by David Weber
“Well, hello, Sir,” a familiar voice came from behind him. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Travis turned around, his stomach knotting. Chomps Townsend. Of course. After all, the best way for the universe to make a bad day even worse was to throw a man who hated him into his path.
“Petty Officer Townsend,” he greeted the other in turn, keeping his voice steady as he turned around. “Sorry—Chief Townsend,” he corrected himself as he noted the insignia on Chomps’s left sleeve.
He frowned as his brain caught up with the oddness of that fact. Six months ago, during the invasion scare, Townsend had been a mere petty officer 1/c. Now, suddenly, the man had been promoted to chief petty officer? And he was back in Navy uniform after getting kicked to MPARS?
Unlike Travis, someone had clearly taken Chomps under his or her wing.
Though who that could be wasn’t at all clear. Chomps’s shirt color was a nondescript gray, and his shoulder patch indicated a shore assignment.
“Yes, Sir,” Chomps said, grinning widely as he strode towards Travis. “And back in the RMN, I trust you noticed.”
“I did, Chief,” Travis said, his heart sinking. Chomps back in the Navy, and promoted to chief. Heading up the ladder while Travis was headed down. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Sir. What brings you up here, if I may ask?”
“New assignment,” Travis said, determined not to let his envy show.
“Ah,” Chomps said. “You wouldn’t be heading to Room 2021 by any chance, would you?”
Travis frowned. How in hell could Chomps have known that?
“As a matter of fact, that is where I’m reporting,” he said.
“What a stroke of luck. That’s where I’m heading, too. May I accompany you, Sir?”
Travis’s sighed. The universe, prolonging the agony. “Of course, Chief,” he said. “What’s your business with BuPers, if I may ask?”
“We’re getting a new officer in my department,” Chomps said as they resumed walking, the CPO pacing along at Travis’s side. “I need to pick up the data work.”
“Ah,” Travis said. For a fleeting moment he wondered if he was that officer. “What department are you in?”
“Oh, it’s something new that the Admiralty’s thrown together,” Chomps said. “It’s a little complicated. A little political, too, I’m afraid.”
Travis made a face.
“Yes, I know how that works.”
“Yes, Sir.” Chomps gestured. “Here we are, Sir.”
Travis nodded. Room 2021, the ID plate said. There was no secondary plate giving the name of the officer in charge. That was unusual, and probably not good.
“Here we are, Sir,” Chomps prompted again.
“Right.” Taking a deep breath, Travis pushed the door open.
Beyond the door was a small anteroom with a desk, two guest chairs, and a single potted plant on the stand beside a plain door at the back of the room. Seated behind the desk was a young woman in civilian clothing. Standing behind her, peering over her shoulder at something on her computer display, was—
Travis stiffened. Was that really—?
“Good morning, Lieutenant Long,” Lady Calvingdell said briskly, straightening up and giving Travis a quick once over. “I’m Countess Calvingdell. You may remember me from that dreadful day on Samantha.”
With an effort, Travis found his tongue.
“Yes, My Lady,” he said, ducking his head in a bow. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“Likewise,” she said. She cocked her head for a moment, apparently studying his expression. “Should I assume that you weren’t overly enthralled with your orders to BuPers? And should I further assume that your enthusiasm level hasn’t scaled new heights at finding yourself face-to-face with the woman who was tossed out of office as Minister of Defense and replaced by Earl Dapplelake?”
Travis winced. What was he supposed to say to that?
“Well, yes, My Lady.”
“Good,” she said briskly. She eyed his expression and smiled slightly. “First, some record-clearing. The official story that I was tossed out of office is the tale we wanted everyone to hear. In point of fact, I quietly resigned in order to take over this brand-new agency. From your record, it appears you might be a good fit for it. So, of course, you had to disappear into the bowels of the bureaucracy.”
Her smile brightened at his perplexed expression and she glanced over his shoulder at Chomps.
“It’s your doing that Lieutenant Long is here, Chief, and I know you’re dying to tell him. Have at it.”
“Yes, My Lady.” Chomps turned to Travis, an extremely self-satisfied smile of his own on his face. “Welcome to my new home, Travis. And your new home, if you want it. Welcome to the Special Intelligence Service.”
* * *
For maybe half a dozen heartbeats Travis just stared at him, years of history rewinding at furious speed as the universe seemed to do a complete about-face around him. If Chomps was telling the truth—and if today wasn’t his first day on the job—
“The computer hack aboard Phoenix,” he murmured. “You were never brought up on charges because there weren’t any charges.”
Chomps looked at Calvingdell, his smile going even broader. “I told you he was quick, My Lady.”
“That you did,” Calvingdell agreed. “Very good, Lieutenant. Continue.”
Travis frowned. “Ma’am?”
“You’re playing out Chief Townsend’s revised history,” she said. “Let’s hear some more.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Travis said, feeling uncomfortably like a trained animal being asked to perform. “There weren’t any charges because it wasn’t a hack in the first place. You were…what? Supposed to check on incoming freighters?”
“That, and anything else that came into the system,” Chomps said, nodding. “It was our first—Lady Calvingdell’s first, I should say—experiment with an agent-aboard program. One of my duties was to sift through everything we got from incoming ships and run an extra set of eyes over it for discrepancies, contradictions, omissions, and any other oddities I might notice. Captain Castillo and the rest of the senior officers were fully aware of all this, of course.”
“Which is also why I didn’t get more than a slap on the wrist for failing to properly report it?” Travis asked.
“Exactly,” Chomps said. “Commander Sladek had to say something—he couldn’t have you getting suspicious, after all. But he could hardly put any major disciplinary action on you, given that it was a fully-authorized activity.”
“Which isn’t to say Sladek didn’t also slap Townsend down for taking you into his confidence in the first place,” Calvingdell put in.
“Oh, he did, all right,” Chomps said, wincing at the memory. “After that, it was Lady Calvingdell’s turn.”
“Is that why you transferred him to MPARS?” Travis asked as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “As a punishment for talking to me?”
“Oh, that wasn’t a punishment,” Chomps assured him. “I was already slated for a stint there.” He cocked an eyebrow at Calvingdell. “Though possibly not quite so soon. No, Lady Calvingdell wanted me to rub shoulders with a lot of different people, in both services, with an eye toward spotting and recruiting promising talent.”
“Such as yourself, Lieutenant,” Calvingdell said.
“Okay,” Travis said, frowning. There was something here that still didn’t make sense. “But why a new department? Doesn’t ONI already handle intel?”
“It does, after a fashion,” Calvingdell said. “And a lot of our work to this point is officially under ONI’s charter. Townsend’s work aboard Phoenix, for example. Unfortunately, ONI is so hidebound, ingrown, and politicized that we decided it was useless for what we need.”
“These days it’s mostly just a handful of mossbacks pondering diplomatic reports,” Chomps said. “And in their spare time leafing through Solarian weapons brochures saying ooh—shiny at all the cool hardware th
at Breakwater will never let us buy.”
“It was determined that we needed a new start,” Calvingdell said. “So I was publicly kicked out of office, quietly gathered a few good people around me, and started ramping up operations here.”
“Casca,” Travis said, looking at Chomps as one more piece suddenly fell into place. “Lisa said your computer hack there was under Lady Calvingdell’s orders.”
“Yes, it was,” Calvingdell confirmed. “At the time, understand, it was just a one-off—I’d brought Townsend’s uncle aboard as an advisor, and he recommended his nephew as someone aboard who could handle the job. As it turned out, the incident more than proved he was someone I wanted to take on permanently.” She cocked her head. “As are you, Lieutenant. If you want the job.”
Travis pursed his lips, his eyes running up and down Chomps’s uniform. To his mild surprise, the other caught the implied question.
“You’ll still be in the Navy,” he said. “Not just as a cover, either—you’ll still be doing all your normal shipboard work. This will just be an extra duty that only the senior officers know about.”
“Understood,” Travis said. With the mystery that had been Chomps starting to unravel, his brain shifted from past to future. “You sound as if you already have a mission in mind, My Lady.”
“We do,” Calvingdell said. “Flora?”
The young woman at the desk, who had yet to say a word, stood up and stepped back out of the way. “This is Flora Taylor, by the way,” Calvingdell added as she sat down in Flora’s vacated chair and gestured to Travis. “We call her the Gatekeeper. Her job is to smile and redirect those who don’t know what’s going on here and pass in those who do.”
Travis nodded to Flora as he walked around the end of the desk. Flora nodded back, offering him a small, polite, and precisely proper smile in return.
A woman who understood and followed official etiquette. Travis liked her already.
“There wasn’t a lot of debris left from the battle,” Calvingdell said. Travis reached her side, to see that she’d pulled up a data list. “And of course, what was there was scattered across several million cubic kilometers of space. It’s taken the Navy—and MPARS and every tug and mining ship we were able to press into service—this whole time to collect enough to find some clues.” She lifted a finger. “Understand that what I’m about to show you is classified as need-to-know.”
On the other side of the desk, Chomps stirred. “Excuse me, My Lady…but, uh, Lieutenant Long hasn’t yet agreed to join us.”
“I know,” Calvingdell said. “It’s all right.”
“Yes, My Lady,” Chomps said stolidly. “May I remind the Countess that she raked me over the coals for telling him things he wasn’t authorized to know?”
“Reminder noted,” Calvingdell said. “That’s the advantage of being the one in charge, Chief: you get to bend the rules when you deem it necessary.” She gave Travis a puckered smile. “Lieutenant Long isn’t the type to blindly jump into something just on someone else’s say-so. Especially when the say-so is coming from a disgraced former Defense Minister and a petty officer who blames him for getting him kicked over to MPARS.”
“Ah—yes,” Chomps said, nodding. “I’d forgotten what a disreputable bunch we were.”
“Exactly.” Calvingdell gestured to the display. “So. Take a look, Lieutenant. Tell me what you see.”
Gingerly, Travis leaned over her shoulder, trying to ignore how close he was standing to a member of the nobility and a more or less complete stranger. The list turned out to be a rundown of various retrieved parts that had been in good enough shape to identify and, in some cases, ascertain their point of origin.
A lot of it was Solarian. No surprise there, given how much the League dominated shipping and shipbuilding. There was a surprising amount of Tahzeeb material, which hinted that at least a couple of Tamerlane’s ships might have come from that system.
But even more intriguing…
“What are these?” he asked, pointing to a group of objects midway down the list. “Are they gravitics array components?”
“Indeed they are,” Calvingdell confirmed. “It must be years since you had to deal with a gravitics inventory list. You have an excellent memory.”
“When the Navy drums something into you, it stays drummed,” Chomps said. “Anything in particular about those components that intrigues you, Travis?”
Travis shot a look at the other. A petty officer wasn’t supposed to use that kind of familiarity with an officer, not in front of a civilian.
Calvingdell apparently spotted the look as it went by and correctly gleaned the thought behind it. “Please excuse Townsend, Lieutenant,” she said. “We’re more informal in here than we are out in public. And of course, the two of you have a certain amount of history together. You were about to tell us the significance of these components?”
“Yes, My Lady,” Travis said. He had known Chomps since boot camp, after all. In private settings that allowed more familiarity. “A lot of systems in this region, even those who can build their own ships, still get their impellers from the League or Haven. So those components and spare parts won’t tell us much. But gravitics arrays are something almost anyone can make, and more cheaply than importing them. So it seems reasonable to assume those would be items Tamerlane could buy closer to home.”
He pointed over Calvingdell’s shoulder. “If the analysts are right about those bits coming from the Silesian Confederacy, I would say that’s where we should start looking for him.”
“Very good, Lieutenant,” Calvingdell said. “That’s exactly the conclusion we came to. Anything else?”
Travis chewed at the inside of his cheek. Silesia was a good lead, certainly. But it never hurt to have a second string to their bow.
And if he was clever, maybe he could do Lisa a favor along with it.
“It looks like you also found some parts that came from Haven,” he said. “If the Havenites can pull any serial numbers or other ID off them, we might be able to backtrack those purchases.”
“That’s rather a long shot,” Calvingdell said doubtfully. “It’s also something of a two-edged sword, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. The fact that a fair amount of material came from Haven might imply the attackers were based somewhere in that area. Nouveau Paris won’t like that implication.”
Travis suppressed a smile. Perfect. “Maybe we can make it more informal,” he suggested. “We could send someone who can ask for an unofficial favor.”
“You have someone in mind?” Chomps asked, an odd tone in his voice.
“Lieutenant Commander Lisa Donnelly,” Travis said. “During the Secour Incident she worked with Colonel Jean Massingill, who emigrated to Haven afterwards.”
“Oh, she didn’t just go to Haven,” Calvingdell said dryly. “She more or less conquered it. Your Colonel Massingill is now Brigadier Massingill, who created, organized, and now commands SCAFE, Haven’s own Special Forces division.”
Travis felt his eyes bulge. He hadn’t heard any of that.
“That’s…impressive, My Lady,” he said. “It should also make it easier for Massingill to pull whatever strings are needed to get those fragments analyzed.”
“Provided she remembers Manticore fondly enough to call in a favor or two,” Calvingdell said. “She might not. In light of that, it might serve us better to pull someone a bit more senior from the Secour thing to make our pitch. Commodore Eigen, for instance, or Captain Metzger.”
“I doubt the Navy would let either Eigen or Metzger go for that long,” Chomps warned.
“And the more senior the officer, the more official the pitch would look,” Travis added. “We were trying to avoid that, right?”
“Though if we wanted a more senior officer, you could arrange for Donnelly to be promoted to Commander and put in Damocles’s XO slot,” Chomps suggested.
Travis winced. Much as he appreciated Lisa’s abilities, promoting any officer too quickly was potentially
setting her up for failure. All he’d really been angling for was for Calvingdell to expedite Damocles’s repairs and get Lisa out of that hated classroom. Chomps, unfortunately, had gotten a little too enthusiastic.
Calvingdell apparently thought so, too. “Not a good idea,” she warned, shaking her head.
“She’s got all the necessary experience, My Lady,” Chomps persisted. “More than that, she has the respect of Damocles’s officers and crew.” He lifted a finger. “And unless I’m mistaken, Eriyne’s Captain Timberlake recently announced his retirement. Damocles’s current XO, Commander Shiflett, could easily be moved into that slot.”
“Yes,” Calvingdell murmured, looking back and forth between them. “I’ll look into it.” She cocked an eyebrow. “You two do work and play well together, don’t you? Of course, you’re missing the other obvious candidate: Lieutenant Long himself. I understand your contribution to the Navy response at Secour was quite pivotal.”
“But if he goes to Haven, he won’t be able to go to Silesia with me,” Chomps protested. “I thought that was the plan.”
“You assume Mr. Long will join us,” Calvingdell said. “As you pointed out earlier, that hasn’t been established.”
“Sure it has,” Chomps said. “Right, Travis?”
“It’s…interesting,” Travis said. “But are you just going to…? I mean, isn’t there some test or something I have to take?”
“You just took it,” Calvingdell said, gesturing to the display. “Your record shows you have an eye and a mind for picking out details and coming up with ideas. Furthermore, Chomps informs me that you’re quick on your feet and, if properly motivated, can tell a convincing lie. Something about chocolate chip cookies, I believe.”
“Yes, My Lady,” Travis admitted, feeling his face warming. It had been a long time since he’d thought about that incident.
“So,” Calvingdell said briskly. “Here’s the deal. Once you sign on, there’ll be six weeks’ of training—not really long enough, but that’s all the time we have before Casey’s upgrade is finished and she’s ready to head out to Silesia. Chomps will be aboard as a Chief, and he’ll continue your training—”