“Our past is a radioactive wasteland,” William snapped. “It’s time to look to the future.”
“True,” Scott agreed. “You want me to take a message. To Kat Falcone, I presume.”
“Quite.” William wasn’t surprised Scott had figured that out. His brother was smarter than he acted. Besides, there weren’t many people William would send a covert message to. “I want to arrange a meeting.”
Scott lifted his eyebrows. “And how do you intend to meet her?”
“I haven’t worked that out yet,” William admitted. He’d had several ideas, but they all depended on a degree of cooperation from Kat. His superiors wouldn’t let him visit Caledonia, even if he could sneak onto the planet without setting off alarms when he passed through the security checkpoints. “The first step is to let her know I want to meet her.”
“Really, now.” Scott’s voice was sardonic. “Missing her that much, are you?”
William felt anger rise. “This isn’t the time to be snide.”
“You never think it’s a good time to be snide,” Scott said.
“This is a particularly bad time,” William said. “There’s a war on.”
“A war that’s quite profitable,” Scott pointed out. “Why would I want it to end?”
“The king started the war that left our homeland a radioactive nightmare,” William snapped coldly. “He has to be stopped.”
“Our homeworld sold girls into sexual slavery to save themselves from pirates,” Scott countered. “Do you think I care what happened to the bastards?”
“Did they all deserve to die?” William resisted the urge to reach across and slap his brother as hard as possible. “The children? The teenagers? The adults who were teenagers and kids when we were young? Did they all deserve to die?”
He held up a hand before Scott could say something unforgivable. “I understand. Really, I understand. But the assholes who sold your girlfriend and treated us like shit are dead. They were dead before the war. Things were getting better, before the Theocracy nuked the planet with dirty bombs. And that happened because of the king! He’s got to be stopped.”
Scott raised a single eyebrow. “And you expect me to help?”
“Yes.” William calmed himself. “If the king wins the war, things will get harder for you. He won’t be able to help himself. If the king loses, the government here”—he waved a hand at the deck—“will not be inclined to see you as anything other than a traitor. They won’t have any incentive to do you favors. They’ll throw the book at you.”
“There’s always work for smugglers,” Scott said.
“Are you sure?” William smiled thinly. “You might find yourself frozen out of shipping lanes, if the big corporations get their way. God knows they resented competition, even before the war. They’ll have all the incentive they could possibly want to hit you with a legal hammer! They’ll have enough of an excuse for doing it, because you did help the king, that people who might otherwise be friendly to you will say fuck you. Yeah, maybe common sense will reassert itself, but . . . I wouldn’t count on it.
“And where would you go? You could take your ships to Jorlem, but the pickings there aren’t great. You could go into the former Theocratic worlds, yet . . . they’re too poor to pay you. Not enough to keep your ships going, at least. There aren’t many places in the human sphere that will tolerate you, let alone pay you. You’ll be reduced to skulking around the fringes of human society, shipping goods from black colonies to primitive rim worlds. In the end, you might even become a pirate yourself. And wouldn’t that be ironic?”
He leaned forward. “This is your chance. You can go legit. You can get a place in the postwar universe with shipping contracts that’ll give you a chance to make a life for yourself and your people. All you have to do is carry a simple message to Caledonia.”
“And get it into the hands of someone who is presumably being watched and guarded,” Scott said. “What’s the difference between bodyguards and wardens?”
“I’m fairly sure Kat is not commanding the king’s fleet at gunpoint,” William said sardonically. “And she doesn’t like being surrounded by bodyguards.”
“There’s a whole list of people who want to kill her and do unspeakable things to her dead body,” Scott countered. “And not all of them are from the Theocracy.”
William grimaced. Scott had a point. There was no shortage of people who regarded Kat as a traitor or, worse, an aristo in a position that should be held by a colonial. The spooks kept predicting that the king’s alliance would fall apart, sooner rather later, as it became impossible to smooth over the cracks in the coalition. William wasn’t holding his breath waiting for it. The king’s supporters knew they had to hang together or hang separately. They’d be insane to start fighting each other, at least until the war was safely won.
“I trust you to find a way to talk to her,” he said curtly. “You already spoke to her once, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” Scott shrugged. “But that was before things started to go wrong for both sides.”
“Then you can do it again,” William said. “I’m sure if you turn up with a hold full of supplies, they won’t turn you away.”
“They’d be sure to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Scott said. “I’d be surprised if they didn’t examine everything thoroughly before installing whatever I brought in their ships.”
“Me too.” William smiled. A handful of his staffers had suggested sending the king’s forces booby-trapped supplies. The engineers had vetoed the plan, pointing out that the king could easily check for surprises and, when they were uncovered, remove them. They’d be giving the king a boost for nothing. “Besides, we want them to trust you.”
Scott grinned. “Does anyone trust me?”
“Far be it from me to dispute that,” William said lightly. He did trust his brother, at least to some extent. Scott might refuse to do what William wanted, but he wouldn’t betray him. He was a smuggler, operating outside the law. A reputation for keeping his word was the only thing that kept him in business when his clients couldn’t seek redress through the courts. “I want you to take her a message. Tell her I want to meet. And that we can figure out a way to meet if she’s open to it.”
“She may want to know something more,” Scott said. “Like why should she meet you when all you can do is recite your position papers at her?”
“I can’t tell you, not now,” William said. “You don’t want to know.”
“So you’re not going to confess your love to her?” Scott teased. “What a shame. I’m sure she’ll be very disappointed.”
“Shut your mouth,” William said tartly. “This is important.”
“Important to you, maybe,” Scott said. “I don’t know, yet, if it’s important to me.”
“You’re being paid through the nose,” William said. In truth, Scott was being overpaid. The fee was enough, he was sure, to convince his brother that more rested on the meeting than William had said. “I’d say that makes it important to you.”
“True enough,” Scott said. “Jokes aside, how dangerous is this likely to be?”
William shrugged. There was no way to know. The king, or more likely his supporters, would be foolish to come down hard on a smuggler, not when he needed smugglers to keep his fleet running. Scott could be kicked off Caledonia without causing too much of a fuss, but anything worse . . . He told himself, firmly, that the king wasn’t that foolish. And yet . . . If the king knew the real purpose of the meeting, he’d act ruthlessly to ensure it could never happen. William had no doubt of this. The king had gone too far to risk making mistakes now.
“I think you’ll be fine, as long as you’re careful,” he said finally. “And don’t expose yourself too much.”
“I think I was exposed from the very first breath I took,” Scott said. He picked up his glass and drained it in a single long swallow. “I’ll let you know how things go.”
William produced a datachip from his pocket. “There’s a network ad
dress here,” he said, handing it over. “Perfectly civilian, I’ve been told. She won’t draw any attention if she sends a message there. But ideally, we’d prefer you to carry messages between us.”
“We,” Scott repeated. “Very well. For the money, of course.”
“Of course,” William echoed. “Tell me, have you ever considered doing anything out of the goodness of your heart?”
“Yep.” Scott snorted. “And then I remember how many people worked themselves to death, doing things without pay or reward. And then I decide, once again, to only take cash.”
“You’ll be paid,” William assured him. “And I wish you joy of it.”
Scott stood. “Money doesn’t buy happiness,” he said. “But you know what? Life’s a lot nicer with it.”
“Money can’t buy everything,” William commented. “Just ask the king.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
TYRE
“Your Grace,” Yasmeena said. “Ah . . . Ambassador Grison is here.”
Peter stood. “Show him in, please,” he said. “And bring us both coffee.”
He watched with studied interest as his aide escorted Ambassador Grison into the office. The colonial was a tanned man, someone who would have been handsome if his lower jaw hadn’t looked ghastly. It was covered by a mass of scars from a botched operation during the war, scars that could have been removed in an instant by modern bodysculpting surgery. But Grison had chosen to keep his wounds. Peter suspected there was a message there for Grison’s voters rather than his friends and enemies on Tyre. Grison was too confident in himself to need cosmetic surgery.
And the scars are striking enough to ensure he’s remembered, Peter thought as they shook hands, without looking ugly enough to draw contempt.
“Your Grace,” Grison said. His accent was strong enough to be noticeable without making him hard to understand. Another part of his act, Peter guessed. Grison didn’t want to give his supporters the impression he was no longer one of them. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Peter said. He was less than amused by Grison’s attempt to see him personally, rather than going through the Foreign Office, but the whole situation was unprecedented. Legally, the Commonwealth wasn’t foreign. “However, you understand that I am a busy man.”
“I quite understand.” Grison took the proffered seat, then accepted his coffee with a flourish. “I am a busy man myself, these days.”
Peter wasn’t sure that was true but let it pass without comment. He’d taken the time to read Grison’s file when the ambassador had arrived and asked for the meeting, only to discover that Grison was seen as a moderate in a climate where extremists were regarded as being a little too soft. The intelligence officers had speculated that Grison was considered expendable by his superiors even though they’d given him an ambassadorial role. He would certainly be easy to disown if things went badly wrong. His superiors might even claim Grison had acted without orders . . .
Except the king isn’t likely to believe them, Peter thought. Ambassadors generally had a great deal of leeway, but there was no way any of them would travel to another world without at least some degree of official backing. I wonder if he’ll pretend to believe them.
He sat, sipping his coffee. “Let’s get straight to the point,” he said. It wasn’t very diplomatic, but he wasn’t very diplomatic. “What do you want to say to me?”
“My homeworld is deeply concerned about the recent . . . discoveries about the king’s role in starting the war,” Grison said. “There is some fear that they may have been sold a bill of goods. If there were to be clear proof the king did start the war . . .”
“We gave you all the proof we had,” Peter said truthfully. He knew the king had chosen what was, perhaps, the best possible way to undermine the truth. The story did sound absurd, to someone who knew the Theocracy. “If that isn’t good enough, I don’t know what we can do for you.”
Grison eyed him for a moment, then took the plunge. “My superiors are considering withdrawing from the war,” he said. “If we did so, what terms would you offer us?”
Peter looked back at him. “How serious are your . . . superiors?”
“Opinion is divided,” Grison said. He didn’t seem to resent the unspoken implication that he was acting without permission from higher authority. “I believe a majority of them would prefer to leave the war rather than switch sides, if terms could be agreed on.”
“And if we were to say you had to switch sides?” Peter pressed his advantage, curious to see what happened. “That you had to join us?”
“We don’t want to break our word,” Grison said. “And we gave the king our word we wouldn’t turn on him.”
And yet, you’re prepared to leave the war if it goes against you, Peter thought. There were always limits to how far one government was prepared to support another, but breaking one’s word too openly tended to cause blowback. You’d leave the king, yet . . .
He frowned. Grison probably couldn’t commit his homeworld to waging war on the king. It might be hard enough to convince his fellows to step back from the war, to leave the king and his enemies to settle their disputes. And yet, Peter felt his stomach churn at the thought of simply letting them get away with joining the rebels. He’d be setting a ghastly precedent for the future.
“Our terms are simple,” Peter said flatly. “You would be expected to rejoin the Commonwealth. You’d repay the loans made to you, but, as a gesture of goodwill, we’d cancel the interest. If you’ve already repaid the original loan, we’ll count it as the end of the payments. After that . . . as long as you abide by the Commonwealth treaties, we won’t seek any further retribution.”
Grison cocked his head. “And if we insist on all payments being canceled?”
“Then we’d have to insist on the infrastructure being returned to us,” Peter said calmly. “We either operate it within your system, as laid down by the treaties, or relocate it somewhere else.”
He met Grison’s eyes. “We are aware that you have reason to be . . . annoyed at us,” he added after a moment. “But there are limits to what we’re prepared to allow you to do in response.”
Grison said nothing. Peter watched him, wondering what thoughts were flickering behind the scarred face. Grison had to know his homeworld was being offered a very good deal indeed, if it quit the war before the king lost, but . . . he also knew he risked exposing his world to the king’s retaliation. And Hadrian would seek to retaliate. Kat might hesitate to bombard a rebel world, as Peter was sure she’d refuse orders she considered illegal, but she wasn’t the only officer under the king’s command. There were a handful of his supporters who would happily throw an entire planet into the fire if they thought it would please their monarch.
“I will have to discuss it with my superiors,” Grison said finally. “With your permission, I will withdraw and communicate with them.”
“You have full access to the StarCom,” Peter assured him as Grison rose and bowed. “I look forward to hearing their reply.”
He smiled, thinly, as Yasmeena escorted Grison out of the office. It was unlikely Grison would trust the StarCom network, whatever assurances Peter offered. The temptation to try to decrypt the messages would be overwhelming. And the king might be trying to intercept the messages as well. It was far more likely Grison would send a courier, ensuring that it would be weeks, if not months, before his superiors sent a response. Peter wondered, as he turned his attention to the latest set of reports, if Grison would have time to get a reply before the war was over, one way or the other. The poor bastard would have to fall on his sword if the king won.
We’ll do our best to keep our files from falling into his hands, Peter thought morbidly. But he’d be a fool to believe us.
Yasmeena pinged him thirty minutes later. “Your Grace, Admiral Sir William is requesting a meeting.”
“A face-to-face meeting?” Peter knew perfectly well that William disliked attending meetings, particularly physic
al meetings. “Really?”
“He’s on his way,” Yasmeena said. “He was very clear he wanted a private meeting.”
Peter didn’t have to look at his schedule to know what he had to do. “Send him in as soon as he arrives,” he ordered. “I’ll be here.”
He read the endless series of economic reports, feeling his head start to pound as he worked his way through the buzzwords and the general tendency not to use one word when the writers could use an entire paragraph. The economic slowdown seemed to have been halted, for the moment, but he couldn’t say how long things would go on before something collapsed, triggering another economic decline. The big corporations had helped by placing large orders for war material, yet . . . He shook his head in annoyance. When the war ended, the orders would be canceled. Again. He made a mental note to see if they could find someone who wanted to buy warships and war material, but doubted it would get very far. They didn’t want to sell ships to someone who might turn on Tyre.
Yasmeena opened the door. “Sir William is here, Your Grace,” she said. “Do you want me to bring more coffee?”
Peter glanced at his mug, unsure when he’d finished it. “Please,” he said. “And then hold all my calls.”
He waved William to a chair as he entered, then put the datapad to one side. “I take it something’s happened?”
“I spoke to my brother two hours ago,” William said. “He’s agreed to carry our message. At a price, of course.”
“Of course.” Perversely, Peter was oddly pleased about that. People who acted out of simple greed were more understandable, and predictable, than people who claimed to be acting out of principle. The latter tended to be more inclined to find newer and better ways to warp the rules out of shape, twisting them into a complex mess without ever quite breaking them. “I’m happy to keep our side of the bargain.”
William nodded curtly. Peter understood, better than he cared to admit. William wasn’t the only one with awkward relations. Peter had several dozen relatives who were little more than oxygen thieves, drinking and gambling their trust funds away instead of making something of themselves. It wasn’t as if they were short of things to do. Peter had plenty of positions within the family corporation that really needed to be held by a relative, someone he trusted to have good reason not to screw the family. But some of his relatives were so irritating that he would almost have sooner taken the risk of hiring an outsider.
Debt of War (The Embers of War) Page 12