Fralick had not found it hard to do that at all, apparently. Yet when the proverbial chips were down, when things were going wrong all around them and when his ship needed its captain in full control, suddenly he would be there. Something about him would change, his tone and his facial expression—everything about him—would be altered, and from that moment until the crisis was over Lincoln Casey and every other officer on board the little Raven would gladly have followed George Fralick into the heart of a supernova.
That had to be the George Fralick with whom Katy Romanova had fallen in love. Linc had suspected it early on in his best friend’s romance with their young captain, and in later years as he became more skilled at reading her thoughts in addition to sharing her feelings he came to realize that he’d been right. The Fralick whom Katy knew in the bedroom was the same one who was seen and heard on the Raven’s bridge when the situation became tense, when the stakes became higher and when the odds got longer.
Yet Linc still wondered, even today as he looked out through another forcefield and saw Fralick standing in front of him in civilian clothing of understated, expensive elegance, whether that romantic and charismatic leader was the real George Fralick revealed—or just another role that Fralick played to near-perfection.
“Comfortable, I hope, Mr. Casey?” That calm voice, courteous and perfectly correct. Except that Linc Casey had once heard it, not aloud but through a telepathic channel to Katy that he had been only half trying to shut down, berating her unmercifully because three young men named Fralick had lost their lives while she was their fleet captain.
Never mind that on the ship carrying the twins, twenty-six other young people had died also. Never mind that Ewan Fralick had been a captain—as old as his father had been in the days of Raven, as responsible for his own fate as it was possible for a Service member to be—and that he had gone to that attempted rescue of his brothers against their mother and commanding officer’s direct orders. Ewan had done just what Katy herself would have done in the same situation, he’d shut off his comm and pretended he did not hear.
The only grief Katy had been spared was that of having to discipline her firstborn child for his act of insubordination. George Fralick certainly had spared her nothing, when the battle was over and the initial peace negotiations were concluded and the professional diplomats finally arrived. Even though she was heavily pregnant with his only surviving child, once he had her alone he’d given her no mercy at all emotionally—and Fralick had the kind of temper that once it was unleashed could make its victim wish he would substitute physical punishment for the wounds his words inflicted.
The marriage had been shaky before, but then it had died. And Linc still wondered how he had managed not to burst into the captain’s quarters aboard the old Firestorm, and take that unnaturally calm-voiced monster apart to stop him from tormenting the woman Fralick was supposed to love. The woman Casey did love, then nearly as much as now.
“I’d be a lot more comfortable if you’d left me where I was a couple of hours ago,” Casey said now, and met Fralick’s gray eyes with his golden ones. “But I don’t suppose reminding you that I’m a citizen of Terra through my father is going to do me any good. Any more than my being an honorably retired Service officer stopped you from doing this to me.”
“I’m afraid not.” Fralick had a way of watching another person, whether supposed friend or declared enemy, that reminded Casey of a scientist watching the subject of an experiment. That was the nature of his calm demeanor, although it had taken the Morthan man more years than he liked to think about to finally figure that out. “Katy made it easy for me, I’d planned a diversion to get you away from her but I didn’t have to bother using it. Do you have any idea why you’re here, Mr. Casey?”
For twenty years Fralick had called his wife’s friend “Linc,” and he hadn’t stopped doing so until the day he learned that Casey and Romanova had become more than friends. The fact that nothing of that kind had happened between them until after his own marriage to Katy was over, had not changed Fralick’s reaction in the least. He always addressed Linc this way now, coldly and correctly and with complete formality.
Fralick was at his most dangerous when he was at his most correct. But Casey did not have to dissemble in order to answer that question with a firm, “No idea at all, George. None.”
He had no reason to go back to calling Fralick by a title, or even by his surname alone. If there was a quarrel between them, it wasn’t of Linc’s making.
“I believe you.” Fralick blinked. “Well. It’s very simple, actually. War with the rest of the Commonwealth is something we in the Outworlds can’t afford. If we allow ourselves to be maneuvered into that situation we’re going to lose the independent and co-equal status that we’ve worked so hard to attain. Following me so far, Casey?”
At least he’d dropped the “mister.” Since he certainly did not mean it as a title of respect, that was fine. Linc nodded. He also stayed seated, on the bunk inside his cell, and let Fralick stand outside.
Damn the man for doing it with such perfect comfort. Fralick continued, “So how do you keep rebel forces from rising, when you have people with combat training and experience on the loose and when they’re able to lay hands on at least some of the hardware that could make them dangerous enough to start the war we mustn’t have? One thing you do is remove their obvious leaders.”
“Huh?” Casey was startled enough so that he reacted to that statement. He had commanded the Star Service Academy for several years, it was true; there was a block of junior officers now starting to work its way up that no doubt had respect for him, maybe even some affection. And during his far longer career as first Katy’s executive officer and then her adjutant after she reached flag rank, he had developed his full share of professional relationships and even of genuine friendships with his brother and sister officers; far more friends than he had ever expected he would have, during the difficult years of his childhood and adolescence.
But to picture himself as a possible leader in a war of rebellion (or of revolution, if you were taking the so-called Rebs’ viewpoint)? That thought had quite honestly never crossed his mind, and he was amazed that it could have crossed anyone else’s.
He said now, “George, that’s crazy. If the Rebs were going to look for a leader, it wouldn’t be me. It would be….”
His eyes widened, became a more liquid shade of gold. And instead of experiencing a stung ego at what he suddenly knew was the truth, he felt his insides turn over with horror.
“That’s right, Casey.” Fralick smiled thinly. “It wouldn’t be you. Not that you couldn’t be a competent flag officer; you never held that kind of rank in your own right, but you’re qualified and you could perform well enough to be damned dangerous. But you always stayed in Katy’s shadow, because that was where you wanted to be. You’re a born No. 2 man, the ‘beta wolf’ in the pack is how some sociologists used to put it when pack theory was popular among military psychologists. Katy’s the alpha, and even though there are still a few older Narsatians who spit at the mention of her name because they remember she refused to follow through with her marriage-promise to the primary Romanov heir—if she was tapped to lead the Rebs, you can bet they’d follow her.”
“Of course they would, but Katy’s about as interested in politics as she is in becoming a Sestian miner.” Casey understood now, perfectly. But he wanted to make Fralick tell him baldly what was going on that had brought him to this prison; so he sat still, and stared at his former captain, and pretended to struggle with the pieces of this already assembled puzzle.
“You’re a horrible liar even when all you’re trying to do is look innocent, Casey,” Fralick said, and he laughed without humor. “Right now Katy doesn’t think she’s interested, but she’s a Narsatian and she could get interested damned fast if something happened to motivate her. She’s also a fighter, and I’ll bet she’s been sitting there in that nice quiet little house just about long enough so tha
t if something worth battling over came and called her name she wouldn’t take long to answer it. So the trick for us, for the people who know how important it is to keep the Rebs from coalescing into a real fighting force, is to make sure Katy can’t become their leader.”
“That sounds damned easy to me. You don’t want someone to be able to lead a fighting force? You kill that someone, and your worries are over.” Casey said it in a tone so even that he was almost mocking Fralick’s famous calm.
And he hit his target, torpedo dead on center. Fralick flushed. The diplomat said quietly, but with the mask down and with hate plain in the wintry gray of his eyes, “That’s where I can’t do my duty the way I ought to be doing it. You’re right, you goddamn Morthan mindfucker! If it were anyone but Katy, I’d have had her killed this morning instead of sending the only child I have left to stay with her. But she is Katy—whether you believe it or not, I still love her—and she is Madeleine’s mother, much as I wish she weren’t. So if she’s ordered to be killed, someone else is going to have to be giving the orders; and right now that happens to be my job.”
“And while you have me where you can do anything you want to me, you figure Katy will do what you tell her. Or at least not do what you tell her not to do. Have I got it right, George?” Casey rose from the bunk at last, and walked deliberately to the forcefield and stood as close to it as he could without causing it to shock him.
Golden eyes and gray ones locked, and after a long moment the human man nodded. “Exactly,” Fralick said. “If it wasn’t for Katy, there’s no way I’d have you where I’ve got you now and not do everything to you that I’ve ever imagined. The mindfucker who turned my wife against me after our boys were killed, safe and warm and well-fed in the brig—and with no idea of just how lucky that makes him!”
CHAPTER 8
“You’ve had your house in MinTar for a long time, Katy, but you haven’t really lived on Narsai since you were just turning eighteen.” Ivan Romanov was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat as the rented aircar headed back toward MinTar, with Katy at the controls and with young Maddy once again in the seat behind them. “And since you and Linc did move back, you haven’t had a lot to do with local people and I suspect you haven’t been paying much attention to Outworld politics. Not even the war rumors.”
“No, I haven’t,” Katy admitted, when her cousin paused as if he expected her to answer him. “I had enough of war rumors before we left Terra, and here on Narsai it’s not hard at all to just turn off the holo-casts and forget that the rest of the Commonwealth is there. Cab socializes with us even though she’s our doctor; I’ve known her since we were babies. She tells me how Mum and Dad are doing, and I talk to some of my other old friends from time to time. But mostly Linc and I both just record the occasional lecture for transmission back to the Academy, and work on our own projects, and spend time in the parklands.”
Romanova’s parents were well up into their nineties now, but on Narsai as on most technologically well-developed worlds that was not the enfeebled very old age that it once had been for human beings. Katy at sixty was regarded as no more than middle-aged. Her retirement had been premature; if not for the crisis in which all scramblers were expelled from the Service, she and Linc would probably have stayed put in their hard-earned power positions for at least an additional decade. Perhaps for longer than that, the Star Service had no mandatory age at which an officer must step down.
Cabanne Romanova, for whom Cab Barrett was named, was still heading up the Narsatian University’s main campus at MinTar; and her husband of eighty years, Trabe Kourdakov, was still chairing that university’s philosophy department. Katy, their only living child, had not seen either parent since she had divorced George Fralick and had come home to Narsai married to her adjutant and without her baby girl.
Ivan Romanov’s face softened as he looked over at his cousin. He said gently, “I know, Katy. Aunt Cabbie and Uncle Trabe just barely forgave you for not marrying me. They still can’t accept your divorce, can they?”
“It’s partly the divorce,” Katy responded quietly, and spared herself a moment to glance over her shoulder in Maddy’s direction. She was not certain she wanted her young daughter to be hearing this…but, she reminded herself firmly, at Maddy’s age she had been Johnnie’s lover. Besides, sending the child out of her sight right now was something she simply didn’t have the ability to do. They had to get back to MinTar, she had to know what had become of Linc.
Yet Johnnie was making her talk about subjects that he had to know were delicate ones. Why?
“It was partly your divorce, but it was mostly that you left your child on Kesra,” Johnnie said bluntly. “I’m sorry if you didn’t know that, Maddy, but it’s the way things are and there’s no sense trying to keep it secret from you now. Your mother’s parents think she should have stayed with you and your father until you grew up, no matter what.”
“My father thinks so, too,” Madeleine responded, in a tone that was such a precise echo of her much older male cousin that Katy wanted to laugh. “But my father’s not always right. Anyhow, what does that have to do with a war we may be going to have?”
“Your grandfather holds Senior Chair on the Narsai Council,” Ivan Romanov answered the girl, as Katy’s mouth tightened. That fit of insane amusement had ended as quickly as it had struck her, and she was blessing this strange child of hers for redirecting the conversation back to where it belonged.
She was also wondering whether she should have headed from the Farmstead directly to the nearest public teleport facility, the quicker to get back to MinTar. But no, although this way was slower it was less likely to arouse the suspicions of anyone who might be observing her movements. Admiral Romanova teleporting when she didn’t have to was a sight guaranteed to make anyone who knew her habits very suspicious indeed.
“I thought he was a professor,” Maddy said, frowning. “He and Granma both.”
“They are, but here on Narsai we don’t believe the government should be headed by professional politicians. The Council is a hereditary body, and its Senior Chair is often held by a scholar.” Johnnie Romanov might have spent his entire adult life running a farm, but he was not an ignorant man. He understood his society and how it functioned, and following politics by every remote means possible was his favorite way of amusing himself during long winters of physical isolation. “Your grandfather has held the Senior Chair for the past seven years, Maddy. Your grandmother held it before him, and I won’t be surprised if she holds it again when he’s ready to take a rest.”
“So what has this got to do with going to war?” Maddy didn’t sound like a Romanov now, she sounded like a Fralick.
Katy reminded herself, firmly, of how much she once had loved the man who was this child’s father. And she said, “I’d like to know that, too, Johnnie. And before we get right on top of MinTar, please!”
“All right.” Ivan Romanov was well aware that his conversations tended to ramble, and he seldom took offense when an exasperated listener asked him to come to the point. “Uncle Trabe is an Isolationist. So are most of the Council’s other members, which isn’t surprising. Being conservative’s natural when you’re past a certain age, that seems to be true on any world and for any sentient species. But as you know, Katy, the Council can’t always control what the commissioners do.”
“Commissioners?” Maddy asked. Clearly Narsatian government hadn’t been one of the subjects her tutors on Kesra had made her study.
“A commissioner runs Narsai Control,” Katy explained, and wished with all her soul she had decent scanners at her disposal. She hated flying along blind like this, able to navigate and to communicate but not able to do much else. “A commissioner oversees trade with the other Outworlds, and with Terra. A commissioner makes sure the farms are run according to all environmental regulations. And so on, there are sixteen professional and commercial guilds and all their commissioners are popularly elected. Councilors serve by inheritance, just as Johnni
e said, although within the Council itself the seat order is elective.”
“Oh,” Maddy said, as if she had understood. Which she probably had. “But the Council decides matters of state? They’d make the decision, if the other Outworlds started fighting against Terra and Narsai had to join one side or the other?”
“Yes. We believe that type of decision is best made by people descended from our original settlers, that it’s far too important to be left to popularly elected leaders.” Katy had learned that line of catechism by heart almost as soon as she could talk, and she said it now automatically. But it had a hollowness in it, today, that she’d never heard before.
Her sons had never asked her questions about Narsatian government. The boys had been like her in that way, they didn’t care about such things. Civilian government had to be dealt with as the ultimate policy maker for the military, but that was the only way it really had mattered to Katy until now; and it never had mattered at all to Ewan or to his brothers.
But Maddy had more of George in her, in that respect at least. She said now, “That sounds to me like the balance of powers between branches that most self-governing planets try to set up. But it’s gotten out of balance, if the people on the Council don’t know or don’t care what everyone else on Narsai really wants them to do.”
“Give this child the Senior Chair, and tell Uncle Trabe to take a rest!” Johnnie Romanov said, and he grinned sardonically. “She just said in two sentences what I’ve spent the past year trying to tell him, and I haven’t been able to get through. Maybe we ought to fly on over to the university right now, Katy, and introduce Uncle Trabe to his granddaughter.”
Katy did not dignify that suggestion with a reply. Instead she said quietly, “So you think the Council will do whatever it takes to keep us neutral. Is that right, Johnnie?”
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