The Thirteenth Man (4 page)

“And what are we?”

Cesare stopped pacing and faced Charlie squarely. “Before your return, we were strong. Now, we're very strong.”

“I can't see how two thousand men changes things. It's ships that make a difference.”

Cesare nodded his agreement. “And the men that fight them. I have ships aplenty, and I have experienced crews for them, and with your two thousand—­all experienced fighting men—­we
are
stronger. But they're not the key, Charlie. You are.”

“Me? Why me?”

Cesare sipped at his drink. “Lucius glorified your deeds rather unashamedly, after we thought you dead. I'm sure that had you lived, he wouldn't have gone to such excess. But he did, and here you are, returned from the dead with a reputation that I can put to use against him. I should add, this puts you at some risk. Know then that I intend to use you.”

Charlie bowed his head and said, “You have but to command.”

“But to be
very strong
, Charlie, I need more than your obedience. I need your active support, I need your counsel, and I need your understanding of the men who may need to fight for us.”

Charlie had only one question. “Do you intend to make war?”

Cesare looked him in the eyes and spoke plainly. “No. I seek to stop Lucius from wasting another two million men on his petty ambitions at empire. And to stop him I need you. But I warn you, war may be a means to that end.”

Charlie stood, put his drink down, dropped to one knee, took the duke's hand, and kissed the ring on his finger. “As I said before, you have but to command, my liege.”

 

CHAPTER 3

FARLIGHT

“N
ow, that's much better,” Add shouted.

Charlie bent down, picked up Ell's saber and handed it back to her, hilt first. She was having a bad day, and he was having a good one, so they were almost evenly matched. She had killed him twice, but he'd managed to kill her in the third match, and disarm her now in the fourth.

Charlie backed out of the ring. “That's enough for today. I have orders to be at the main airlock when we dock.” He started peeling off the sparring suit.

Ell flipped the saber to her twin sister, who caught it casually. “You still have a ways to go. But at least now we can let you out on your own, knowing you have half a chance of keeping yourself alive against an assassin.”

Add, always the more critical of the two, mumbled, “
Half a chance
is pushing it a bit, sister. I wouldn't give him more than one in three.”

Charlie tossed the sparring suit to Ell, left the two of them in the gym, and hurried to his cabin. He showered, shaved, put on a freshly pressed uniform, shoved a small palm gun into the holster hidden beneath his left armpit, and stuffed a plast knife into the sheath in his right boot. “Remember,” Roacka and the twins had reminded him, “a body scanner will catch a power knife or the palm gun, but a plain old plast blade has a good chance of passing unnoticed.”

At the airlock Cesare acknowledged him with only a nod and a gruff “Commander.” There would be no first names or familiarity in front of others, though when Charlie took a position behind and to the left of the old duke, Cesare said, “Stand at my right hand, Commander.”

Winston appeared magically at Charlie's right. “Are you ready for this, Charles?” Winston, Paul, Cesare, and Charlie had discussed “this” carefully. Upon return to Traxis, Cesare could bypass normal entry procedures. They could take up a restricted orbit close to Traxis, and an armed gunboat would shuttle the duke and his entourage down to the ducal estates at Farlight, all under the watchful and protective guns of
Defender
, Cesare's flagship. But with the announcement of Charlie's resurrection, Winston felt that the duke should make a public appearance with Charlie at his side. So, like so many other ships, they'd docked at Traxis Prime, the main station orbiting Traxis. And while they'd certainly get VIP treatment, Winston had made sure that certain members of the media knew where to wait if they wanted to be the first to shove a microphone into someone's face.

“Ya,” Charlie answered. “I'm about as ready as I can be.”

While docking booms clanged through the hull, Charlie tried to imagine what awaited him. So many times he'd thought to never see home again. He'd believed he'd die nameless on some unknown planet, though after a time the dying part hadn't bothered him so much as the nameless part had. But now a piece of him was afraid to be there when the airlock opened, afraid to step through and find that everything had changed. Paul, standing behind Charlie, seemed to sense his unease, though he misinterpreted it. “Don't worry, Charlie. It'll be easy. Remember to nod politely, and keep any answers you give benign and meaningless.”

Meaningless answers,
he thought.
Sounds like a contradiction in terms.

The hatch cycled open without warning. Add stepped through it before it completed cycling, followed by four of Cesare's personal guard. Ell remained just on this side listening to her implants. After a few seconds Charlie saw her subvocalize a response to Add, then she nodded to the duke, while to Charlie she signed in handspeak,
This will be no fun, little brother.

The hatch opened onto a private dock maintained for VIPs, and containing Winston's carefully selected group of media hypes. As Cesare's retinue marched through them they rifled questions at him. Cesare responded with practiced ease to questions about Lucius, himself, and the returned prisoners. Charlie was happy to be ignored and beginning to hope he might be overlooked completely, then one of the hypes stepped in front of him, blocking his path and forcing him to come to a halt—­clearly something not in Winston's prearranged script. “Lieutenant Commander Cass,” the hype demanded. “Do you intend to support the king in his negotiations with Aagerbanne?”

Never answer a dangerous question,
Winston had warned him.
But try to avoid, “No comment.” If you don't like the question, then think of a question you do want to answer, and answer it.

“I've always been a loyal subject of the crown,” Charlie said.

One of the guards politely edged the hype out of Charlie's way, and Winston got the retinue going again. But the hype persisted, “Even if it means war, Commander?”

Another hype shouted, “Even if it means alliance with the Republic of Syndon?”

Charlie halted, turned on them, tried to look displeased, and suddenly everything came to a stop as the hypes waited for him to say something newsworthy.
Alliance with Syndon
,
he thought.
Where did that come from?
With the dukes withholding levies, Lucius just might be that desperate. Charlie mentally clamped down on what he really wanted to say. “I've always supported my king. Do you question my loyalty?”

“Of course not,” the hype said, unruffled by Charlie's counter. “But our viewers are wondering . . .”

Winston quickly turned Charlie around, started the retinue up again, and with the hypes firing questions at their backs they passed into a VIP lounge where a door slammed shut behind them. Cesare kept moving, though he looked over his shoulder at Charlie and commented, “Well done, Commander.”

The hypes' questions had brought on a cold, sinking feeling in Charlie's gut. “What did they mean, Your Grace, by
alliance
with the Syndonese?”

Cesare frowned, turned away from Charlie, and commented over his shoulder, “Don't worry about it, Charlie. We'll discuss it later.”

As they boarded a shuttle for the trip down to the planet's surface, the sinking feeling deepened.

We sure as hell
will
discuss it later,
Charlie thought.

O
nce their shuttle settled onto the ducal estates at Farlight, Charlie headed straight for Arthur's study. Charlie found him with three of his assistants, all leaning over some sort of designs on Arthur's desk; they were in the midst of a rather heated discussion. They didn't notice Charlie as he slipped into the study, and it wasn't until he cleared his throat that Arthur turned around, looked at him, and froze in midsentence. A big grin spread across his face. “Come back from the dead, eh?”

Charlie shrugged. “I could say the same about you.”

“Yes,” Arthur said. “I heard about that, you idiot.”

Arthur sprinted across the room, gripped Charlie in a bear hug, and lifted him off his feet. “Damn, Charlie! I couldn't have wished for more.” Arthur was taller and bigger than Charlie, though not as athletic, and he swung Charlie around once before putting him down. He held Charlie at arm's length and looked him up and down. Charlie saw the big brother he had thought dead. He was a little older than Charlie remembered, with a few added pounds around his waistline . . . and had never looked better. “It's good to have you back,” Arthur said. “We need you now more than ever.”

Charlie frowned. “I've been getting dire little hints like that, but no one has bothered to enlighten me as to why. Would you care to?”

Arthur looked over his shoulder at his assistants, nodded at the designs on his desk. “If you don't mind, we can continue this later.”

They all replied with an “Of course, Your Lordship.” They gathered up the designs and disappeared quickly. Arthur closed the door behind them. “Computer,” he called over his shoulder as he strode back to his desk. “Full privacy and surveillance scan, no recording, no monitoring.”

“All entrances are sealed,” the computer replied. “Surveillance scan verifies a monitor free environment within the confines of your study. Vocal monitoring will be disabled upon your verification. You'll have to reactivate manually when you're finished, Your Lordship. Please verify.”

“Verified,” Arthur said.

“Confirmed,” the computer replied.

He turned to Charlie. “Okay, Charlie. We can talk. There'll be no record kept.”

“That bad?”

Arthur shrugged. “We're going to discuss the Realm's dirty laundry. And some of what we say might be construed as treason.”

That bad,
Charlie thought.

Arthur began with a question. “What do you know of the situation with Aagerbanne?”

This time it was Charlie who shrugged. He had heard bits and pieces on the trip back from the prisoner exchange, but not much. “Lucius is negotiating for unlimited access to the Aagerbanni port facilities on Aagerbanne Prime, which would give us access to all the trade routes into the independent states. But there's been some sort of snag.”

Arthur sat down behind his desk. “On the surface, you've got the gist of it. But the Aagerbanni Cabinet Minister for Trade thinks the crown might take the position that, since Aagerbanne was originally colonized with funds from the royal treasury, it's a candidate for annexation as a Crown State Holding.”

“That's ridiculous,” Charlie said. “Aagerbanne has been an independent state for more than five centuries.”

“Yes,” Arthur said. “But once it's done, and crown troops are occupying Aagerbanni nearspace . . .” Arthur finished with a shrug.

“Lucius is insane,” Charlie said.

“No,” Arthur said. “Foolish, yes. Idiotic, maybe. But this is calculated. The Syndonese war badly depleted the royal treasury. If he pulls it off, it would be a financial windfall. So Lucius's real game is to push the negotiations into stalemate, feed appropriate amounts of misinformation to the media, and when the time is right, forcibly annex Aagerbanne.”

Charlie shook his head, couldn't believe what he was hearing. “He might get away with it. Even with advance warning Aagerbanne can field only a few hundred thousand troops and maybe a dozen warships. What about the independent states?”

“They're moving carefully,” Arthur said. “Finalsa and Allison's Cluster have signed a mutual defense alliance with Aagerbanne. Toellan and Istanna are arming themselves now, and the other states are simply watching the situation nervously. If Lucius—­”

The computer interrupted him. “Your Lordship. Forgive me for interrupting, but Lord Theode is demanding admittance.”

Arthur sighed. Charlie grinned and asked, “How is Twerp?”

“Unchanged. And please don't call him that to his face. It'll only start a fight, and he'll go whining to his mother.”

“And the Lady Gaida?”

“The witch-­bitch is also unchanged. Oh, Charlie!” Arthur laughed. “I haven't called her that since you got killed.”

“Again, Your Lordship, I apologize for interrupting, but since my monitoring systems are deactivated at the moment, if you have replied to my earlier request, I am unaware of it and cannot respond to vocal instructions.”

Charlie sighed. “You might as well let Twerp in and get this over with.”

Arthur reached over and touched a switch on the console buried in the surface of his desk. “Computer, reactivate standard monitoring and security procedures. Then admit Lord Theode.”

“W
ell, if it isn't the whoreson,” Theode announced as he strode into Arthur's study with two friends following him. “And newly risen from the dead. Quite a miracle, especially considering the lineage.” He glanced at his two friends and raised an eyebrow, which appeared to be a signal that he was being witty, and they were now supposed to laugh. They did.

As Arthur had said, Theode hadn't changed. Small, slight of build, dark hair combed and oiled, an impeccably trimmed goatee. He sported an expensive green tunic, with the coat-­of-­arms of House de Maris tastefully embroidered on the lapels, and cream colored pants stuffed into soft, leather, knee-­high boots. Theode had always been conscious of fashion, and spared no expense to ensure that he was properly attired.

“I'm told the conditions you survived were rather atrocious.” In the Syndonese prison camp Charlie had remembered Theode's voice as a nasally, high-­pitched whine. But he'd convinced himself that his dislike for Theode had colored his memories, that no one's voice could be that irritating. He realized now that his memories had been all too accurate. “Now, that, I think, is genetic. One must have the appropriate genes to survive happily in filth and muck. And we never doubted your genes, Charlie.”

Theode was smaller than Charlie, and to Charlie's knowledge had never bothered with any kind of exercise. As boys, Charlie had once responded to Theode's insults by beating him soundly. Gaida's retaliation had been harsh and cruel, teaching Charlie to respond not at all to such taunts, and Theode had learned that he had free rein to deliver them.

Charlie looked at Arthur, bowed slightly from the waist as was appropriate for a vassal—­long ago they'd learned to conceal any affection in the presence of Theode or Gaida. “With your permission, Your Lordship, I must go.”

Theode sneered, “You don't have my permission.”

Arthur came to his rescue. “But he has mine.”

Charlie bowed again to Arthur. “Your Lordship.” And though it galled him greatly, he offered the same courtesy to Theode. “Your Lordship.”

He turned, and as he walked out of Arthur's study he heard Theode demand, “What were you talking about?”

Charlie threw one comment over his shoulder, “You, Twerp.”

“You're not supposed to call me that,” Theode shouted after him. Then to Arthur he asked, “You were talking about me? What did you say?”