“Right,” he said. “I assume you have proposals for . . . downsizing?”
“Yes, sir,” Alexander said. He altered the display. “As you can see, sir . . .”
Peter’s terminal bleeped. He held up a hand to stem the tide of words as he keyed the switch. “Yes?”
“Sir,” Yasmeena Delacroix said. His terrifyingly efficient secretary sounded perturbed. “His Excellency Israel Harrison, Leader of the Opposition, has just landed on the pad. He’s requesting an immediate meeting.”
Peter blinked in surprise. He’d heard that Israel Harrison was supposed to be a little eccentric, but this? He couldn’t just drop in for a meeting with a duke, certainly not on his home territory. Normally, his people would speak to Peter’s people, and a time and place would be organized. There were plenty of places they could talk in reasonable privacy without one of them looking like a supplicant. Dropping in for a chat simply wasn’t done.
He forced himself to think. Agreeing to the meeting would have implications, particularly in the minds of anyone watching from a distance, but so would refusing it. He was a duke, not a member of the House of Commons. There was nothing wrong with meeting the Leader of the Opposition. And yet . . .
“Have him shown up,” Peter said, finally. “And then bring us some tea.”
He closed the connection, then looked at the two men. “I’ll speak to you both later, after I’ve had a chance to assess your work,” he said. He had no doubt it would be comprehensively detailed, but he wanted to make sure he understood the data before coming to any final decisions. He’d learned to watch for people trying to snowball him into making a fatal mistake. “Until then, please keep your findings to yourself.”
“Of course, sir,” Alexander said. He deactivated the holographic projector. “Our files are already in your terminal.”
The two men rose, bowed, and made their way out of the giant office. Peter barely noticed them go as he pulled up the files on Israel Harrison and skimmed them, quickly. His father hadn’t had much to say about the Leader of the Opposition, beyond the simple fact that he’d started amassing power from a very young age. Not a nobleman, oddly enough. Peter wasn’t sure what to make of that. Putting himself on the list of people in line to receive a Patent of Nobility wouldn’t be hard. Perhaps the king, or the previous king, had quietly refused to ennoble the man. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had been denied a title they deserved.
“Israel Harrison, Your Grace,” Yasmeena said.
Peter rose. “Mr. Harrison,” he said as they shook hands. “I must say this meeting is a surprise.”
“I have often found that being unpredictable has its advantages,” Harrison said. He sounded distinctly plebeian in private conversation. “Is this room secure?”
Peter sat back at his desk, motioning the older man to a seat. “It has the finest security money can buy,” he said truthfully. The corporation’s security division swept the entire building daily. Industrial espionage had been alive and well on Tyre since the Ducal Fourteen had turned the world into their base. “You can talk freely.”
“Let us hope so,” Harrison said. He cocked his head. “I trust you are settling into your new role?”
Peter snorted as Yasmeena brought them both tea, then retired. He’d been the Duke from the moment the family council had elected him to succeed his father. The Duke was dead, long live the Duke. There was no way he could afford to wait a year before taking the reins. The family council would have impeached him on the spot.
“It could be better,” he said tightly. He met Harrison’s eyes. “Mr. Harrison, I am a very busy man, and you have forced your way into my schedule. Can I ask you to get to the point?”
Harrison smiled, as if Peter had cracked a joke. “Here’s a question for you,” he said. “Do you believe the king has the best interests of his planet at heart?”
Peter blinked. “Do you believe otherwise?”
“I have reason to believe that the king does not intend to ask for the military tax to be repealed,” Harrison said. “Worse, I believe that he has yet to realize that his spending—our spending—is dangerously out of control. My people have been trying to trace the money, Your Grace, and there are considerable sums that remain unaccounted for. We don’t know where the money went.”
“They were throwing money into hundreds of research programs,” Peter pointed out. “And a lot of black ops stuff.”
“Billions of crowns,” Harrison said. “A small fraction of our wartime budget, to be fair, but not an insignificant amount. Our desperate rush to gird our loins and defend our worlds made it impossible to exercise any financial discipline.”
“When you’re in trouble,” Peter quoted one of his father’s speeches, “don’t count the pennies getting legal representation.”
“Wise words,” Harrison agreed. “I was there when that speech was delivered, Your Grace.”
“I know,” Peter said.
“Right now, we have commitments we cannot hope to meet,” Harrison said. “We have committed ourselves to the Commonwealth, the king has committed us to the Theocratic Sector, we have a looming economic crisis . . . and the king wants to up our expenditures. I have reason to believe that he intends to ask for extra subsidies when Parliament reopens at the end of the summer. And he might just be able to drum up enough support from the Commons to get them into the Lords.”
Peter sucked in his breath. Once the bill was in the House of Lords, it would be harder to engage in backroom dealing to rewrite the law to something more satisfactory. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Harrison said. “I have an . . . operative . . . in the prime minister’s office.”
The report could be deliberately designed to mislead you, Peter thought. He’d never liked the cloak-and-dagger shenanigans that his father had so loved, but he knew enough to be careful. A person slipping information to someone else might have their own motives, even if they were telling the truth. The prime minister could be trying to lead you into a trap.
“There are other issues,” Harrison added. “The king has also been pushing his patronage rights about as far as they will go. A number of naval officers who happen to be corporate clients have been sidelined, while others, who happen to be the king’s clients, have been pushed forward. He’s been replacing naval officers with loyalists.”
Peter felt cold. “Are you sure?”
“I imagine your clients have had the same problem,” Harrison said. “We were at war for four years, Your Grace. That’s more than long enough for the king to put his people in the right places to take full control of the navy.”
“And then what?” Peter looked down at his hands. “We still control the orbital defenses, don’t we?”
“Yes,” Harrison said. “But even they are under threat.” He took a long breath. “The king may simply be building up his power base,” he said. “Or he might have something more sinister in mind. Either way, it poses a threat.”
“Perhaps,” Peter said. “It may also be nothing more than paranoia. How many of us would put people who weren’t our clients in positions of power?”
“We understand where the lines are drawn,” Harrison countered. “Does the king?” He glanced at his wristcom. “They’ll have noticed I came here,” he said shortly. “If you want to . . . ah . . . discuss matters further, I suggest we do it over a secure communications line.”
Peter’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think the king will intercept our communications?”
“I think the king has a black ops division of his own,” Harrison said. His tone was light, but his words betrayed just how seriously he took his concerns. “And I also think he’s too young to understand the dangers of playing with fire. His father understood the rules of the game.”
“I see your point,” Peter said. The king had always been the most powerful of the noblemen, yet there were limits on his power. Or there were supposed to be limits. War had given the king an opportunity to expand his power in ways
his father could never have considered, even for a moment. “But I hope you’re wrong.”
“So do I,” Harrison said. “So do I.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
* * *
JUDD
Captain Amy Layman was deeply immersed in a Regency VR sim when the attack began.
It wasn’t something she would have allowed herself during the war. HMS Gibraltar had seen action in nearly a hundred engagements, from raids into enemy territory to convoy escort missions and, finally, the first and second Battles of Ahura Mazda. Amy knew, deep within her bones, that the alert could come at any time. And yet, as days had turned into weeks and months of boredom, she’d allowed herself to slip. She’d never really considered that anyone would attack Judd.
She tore off the VR jack as the alarm howled through the light cruiser, swallowing hard to keep from throwing up as the world spun around her. It couldn’t be a drill, she told herself sharply. God knew she’d slacked off on combat drills as well as everything else. Nausea assailed her as she jumped up from the bed, one hand grabbing her jacket while the other found the emergency hypospray. She blessed her forethought, what little of it she’d had, as she pressed the device to her arm and pulled the trigger. The drugs would make her sweat buckets later, but they’d clear her head. She breathed out a sigh of relief as the nausea started to fade, then headed for the hatch. The sound of her crew running to battlestations echoed through the hull as she hurried to the bridge.
“Report,” she snapped.
“Captain,” Commander Isobel said. “We have multiple enemy contacts on attack vector!”
“Bring up the drives and weapons,” Amy snapped as she threw herself into her command chair. “And prepare to leave orbit.”
“Aye, Captain!”
She studied the display, cursing her own stupidity as her starship powered up. The display was practically glowing with red icons, row upon row of superdreadnoughts . . . Theocratic superdreadnoughts. Panic yammered at the back of her mind, threatening to overwhelm her before she told herself, firmly, that the contacts couldn’t be real. If the Theocracy had so many superdreadnoughts, more than a hundred, according to her sensors, the war would have gone the other way. No, most of those starships had to be nothing more than fake sensor images, with no more substance than a soap bubble. But her sensors couldn’t tell the real starships from the fakes. They’d need to get a great deal closer . . .
“Launch a probe,” she ordered. If even one of those superdreadnoughts was real, she didn’t dare risk taking her ship any closer. The massed volleys of a single superdreadnought would be more than enough to reduce Gibraltar to atoms. “And alert the planetary authorities.”
A low hum echoed through her ship as the drives were brought online. Amy silently kicked herself for allowing matters to get so far out of hand. She could have kept the drives powered up without putting significant wear and tear on the engines, couldn’t she? But she’d heard too many stories of supply officers snatching back their authority, now that the war was effectively over. They’d give her hell if they knew she’d burned out her drive components for no good reason.
I fucked up, she thought, stiffly. It had been sheer luck the enemy had come out of hyperspace so far from the planet. If they’d risked opening a gateway closer to Judd, they would have been on top of her before she’d had a chance to respond. And everyone is going to pay for it.
“Edinburgh and Aberdeen are standing by,” the communications officer reported. “They’re ready to engage the enemy.”
Amy fought to keep her face expressionless. Three light cruisers were no match for the immense firepower bearing down on them. She was morbidly certain that at least one of the superdreadnoughts had to be real, perhaps more than one. But she wouldn’t know until the probe started to pick out the real ships from the fakes, or the real ships opened fire. The sensor ghosts wouldn’t be able to fire missiles . . .
Her mind raced, searching for options. There weren’t many. She could open gateways and run, but that would mean abandoning Judd to its fate. If those were Theocratic ships . . . she wouldn’t give two crowns for Judd’s continued survival. The Theocrats would probably smash the planet flat from orbit, then piss on the rubble. There was no one around to stop them either. It would take at least four days for reinforcements to reach the doomed world, assuming they were dispatched at once. And no one knew reinforcements were needed.
We should have extended the StarCom network out here, she told herself savagely. Perhaps if I’d argued for it . . .
“Communications, contact Aberdeen,” Amy ordered. “They are to disengage and fly directly to Ahura Mazda. Once there, they are to inform Admiral Falcone of the situation and request immediate reinforcements.”
“Aye, Captain,” the communications officer said. There was a pause as he worked his console. “Captain, Aberdeen’s skipper is protesting . . .”
“Tell him that that is an order, which he may have in writing if he wishes,” Amy said. She didn’t quite recognize her voice. It was so cold. She understood the man’s desire to stay, even though doing so was certain death, but she couldn’t allow it. Someone had to warn Admiral Falcone that the war wasn’t quite over. “He is to leave, now.”
She turned back to the display. Her ship didn’t have a superdreadnought-sized tactical deck, but her crew was doing the best they could. A handful of enemy superdreadnoughts had already been flagged as prospective sensor ghosts, while a dozen more had been marked as potentially suspect. A couple had even been positively identified as real . . . not, she supposed, that it mattered much. A single superdreadnought had more missile tubes than two entire squadrons of light cruisers.
Their ECM is good, she thought. Better than it should be.
“Deploy ECM drones, then stealth platforms,” she ordered, dismissing the thought. There would be time to worry over who was supplying the enemy later. If there was a later. “And then angle five of the probes to record what happens here. I want to leave a message . . .”
The display sparkled with red lights. “The enemy have opened fire,” the tactical officer said, sharply. “Captain, their missiles are roughly comparable to our Mark-XVs!”
Someone’s been giving them help, Amy reminded herself. She’d thought she had more time before the enemy opened fire. What sort of idiot sells them advanced missiles?
“Stand by point defense,” she ordered, although she knew the gesture would be futile. “And engage as soon as they enter weapons range.”
She glanced at the planet on the display, feeling a stab of guilt. The enemy superdreadnoughts—and only three of them were real, judging by which ships had opened fire—were going to take the high orbitals. There was nothing she could do to stop them. They’d blow her two remaining ships out of space and wreak devastation on the world below. And there was nothing the planet’s inhabitants could do to stop them either.
They don’t deserve this, she thought as the enemy missiles roared into engagement range. They were free.
But she knew, as her ship started to fight for her life, that what the planet deserved didn’t matter.
“You fired off a great many missiles,” Askew commented as the second enemy cruiser vanished from the display. “Overkill, hey?”
Admiral Zaskar ignored him. Firing the missiles had been immensely satisfying, even though he knew he’d be cursing himself later. Askew was right. It was overkill. But he’d wanted to eliminate all chances of enemy resistance, and he’d succeeded. Watching the two enemy cruisers die had merely been the icing on the cake.
“Launch probes,” he ordered instead. “Tactical, isolate potential targets on the planet’s surface.”
“Aye, sir!”
“And find those camps,” he added. “I want the troops ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.”
“Aye, sir!”
Askew coughed. “Our intelligence suggests that there are no enemy ships within a day of Judd.”
“We can’t take that for granted,” Zas
kar pointed out as the first set of targets appeared on the main display. “If an enemy superdreadnought shows up at the worst possible time . . .”
“God is with us,” Moses assured him. “He will not let us die so easily.”
God helps those who help themselves, Admiral Zaskar thought. It had once been the Theocracy’s motto. Somewhere along the way, it had become verboten. And if we neglect basic precautions, we’re finished.
“Admiral,” the tactical officer said, “I have a list of targets.”
Zaskar studied them for a long moment. The enemy had been building rapidly over the last year. Judd no longer had any space-based industry, beyond a cloudscoop he intended to destroy on his way out of the system, but they’d repaired and expanded their cities and ground-based industrial estates. A handful of military bases and spaceports were clearly visible, along with several fusion plants. One of them, judging from the electronic signature, had been taken directly from a midsized starship. The engineer in him wondered how they’d managed to get the ship down without crashing it into the surface.
No matter, he told himself.
“Open fire,” he commanded. “And then order the troops to hit the camps.”
A rumble echoed through the mighty ship as it launched the first volley of KEWs. There was a limitless supply of kinetic energy projectiles—really nothing more than rocks dropped from high orbit—and while their targeting left something to be desired, he had no compunctions about dropping several more projectiles if the first missed. He had no particular qualms about destroying large chunks of the city too. The locals had sworn to follow the True Faith, but they’d lied. They’d ended their devotion as soon as their world had been liberated.
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 8