by David Weber
“Oh, it’s a lot like cheating,” Elizabeth confirmed. “But if you really don’t want the job, that’s your way out.”
The frown cleared away, and Sophie smiled puckishly.
“And if I don’t want my name and the family’s honor in the sewer, I stick with it anyway? Is that where you’re going with all this?”
Elizabeth shrugged.
“I’m not going anywhere, Sophie. Really. I’m just helping you figure out what’s already in your heart and soul.”
“Yeah.” Sophie took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. “Thanks, Aunt Elizabeth. If my parents do have another girl, I hope they name her after you.”
“I thought you were going to take my name,” Elizabeth reminded her. “How many Elizabeths do you want running around, anyway?”
“Personally, I don’t think you can ever have too many.”
“Well, thank you,” Elizabeth said. “I still think your father would have a conniption if you tried it.”
“Enough reason right there to do it. Maybe it would encourage him and Mom to get busy making a new heir.” Sophie sighed again. “Fine. If a Crown Princess can’t hang-glide, what can she do?”
“Well, I was just about to have a cup of tea.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “Terrific. Whatever. Let’s go have tea.”
“You’ll love it,” Elizabeth promised, taking the girl’s hand and guiding her around the forlorn-looking hang-glider. “While we’re at it, I can instruct you in all the finer nuances of tea party etiquette.”
“Right. Don’t push it.”
* * *
Travis looked up from his orders, his heart sinking. “I don’t understand, Sir.”
“The orders seem pretty self-explanatory, Lieutenant,” Heissman said, his face an unreadable mask. “Three months from now you’re slated to be transferred to Admiralty Building to serve as Beginning Tactics instructor for the new MPARS officers’ section.”
Travis looked back down at his orders. So that was it. After everything that had happened—after the Secour pirate attack and Tamerlane’s invasion—after watching friends and shipmates die horrible deaths—he was to be summarily taken off Casey. And not just put on instruction duty, but to be teaching MPARS weenies.
All because he hadn’t had the sense to keep his mouth shut when Chancellor Breakwater started dumping on those same friends and shipmates.
“Is there—?” He broke off. Of course there was no chance for appeal. BuPers giveth, and BuPers taketh away, the aphorism went; but BuPers never let junior officers argue their decisions. “Yes, Sir,” he said instead, wondering if he should say something about how he would miss serving aboard Damocles. Probably not.
“Until then, of course, you’ll still be one of my officers,” Heissman reminded him, “and you’ll be expected to carry out your duties with all due diligence and enthusiasm.”
“Of course, Sir,” Travis said.
“Good,” Heissman said. “Then there’s just one more thing, Lieutenant.” He handed Travis a hard copy.
Frowning, Travis took it and started reading.
And felt his eyes widening.
“From Admiral (ret) Thomas P. Cazenestro, First Lord of the Admiralty, Royal Manticoran Navy, to Lieutenant Travis Uriah Long, Royal Manticoran Navy. Sir: you are hereby invited to proceed to the Royal Palace on the Sixteenth Day, Fourteenth Month, Year Seventy-Four After Landing at eleven o’clock to attend the Monarch’s Thanks.
Travis looked up again, his eyes still wide. Heissman still had that unreadable expression, but there was now a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Cat got your tongue, Travis?” the captain asked mildly.
With an effort, Travis found his voice. “Sir—I’m sorry, but I was under the impression that it was only the senior officers from each ship who were invited.”
“They were,” Heissman confirmed. “But as you see, our invitations included one for you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Apparently, there are some people who want to meet you.”
Travis opened his mouth. Closed it again. As had happened so often in the past, he had no idea what to say to that.
“Oh,” he said instead.
“Just make sure you’re at the Palace on time.” Heissman lifted a finger. “And if you happen to run into Chancellor Breakwater, do us all a favor. Make an excuse, and walk away. Better yet, just walk away.”
“Yes, Sir,” Travis said with a sigh. “I will.”
CHAPTER NINE
0600 Sunday
Embarkation for the Monarch’s Thanks five hours away.
Sergeant Robert Herzog was sweating bullets. Big bullets.
Because the whole damn thing was ridiculous. Utterly.
It wasn’t bad enough that the King, Crown Princess, former King, Prime Minister, and half the Cabinet were going on this little jaunt. Oh, no. Just the entire leadership of the Manticoran government, aboard a single ocean-going ship, within range of a well-placed missile or long-distance mortar attack from the shore. It was the same assassination choke point the King ended up in every time he and his family headed out to Triton Island, or even just for a cruise around Jason Bay.
And every single time Herzog and the rest of the King’s Own security force walked on eggs until their monarch was safely back in the Palace.
But this time was worse. Far worse. For this trip, the King had effectively doubled the ante.
Because he’d also invited the Navy’s top officers aboard. The self-same officers who’d risen to the challenge of Tamerlane’s superior force, beaten him back, then chased him out of the system
Which meant that theoretical well-placed missile or mortar round would not only take out the Star Kingdom’s top political leaders, but its best military ones, as well.
Didn’t the King realize that?
Probably not. Herzog suspected that Edward had his father Michael’s easy-going and slightly naïve attitude toward assassination, which boiled down to the assumption that he was so beloved by the Manticoran people that no one would ever want to harm him. And if by some miracle someone did want to, the men and women of the King’s Own would protect him.
Under normal circumstances, Herzog would have mostly agreed with both parts of that assessment. Certainly the King’s Own were the absolute finest the Star Kingdom had to offer.
But these circumstances weren’t normal. The Star Kingdom had just beaten back an invasion…and Herzog’s reading of military history indicated that invasions were often preceded by the infiltration of enemy agents. Agents whose job it would be to support the external attack with an internal one.
That was ominous enough. Even worse, the fact that they still didn’t know where Tamerlane had come from meant there was no way to guess what sort of agents and weapons might be unleashed against them.
The King might not appreciate the risks, former Navy officer though he might be. He was used to being surrounded by other dedicated officers, protected by multiple centimeters of armored hull and a flinkin’ big impenetrable impeller wedge. He might not really understand how vulnerable he was down here at the bottom of a gravity well.
But if the King didn’t get it, Major Blackburn certainly did. He’d had his people swarming like crazed bees ever since the announcement had been made public. Everything within reasonable attack range of the Palace and the yacht had been checked and double-checked.
Which was all well and good. But in the end, it came down to the last few hours. Those last hours when someone could smuggle a sufficiently powerful weapon into range and wait out the remaining minutes until he could change history.
That wasn’t going to happen today. Not on Sergeant Herzog’s watch.
The wind was brisk and cool, and getting brisker as the sun warmed the air. But Herzog didn’t mind. He liked rooftops, the higher the better. Slowly, he turned on his latest three-sixty, peering at each of the nearby rooftops through the spotting scope slaved to the computer controlling his tripod-mounted M5A1 hypersonic sniper rifle. There were ot
her spotters scattered around Landing’s highest buildings, but this was the one with the best view of the Palace and yacht. An attacker with even half a brain would set up somewhere around here.
Herzog would be ready for him. The M5A1’s computer did a continual read on air pressure, humidity, windage, distance, and every other factor that might affect how and where a bullet flew through the air. At the first sign of trouble—or even the first hint of a sniper nest in the making—Herzog could put a targeting laser built into his scope on that trouble and squeeze the trigger, and the rifle would put a round within two centimeters at a distance of three kilometers.
He paused. Down on the Samantha’s dock, among the people moving briskly about on their various errands…
He tapped his mic. “Nitro; Herzog,” he said quietly. “I make a stranger ten meters on your ten.”
“Blue shirt?” the reply came back instantly. “It’s okay—he’s got an ID pin.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Herzog said tartly. “He’s still a stranger.”
“Hang on, let me check.”
The earpiece went quiet. Herzog peered at the unidentified man another second, then went back to his scan. Planting a screaming security anomaly in the most visible place possible was a classic diversionary tactic, and he was determined not to fall for it.
He hadn’t found anything more suspicious before Nitro came back on. “Herzog; Nitro. It’s okay—he’s from one of the caterers.”
“Caterers?” Herzog repeated, frowning. The Palace had a full kitchen staff of its own.
“Specifically, Sphinxian caterers,” Nitro confirmed. “A few of the people coming on the cruise are Sphinxians, and the King wanted to get some authentic food for them. Don’t worry—our people supervised the cooking and ran the usual tests, and sent everything over under full seal.”
“And the seals are intact?” Herzog persisted, focusing his scope back on the man far below. He sure didn’t look like a caterer, though now that Herzog thought about it he probably hadn’t seen an awful lot of caterers in his lifetime.
“Checked ’em myself,” Nitro assured him. “Relax, will you? You hawks just do your job up there and let us gophers do ours down here, okay?”
Herzog nodded, feeling marginally better. Eagles and groundhogs would have meant Nitro was under duress or otherwise had some suspicions that he didn’t want to broadcast. But any other animal names meant things were all right.
At least, they were down there. Up here…well, the jury was still out.
Lifting his scope focus from the dock, Herzog settled it briefly on the distant patch of green midway to the watery horizon. Landing City was important, certainly. That was where the Samantha would depart from and return to.
But even more critical was Triton Island itself. That was where everyone would be spending three or four hours today.
Granted, an island was a big target. But it was also a stationary one. And even an unskilled idiot could hit a target that wasn’t moving, provided he had a big enough weapon.
There were some in the security team, Herzog reflected, who considered him paranoid at best and something of a nutcase at worst. But he didn’t mind the name-calling. He might be a pain in the butt to work with—a lot of team members said that, too—but at least no one had to worry about him overlooking or casually dismissing a potential threat.
Herzog had his end of the danger zone locked down. He just hoped the other end was equally solid.
0700 Sunday
Embarkation for the Monarch’s Thanks four hours away.
Arrival at Triton Island six hours away.
Growing up in the hills outside of Landing, Major B.A. Felton had always loved the woods. Here on Triton Island, he was starting to hate them.
It hadn’t always been that way. Felton was old enough, and had been in the King’s Own long enough, that he had fond memories of Crown Prince Richard and Princess Sophie hiking in these woods. Often the hikes degenerated into a game of hide and seek, usually with Richard attempting to lose his little sister. Most of the time it had been a game, but occasionally Richard had been exasperated enough with having a half-sized shadow that he’d tried to lose her for real.
Which hadn’t bothered Sophie in the slightest. She’d doggedly pursued him each and every time, even when she became so exhausted by her efforts that her guards had to carry her back to the Lodge, the big stone building that had been the Wintons’ get-out-of-town-and-clear-your-head retreat ever since the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
But now Richard was gone, it was Sophie who was heir to the Throne, and the Star Kingdom had been attacked.
And the woods were no longer a place for children to play and adults to stroll.
Woods could hide people. Woods could hide traps. Especially the dense woods on the western side of the island between the Lodge and the sea.
Still, the advantage of an island was that, once it had been locked down, it tended to stay that way. Mostly, anyway. While the official announcement of the Monarch’s Thanks luncheon had been made a month ago, the far quieter revelation that it would be held on Triton had only happened in the past six days. Within three hours of that news the island had been sealed off, the handful of visitors who’d been enjoying the public park sections had been escorted back to their boats and sent home, and a millimeter-by-millimeter search begun. Two days later, Felton himself had declared it clear.
But there were always ways a clever person could slip something through even the cordon into a supposedly safe place. Hence, with six hours left before the Samantha’s projected arrival, they were sweeping the island again.
“Major Felton?” PFC Patricia Gauzweiller’s voice came over Felton’s earpiece. “We may have something at the Lodge. It might be nothing, but it looks a little…odd.”
“On my way,” Felton said, heading off at a quick jog, his right hand resting on the grip of his sidearm. “Don’t touch it.”
“Roger that, Sir. Not really going to be a problem.”
Felton was still frowning over that one when he reached the Lodge. Gauzweiller was standing at the southwest corner, peering up along the side of the building with her binoculars. “Where is it?” Felton asked.
“Up there,” Gauzweiller said, pointing toward the roof. “At the top of the chimney. Looks like a bird’s nest.”
Felton focused his own binoculars on the spot. It did indeed have that nest look to it.
“Only it wasn’t listed on the last report, so I thought someone should check it out,” Gauzweiller continued. “You want me to take a look?”
“No, I’ll do it,” Felton said. Keying his counter-grav belt, he eased on his thruster and floated slowly up the side of the building, every sense alert for trouble. He reached the chimney without incident…
To discover that the mass of twigs and mud was indeed just a bird’s nest.
Still, Gauzweiller was right. It should have been removed or at least noted during the earlier sweep of the island. Either someone on Felton’s team had been sloppy, or Triton was home to a world-champion nest builder.
“Looks okay,” he called down. Just the same, he eased his probe through the mass in a few spots, in case they had a very clever bomber on their hands. But there was nothing but nest.
“Any eggs?” Gauzweiller called back.
“Nope,” Felton assured her as he carefully gathered it together for removal. If Sergeant Herzog had been assigned to the Triton detail, he mused, once this whole thing was over he would probably go over the records and find out who had let this slip through the earlier sweep. It would then have been a tossup as to whether the guilty party would suffer more from the gig or the lecture on how there was no room for sloppiness when the lives of the royal family were at stake.
A movement caught his eye, and he looked up at the blue water glistening in the early-morning sunlight. Between Triton and the distant spires of the city a couple of dozen small pleasure craft had already appeared. Some of the boaters were probably hoping for
a glimpse of the King as the Samantha passed by, while others were simply out for a leisurely Sunday morning cruise or some casual fishing. Many of them, Felton suspected, were there for all three reasons.
They were going to be disappointed. Two of the Coast Guard’s cutters had already appeared on the horizon, plowing through the waves toward the scattering of boats. Each craft would be hailed, each passenger checked against the Manticoran citizen lists, and everyone ordered clear of the corridor the Samantha would soon be taking to the island.
It was a task that by its very nature generated civilian disappointment and anger, and Felton didn’t envy the cutter crews their duty. But it had to be done. With Triton Island locked down, the critical part was to keep anyone from approaching the yacht.
Still, the cutters had had lots of experience at that task. They were hardly going to screw up today.
0800 Sunday
Embarkation for the Monarch’s Thanks three hours away.
Passage through this part of Jason Bay approximately four and a half hours away.
The maritime enthusiasts of the greater Landing area were not happy.
Lieutenant David Bozwell, commander of the CGC Jackstraw, couldn’t really blame them. Triton Island was the royal family’s retreat, and the Palace almost never announced their visits early enough for citizens to get out on the bay in time to watch Samantha plying the waters.
Bozwell wished the Palace had kept its corporate mouth shut this time, too. His best guess was that the King knew how confused and worried his subjects were and wanted to offer them the chance to line the route, possibly to cheer him on and show their support, possibly just to watch as he and the heroes of the Battle of Manticore passed by.
Still, it had raised the security issues an order of magnitude. None of the King’s Own liked it. Sergeant Herzog had been especially loud on the subject, fuming over the stupidity inherent in telling potential assassins exactly where to find the entire flipping royal family, in one sinkable spot, for what amounted to a flipping publicity stunt.