House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion (8 page)

The problem,
Roger thought,
is that we need
both
of them because both of them are making very valid arguments. Sonja really
is
too convinced she’s going to come up with a silver bullet if she just throws enough ideas at the bulkhead until one of them sticks. She’s not interested in how we get the best use out of the systems we’ve already got, because she’s so confident she’s going to be able to replace them with something so much better. And
Hamish
is too stubborn—and smart,
and
outside the loop of what we’re looking at over here—to pin his hopes on something that may well never materialize. No
wonder
the two of them are at each other’s throats! But at least he doesn’t think Sonja’s a cretin with delusions of godhood the way he sees Janacek. Or not
yet
, anyway. I suppose that’s always subject to change if this . . . spirited discussion of theirs goes on long enough.

“So what are you going to do about them?” he asked.

His tone darkened with the question. It was a small thing, but Adcock knew him well and gave him a sudden, sharp look. Roger saw it and shrugged with a crooked smile. There was a reason he’d asked Adcock what
he
was going to do about it instead of asking what
they
were going to do about it.

“There’s not much I
can
do about young Alexander, since he’s not under my command,” Adcock pointed out after a moment. “For that matter, I doubt he and I have even spoken to one another more than three or four times, so I can hardly sit him down and ‘reason’ with him on any personal basis.” He shrugged. “I
have
talked to Sonja . . . again. And she promises to behave better—hah! What she means is she’ll
try
to behave better for at least a couple of weeks, but then she’s going to get buried in something and step on somebody’s toes—again—without even realizing she’s done it. And I’m going to try to make the fact that we’re losing Sebastian back to fleet duty an advantage. I’ll have him sit down and ‘counsel’ her—bluntly—before he leaves. Maybe that’ll keep her on the straight and narrow at least long enough for Stovalt to settle in at his desk before
he
has to separate any fractious children!”

Roger nodded, Commander Gerald Stovalt was Admiral Lomax’s hand-picked successor to Sebastian D’Orville. He was older than D’Orville, although young enough to have received prolong, and Dame Carrie obviously hoped his calmer personality would be an asset as Adcock’s executive officer. Roger didn’t think Hemphill was the
only
reason Lomax thought a calmer personality might be in order, but she had to be
one
of the reasons.

And at least Dame Carrie’s not going to have to play hide-the-pea about our shop much longer,
he reminded himself, reaching up to scratch Monroe’s ears as the treecat leaned against the side of his neck.
With Low Delhi gone at BuShips, Truman retired, and Havinghurst on her way out at ONI, the internal politics are going to be a lot smoother at Admiralty House. Now if only we could convince
Parliament
to at least open its damned eyes!

Unfortunately, not even the fact that the People’s Republic had acquired two new member star systems in the last half T-year alone, neither of whom had joined remotely voluntarily, seemed capable of getting through to the Star Kingdom’s career politicians. The intelligence reports Roger was seeing on the pacification measures adopted in the Rutgers System were enough to turn a man’s stomach, but that wasn’t enough to awaken Parliament’s sense of urgency. Oh, heavens, no! In his darker moments, he was beginning to wonder if
anything
could accomplish that miracle.

Well, that’s why we’re a monarchy, Rog,
he told himself.
I guess it’s going to be up to
you
to do the waking up, one way or the other. And,
he thought more grimly,
whatever it takes.

Monroe made a soft, distressed sound in his ear as he picked up the emotions which went with that thought, and Roger stroked the ’cat’s head gently.

“May I ask how your mother is?”

Adcock’s voice was quiet, and Roger looked at him sharply. The captain looked back, then twitched his head in Monroe’s direction.

Of course. Jonas has been around us long enough to read the two of us like a book, hasn’t he?

“Not good,” he admitted in an equally quiet voice. “We’re trying to keep it as quiet as we can, but she’s not responding well.” His jaw tightened. “Damn it, Jonas! She’s not even
eighty
, and we’ve got the best medical establishment in the damned galaxy just through the Junction at Beowulf!”

Adcock nodded silently, and Roger felt a flush of shame. Jonas was fifty-eight already, himself . . . and without prolong he had perhaps another forty years of life left to look forward to.

“I’m sure they
are
doing their best, Roger,” the other man said after a moment. “Sometimes that isn’t good enough, but it’s still the best they can do.”

“I know, and I shouldn’t complain, either. I know that, too.” Roger summoned a smile which was only slightly off center. “Knowing doesn’t help, sometimes, though.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Adcock agreed. “And from a purely selfish viewpoint, I’m going to really miss you around here.”

“I’m going to miss
being
around here.”

Roger looked around the small, cluttered office which still housed Adcock’s files and desk and very little else. At least they’d be able to move him and the rest of the shop into better quarters. Too bad Roger wasn’t going to get to make the move with them. Unfortunately . . .

“If I could figure out away to avoid it, I would,” he continued, looking back at Adcock. “But, as Mom’s always said, it comes with the nice house and all the servants.”

“I suppose it does.”

Adcock snorted gently, although the joke wasn’t as funny as it once had been—or as it was going to become in about another three planetary months, for that matter, when
he
started having to deal with those self-same servants any time he wanted to visit his sister. Still, little though he knew Roger would have enjoyed hearing it, there
were
upsides from his perspective to Roger’s effective retirement. He hated the fact that it was his mother’s failing health which was forcing the crown prince who’d also become one of the closest friends he’d ever had to take up his full-time political duties so soon, and he hated how much he knew Roger was going to miss active duty. Yet having an experienced naval officer, one who was fully committed to bolstering the Star Kingdom’s defensive posture, effectively running the government from Mount Royal Palace was going to have a salutary effect on the battle Jonas Adcock had been fighting for so long. And on a more personal level—

“And where,” he asked in a deliberately brisker voice, “is that gadabout sister of mine? I thought she was supposed to be dragging you off to lunch?”

“And so she is.” Roger checked his chrono. “I might point out, however, that while she isn’t quite as compulsive about clock-watching as
you
are, she still has over four full minutes before she’s late. The odds are that she’s—”

The opening door interrupted him, and he turned with a smile as Angelique Adcock and his sister Caitrin came through it.

“You
cheated
!” Adcock said indignantly, standing to greet the two women and bowing respectfully to Princess Caitrin. “Security told you they were on the way up, didn’t they?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Roger’s innocent expression would have done justice to any lawyer, con man, politician, newsie, or other professional liar. Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite hold it when Monroe plucked the almost invisible earbug out of his right ear and held it up for all to see.

“Traitor!” he told the treecat as Monroe bleeked in amusement, and Angelique hit him on the ’cat-less shoulder.

“You did so cheat,” she told him firmly. “And you
promised
me all those security people wouldn’t spy on me for you!”

“They didn’t,” he said virtuously, putting his arm around her and kissing her firmly. “They were spying on
Caitrin
!” He shook his head, brown eyes gleaming at his sister. “They’ve been spying on
her
for us ever since she discovered boys.”

Angelique laughed, but there was an edge to the laughter, and he hugged her a bit tighter in acknowledgment. She still wasn’t really comfortable with the notion of becoming his queen, given all the monumental changes it would demand of her. She was one of Gryphon’s most respected forestry experts, in constant demand for the forest regeneration and management concerns of the planet’s huge (and hugely profitable) ski resorts, and she was never happier than when she was outdoors
doing
something in wind and weather. Which was probably a good thing for him, he admitted. He’d always enjoyed sports, but he’d spent far too much of his life in artificial environments since graduating from Saganami Island. Angelique had dragged his sorry butt back out into the open air, though, and he’d shared his rediscovered youthful passion for grav skiing with her, while she’d shown him the joys of forest hikes, camping trips, and whitewater kayaks.

Of course, the two of them couldn’t enjoy those camping trips as much as they might have, given who he was and the intense watchfulness of Palace Security and the Queen’s Own, and Angelique wasn’t quite able to hide her awareness of that, however gamely she tried. And that, he conceded unhappily, was a problem which wasn’t going away. The knowledge that the position of Queen Consort of Manticore was a full-time job that would leave no time or space for the career she’d built and loved was a heavy price to pay, and he knew it. In fact, he hated asking her to pay it almost as much as she did the thought of
paying
it . . . just as he knew the pervasive presence of her own security detail was part of her discomfort with the entire notion. It underscored the monumental change which would envelop her—and which would never release her, for the remainder of her life—when she married him in one hundred and three days.

“Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading their reports, brother mine,” Caitrin told him now. “And I hope you realize Mom was keeping an eye on
you
, too. Of course, she’d never’ve shared those reports with me. But I always was a better hacker than you, wasn’t I?”

She smiled sweetly, and Roger reached out his other arm to give her a hug, as well. She and Angelique had become fast friends, and he knew he owed a lot of Angelique’s eventual willingness to accept his proposal of marriage to that friendship. Despite the decade-plus difference in their ages—Angelique was actually a T-year older than Roger—Caitrin had been her sponsor, confidante, mentor, and bulwark as she found herself thrust into the very highest levels of Manticoran society. And whether or not Angelique would ever admit it to Roger—or any other member of the human race—she was deeply grateful Caitrin had agreed to delay her own marriage to Edward Henke, the Earl of Gold Peak for over six T-months. The Star Kingdom of Manticore wasn’t accustomed to double weddings in the royal family, but they weren’t unheard of, either, and Roger knew Angelique would take enormous comfort from having Caitrin endure the ordeal right beside her.

Of course, “ordeal” is hardly the right word for how
Katie’s
going to be feeling about it,
Roger thought with a grin.

Palace Security most emphatically did
not
report to him on his sister’s love life, although he was depressingly well aware that Security knew everything about everyone in the royal family,
including
who was sleeping with whom. On the other hand, he knew his sister well. Unlike Angelique, Caitrin thrived on social events and affairs, and she would be
delighted
to . . . regularize her relationship with young Gold Peak, too.

“Well,” he said out loud, turning back to Adcock with a smug expression as he extended one elbow to each of the women, “it would seem there are some advantages to becoming an idle civilian, after all.” He elevated his nose and sniffed loudly. “Unlike those uniformed menials whose ranks I shall soon be departing,
I
am free to go take a long, slow, luxurious lunch break.” He smiled sweetly. “Should we bring you the leftovers, Sir?”

October 1857 PD

KING ROGER WINTON
sailed into the Admiralty House conference room like a thunderstorm, and Jonas Adcock felt a sinking sensation as he absorbed the gale warning signals flying in his brother-in-law’s eyes.

The last couple of months would have tried the patience of a saint, and whatever manifold virtues Roger III of Manticore might possess, sainthood was not among them. He was impeccably polite as he shed the three-man security detail from the King’s Own Regiment—which had been the
Queen’s
Own, until about six T-weeks ago—at the conference room door, strode to the head of the table, and seated himself. No one was fooled, however; one look at Monroe’s flattened ears and twitching tail was enough to warn even the densest that His Majesty was
not
amused.

Allen Summervale, the Duke of Cromarty and the Star Kingdom’s new Prime Minister, had followed him through the door. Now he nodded a greeting to the others seated around the table—First Lord Castle Rock, Second Lord Jerome Pearce, First Space Lord White Haven, Second Space Lord Big Sky, Fourth Space Lord Lomax, and sitting at the very foot of the table, monumentally junior to everyone else present, Captain (JG) Jonas Adcock—before he found his own seat and slipped into it.

Roger let Cromarty settle, then smiled (more or less) and planted his forearms firmly on his comfortable chair’s armrests.

“Allen and I have just come from a Cabinet meeting,” he said in a dismayingly pleasant tone. “At that Cabinet meeting, I was informed that while everyone deeply regrets my mother’s death, they’re simply delighted with the superlative degree of training, insight, and experience, gained at her side, which I bring to the Throne. My ministers inform me that Parliament has total faith in my judgment and that my people’s hearts are with me as I take up the weight of government. And I have personal messages from the leaders of every political party promising cooperation and support as I take up the burden of government.”

He showed his teeth in what was technically a smile.

“And I can go piss up a rope as far as increasing the Navy budget is concerned.”

He leaned back in his chair amid a total, ringing silence. No one broke it for several moments—several very
long
moments. Then, finally, Cromarty cleared his throat.

“That’s not
precisely
what they said, Your Majesty,” he observed with laudable courage. The King looked at him icily, and the Prime Minister shrugged. “I agree that you’ve just summarized the
sense
of the discussion with admirable clarity, Your Majesty. They were a
little
more polite than that, though.”

Most of the uniformed personnel present held their breath as Roger glowered at Cromarty. But then the King snorted in harsh amusement.

“Point taken, Allen,” he acknowledged. “I’m beginning to understand, however, why there were so many times Mom just needed to vent. She didn’t want anyone to offer solutions or advice; she just needed to rip off some heads—figuratively, at least—where it wouldn’t do any political damage. I’m still working on that. And I’ve discovered there are times I really regret the fact that I don’t have any royal headsmen in reserve!”

The naval officers relaxed visibly, and Baron Castle Rock actually chuckled quietly. The King’s eyes tracked to him, and the first lord shrugged.

“You may not have headsmen, Your Majesty, but you do have the King’s Own, and most of its personnel have actually seen Parliament in action.”

“Don’t tempt me, My Lord.”

Roger’s tone was distinctly frosty, but his lips twitched and Monroe’s tail stopped twitching quite so vigorously.

The King sat for a moment longer, then inhaled deeply.

“All right,” he said. “Allen is quite correct; no one told me outright that I can’t have what I want, whatever they may have had to say about ‘potentially insuperable difficulties’ and the desirability of considering ‘scaling back’ my perhaps ‘overly ambitious’ plans. The short version of it is that Parliament in general and the House of Lords in particular remains unconvinced that the People’s Republic of Haven poses a credible threat to the Star Kingdom. This despite eleven T-years of steady military conquest, the creation of an old-fashioned police state that routinely ‘disappears’ its own citizens and ‘pacifies’ new conquests with pulser darts and old fashioned torture, a covert action arm responsible for an estimated thousand assassinations and acts of ‘domestic terrorism’ a year to destabilize intended victims, and a steadily increasing rate of expansion. Indeed, it was pointed out to me by Mr. Lebrun—
tactfully
, I assure you—on behalf of the Liberal Party that the closest edge of Havenite-claimed space is still better than two hundred and fifty light-years from the Manticore Binary System. It may
amaze
all of you to discover that I was already in possession of that astonishing information. Oddly enough, however, neither Mr. Lebrun nor the rest of the Opposition leadership seemed to be aware that that meant the People’s Republic is now
less
than fifty-four light-years from
Trevor’s Star
.”

Some of the uniformed personnel’s relaxation seemed to depart, and Shadwell Turner, the Baron of Big Sky, who’d replaced Bethany Havinghurst as Second Space Lord grimaced. Roger looked a question at him, and Big Sky shrugged ever so slightly.

“Sometimes I think some of
my
people haven’t quite twigged to that yet, either, Your Majesty. We’re working on it, but there’s what I can only call an entrenched unwillingness to consider new truths. I’ve ordered a complete top-down review of all of our existing analyses where the Peeps are concerned, but it’s going to take a while, and there are a lot of professional rice bowls involved.” He shrugged again. “I’ve got a feeling some fairly drastic housecleaning’s going to be in order in the aftermath.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Roger half-grunted. “And we need a lot better coordination between your people and the San Martinos than we’ve been getting under the old management, too.” He shook his head, his expression frustrated. “Havinghurst dragged her heels over it for years, but we’ve got to establish some kind of information exchange with them, even if they’re not about to do anything to tick off the Peeps. We need a look inside their thinking, not just what their diplomats are saying openly!”

Heads nodded soberly around the table. The people of San Martin, the single habitable planet of Trevor’s Star, had traded with Manticore for over three hundred T-years. That relationship had not always been particularly close or amicable—in fact, they’d come perilously close to a shooting war a T-century ago—and things could have turned very ugly following the “San Martin War” of 1752.

When a radicalized San Martin government had sought to cure its fiscal ills by “nationalizing” the Trevor’s Star Terminus of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction and seized it by force in blatant violation of the Junction Treaty of 1590, a powerful task force under the command of Vice Admiral Quentin Saint-James had been dispatched to get it back again. Saint-James’ masterful strategy had diverted the entire San Martin Navy to hold the terminus it had seized . . . only to leave San Martin itself, three light-hours from the terminus, fatally exposed. Saint-James had pounced, forcing the planet (and the system government) to surrender after a “war” in which fewer than eighty people had been killed or wounded, and his terms had been remarkably compassionate. In the name of Queen Caitrin, he had demanded the return to the terms and conditions of the Junction Treaty, return of all private property seized, and restitution for damages done to the owners. In return for that and a pledge from the planetary government to put its fiscal house in order, Saint-James had negotiated a major reduction in transit fees for San Martin-flagged merchantmen using any of the Junction termini for a period of twenty-five T-years.

The San Martinos, astounded by the generosity of their “conqueror,” had done just that, restoring their economy to solvency and, in the process, forging a very close and amicable relationship with the Star Kingdom. Over the last century those reforms and that relationship had made Trevor’s Star the most economically powerful star system in the entire Haven Quadrant, outside Manticore itself . . . which, unfortunately, had to make it especially tempting to any expanding, imperialistic neighbor. Now, threatened by the approaching wave of Havenite conquest and far closer to the Haven System than Manticore, the current San Martin government was deliberately distancing itself—or its official foreign policy, at any rate—from the Star Kingdom lest it arouse the People’s Republic’s ire prematurely. Roger was privately certain the San Martinos wanted no part of the PRH, but they didn’t think they could afford to say so openly, which made it imperative that the Royal Manticoran Navy establish some sort of quiet, under-the-radar conduit with the San Martin Navy.

“I agree, Your Majesty,” Big Sky said, “but given the interstellar situation and the San Martinos’ . . . unpleasant neighbors, something like that’s going to have to be handled very carefully. Their civilian government probably won’t approve, although I’m pretty sure some of them will be willing to make it a case of deliberately not seeing something so they don’t have to take cognizance of it. Even some of their naval officers are going to have serious reservations, though, and I’m afraid Admiral Havinghurst didn’t exactly inspire confidence on the part of people who’d be taking serious risks to pass information on to us. For that matter, no one’s going to want the possibility that
anyone’s
feeding us information to make it into the ’faxes, and I’m not at all sure—yet—that I could be confident we wouldn’t have a few potential deliberate leakers still inside ONI, at least until I’ve had a chance to deal with that housekeeping. And then there’s the question of how much information we’re willing to give back to them in return for whatever they give us. I’m afraid I might have to wield a somewhat bigger broom than I’d actually been planning on if I’m going to feel comfortable about our ability to handle that as discreetly as it would need to be handled.”

Roger regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, then glanced at the First Space Lord.

“Admiral White Haven?”

“It’s Shadwell’s shop, Your Majesty. I’d prefer he not be any more draconian than he has to be, but you’re right about the necessity of opening some back channels to San Martin. That’s going to fall squarely into his court, and he’s clearly entitled to make whatever changes he deems necessary after his review.” White Haven shook his head. “There won’t be any heel-dragging on the uniformed side when he does it, I assure you. And I don’t care
whose
cousins, nephews, or nieces get stepped on in the process, either. You’re right about the need to get our foot down on all that nepotism, Your Majesty. Especially if we’re going to be expanding our officer corps anytime soon.”

“Don’t expect any heel-dragging on the civilian side, either,” Castle Rock said firmly, and Roger nodded.

“Good,” he said. “But even if ONI starts producing chapter and verse, hard numbers to substantiate what we all already know is going on, we’re still going to be looking at—what was it you called it, My Lord? ‘An entrenched unwillingness to consider new truths,’ I believe?—by the Parliamentary leadership. Given the fact that Allen doesn’t have an outright majority in the Lords, the Opposition peers have too much clout for me to simply fire the cabinet ministers who’re going to be expressing that unwillingness. None of them are about to come out into the open and actively oppose my policies, you understand. They’ll just drag their heels when it comes to
supporting
those policies before Parliament. Allen, unfortunately, is going to have the exquisite pleasure of dealing with that, and I’m afraid there’s going to have to be a lot of horse trading to get what I want out of them. In fact, I’m probably
not
going to get what I want out of them—not all of it, at any rate—but I damned well intend to get everything I can.”

The King looked around the conference room, his expression unwontedly bleak.

The thought of the People’s Republic getting close enough to threaten Trevor’s Star should have been a wake-up call for
anyone
, he thought harshly. Manticorans understood—or damned well
ought
to understand—the realities of warp bridges. Trevor’s Star might be close to two hundred light-years from Manticore, but it was also only a single, virtually instantaneous jump away through the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, and the People’s Republic’s plan to plunder its way to prosperity had become painfully evident. That being the case, how could anyone with a single functioning brain cell fail to grasp the temptation the Junction had to present? It was the Junction which gave the citizens of the Star Kingdom of Manticore the highest
per capita
income of any star nation—
including
the Solarian League—in history. Of course, the Solarian League was so huge, had so many more citizens, that the Star Kingdom’s absolute income was minute in comparison, but even in purely economic terms, the Junction would be worth at least a dozen—more probably two or
three
dozen—star systems like the ones the Peeps had already gobbled up. And that didn’t even consider the opportunities for future expansion the strategic mobility and reach the Junction would provide for any imperialistically inclined regime! Even if no one in Nouveau Paris was thinking in those terms
now
, they would be by the time they got close enough. That was as inevitable as the next day’s sunrise, and whatever Parliament and the Opposition might be thinking, the House of Winton knew its duty.