’ve also run the financial numbers,” Breakwater said. “If he’s right, we’ll be able to create our new Home Guard without unduly straining the budget. And every penny we spend on it will be spent right here in the Star Kingdom, providing jobs and helping to build—rebuild—our infrastructure, not ordering ships from some well-heeled shipyard back in the League.”

  And the fact that some of your staunchest political allies happen to own the local shipyards where all that work will be done—and where all that money will be spent—is just an added bonus, isn’t it, My Lord? Winterfall very carefully did not ask out loud.

  “Granted, the new ships won’t be sleek and beautiful,” Tweenriver said. “But they’ll be functional.” She smiled. “I daresay aesthetics will be the last thing on the minds of a mining crew facing certain death as their rescuers arrive.”

  “Yes,” Winterfall murmured. “A question, if I may?”

  Breakwater waved a hand in invitation, and Winterfall braced himself.

  “Why me?”

  “Why not you?” Castle Rock asked.

  It was, Winterfall knew, a reply designed to deflect the question. But for once, he wasn’t going to be dissuaded. Not even by such people as these.

  “I’m just a baron,” he said doggedly. “My house and lands are miniscule, my political and economic positions are negligible, and all my friends are in pretty much the same state as I am. If my grandparents hadn’t been one of the first fifty investors in the colony, no one in the Star Kingdom would ever even have heard of me.”

  “But they did make that investment, and you are in the Lords,” Breakwater reminded him. “Accident of history or not, it still makes you one of the fifty most powerful men and women in the Star Kingdom.” He pursed his lips. “Fifty-one, of course, counting King Michael.”

  “I understand that,” Winterfall said. “Please don’t misunderstand—I’m honored and flattered that you consider me worth inviting into your confidence. I simply don’t see what additional assets I can bring to the table.”

  “You give yourself too little credit,” Breakwater said calmly. “Where you see weaknesses, we see strengths. Your youth and circle of friends make you the ideal person to reach out to young peers of similar rank and position. Your political averageness helps allay any suspicions that your true motivation is to draw more power to yourself.”

  “Because, frankly, you’re not destined to rise much higher than you already are,” Chillon said. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Winterfall assured him. It was a conclusion he’d reluctantly come to years ago.

  “There’s also Clara Sumner’s tacit recommendation,” Tweenriver said. “The Countess wouldn’t let just anyone sit in on an Appropriations meeting for her, you know. We trust Clara, and she obviously trusts you.”

  “And of course, there’s your brother,” Castle Rock added. “He’ll add a nice touch of additional sincerity to your message of reform.”

  “Excuse me?” Winterfall frowned. His brother? What did his brother have to do with this?

  “Your b
rother,” Castle Rock repeated. “Sorry; your half-brother. Travis Long.”

  “Yes, I know who you mean,” Winterfall said. “What about him?”

  The others exchanged puzzled glances.

  “He’s just enlisted in the Navy,” Castle Rock said.

  “He what?” Winterfall demanded, feeling his eyes go wide in disbelief. “Enlisted?”

  “Three weeks ago,” Castle Rock said, staring at him in some confusion of her own. “He’s already two weeks into boot camp.” She threw a look at Breakwater. “You didn’t know?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Winterfall ground out. He’d talked with his mother not two days ago, and she hadn’t said a single word about Travis, let alone mentioned anything about any such sudden and seriously major decisions.

  Unless his mother herself didn’t know.

  He felt his throat tighten. Four years ago, Travis had tried to talk to him about his growing isolation from his mother. Winterfall, in his usual hurry to finish up the perfunctory visit and return to his work, had brushed the concerns aside, assuming Travis was merely presenting with standard teenage angst, and had offered the boy the same half-baked aphorisms he himself had been given when he was that age.

  Now, he wondered if maybe Travis hadn’t been imagining things. Wondered, too, if he should have listened to his brother a little more closely.

  “But it doesn’t matter,” he said, trying to filter the foreboding from his voice. He had no idea what RMN boot camp was like, and he frankly didn’t know his half-brother very well. Even so, he had a pretty good idea that Travis and the rigors of boot camp wouldn’t be especially compatible. “He’s my brother, not me. Whatever he does or doesn’t do, his actions don’t impinge on my life and career. Nor do they affect how well I can assist in this undertaking.”

  He looked at Breakwater. “Assuming you still want me.”

  Once again, Breakwater looked at Castle Rock. Winterfall looked at her too late to catch her response; but when he turned back to Breakwater the other was smiling.

  “Welcome aboard, My Lord,” he said, inclining his head. “The Committee for Military Sanity is pleased to have you among us.”

  His smile faded.

  “Let’s just pray we can get the rest of the Lords to see the universe the same way we do. Before it’s too late.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Casey-Rosewood Instructional Center was the RMN’s all-purpose training base for enlisted and non-commissioned officers, with an entry-level boot camp at its southern end, a set of training schools in its northern and western quadrants, and the more esoteric advanced training facilities to the east.

  And it was quickly apparent that the boot camp section of the complex had been designed and built solely for the purpose of killing naïve young recruits like Travis Uriah Long.

  Travis’s first three weeks there were a nightmare. Literally. They were a half-comatose, pulse-pounding, muscle-aching, walking, marching, being-continually-yelled-at nightmare.

  The order and structure he’d always yearned for were there, just as he’d hoped. But it was a structure he could feel choking the life out of him. Morning began before the sun was even up, with a loud bugle call or an even more raucous banging of metal bars on metal trash can lids. Once the noise started, the thirty men and women in their respective ends of the barracks had exactly twenty seconds to scramble out of their bunks and stand at rigid attention along the central aisle, and heaven help the maggot who missed the deadline, or even made it in time but was the last one in position. The platoon commander, Gunner’s Mate First Class Johnny Funk, knew more curses than Travis had ever heard, and had the volume and tone control an operatic singer would have envied.

  By the end of the first week Travis probably would have quit if quitting had been an option. Several of the other boots, he gathered from the muttered curses and soft moans of aching muscles in the night, felt the same way.

  But quitting wasn’t possible. Not yet. They’d signed up for five T-years, and by God and by First Lord of the Admiralty Admiral Thomas P. Cazenestro, RMN (ret), they would put in those five years or die trying. Or so GM1 Funk said.

  Funk had given them his full name the very first time he’d faced them, and had all but dared anyone to make jokes about it. A couple of the braver or more foolhardy boots had done so, though they were smart enough to offer their humor where neither Funk nor any of the other platoon commanders or drill instructors could overhear.

  Such private triumphs were short-lived. GM1 Funk found out about every one of them, and the humorists’ muscles had ached extra hard for the next few days from the dozens of additional workout reps the unamused platoon commander had put them through. No one made any such jokes now.

  Which was hardly unexpected. People didn’t make jokes about the devil incarnate, and by the end of the second week Travis was convinced that that was who GM1 Funk truly was. The man was up ahead of them every morning and was the last angry face they saw before staggering to the barracks and collapsing into comas in their bunks. His brain was an encyclopedia of the General Orders, the Manual of Arms, Uniform Code of Conduct, ship types, weapon types, ship systems, ship terminology, history, officer lists, and every other bit of information that anyone could possibly want. He could see a twitching lip two ranks away, could hear the smallest snicker four ranks away, and could almost literally draw blood with the serrated edge of his voice.

  There was no possible way that Travis could ever become accustomed to such a hell. And yet, to his numbed disbelief, by the end of the third week he could feel himself actually doing so. The aches became fewer and less intense, he started being less overwhelmed by the flood of information Funk and the other instructors firehosed at them, and the rhythms and cadences of the marching were starting to stick in his brain stem, freeing his higher functions to drop into a neutral state that almost qualified as extra sleep.

  By the end of the fourth week he knew all twenty-five men and fourteen women in his platoon better than he’d ever known anyone in his life. Better that he’d ever realized he could know anyone. He’d heard their stories and their histories; knew their strengths and quirks and weaknesses; knew which ones he could trust and which he couldn’t and which he needed to steer wide of when they got that certain gleam in their eye, because when their latest scheme or infraction fell apart he didn’t want to be anywhere inside GM1 Funk’s blast radius.

  By the end of the fifth week something in his brain abruptly clicked, and the patterns and relationships inherent in the mass of information being poured into the boots’ brains suddenly made sense. From that point on, the classwork was under the same kind of control as the marching and pushups and obstacle course: not exactly easy, but no longer on the edge of hopeless. It was the point where Travis finally and truly began to believe that he not only could, but would get through this.

  At the end of the sixth week, the whole thing was nearly snatched away.

  * * *

  Predictably, it was because of Chomps.

  Charlie Townsend had picked up the nickname Chomps early in the platoon’s nickname-attaching process. He was from Sphinx, shorter and squatter than average, but immensely strong and invariably cheerful. Unfortunately, his cheerfulness bled over into the forbidden area of commander baiting, and he caused the platoon more than its fair share of midnight marches and snap inspections.

  The man also had an enormous appetite. The son of assisted immigrants from the Kismet System, he had the super-active metabolism of someone whose ancestors had been genetically engineered for heavy-gravity environments. There weren’t that many people on Sphinx, even now, but Sphinxians appeared to be overrepresented in the Navy. Four of the mess men were Sphinxians themselves, and at first they’d made sure to surreptitiously heap extra food on Chomps’s meal trays, even though they were supposed to dole out exactly the same rations to everyone. That ended midway through the third week when some by-the-book officer wandered into eyeshot and ordered the servers back to proper pr
ocedure.

  Chomps’s countermove was to make sure he was the first one in the platoon to go through the mess line, wolf down his food, then slip back into line and collect a second meal before the last boot made it through and service was closed down. Again, the mess crew played along; again, some wandering rule-stickler caught on and ended the game.

  For the next week, in the quietest part of the night, it was possible to hear the sound of soft stomach rumbling across the men’s side of the barracks. The various meals were supposed to provide sufficient nutrition for anyone, even a Sphinxian, but Travis wasn’t sure he bought that.

  Chomps was absolutely sure he didn’t buy it, and there was no doubt that he was losing weight. In fact, his face had begun to look almost gaunt as he suffered his deprivation in increasingly grouchy silence, his cheerful attitude fading like the charm of mess hall borscht.

  And then, sometime late in the fourth week, he found the final card he could play.

  If they wouldn’t give him the food he needed, he would steal it.

  Travis knew nothing about it at the time, of course. As he’d been learning about the rest of the platoon, they’d likewise been learning about him, and the last thing anyone planning mischief wanted was “Rule-stickler” Long hearing about it.

  That was fine with Travis. He had enough stress on mind and body without dragging his ethics on a twenty-five-klick march of their own.

  It was also why his first indication that something was up was as he walked past Chomps’s locker shortly before lights-out one evening and caught the delicate aroma of chocolate chip cookies.

  His first reflexive thought was that he was having an olfactory flashback to the cookies that had been racked at the dessert station at lunch that afternoon. But no—this aroma was very real.

  And unfortunately, there was only one possible explanation for the presence of food in the barracks.

  He moved slowly down the line of lockers, sniffing carefully, wondering who the thief was and what he, Travis, would do when he found him out. Food of any sort was absolutely forbidden in barracks, and the penalty for theft was even more severe. Those were the rules, and Travis had always tried his best to follow the rules.