The Oncoming Storm

by Christopher Nuttall

Her father, oddly, reached out and placed his hand on top of hers. It was a curiously intimate gesture from someone who had always been very reserved when he’d bothered to pay attention to her at all. The last time they’d spoken alone had been just after Kat had applied to join the Navy. He’d seen it, perhaps, as a cry for attention rather than a serious attempt to escape the family name.

  “I understand how you feel,” he said softly. “But I also know that the family needs you.”

  Kat felt her temper flare. “What do I owe the family?”

  “Your life,” her father said. He ticked points off on his fingers as he spoke. “Your expensive education. Your exclusive implants. Your looks and genetic legacy. And the safety bubble that protected you as you grew into adulthood.”

  He paused. “And are you going to keep acting like a teenager?”

  Kat felt her face heat. What was it about her father that made her act like a child?

  “There were reasons for my decision,” he said when Kat said nothing. “And, if you will listen, I will enlighten you.”

  He paused as the maids returned, carrying two large plates of food. Kat wasn’t surprised to see that the chef had done his best to make the fish and chips look expensive rather than the greasy food she remembered from the cafe near Piker’s Peak. The senior cadets had gone there on weekend passes, just for the pleasure of eating something that wasn’t Navy rations while having a drink or two with friends. And then most of the young men had headed to the brothel.

  “Your ship is being assigned to Cadiz,” her father said, once they’d eaten enough to satisfy the hunger pangs. “And I have some reason to believe the situation is dire.”

  Kat leaned forward, puzzled. “Father?”

  “I haven’t been able to find much hard evidence,” her father confessed. “Even me, even with my connections; there’s little evidence to find. But there are alarming whispers coming out of Cadiz Naval Base, while some of my . . . operations on Cadiz itself have been disrupted by the insurgency. And then there’s the decision to appoint Admiral Morrison to command the 7th Fleet. Do you know him?”

  “No,” Kat said. It wasn’t as if admirals made a habit of socializing with lesser beings, even those who happened to have aristocratic families. She made a mental note to read his file—the parts of it she could access, at any rate—as soon as possible. “I’ve never even heard of him.”

  “Probably for the best,” her father said. “Admiral Morrison was a compromise choice, Katherine. The Hawks wanted someone more . . . aggressive; the Doves wanted someone who wasn’t inclined to make waves. Morrison seemed the best of a bad bunch. But, with war looming, choosing him to command the fleet might have been a deadly mistake.”

  Kat nodded. Everyone knew war was coming. Ever since the Commonwealth had encountered the Theocracy—and the first refugees had started streaming across the border—everyone had known that there would be war. Everyone . . . apart from a number of politicians who believed the galaxy was big enough for both the Commonwealth and the Theocracy. It sounded idiotic. Nothing anyone had seen had suggested the Theocracy was interested in peace.

  “Local politics,” her father said, when Kat voiced her thoughts. “The Opposition feels that the king and his loyalists pushed the Cadiz Annexation through on false pretenses. They’re not inclined to pay much heed to suggestions that storm clouds are gathering on the horizon when Cadiz was such a costly disaster. But right now, their refusal to admit there may be war looming is costing us badly.”

  He took a breath and then sighed. “Admiral Morrison’s position is almost impossible to assault right now,” he added grimly. “We need hard evidence to propose to the Privy Council that the Inspectorate General be ordered to inspect Cadiz. But the only way to get that hard evidence is to send in the IG. Which we can’t do without due cause . . .”

  “Or a report from me,” Kat said. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Among other things,” her father said. “I believe you will have ample opportunity to observe Admiral Morrison at close range.”

  Kat didn’t bother to hide her distaste. Naval tradition insisted that officers were not meant to criticize other officers to civilians, let alone spy on them. There was no shortage of officers who had been promoted through serving as someone’s eyes and ears within the service, but she had never wanted to be one of them. The fact she’d been promoted so rapidly, she realized numbly, would convince a great many officers that that was precisely what she was.

  “It gets worse,” her father said. He didn’t trouble himself with insincere condolences. “Are you aware that there’s been an upswing in raider activity over the past four months?”

  “No,” Kat said, alarmed. “It’s been covered up?”

  “More or less,” her father said. “Most of the media is owned by the big family corporations and none of them are eager to do anything that might drive confidence down and insurance rates up. Proportionally, losses are a small fraction of our overall merchant marine, but it’s rapidly growing to alarming proportions. I believe the Admiralty is already assigning starships to serve as convoy escorts.”

  “Which reduces the number of hulls available for border patrol and screening duties,” Kat said slowly. “I’d bet that isn’t a coincidence.”

  “Me neither,” her father said. “Raiders have been a problem since the Breakaway Wars, but this is on a considerably greater scale.”

  He took a breath. “And then there’s trade with the Theocracy itself,” he added. “They’ve layered whole new security precautions on our ships entering their space.”

  Kat gave him a sharp look. “You’re trading with the enemy?”

  “Certain . . . factions within the houses of Parliament believe that trade will eventually cause the Theocracy to moderate its territorial expansion and concentrate on economic growth,” her father said. “Others think it’s a good chance to gather intelligence. And still others believe that trade will convince the Theocracy that they don’t have to be scared of us—and our expansion.”

  Kat couldn’t help herself. She snorted.

  “They’re politicians,” her father pointed out dryly. “A good grip on reality isn’t part of the job description.”

  He shrugged. “Quite a few voters think the bastards have a point, though,” he added. “If the Theocracy had been the ones to grab Cadiz, instead of us, wouldn’t we be worried about what they would do with it?”

  Kat considered it, reluctantly. She didn’t want to admit it, but the politicians did have a point. The Commonwealth had expanded peacefully until Cadiz, when they’d annexed a world by force, even if they did have the best of intentions. It would be better for the locals to be part of the Commonwealth rather than the Theocracy, but it had cost the Commonwealth a great deal of goodwill among the other independent worlds. And was it worth it? By almost any measure, Cadiz was a net drain on the Commonwealth’s resources.

  Her father cleared his throat. “In any case, our crews have been completely isolated while their ships have been in Theocratic space,” he said. “It doesn’t bode well for the future.”

  “I see,” Kat said.

  “So we need you out there to report back to us,” her father said. “We need an accurate report of just what is going on.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kat said. “But if I see evidence that you’re wrong, I won’t hesitate to bring it to your attention.”

  Her father nodded, then reached into his pocket and retrieved a secure storage datachip, which he dropped on the table in front of her. “There’s a contact code here that will allow you to access the StarCom,” he said, “along with a number of personnel files and other pieces of information you might need. You should review it on your flight to Cadiz.”

  Kat nodded, wordlessly.

  “Tell me,” her father said, straightening up, “how is your relationship with Davidson?”

  Kat felt her face turn bright red. One of the other reasons she’d been so quick to abandon her family esta
te was the simple lack of privacy. Everyone knew what she was doing almost all the time. She knew, just from listening to Candy’s complaints, that the family security division vetted all of her friends and romantic entanglements, making sure that none of them posed any danger to the clan. There was no privacy at Piker’s Peak either, but at least everyone was in the same boat.

  “We’re just friends,” she said tartly. She shouldn’t be surprised her father knew. She and Davidson had been lovers, once upon a time, but the call of duty had separated them, and so they’d parted platonically. “Why?”

  “I’m having him assigned to your ship too,” her father said. “If you need support, it will be good to have a marine you can trust behind you.”

  “Thank you,” Kat said, icily. “And are you going to be making any other decisions for me today?”

  “No,” her father said.

  He looked up, meeting her eyes. “I’d like to believe I’m wrong,” he admitted. “Wars are chancy things—you would know better than I. But I don’t think I’m wrong. And if the Theocracy does come over the border . . . you might have a chance to prove you belong in a command chair sooner than you might think.”

  Kat shivered.

  Chapter Two

  “She’s a child,” Commander William McElney muttered.

  Manfully, he resisted the temptation to throw the datapad across the compartment and into the bulkhead. It was a military-grade machine, capable of surviving an astonishing amount of abuse, but it still would have felt very satisfactory to try and smash it. Angrily, he pushed the impulse aside and reread the official notification for the second time. HMS Lightning had finally been assigned a commanding officer. And it wasn’t him.

  William clenched his teeth and then forced himself to relax. He’d hoped that he’d be appointed commander of Lightning, but he’d known it wasn’t likely to happen. He hadn’t been born on Tyre, after all, nor had he been born after Hebrides—his homeworld—had entered the Commonwealth. Someone like him would always lose out to a citizen of Tyre, even though the Navy’s rapid expansion was opening up all kinds of possibilities for those born away from the capital and founder world. But discovering that his prospective CO was nothing more than a child . . .

  He glowered down at the terminal and then keyed his access code into the device, accessing the naval datanet. Officially, he only had access to the bare bones of his new commander’s file, but he’d been in the Navy long enough to learn a few tricks. Accessing the complete file—the one that would have been available to a captain or commodore—was relatively simple; indeed, he’d never understood why the Admiralty set out to classify such data in the first place. But it wasn’t reassuring.

  There was no aristocracy on Hebrides—or, at least, there hadn’t been one until the Commonwealth had arrived. The planet had simply been too poor to support a ruling class, no matter the pretensions of some of the elected leaders. But he was familiar with the concept—he had thirty years in the Navy—and now, looking down at the file, he understood how his new commander had received her position. She was the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the Commonwealth, a man so staggeringly wealthy that he could buy an entire superdreadnought squadron out of pocket change. The nasty part of his mind wondered just how many superdreadnoughts the old man had bought just to ensure his daughter got a chance to sit in a command chair.

  William skimmed through the rest of the file rapidly, noting—to his alarm—that it was surprisingly thin. Either she hadn’t done anything worth mentioning or nothing had been written down—or, if it had, it had been classified well above top secret. He supposed that made a certain kind of sense. The aristocracy wouldn’t be interested in having their dirty laundry aired for all to see, but they would need to know who was letting the side down or simply couldn’t be trusted with any kind of real power. Kat Falcone, it seemed, wasn’t considered a potential risk to the aristocracy’s reputation.

  Captain Kat Falcone, he reminded himself sternly. Resentment or no resentment, he was still a professional and he was damn well going to act professionally.

  Shaking his head, he switched to the planetary datanet and ran a search. Hundreds of results popped up—it sometimes seemed the media had little better to do but report on the activities of young aristocrats—but Kat Falcone didn’t seem to court scandal. Instead, the reports merely mentioned that she’d gone to Piker’s Peak and then helped save a starship during a border tussle. That, at least, matched with the Navy file, although neither was very informative, suggesting that some of the details had been classified. It left an odd taste in his mouth.

  A wider search revealed more about the Falcone family and corporation than he’d ever wanted to know. It was one of the original founding corporations that had moved operations to Tyre; it accounted for the planet’s considerable economic growth before the Breakaway Wars had smashed humanity’s fragile unity and created dozens of independent star systems, some on the brink of total collapse. The family had remained powerful through the economic crash, and then played a key role in organizing the Commonwealth and building up the Royal Tyre Navy. As aristocracies went, he had to admit, they were definitely enlightened.

  So why, he asked himself, had the Duke ensured that his daughter received one of the most coveted command chairs in the Navy?

  William knew she wasn’t qualified. He’d looked it up. The youngest person to be appointed to command a heavy cruiser had been thirty-seven—eight years older than Captain Falcone. A handful of younger officers had taken command briefly, when their commanders were disabled, but only one of them had been allowed to keep the ship. That particular officer had been in line for a command of his own, according to the files, and the Admiralty had merely decided to leave him on the ship rather than transfer him elsewhere. And he’d been thirty-six.

  William’s wristcom bleeped. “Yes?”

  “This is Ross,” Lieutenant Linda Ross said. Her voice was, as always, calm and professional. “We have received a signal from groundside. Captain Falcone is on her way.”

  William gritted his teeth, unsurprised. It spoke well of her that she wanted to see her new command as soon as possible, he supposed, but Lightning was nowhere near ready to receive her. Half of the ship’s personnel were assigned to urgent duties, while the remainder were scattered all over the ship. The Admiralty had been dragging its feet on assigning additional crewmen to Lightning, something that irked him more than he cared to admit. But a superdreadnought had required urgent crew replenishments in a hurry and Lightning wasn’t scheduled to leave for another two weeks.

  “Understood,” he said.

  “She specifically requests no greeting party,” Lieutenant Ross added. “And she also wants readiness files transmitted to her at once.”

  William lifted an eyebrow. He’d served under five captains since joining the Navy and some of them had been egotistical enough to demand that their senior officers stop work and greet them whenever they returned to the ship. A greeting party was traditional, at least when the captain boarded for the first time, but it would be a headache at such short notice. The captain’s appointment had only been confirmed nine hours ago, for crying out loud. But it spoke well of her too, that she didn’t want a greeting party.

  “Transmit the files,” he ordered. Technically, they shouldn’t be sent until after the captain had formally assumed command, but there was no point in withholding them. It would be petty, pointless spite. “Do we have an ETA?”

  “Thirty minutes,” Linda said, after a moment. “She’s coming directly from the planet.”

  “I’ll meet her at the shuttlebay,” William said. He glanced down at the terminal once again, then returned it to his belt. “Pass the word to the other senior officers, Linda. The captain is about to come aboard.”

  He closed the channel and then looked around the Ready Room. It had been intended for the starship’s commander, but he’d found himself using it during the desperate struggle to get Lightning worked up and ready f
or deployment. As always, the yard dogs had missed things that only experienced crewmembers would have noticed, while other items or problems simply didn’t show themselves until the starship was run at full power for the first time. He looked at the pile of paperwork on his desk—the captain’s desk—and sighed to himself. The room would have to be cleaned before the captain laid eyes on it . . .

  No, he told himself. There isn’t anyone who can be spared from more important work.

  Leaving the office behind, he walked through Officer Country and into his own cabin. It was smaller than the captain’s chambers, but it suited him, even though the bulkheads were still bare and utterly untouched by any paintings or moving images. A handful of old-fashioned paper books sat on a bookshelf, each one very well thumbed. They’d cost him a month’s salary apiece, but they’d been worth it. There was something about a paper book that was never quite matched by anything on the datanet.

  He stripped down rapidly, then pulled his white dress uniform over his underclothes and glanced at the mirror. His homeworld hadn’t possessed any form of rejuvenation technology until after they had made contact with the Commonwealth and it showed. Naval personnel were offered rejuvenation treatments as a matter of course, but his hair was already starting to turn gray, even though he was only sixty. He had a good seventy years of life left in him, he knew, assuming he wasn’t killed in the line of duty, yet he looked old. And he wasn’t vain enough to use cosmetic surgery to make himself look young.

  Besides, he thought, looking old makes it easier to get younger crewmen to pay attention.

  He keyed his wristcom. “Inform me when the captain is five minutes from arrival,” he ordered. “And then hold any calls for me unless they’re priority one.”

  The thought made him smile. Everything was priority one right now, with yard dogs crawling over the cruiser’s hull and countless problems popping up every day that only the CO could solve. Captain Falcone was going to jump right into the deep end, as soon as she assumed command. But, as a good XO, he would take as much of the weight from her shoulders as he could.