Original Work Stolen Glory (Morningstar II)

Hi, everyone

Stolen Glory is the direct sequel to Exiled to Glory, picking off more or less immediately after the end of the first novel. I have included a short recap as part of the prologue, and I am happy to forward copies to anyone willing to offer feedback, commentary, criticism, etc, of the ongoing draft of the story.

You can purchase the first novel and read a brief introduction to the universe through the links below:

The Chrishanger

An Introduction To The Morningstar Universe

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The Chrishanger

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Chris

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Prologue I

From: The Rise and Fall of Leo Morningstar. Baen Historical Press. Daybreak. Year 307.

What can one say about Leo Morningstar?

How can one describe a dancing moonbeam? How can one catch lightning in a jar? How can one describe the innermost thoughts and feelings of a person one has never met? How long can a writer extend a sentence, how purple can he write his prose, before the editor tells him that it is nothing more than blatant padding to disguise the fact he doesn’t have a clue and his incredibly long run-on sentences are mountains of nonsense that most readers will tune out before they get to the reveal?

And how can a writer keep his editor from cutting the above paragraph?

Leo Morningstar was born in Cold Harbour, on Daybreak, the child of Senior Crew Chief Davis (who was awarded the Navy Cross by then-Captain Sullivan and took the name of his ship in thanks, as was and remains customary) and Hoshiko Davis, the daughter of two immigrants who earned citizenship and became a teacher. His father enjoyed the patronage of Grand Senator (Admiral) Sullivan, and a combination of this patronage and extremely good test rests ensured that Leo Morningstar was able to enter the Naval Academy at sixteen. He was a brilliant student, who became class valedictorian three years out of four (owing to a quirk in the system, the four years of academy training were required as four different establishments) and would have probably become valedictorian for all four years if his first year hadn’t been marred by a brutal confrontation between himself and then-Senior Cadet Francis Blackthrone whom Leo nearly beat to death after the older student insulted his mother. It was only through the direct intervention of his patron that Leo was not summarily expelled in disgrace.

The incident did seem to teach him a little prudence, according to his class reports, and he was on track to graduate at the top of his class. Indeed, his desperate plan to save the lives of his peers after a training exercise turned devastatingly real ensured his promotion to lieutenant, if provisional, and a glittering career. His progression came to an abrupt halt, the night before graduation, when he was caught in bed with Fleur O’Hara, the wife of Commandant O’Hara.

This posed an unprecedented dilemma for his superiors. If they demoted him now, after completing his training, and denied him the right to make the formal valediction speech, it would trigger a political crisis. His patron would demand answers, and there would be no good answers they could give. It would be a very public scandal, one that would call into question the academy’s independence from planetary politics. On the other hand, they couldn’t allow him to serve as the valedictorian either, let alone go on to take the promised slot on a front-line combat starship. His actions were a severe breach of the honour code and could not be allowed to go unpunished.

Deputy Commandant Horace Valerian hit on a solution that paid more credit to his head than his heart. Instead of demoting Leo Morningstar, he gave him an unprecedented promotion to Lieutenant-Commander and assigned him to RSS Waterhen, an outdated starship with a very hands-off captain, so hands-off, in fact, that he served almost no time on his vessel at all. Leo would be the de facto commander of Waterhen, during her assignment to a far-distant sector, and no matter the outcome – they thought – there was no way in hell he would ever trouble them again. So far from Daybreak, his chances of being noticed and gaining further promotion would be very slim. It was a neat little solution. Leo’s patron could hardly object to Leo being promoted and Leo himself could hardly refuse the assessment. And it provided a cover story to ensure he wasn’t on the academy grounds when the time came to give his speech. Leo was, in fact, put on a shuttle to Waterhen shortly after being given the news. It was generally assumed he would never be seen again.

Leo was not best pleased, when he arrived on Waterhen, to discover a very unhappy ship indeed. The crew were the dregs of the service and the nominal captain was even worse, spending most of his days in the pleasure dens rather than doing his job. He was not, however, trained to give up, and working with the few genuinely decent crewmembers (and abusing his absent captain’s command codes) he worked hard to bring his new command up to par. Waterhen would never be a front-line combat starship, as she was too outdated to serve in any major deployment, but she would be an effective anti-pirate ship. When she jumped out, and started her long voyage to the Yangtze Sector, Leo had at least some reason for confidence. Being so far from Daybreak would allow him to operate without supervision, giving him a chance to use unconventional tactics to defeat the pirates and convince the locals of the value of being part of the Daybreak Republic. Or, as they knew it even then, the Daybreak Empire.

The sector was in turmoil when Leo arrived. Some worlds had been forced into the republic and chaffed under its rule, complaining of the lack of rewards for their submission. Others remained isolated, or plagued by pirates and insurrectionists; it was hard, almost impossible, for the newly-appointed Governor Steven Brighton to make any headway, as he lacked any real naval support until Leo arrived. Bringing order to the sector would be a challenge to any lesser man, but Leo gritted his teeth and got to work. Through a series of daring operations, he destroyed or captured a number of pirate ships and took control of a pirate base, giving him the nucleus of an auxiliary fleet to patrol the spacelanes and make life difficult for the pirates. It was far from perfect, as he acknowledged himself, but it was a start. He also earned the admiration of Gayle Bridgerton, the daughter of Deputy Governor Hari Bridgerton, and they became lovers.

It was also a threat to a local consortium, led by Hari Bridgerton, that had been conspiring against the empire. Their plan had been thrown into disarray by Leo’s arrival and his bid to actually do his duty, forcing them to launch an attack, gambling they could capture or destroy Leo and his ship before it was too late. Their plan came very close to success, as Gayle was one of the conspirators and she was able to lure Leo away from his ship. but Leo was able to turn the tables and – through a brilliant and innovative tactic – destroy the enemy ship. Hari Bridgerton was apparently killed; the fate of his daughter remained unknown.

Leo had good reason to be pleased with himself, as his reports winged their way back to Daybreak. He had defeated a serious threat, put together a small squadron that could keep up the pressure on pirate operations, and proved that Daybreak was in the sector to stay. But all of his accomplishments were thrown into jeopardy by the arrival of reinforcements, commanded by Commodore Alexander Blackthrone, uncle to Lieutenant-Commander Francis Blackthrone, who had good reason to hate Leo’s guts …

 

Prologue II

“I can’t believe you got away with that,” Cadet Judy Singh teased. “What were you thinking?”

Leo smirked. The navel combat simulator was the most complex system known to mankind, the most realistic depiction of naval combat outside actual live-fire exercises. It had taken him weeks to even begin to get to grips with the sheer complexity of the system and his instructors had been at pains to assure him, and the rest of the cadets, that it was nowhere near as complex as serving in a real Combat Information Centre. There were no communications breakdowns, no speed of light delays, no subordinates who misunderstood your orders and did the wrong thing at the worst possible time. Leo had questioned the value of such a system and had been told they had to learn to walk before they could run, to understand how to handle the mock combat under ideal conditions before facing the fog of war and all the other little problems that made the simplest things difficult in the real world. And then he’d had his head handed to him by an officer who had commanded an actual deep-space engagement. It had been embarrassing.

His lips twisted at the memory. Losing to an experienced opponent was one thing, but it hadn’t been remotely a fair fight. Or so he’d thought. He’d actually lodged a protest when he’d been told he’d have a heavy cruiser, crammed with missiles as well as energy weapons, and his opponent would have a destroyer, barely armed with anything more than outdated missiles and popguns. The odds had been so heavily in his favour that he’d almost been embarrassed to step into the training simulator, knowing it would make him look like a bully. Or a coward. And then he’d lost the engagement, so decisively it had made him a laughing stock for several days afterwards. Sure, he’d had the firepower, but his opponent had known all the tricks. In hindsight, he should have rammed the destroyer with his heavy cruiser. It would have been a less embarrassing defeat.

“You had the edge on paper, Cadet Morningstar,” Instructor Griffin had said, afterwards. “But in practice, the victory will always go to the officer who knows his enemy and knows himself.”

Leo had taken the lesson to heart, after being forced to write no less than three after-action reports to explain his defeat. The instructor had known the capabilities of both ships and tailored his attacks to take advantages of weaknesses and blind spots, deploying his far more limited drones and other pieces of equipment to get close to the heavy cruiser’s hull and tear it apart at point-blank range. Leo couldn’t help thinking he’d deserved his humiliation, that if he’d played the engagement a little more carefully he would have won … not, he supposed, that he would have been able to enjoy his victory. On paper, the odds had been ludicrously in his favour. He might as well have been a grown man beating up a toddler. What sort of monster would applaud that?

He grinned. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Judy snorted, her lips wrinkling in a manner Leo would have found cute if he hadn’t been so tired. “Barely.”

“It worked,” Leo repeated. It wasn’t the sort of tactic he’d have cared to use in a real engagement, if only because there were too many things that could have gone wrong, but they’d been strongly advised not to even think about it. It hadn’t taken him long to realise they hadn’t been ordered not to try it. A loophole … small, he conceded, but there. “And if the OpFor CO had been a little more careful, the trick wouldn’t have worked.”

His lips twisted into a smile. He had no idea who’d been played the OpFor CO commander, but he’d been so convinced of his victory that he hadn’t even bothered to come in on a random vector. Perhaps he’d just wanted to get it over with, because he’d advanced towards the planet on a least-time course, something that had given Leo plenty of time to get his ships into position and power down his drives. The vessels had looked like holes in space, practically undetectable on passive sensors, until he’d hit the switch and opened fire at point-blank range. The OpFor CO had been caught completely by surprise, not even managing to get a single shot off before his ships had been blown away. Leo had no idea who’d been in command, on the other side, but he was going to get one hell of a lecture from his superiors. If the engagement had been real, it would have been the most one-sided victory in space-navy history.

Judy pointed a finger at him. “That won’t work twice.”

Leo shrugged. “Probably not.”

He followed her into the refectory, where the rest of the first-year cadets were eating before the next set of lectures and training exercises. They had been told it would only get harder, as they passed through the four-year training course … Leo winced inwardly, noting a handful of cadets who were likely to drop out before the exams at the end of the year. The instructors were good at spotting promising cadets and helping them overcome their early fumbles, but there were limits to how far they were prepared to go. Leo knew, without false modesty, that he was amongst the best. He also knew he was incredibly lucky to be anywhere near the academy. If he hadn’t had a prominent patron, the odds of him entering the academy would have been very low. He would have had to join the navy as a crewman and then become a mustang.

Which is far from impossible, he reminded himself. Quite a few officers, famed in song and story, had started their careers as simple crewmen. You just need the dedication to succeed.

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Morningstar!”

Leo tensed as he spun around. Senior Cadet Francis Blackthrone was everything Leo detested wound up into one, a dashingly handsome young man who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The Blackthrone Clan had been amongst the original founders of Daybreak and they never let anyone forget it, certainly not the current generation who had no deeds of their own to their name. Francis’s name had been down for the academy since birth and there had been no question that he’d attend, something Leo would have sold his soul for. He had often wondered, as the older cadet hazed the youngsters, if Francis had actually wanted to attend. But the price for being a Blackthrone, it seemed, was upholding the family tradition of naval service followed by a political career. Whatever else could be said for a clan that had a habit of honouring the letter of the law while blithely subverting the spirit, they did ensure their children earned their citizenship. The only other option was disinheritance. A far worse fate than death.

Francis glared. Leo had often wondered if the young man had had his face reshaped into something that was a little too handsome to be true, the picture-perfect young officer with lantern jaw and stern features that could have stepped right out of a holomovie. It was odd to see such an expression on such a face, as if it wasn’t quite equipped to sneer properly. And he’d never liked Leo. Leo himself hadn’t been so concerned. Francis was a bully, like far too many lads he’d met at Cold Harbour, and most bullies were cowards at heart. The others, at least, hadn’t hidden behind rank and family name.

Leo loathed bullies. But he’d give them that much.

“What were you thinking?” Francis clenched his fists, his voice so loud the entire refectory heard it. “Why?”

Leo hastily ran through a mental checklist. What had he done? He’d showered at First Call, made his bed as per regulations, eaten a health breakfast and gone straight to his first lecture. He hadn’t even seen Francis for the last few days, and while the senior cadet was supposed to inspect the dorms he wasn’t supposed to do it until the end of the week. Perhaps he’d decided to do it early … no, there was no way the inspectors would let him get away with it. They gave Francis and the other seniors some leeway, but not that much.

He pasted a blank expression on his face. “This cadet requests clarification.”

Francis looked as if he was about to throw the first punch, a severe breach in regulations. “You tricked me!”

“I did?” Leo was honestly perplexed. He hadn’t had time to think about Francis and even if he had, pranking a senior cadet was asking for trouble … oh. “You were the OpFor Commander?”

“You tricked me,” Francis repeated. “You …”

Leo had to fight to keep his smile off his face. He hadn’t known Francis was the OpFor Commander, and the possibility had never crossed his mind, but … oh, that was glorious. Francis wasn’t a trained instructor, someone who might make a plausible mistake to see if the cadet noticed the window of opportunity and fired a salvo of missiles through it, and his mistake had been a honest one. Leo almost wished he’d been a fly on the wall, when the instructors pointed out in agonising detail precisely how badly Francis had screwed up. If he’d launched a single drone along his flight path, or realised his ships had already been detected and bringing the active sensors online wouldn’t make the situation any worse, he’d have won a pretty much effortless victory. He could have made Leo look a fool if he timed it just right … and even if he didn’t, Leo would still have put his ships in a bad position, effectively checkmating himself. It would have been an utter disaster. The instructors didn’t normally strike their cadets, but they might have made an exception for him.

“You should have been a little more careful,” he said. It wasn’t the smartest thing to say to a senior cadet, who had plenty of ways to make Leo’s life miserable, but it was true. “If you turned on your active sensors …”

Francis purpled. Standard tactical doctrine was to keep active sensors offline as long as possible, if only because their activation would tell the enemy where to aim, but Leo had already had a good idea where to point his guns. The ambush wouldn’t have worked so well if Francis had come to the same deduction and altered course, avoiding engagement and winning the match without so much as firing a shot or forced Leo to alter his own position before it was too late.

“You son of a whore,” Francis thundered. “You …”

Leo stilled, ice prickling down his spine. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your mother is a whore,” Francis snapped. Two bright red spots appeared on his cheeks, a reminder he’d been humiliated beyond words. Losing a simulated engagement to a junior cadet with just over nine months in the academy wasn’t unprecedented, and the instructors wouldn’t hold it against him, but losing in a manner that owed much to his own foolishness was a very different story. They wouldn’t let him get away with it. “She was screwing Sullivan and …”

Leo saw red and hit him, driving his fist hard into Francis’s chest. All cadets were required to take classes in martial arts, and Leo knew he was good at them, but he’d learnt most of his lessons on the streets. Neither polite words nor submission worked on a bully, a man so degraded he saw the former as a hint of weakness and the latter a confession. It was one thing to be insulted himself, to have everything from his uniform to his performance dissected in great and mocking detail, but his mother? His mother had raised him and his siblings alone, after their father had died in the line of duty, and an insult to her could not be tolerated. The idea she might have been cheating on her husband, his father …

Francis doubled over, gasping in pain. Leo brought his knee up hard, slamming it into France’s face. He felt the older cadet’s nose break, his body tumbling over and crashing to the floor. Leo kicked him as hard as he could, knocking Francis out. The darker part of his mind noted that it might have been a relief, almost a mercy. Francis had been in terrible agony. And he’d deserved every last bit of it.

Leo clung to that thought, afterwards, as the redcaps led him away, as the staff explained that only the direct intervention of his patron had saved him from expulsion. Leo had never felt particularly sorry, although he had learnt to control his temper a little better. Francis was too great a fool to have planned to let Leo throw the first punch and then beat the shit out of him, but someone a little smarter might certainly try. He paid as little heed to Francis as possible for the rest of the year, watching – and concealing his disgust – as Francis graduated a lieutenant. His family had to have arranged that for him, Leo was sure, perhaps in hopes of turning him into an asset in their endless struggle for power. Leo told himself, as he started his second year at the academy, that it didn’t matter. The odds were good he would never see Francis again.

In that, he was dead wrong.

 

Chapter One

Under other circumstances, Leo would have enjoyed the flight to RSS Pompey.

The battlecruiser was an awesome sight, a gleaming dagger against the stars and the blue-green planet below. Her lines were long and sleek, a stark contrast to the blunt outline of a battleship or the crude and functional lines of Waterhen. The designers had been allowed to let their imaginations run riot for once, crafting an starship that looked like a sword, ready to be drawn in the defence of the republic. Or for its expansion. Leo had believed firmly, only a year ago, in the mission, but now – if he were forced to be honest – he knew the galaxy was a messy place. There were no simple answers to the crisis that had provoked the Great War, and the rise of Daybreak, and there never would be.

He felt his heart sink as the battlecruiser grew closer, his mind torn between admiring her lines and the blunt, icy message that had summoned him to her. The battlecruiser was the flagship of a task force sent out to reinforce the naval presence in the sector, something he would have greeted with untrammelled delight if he hadn’t known the squadron was commanded by Commodore Alexander Blackthrone. Leo didn’t know for sure how the commodore was related to Francis Blackthrone – the Blackthrone clan was easily the most complex in the republic – but he would be. There was no one with a Blackthrone name who wasn’t one of the Blackthrones. The name belonged to the clan and the clan alone.

The pilot glanced back. “Sir, they’re requesting permission to take remote control.”

Leo shrugged. It was an insult, technically, but he didn’t blame the battlecruiser’s commander for being wary of a shuttle, no matter what IFF codes it was using. The trail of treachery that led all the way up to the sector’s Deputy Governor was undoubtedly alarming, if only because a man in that position could have easily obtained all kinds of information and access codes that should have been restricted to Daybreak personnel only, then forwarded the intelligence to his allies amongst the stars. Leo’s heart clenched painfully. Deputy Governor Hari Bridgerton was supposed to be dead, and his daughter too, but Leo feared Gayle was still alive. She was smart and adaptive and she’d pulled the wool over his eyes quite thoroughly, to the point he hadn’t had the slightest suspicion she was anything other than a young woman seeking escape from a humdrum life until it was too late. In hindsight …

Bad rolls of the dice are inevitable, he told himself, sternly. His instructors had pointed it out again and again, when the cadets had started training in earnest. No commander was ever-victorious and no career was ever unmarred by a mistake, one born of ignorance or simple misunderstanding. The trick is to pick yourself up, learn from your mistakes, and keep going.

He scowled. He would see Gayle again. He was sure of it.

The shuttle rocked, slightly, as the battlecruiser took control. Leo didn’t need to look at the pilot to sense his unhappiness. They were well within communications range, the time delay so minimal it was barely measurable, and yet something could easily go wrong. The officer on the battlecruiser, flying the shuttle from a distance, didn’t have the feel for the controls or the craft itself that its real pilot had, nor was he in any real danger. Leo shrugged, putting the thought aside. Compared to all the other problems, the issue of who was flying the shuttle was decidedly minor.

He watched, coldly, as the shuttle levelled out and flew towards the docking hatch. Up close, the battlecruiser’s lines were marred by weapons ports, missile tubes and sensor arrays … a handful, he noted thoughtfully, looking decidedly out of place. The designers had left room for a piece of gear that would change the face of warfare, from what he’d heard at the academy, but – like so many other pieces of promised hardware – the new tech had failed to materialise. Leo had heard a great deal of speculation, from superluminal energy weapons to actual force fields, yet … he shrugged. He’d believe in such silver bullets when he saw them. He’d read Superiority. It was required reading at the academy. If it had been required reading elsewhere, a great many problems might have been avoided before it was too late.

A dull clunk ran through the shuttle as she mated with the docking point, followed by a low hiss and a faint flicker in the gravity field. Leo was almost relieved they’d been steered to the docking port, although it boded ill for his personal future. The idea of facing a welcoming committee of officers would be daunting at the best of times, and right now he was both a junior officer and a commanding officer. The navy was supposed to have protocols for everything, but he didn’t think there was a welcoming procedure for that. Probably. The commodore had clearly decided to dodge the issue completely. Leo didn’t blame him.

“Good luck, sir,” the pilot said.

Leo nodded, feeling a lump in his throat as he stepped through the opening airlock. He had no illusions about why he’d been promoted and sent to the sector, a knife in the back cunningly disguised as a reward, a poison pill he’d had no choice but to swallow. It would have been easy to sit in his cabin and sulk, or lose himself in the pleasure dens, or even join Gayle when she came to him … but he’d known his duty. He’d determined to make something of himself and … he’d done well. He knew it.

The inner hatch hissed open, revealing a figure Leo had hoped never to see again. Senior Cadet Francis Blackthrone was as handsome as ever, with holovid star good looks Leo was sure were the result of gene-splicing and cosmetic face-sculpting. He was blond, with bright blue eyes and a face that managed to give the impression of both youth and maturity, wearing a dress uniform that was carefully tailored to show off his muscles without revealing any bare skin above the wrist. He was a Lieutenant-Commander now, Leo noted, with two stars on his collar … two starship assignments. Francis was four years older than Leo, and he’d graduated a Lieutenant three years ago, but that was still a surprisingly rapid advance. Or perhaps it wasn’t surprising at all. Francis was a Blackthrone.

And I can hardly talk about rapid advancement, Leo thought, wryly. His promotion had set records, and would probably cause no shortage of raised eyebrows if he’d been sent to a regular duty station. It took him three years to do what I managed in a day.

Francis met his eyes. His face was stern, but there was a hint of fear in his expression. Leo found it both reassuring and deeply worrying. Francis had always been a bully, someone who had lorded it over the plebs, and like most bullies he was a weak man at heart. Leo was mildly surprised he hadn’t found a way to extract revenge on Leo for beating him within an inch of his life, although the combination of shock and fear of Leo finding him in a dark alley one day had probably stayed his hand. Or he’d been biding his time. A strong man could acknowledge when he’d been beaten and move on. A weak man would risk everything just to tear his enemy down.

He might have more time in grade than me, but we’re still the same rank, Leo thought. He can’t use his position to put me in my place any longer.

“Morningstar,” Francis said. His tone was as snooty as ever. Leo made a mental bet with himself that Francis didn’t spend any time with the enlisted men. The battlecruiser was big enough to have a private mess for officers, and Francis certainly wasn’t the kind of person to get his hands dirty if it could be avoided. “Commodore Blackthrone is waiting for you.”

Leo saluted the flag, silently relieved he didn’t have to salute Francis, and allowed the older man to lead him through a maze of corridors. The battlecruiser was surprisingly sedate, for a ship that had just completed a long voyage, something that puzzled him. The crew should be lining up for shore leave … it was rare, almost unknown, for a crew not to be given leave after such a long voyage. Perhaps the commodore was feeling paranoid. Leo didn’t blame him for that either. The sector was nowhere near as peaceful as Leo had been told, when he’d left Daybreak. He dared not assume the attempted revolt was over.

Francis stopped, outside a hatch. “You may enter.”

“Thank you,” Leo said.

He had the satisfaction of seeing Francis twitch, just a little, before the hatch hissed open. The commodore’s office was surprisingly bare, for a scion of one of the greatest families in the republic, decorated only by a large family portrait and a painting of a heavy cruiser spitting missiles at an unseen target. The artist was talented, but clearly had only the vaguest idea of the cruiser’s design, drawing missiles erupting from tubes that simply didn’t exist. And yet, it was very dramatic. The only other display in the chamber was a holographic starchart, showing the local sector. Yangtze was surrounded by a handful of tactical icons. The rest of the stars looked deserted.

“Morningstar,” a cold voice said.

Leo straightened to attention, kicking himself mentally. He had been a de facto commanding officer for too long, without any real superior. Even Governor Brighton hadn’t had authority over him, the navy protecting its independence from colonial governors with the same determination it showed in its endless quest to wipe out pirates, terrorists and insurrectionists alike. Leo’s orders had noted he was to work with the governor, not for him. There was clearly a great deal that had been supposed to be passed down as he worked his way up the ladder …

“Lieutenant-Commander Leo Morningstar, reporting as ordered,” he said.

Commodore Alexander Blackthrone looked very much like an older version of Francis, although his gaze was sharper and his hair starting to turn grey. It was a vanity in its own way, a sign of age and experience … and a maturity that kept him from having his body rejuvenated completely, to make him an old man in a very young body. There’d be nothing wrong with his physical health, Leo was sure. The navy wouldn’t tolerate a flag officer who couldn’t handle the pressure, and it had no shortage of places it could send someone who couldn’t be easily dismissed.

“Leo Morningstar,” Commodore Blackthrone said. He held a datapad in one hand, his eyes skimming down the opened file. “Why were you promoted so quickly?”

Leo winced, inwardly. On one hand, his promotion was genuine. It could hardly have been otherwise. But on the other, there was no way such a promotion – given to someone still in the academy – would go unremarked. Questions would be asked, and very unfavourable conclusions drawn. It would be hard enough for an officer on active duty to be confirmed in his new rank, whatever the reasons for the promotion, but ludicrous for a raw cadet. He might have been a Lieutenant, and on track to graduate as one, yet a Lieutenant-Commander? Absurd.

He found himself honestly unsure how to respond. The truth had been carefully buried, hidden away behind a mountain of bullshit. Deputy Commandant Horace Valerian had excelled himself, putting together a picture that would go unquestioned, at least long enough to get Leo well away from Daybreak. The hell of it was that Leo’s own actions had brought his earlier promotion under scrutiny. If he’d sat on his rear and done nothing, rather than trying to do his duty, there wouldn’t have been any reason for anyone to look into the matter. If he hadn’t done his duty …

“I did extremely well at the academy, sir,” he said, finally. “The Deputy Commandant thought a merited a promotion and a new assignment.”

“To a rattletrap of a ship and a sector so far from civilisation they think a ship is something that floats on water,” Commodore Blackthrone said, dryly. “I read the file very carefully, Morningstar. I read it and I noticed all the questions it left unanswered, starting with the obvious issue of just why they promoted you and then assigned you to a death trap.”

Leo felt stung. “Waterhen is not a death trap, sir.”

“She is an outdated ship on a long-range patrol,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “Hardly the sort of ship I’d assign someone I wanted to see promoted, Morningstar. My nephew was assigned to a modern battleship, before he came here.”

Francis, Leo thought, coldly. The Commodore is his uncle.

“So tell me,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “Why were you assigned to Waterhen?”

Because they caught me in bed with the Commandant’s wife, Leo thought, feeling a flash of hot anger. And they wanted to bury the scandal, so they gave me a promotion and a duty assignment that would take me a very long way from Daybreak.

“The Deputy Commandant said it would give me a chance to make a name for myself,” Leo said. It was technically true, if misleading. But he didn’t want to land Fleur in any more hot water. If she could repair her marriage, more power to her. “I believe I have succeeded.”

“Quite.” Commodore Blackthrone held his eyes for a long moment. “I am sure he will be very proud of you.”

His tone suggested otherwise. Leo wondered, suddenly, just how much he knew about the scandal. There had been no Blackthrones on staff, as far as Leo could recall, but that was meaningless. The Blackthrones were amongst the most powerful patrons in the republic, with a web of clients that stretched all over Daybreak and beyond, all the way to the outer colonies themselves. If Commodore Blackthrone had wanted to get the truth, he probably could find someone on the academy’s staff who would fill him in. Leo groaned inwardly. No matter what happened, it was going to be a nightmare if the truth ever came out.

“I have also read your reports,” Commodore Blackthrone continued. “Your conduct in this sector has been decidedly mixed. On one hand, you conducted a very effective anti-pirate campaign which culminated in the capture of a pirate base and the defeat of a rebel attempt to seize Yangtze, but on the other you repeatedly displayed a degree of immaturity, perhaps born of your relative inexperience, that came very close to getting you killed. Your stunt with the Q-Ship was marginally justifiable, but leading the mission to seize a pirate ship was insane.”

Leo tensed. “If you are referring to the incident on Yellowstone, I was caught on the ground and there was no time to arrange for anyone to take my place.”

“You should not have risked your life,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “You were the commanding officer, in a dangerous situation. Your place was on the bridge.”

“There was no time to return to the ship, and no way to do it without being detected,” Leo pointed out. Boothroyd had said the same, and far more bluntly, but Leo still felt he’d made the best of a bad set of choices. “And it worked.”

Commodore Blackthrone smiled, humourlessly. “You also displayed several other errors of judgement,” he said. “You recruited marines without any vetting process, or indeed anything more than basic training. You recruited spacers as naval auxiliaries without clearing it with the authorities. You overthrew a planetary government without good cause and …”

Leo started. “Sir, I …”

“Please don’t interrupt,” Commodore Blackthrone said, the very mildness of his tone turning Leo’s blood to ice. “Worst of all, you allowed a young woman to seduce you … a young woman who turned out to be a rebel, perhaps even the rebel leader.”

“There was no clue,” Leo said. “It wasn’t until afterwards that we realised how closely she and her father, and the rest of the rebels, were working together.”

“It was a planned seduction,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “And you fell for it.”

Leo couldn’t deny it. “Yes, sir.”

“And that let you get lured into an ambush, and then forced into a knife-range engagement with a much heavier starship,” Commodore Blackthrone continued. “You trusted the wrong person because you were sleeping with his daughter.”

“There was no reason to expect treachery on such a scale,” Leo countered, stiffly. “And we had no reason, either, to expect the enemy would have ships that could stand up to us.”

“And you still have no idea where those ships came from,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “Correct?”

Leo scowled. His analysts had combed through the wreckage as well as every record they could find, trying to put together a trail leading back to the mysterious backers. They’d drawn a complete blank. The money didn’t appear to have come from Yangtze, and the ships themselves certainly couldn’t have. But where had they come from?

He gritted his teeth. “Yes, sir.”

“Which is a problem that will now bedevil my intelligence staff,” Commodore Blackthrone continued. “Who gave the rebels those ships and why?”

He went on before Leo could outline his list of suspects. “You have done well for yourself, and lived up to Valerian’s faith in you. However, it is clear to me that you require more seasoning before you can be entrusted with a command, a formal command, of your own. This sector is becoming more important to the Republic and you can no longer be allowed to play at being a fleet commander out here.”

Leo felt his heart sink. “Sir?”

“Accordingly, Lieutenant-Commander Blackthrone will be transferred to Waterhen as soon as possible,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “I trust you will make his assumption of the post an easy one.”

He smiled, coldly.

 

Good start..Put the bait down and set the hook. Really haven't done anything but set the background, BUT there are so many unanswered question that I am very much interested in which way it is going to go. Also left open the possibility of another book on what happened before this meeting. Damned with faint praise, but he succeeded where he was expected to fail. Made him the under dog already in the first chapter.

I have always loved the type stories that Baen Press published, emphasis on the man rather than the tech. Looking forward to seeing which head dominates in his future career path. So far open to question.

 

Can't wait for the rest!

 

Chapter Two

Leo felt as though he’d been punched in the belly.

He had known, intellectually, that he wasn’t the legal commanding officer of Waterhen. The post belonged to Captain Reginald Archibald, who had cared so little about such matters that he had stayed behind on Daybreak when his ship had been ordered to Yangtze, a man who was technically Leo’s CO even though they’d never met. Leo hadn’t worried much about the ship’s CO, after departing for Yangtze. Flower had assured him the older man would never leave the pleasure dens to travel all the way to the sector, just to take command, and Leo believed her. And yet …

It was hard to think clearly. Francis was technically Leo’s senior and if they were assigned to the same ship and chain of command he’d be the superior officer, but … a wave of pure rage threatened to overcome him, threatened to break through his impassive face and show his true feelings to Commodore Blackthrone. It had been Leo who had taken a broken-down starship, used as the dumping ground for personnel the navy couldn’t or wouldn’t discharge, and turn it into an effective warship. It had been Leo who had convinced the crew they could and would become great, if they carried out their duty; it had been Leo who had led them into a series of engagements, against pirates and rebels, that had earned them fame, respect, and prize money. It had been Leo … not Francis. Losing command to Captain Archibald was one thing. Losing it to Francis was quite another.

He gathered himself, unwilling to simply knuckle under. “Sir, with all due respect …”

“You are a very junior officer, who was only permitted to assume command of a starship because the legitimate commanding officer was unavailable,” Commodore Blackthrone said, cutting him off. “Your decisions show a certain degree of immaturity, unsurprising in a new graduate, and you require more seasoning before you become a commanding officer in your own right. You have been lucky, and that is a valuable trait to develop, but the real world doesn’t allow for a starship commander who acts like a holovid star rather than a genuine military officer. I cannot in good conscience leave you in command any longer.”

He paused. “You will, of course, remain on Waterhen.”

Leo gritted his teeth, unable to keep his feelings from showing. It was rare for a relieved CO to remain on his ship … certainly not when the vessel wasn’t heading home. The temptation to meddle in command matters, no longer their concern, would be irresistible. But it was different when an officer held the conn for a brief period. No one would expect the helmsman to transfer after being left with the bridge for an hour or two. And he … he might have been the de facto CO for nearly a year, but legally he was just an officer who happened to have been given the conn. There was no requirement to transfer him. Why should there be?

He cursed Francis mentally. The bastard really had found a nifty – and perfectly legal – way to take revenge. He would slip into Leo’s shoes, take command of the vessel he’d repaired and upgraded as best he could, and claim all the credit for their successes. God knew, piracy had been on the decline since Leo had seized a pirate base and arranged for every passing vessel to be boarded the moment it docked. It was safer, now, for individual starships to move around the sector, thanks to him. No doubt Francis would take credit for that too.

He might have gotten better over the years, Leo told himself, trying to convince himself. He has had four years of genuine naval experience.

Sure, his thoughts disagreed. And most of that experience was as a junior officer, under the command of his family or their clients.

He took a breath. “Sir, permission to speak freely?”

Commodore Blackthrone studied him for a long moment. “Granted.”

“I have been assigned to Waterhen, and this sector, for nearly a year,” Leo said. “I know both the ship and the surrounding stars in a manner Francis will be unable to match, at least for several months. He is not qualified to take command and …”

“On paper, neither are you,” Commodore Blackthrone pointed out. There was a hint of … something … in his tone that bothered Leo. “I understand your feelings. It is never easy to give up the command chair, even though you should never have had it. However, you do require seasoning before I can allow you to regain command. Furthermore, that is also true of Francis himself. He too requires a chance to learn, so he may seek promotion himself. In assisting him, you will also assist yourself.”

Leo rather doubted it. He already had a patron, although one hundreds of light years away. His mind raced, considering his options. Should he complain to his patron? It was never easy to know how such a man would react to a complaint, particularly one that sounded like whining or tattling. Leo was honest enough to admit his patron had good reason to be both proud and ashamed of him, and there was no way to know which emotion would hold sway at any moment. The commodore had sewn him up very nicely. Legally, he was entirely correct. Leo really shouldn’t have held command for so long.

And yet, I did well, Leo thought, bitterly. I did.

“Return to the ship,” Commodore Blackthrone ordered. “You can make the preparations for the transfer of command, before Francis reports onboard tomorrow. I expect you to do everything in your power to ensure he is warmly welcomed by the crew.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. It wasn’t precisely an order, but … Leo’s lips twitched helplessly. It had been hard enough when he had taken command, dealing with officers who thought him a jumped-up cadet and enlisted men who thought he wasn’t even in his teens, let alone out of them. Francis might have an easier time of it or he might not. His attitude was a great deal closer to Captain Archibald than the legendary Captain Feintuch. Or any of the other great naval heroes of Daybreak. “I’ll do my best.”

“I appreciate this is a disappointment,” Commodore Blackthrone said. He managed to sound sincere. “However, I am sure that if you continue to display the same competence you have shown over the last month, it will only be a matter of time before you return to the command chair. Dismissed.”

Leo saluted, then turned about and left the office. It was hard to keep his expression under control, hard to resist the urge to punch the nearest bulkhead as hard as he could. The need to vent his feelings was almost overpowering … he saw Francis outside and saw red, his fist twitching so violently that for a second he honestly thought he had punched Francis right in his too-handsome face. It would have ended very badly, and his court martial and death sentence would be the shortest formality on record, but he almost thought it would be worth the cost. If he …

“I’m sure you will serve me as you served Captain Archibald,” Francis said. He’d clearly known the fix was in, right from the start. The bastard had never been a competent cadet, and he’d kept making the mistakes he’d been supposed to get out of his system before starting his second year at the academy, but when it came to manipulating the system he was first rate. “I look forward to a long and happy career together.”

Leo gritted his teeth. They weren’t cadets any longer and technically they had the same rank … he supposed it must rankle Francis that Leo had been jumped all the way to Lieutenant-Commander without even leaving the academy. He wondered, idly, how much of the story Francis knew. It was hard enough to graduate as a Lieutenant, let alone a Lieutenant-Commander. Whatever story had been spread back home, anyone with any naval experience would suspect it was bullshit. Leo might have been the greatest cadet the academy had ever seen, but that didn’t mean he’d automatically be a great naval officer. There was a difference between theory and practice and if a cadet didn’t realise it during their third year they often discovered the truth the hard way.

I made valedictorian three years out of four, Leo recalled. Captain Feintuch made valedictorian all four years.

“I shall, of course, closely consul with my new XO,” Francis continued. “I do trust you’ll do your duty.”

“Of course,” Leo said. It was ironic to reflect he might have remained in command if he’d sat in orbit and done nothing, but he wasn’t the kind of person to abandon his career so easily. He had to be doing something, anything, and it had worked out for the sector. Besides, if he had done nothing, the rebels would likely have atomised his ship and blamed it on pirates. Or Beyonders. Or anyone, as long as it served his purposes. “I always have.”

“Good, good.” Francis patted him on the back. “I’m sure you’ll make a splendid XO.”

Perhaps I can find a way to get Captain Archibald out here, Leo thought, with a sudden savage intensity. The man was a colossal pervert, according to Flower, and Leo believed her. He’d abused his junior officers, male and female alike … Leo wondered just what he’d make of a young man as handsome as Francis. Or perhaps he’d see the name and start sucking up to him instead. At least Francis would no longer be in command.

“And if you do well, you’ll get a command of your own,” Francis added. “I’ll see to it.”

“I’m sure you will,” Leo said, with heavy sarcasm. Francis might be a Blackthrone, but he wasn’t a particularly high-ranking one. He wasn’t a particularly skilled patron either, if half the rumours were true. Leo didn’t want to believe them, but he sort of did. It took a special kind of shithead to promise a younger cadet a promotion if she slept with him, and then swear blind he’d made no such promise, yet Francis was such a shithead. “Can we get that in writing?”

Francis reddened, his eyes flickering from side to side to make sure they weren’t being watched before he rounded on Leo. “Listen very carefully,” he growled. “I have had enough of your cheek. Your superiors have had enough of your cheek. I have orders to take command of your ship and …”

Leo smiled. “My ship?”

“And ensure that matters are put on a proper footing from now onwards,” Francis continued, ignoring the jibe. “I don’t have time to deal with a jumped-up cadet who should still be a midshipman and …”

“Pot. Kettle. Black.”

Francis caught himself with a very visible effort. “At least I have four years of actual naval experience,” he snarled. “And I am your superior officer!”

“By a month,” Leo pointed out. It wasn’t wise to torment Francis, not when he would be Leo’s commanding officer within a day, but … he couldn’t help himself. “If your promotion had been delayed by a few weeks, I would be your superior.”

“But you’re not, are you?” Francis looked furious. “Are you?”

Leo shrugged. His promotion was real, even though he’d been moved up the ranks too quickly to avoid suspicion he’d earned the rank through less than savoury means. He might not be promoted again in a hurry, something that wasn't uncommon when someone was given a promotion ahead of time, but the rank was real. It had to gnaw at Francis that Leo had come so close to having more time in grade than him, despite an entire clan of political manipulators pulling the strings to ensure Francis was promoted at the earliest opportunity. Leo had no idea what sort of deals had been struck, behind the scenes, but he hoped it was worth it. Francis lacked the maturity to be a commanding officer.

“You’re the one who went to bed with a rebel,” Francis continued. “How is that for poor judgement?”

Leo bit down on several sharp answers. “She didn’t have I AM A REBEL tattooed on her arse.”

Francis flinched at the deliberate crudity. “There’ll be none of that on my ship.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said, deadpan.

“That’s what happens when we get cadets from the docks,” Francis said. Leo could hear the sneer. “They are crude, lacking proper breeding.”

“I may be crude,” Leo said, “but it wasn’t me who talked a younger cadet into bed.”

Francis clenched his fists. For a moment, Leo thought Francis was on the verge of actually hitting him. They weren’t in the dojo, where junior officers were allowed to indulge in off-the-record punch-ups, if they couldn’t settle their differences any other way, but … he tried not to smirk as he shifted his weight, entirely sure Francis would never accept a challenge to meet Leo for an informal sparring match. If he threw a punch now …

“I am in command of the ship, and you will respect me as such,” Francis hissed. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said, truthfully. Francis hadn’t grown or matured in the last four years. That was what had become clear. “I look forward to welcoming you with proper ceremony.”

Francis eyed him, suspiciously. “Get back to the ship,” he ordered. “I’ll board tomorrow.”

He turned and strode away. Leo resisted the urge to make a rude gesture at his back. It was technically against regulations to leave a visitor alone on a naval vessel, although Leo was a naval officer in his own right rather than someone who might try to sneak around to gather intelligence or indulge in acts of sabotage. He made a mental note of it for later, then walked back to the hatch. The pilot was sitting in the rear, reading a tablet. Leo almost envied him. He didn’t have to worry about anything, but flying his craft from place to place.

Of course, some of those places might be trying to kill him, Leo reflected. He took his seat, buckled himself in, and took his own datapad from his belt, tapping a quick message to Flower as the shuttle came to life. She could arrange for the rest of the de facto command team to meet him in the office, when he returned to his ship. The ship. But at least he doesn’t have to worry about losing his command to a arsehole with a silver spoon jammed so far down his mouth …

He put the thought firmly out of his mind and keyed the datapad, downloading Francis’s service record from Pompey. There were no real surprises, certainly nothing he hadn’t already known … although there was a certain blandness to some of the notes, suggesting there were either classified sections he couldn’t access or, perhaps more likely, that Francis’s former CO hadn’t been willing to go out on a limb for him. That was odd, given his family connections. Daybreak was better than most at keeping nepotism under control, but there were limits. Anything less than a glowing and very specific report was extremely suspicious.

Maybe he just sat on his ass and did nothing, Leo thought. It might be better than the alternative.

His lips twisted. He’d heard stories of a commanding officer who was quite happy to stay in his cabin, letting his XO do all the work. He hadn’t believed them, even after hearing of Captain Archibald. Waterhen had been assigned to makework duties in the home system, and there had been no reason – if Leo were feeling charitable towards his legal CO – to assume the captain would ever have to do anything beyond signing a few papers. A commander on deployment had to show more interest in his ship and crew, right? And a midshipman? People would talk if he lay in his bunk and did nothing. Probably.

He frowned as he tried to download more files. There were no operational orders for Waterhen, but that probably wasn’t as worrying as he feared. Waterhen hadn’t been part of the task force and technically she still wasn't, at least until she was formally reassigned. Not, he suspected, that anyone would consider it anything more than a mere formality. Commodore Blackthrone was the senior officer in the sector, as well as the CO of the task force. And Waterhen didn’t have any orders isolating her from the rest of the deployment.

The ship came into view as the shuttle neared, a blocky shape that looked crude and unfinished compared to the gleaming battlecruiser. There was nothing subtle about Waterhen, nothing to suggest her designers had been motivated by anything more than cold practicality. Her engineer had patched the hull repeatedly, welding hull plates cannibalised from other vessels into place and adding a dozen weapons and sensor nodes that had been captured from pirate crews or simply put together from spare parts in the machine shop. There would be problems if anyone carried out a proper inspection, Leo reflected, although the fact Waterhen had needed to operate a long way from a proper fleet base should work in his favour. The IG might balk at some of the more creative solutions to their problems, but better a makeshift repair than leaving his ship unprepared for deployment. That was a court martial offense and rightly so.

A flash of bitterness shot through him. Waterhen was his, in every sense of the word. He had taken command, rallied her crew, repaired her hull and taken her into battle. She was his ship. And yet, Francis had taken her … no, he’d been given her, as easily as a rich father might buy his daughter a fancy aircar. Leo had met too many young girls like that, when he’d been a young man. They could get everything from their fathers …

The ship is mine, he thought, coldly. And she will remain so.

But in truth, he feared that was no longer true.

 

Chapter Three

“You’re no longer in command?”

It was a mark of how far they’d come, Leo reflected ruefully, that Lieutenant Stuart Halloran sounded honestly shocked. The older man had been unfortunate enough to be assigned to Waterhen as her de facto third officer and he had had good reason to think he’d be the XO or even the CO, after the previous XO had managed to get herself assigned to an asteroid mining station rather than stay on the outdated ship for a moment longer. Lieutenant Halloran would have been more than human if he hadn’t resented Leo taking command, not least because Leo outranked him without climbing up the ladder, and it had taken them some time to learn how to work together. Leo had written Lieutenant Halloran a glowing report, which might not have worked out in his favour. God alone knew what Commodore Blackthrone would make of it.

“Apparently so.” Leo had to fight to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Francis Blackthrone will assume command, tomorrow morning.”

His eyes flickered around the chamber. Lieutenant Halloran was a conventional naval officer, or as conventional as one could be on Waterhen. Sergeant-Major Ramjet Boothroyd was much older, his face scarred with a combination of decades in the Marine Corps followed by requirement and a simple lack of proper rejuvenation treatment. And Flower … her beautiful face betrayed no hint of her true nature, an executive assistant whose talents had been grossly wasted by Captain Archibald. Leo had often wondered if he’d been ordered to buy Flower’s contract by his family, in hopes of him letting Flower make something of him. If that had been the aim, it had failed. Captain Archibald had made absolutely no use of her talents whatsoever.

“That’s not right,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “You did well and …”

“I wouldn’t say that too loudly,” Boothroyd said, dryly. “Bulkheads have ears.”

Leo winced, inwardly. Commanding Waterhen had been an eye-opening experience in more ways than one, from the realities underlying Daybreak’s mission to reunify the human race – even if it didn’t want to be reunified – to the simple fact that the system was not as meritocratic as he had been told. Captain Archibald and Francis were both grim reminders that some officers had been promoted through connections, rather than actual accomplishment or even time in grade. It was hard not to feel bitter and cynical, even though it was a little hypocritical. He’d been promoted for reasons other than merit too.

But at least I did a good job, he told himself. He knew he’d done well. Francis hasn’t commanded anything larger than a shuttlecraft!

“I don’t think it matters what’s right or not,” he said, dryly. “Legally, Commodore Blackthrone is quite right.”

He sighed, inwardly. He’d spent hours, after Waterhen had left Daybreak, reading through the rules and regulations very, very, carefully. There was a surprising amount of flexibility, when it came to a junior officer assuming command, but nothing that guaranteed the officer would be allowed to retain command indefinitely. The handful of possible exceptions, if he squinted at the text and used his imagination, were simply inapplicable. A lieutenant had taken command of a battleship after everyone above him in the chain of command had been killed, then kept command long enough to get the hideously damaged vessel back to the breakers, but that wasn’t any help to Leo. Waterhen wasn’t so badly damaged she needed to be scrapped.

“We will do everything in our power to ensure it goes smoothly,” he continued. “The two of us” – he nodded to Lieutenant Halloran – “will be sharing a cabin. I dare say our new commander will want my space.”

“Or Captain Archibald’s cabin,” Flower said, quietly.

Leo grimaced. He’d gone through the cabin once, when he’d assumed command, and then left it sealed. It wasn’t his space, and it was important to maintain the legal fiction that Captain Archibald was still in command. He wondered, idly, if Francis would give much of a damn about such niceties. It wasn’t as if anyone expected Captain Archibald to return and assume command.

“We shall see,” he said. He glanced at Boothroyd. “We will, of course, welcome our new commander with pomp and ceremony.”

“Of course,” Boothroyd echoed. “Full dress uniform?”

Lieutenant Halloran snorted. “Do we even have full dress?”

“There’s some dress uniforms in storage,” Flower said. She served as the ship’s logistics officer, a vague rank that concealed a number of sins. It hadn’t been easy to get the supplies they needed to keep the ship going, let alone the rest of the tiny squadron, and Flower had been more scrounger and fixer than supply officer. Leo wondered, idly, if Francis would have the wit to examine the records, what there was of them. There were plenty of little irregularities he could use to hang Leo, if he bothered to check. “Does he merit a formal welcoming?”

Leo’s lips twitched. “I’m sure he’ll demand one,” he said. He’d never received a formal welcome himself, but … it didn’t matter. “It might be good for him.”

Or the exact opposite, he thought, in the privacy of his own mind. Francis was going to be in command for the first time in his life, operating without anyone looking over his shoulder and smoothing the path for him. If we feed his ego a little, we could give him more than enough rope to hang himself.

He found himself torn between two contradictory thoughts. It would be easy to screw with Francis’s mind, mess up his career … but this was the navy, not some childish game. It wasn’t even a simulated engagement, where one could gamble everything on a cunning plan that would likely fail in the real world. If he let his hatred for Francis get in the way of his naval service … he sighed inwardly. He owed it to his crew to stand between them and Francis, to serve as the intermediary every captain required and the protector the crew needed. And if that meant swallowing his pride …

“This won’t be easy, but we’ve been through worse,” he added. “The rebels nearly blew us away.”

“We’re allowed to shoot back at rebels,” Boothroyd said, dryly.

“Yeah,” Leo agreed. He glanced at Lieutenant Halloran. “If you have anything in your quarters you don’t want me seeing, get rid of it now.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said.

“I’ll get the lads ready,” Boothroyd added. “If he wants a welcome, he’ll get one.”

Leo nodded, dismissing them both. Lieutenant Halloran deserved better … so did Boothroyd. God alone knew what Francis would make of him. Leo might not have bent any rules, when he had recruited the older and far more experienced groundpounder, but he had bent them into a pretzel and Boothroyd himself had done worse, when he’d picked recruits for the ship’s marines. It wasn’t technically illegal, yet … he shook his head, all too aware he’d done the best he could under the circumstances. If the Admiralty had assigned him a platoon or two of marines, it would have been a great deal easier.

Flower waited until the hatch had hissed closed, then leaned forward. “Are you alright?”

“Just pissed,” Leo said. He could be honest with her, for all sorts of reasons. It helped that he knew she gave good advice. “I … fuck it.”

“That bad?” Flower cocked her head. “You want me to see what I can get from the files?”

“Or go out drinking with some file clerk and see what he has to say,” Leo said. The rebels had subverted a handful of staffers who were so low-ranked they’d been literally beneath suspicion. It had worked out pretty well for them, at least until the mystery started to unravel. “I don’t think he has any real surprises in his file. Some toady at the academy let him graduate as a Lieutenant, some other toady promoted him to Lieutenant-Commander … and then assigned him to his uncle’s staff.”

“Odd,” Flower said, mildly. “Do you think there was something more to it?”

Leo’s first impulse was to say no. Francis Blackthrone had no qualms about using his family connections to climb the ladder, and if that meant being a Lieutenant-Commander on his uncle’s staff … he frowned as the oddity struck him, a moment later. It was one thing to promote someone and then assign him to an asteroid mining station, or somewhere else where he would be out of sight and mind, but quite another to put him in a position that would inevitably attract attention. The Old Boys Network was a very real thing, yet so too were subtle penalties aimed at any patron who pushed his client too far too fast. Francis being assigned to a commodore’s staff was a very clear hint he didn’t have what it took to be a starship officer, and ordering him to take command of Waterhen was something that could easily blow up in his uncle’s face. Hell, ordering Leo to take command could have been disastrous too …

Except Waterhen was worse than an asteroid mining station, Leo thought. The last XO certainly thought so.

He rubbed his forehead. “I hate politics.”

“You must take an interest in politics, because politics will take an interest in you,” Flower said. “It already has.”

Leo frowned. Could someone have planned for Francis to relieve him all along? It was possible … no, it was nothing more than an insane conspiracy theory. Being a little paranoid was sensible, but … in order to have Francis outrank Leo, his enemies would have to have outright precognition. There had been no way to predict Leo would graduate as a Lieutenant-Commander, let alone be assigned to Waterhen. Or anything else that had happened over the last year. If Leo had followed a normal career path, he would still be a Lieutenant. Or even busted down to Midshipman. It was far from uncommon for cadets who graduated as Lieutenants.

“Perhaps they just decided to take advantage of Francis being out here,” he said, finally. It was the only theory that made a lick of sense. If the commodore had wanted to relieve Leo, or at least put someone else in the ship’s command chair, he wasn’t short of possible candidates. Pompey’s XO would be delighted to be promoted to Captain, even if he had to assume command of an outdated ship. It would make it easier for him to transfer a year or two down the line. “Or maybe they set out to ruin me.”

He scowled. “If so, why?”

“I’ll look into it,” Flower promised. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Leo grinned. “It may be too late for that,” he said. “But we’ll see.”

He stood and opened the drawer under his bed, silently relieved he’d never bothered to pick up more than a handful of souvenirs. There had been no time, really, and the sector wasn’t a big tourist destination. Not yet. A couple of photographs from distant worlds, a wood carving of Waterhen from a planet he’d saved from pirates, a set of images of his family … not much else, not really. It left him with mixed feelings as he lifted his clothes and dumped them on the bed, sorting them into order before packing them into a knapsack. There weren’t many of those either. He’d never bothered to order more than he needed from the ship’s stores, let alone commission perfectly-tailored uniforms from a tailor. Senior officers were expected to put some of their wages towards proper outfits, although Leo had never seen the point. It wasn’t as the navy was short of money. If it wanted him dressed up like a tame monkey, it could damn well pay for the uniform and tailoring itself.

“Francis will probably complain I didn’t bother to purchase a proper dress uniform,” he muttered. “If we are going to welcome him properly …”

Flower gave him an odd look. “Pardon?”

“I never saw the need to get a properly tailored uniform,” Leo explained. “Francis will bitch about it.”

“His family are too wealthy to have any empathy for anyone who has to count the pennies one by one,” Flower agreed. “You can have one of Captain Archibald’s uniforms resized, if you want. I can do it for you.”

Leo smiled. “You’re a tailor as well as everything else?”

Flower smiled, placidly. “You never know what you might need to know until you need it and by then it might be too late,” she said. “I can be a tailor, or anything else you might happen to need.”

“Don’t tell Francis that,” Leo warned. “How do you intend to explain your presence on this ship?”

“Supply officer.” Flower battered her eyelashes, exaggerating the motion so much it was hard to take it seriously. “I just wink and smile and we get a humongous discount.”

Leo mock-shuddered. “Don’t do that,” he teased. “On you, it looks unnatural.”

“That’s the point,” Flower countered. “I don’t want you taking it seriously.”

Leo shrugged, then finished packing his knapsack. It felt strange to have all his possessions wrapped up, as if his entire life had been compressed down to nothing and then crushed into his bag. He supposed he was lucky he hadn’t bothered to hang posters on the wall – the less said about the paintings Captain Archibald had collected the better – or anything else, but still … he shook his head. He would be back, he was sure. Francis didn’t need help to make a fool of himself. He was perfectly capable of doing it for himself.

Flower stood to allow him to strip the bed. “You do realise he’s going to want someone to do this for him?”

“I’m sure he will,” Leo said. “But he’ll be out of luck.”

He smirked. A captain could request a steward, and it was fairly common on capital ships, but Waterhen was too small for her commander to have someone dedicated to his needs. Francis could cope. There were no servants in the academy, no one paid to make the beds or mop the floors and woe betide any cadets who didn’t keep their chambers as clean as possible. He’d been assured conditions were even worse than midshipman quarters on a starship, just to make sure the cadets knew what was expected of them. Francis had had great fun inspecting the chambers, Leo recalled, pointing out flecks of dust that should have been invisible to the naked eye. Hadn’t he gone through the same experience himself? Or had his family name protected him?

He had to have learnt how to carry out an inspection at some point, Leo thought. And after having to clean his own quarters repeatedly, after his inspector found dust, he knew how to do it to his juniors.

“Make sure he doesn’t bully someone into the role,” Flower said. “Unless you want me to do it, keep an eye on him …”

Leo winced. “Not really.”

He shook his head. “What a fucking mess.”

“Yes.” Flower leaned against the bulkhead. “What happened between you?”

“He was the senior cadet, honouring the academy tradition of hazing the juniors brutally to prepare them for the rigours of deep-space service,” Leo said. He’d heard all the justifications. He just didn’t believe them. “I was a junior from Cold Harbour, the lowest of the low … but with test scores that ensured I’d be offered a place. He never liked me, so he kept trying to make my life miserable. It didn’t really work. I’d met too many genuine monsters in Cold Harbour.”

He shrugged. “One day, I stepped into the simulator to face an opposing commander. I decided to be clever and came up with a tactic that really shouldn’t have worked – and wouldn’t, if the enemy had bothered to take even the slightest precautions. He could have set me up and beaten me so soundly the instructors would have to invent some new numbers, just so they could give me the proper number of demerits. Instead, I kicked his ass. It was the most complete and one-sided victory in history, the sort of victory you never see in the real world unless there is a staggering tech imbalance.

“I didn’t realise it was him commanding the other side. Not until he called me out for it.”

Flower smiled. “Oh dear. What happened?”

Leo shrugged. “He brought it on himself. Really. If he’d taken a little more care … I imagine the instructors pointed it out. It’s one thing to make a deliberate mistake in hopes of finding out if the cadet will spot it, quite another to screw up so badly you lose everything. He was spitting mad and he insulted my mother. I hit him.”

His mood darkened. He didn’t care if he were insulted by someone like Francis, someone who would never get anywhere in life without his family. But an insult to his mother could not be borne. Nor too could any suggestion his mother had been sleeping with his patron. That was unforgivable.

“I got yelled at, and caned, and yelled at again … he graduated as a Lieutenant a few weeks later and I never saw him again,” Leo said, reflectively. “Not until now. He didn’t actually say much of anything to me between the incident and graduation. I hoped he’d learnt his lesson. I guess I was wrong.”

“It looks that way,” Flower said. “Chin up. You’ll make it.”

“Thanks,” Leo said, dryly. “Perhaps I should put in for a transfer.”

“Better not,” Flower advised. “He’ll be the one signing off on it.”

Leo nodded, coldly, then picked up his knapsack. He’d had trouble sleeping alone at first, after sharing a dorm with other cadets, but now … he sighed, not bothering to hide it. He’d been through worse. Really. Losing the compartment was nothing, compared to losing command. And losing it to Francis, of all people …

I’ll be back, he promised himself. Just you wait and see.

 

Chapter Four

Waterhen lacked a proper shuttlebay, an issue that had sometimes caused problems during her patrols around the sector. There was nothing that could be done about it, short of tearing out dozens of vital compartments to make the space for even a small shuttlebay, and Leo and his crew had learnt to work around it. Besides, it was quicker to launch a shuttle attached to the hull than open the shuttlebay doors and launch the craft into space. But it was still awkward in so many ways.

He sighed inwardly as he squirmed in his dress uniform, borrowed from Captain Archibald’s supply and carefully refitted by Flower. The original outfit had been cunningly disguised to hide the wearer’s paunch, ensuring he looked thin – at least until he got undressed – while ensuring Leo looked as if he’d slimmed down with remarkable speed or surgical intervention, at least until Flower had gone to work. It was still far from perfect, and she’d had to remove a great deal of gold braid neither Captain Archibald nor himself had been entitled to wear, but it was better than the alternative. His eyes swept up and down the welcoming party, feeling a twinge of unease. It was one thing to take part in such ceremonies, but quite another to organise them. There were so many different interpretations of regulations, when it came to welcoming a new commanding officer, that it was very easy to make a mistake.

And let’s hope Francis brushed up on his ceremonial procedures during the long flight from his former post, Leo thought, unkindly. He’ll have needed to do something to keep himself busy for twenty minutes or so.

He schooled his face into a blank mask as he felt the faint but unmistakable sensation of a shuttle latching onto the far side of the hatch. Francis had been on the commodore’s staff. Organising such affairs would have been part of his job, unless he’d passed them on to someone else and then taken the credit. Leo wouldn’t have cared to bet against it. There was an old joke about a test for young officers, their seniors asking them how to do something, and the right answer being order a sergeant to get it done. It had been funny, at the time. It wasn’t so funny now.

The hatch hissed open. Showtime.

“Attention on deck,” Leo said. It had been a long time since he’d practiced giving the command, but it came naturally. Normally, junior officers were on a rota to carry out the welcoming ceremony, something else he’d skipped when he’d been promoted all the way to Lieutenant-Commander. “Present arms!”

The welcoming party straightened as Francis stepped through the hatch, wearing a dress uniform of his own. His face was set in an expression of smug superiority, his eyes narrowing briefly as he glanced across the line of faces. Leo had inspected everyone carefully, making sure there wasn’t anything out of place. The instructors at the academy had been hyper-criutial, pointing out everything from cadets who’d forgotten to shave to enlisted men who were wearing the wrong uniforms, something they’d done purposefully, If they’d been noticed before the ceremony began …

“RSS Waterhen,” Leo thundered. “Arriving!”

He braced himself. Would Francis play his role? Or would he try to bluff his way through? Or … he had said he wanted to be welcomed with full ceremony, as though he was the legal CO as well as the de facto commander. It would be hilarious if he’d forgotten his role in the military play, although the humour wouldn’t last long.

Francis straightened. “By order of Commodore Blackthrone, Governor and Viceroy of the Yangtze Sector, I assume command of RSS Waterhen,” he said. It wasn’t quite the formal wording, but that was for legal commanders. It might have ended badly if Francis had used the ceremonial wording, something he wasn’t entitled too. His eyes flickered to Leo. “I relieve you.”

Leo spoke, tonelessly. “I stand relieved.”

A rustle ran through the group. Leo felt a twinge of something he didn’t care to look at too closely. He’d told the crew that a new senior officer was arriving, and that officer would be assuming command, and the news – Flower had told him, later – hadn’t gone down very well. The crew had been reluctant to accept Leo at first, after Captain Archibald, and it had taken some time for them to get used to him. The bar had been set so low it was practically on the deck, and yet …

Francis’s face darkened, just for a second. Or perhaps Leo was imagining it. Francis had never given much of a damn about anyone else, certainly someone who wasn’t related to him or high-ranking enough not to have to care about Francis’s family connections, but he might have learnt a little in the last four years. Stranger things had happened. A crew who wasn’t personally loyal to their CO wouldn’t actively sabotage him, but they wouldn’t give him their all either. Francis had done nothing to earn the loyalty of this crew. Was he smart enough to know it?

“All standing orders remain in effect, until otherwise noted,” Francis continued. There was a hint of pique in his tone. “We will continue our quest to eradicate privacy from this sector, to establish Daybreak’s primacy throughout the local planets and stars, and lay the groundwork for the full incorporation of this sector into the Daybreak Republic. This ship may be old, but under my command she will go on to play a full role in the reunification of the human race and the prevention of another interstellar war …”

Leo kept his face blank as Francis droned on, making a speech that probably hadn’t come from his family’s speechwriters. Rhetoric was taught in schools, with children urged to study the great speakers and learn how they convinced others to follow their lead, but he had a feeling Francis had never been a good student. The speech was too long and cumbersome, too long to hold anyone’s attention. His old tutors had said, more than once, that it was a capital mistake to make your audience bored, resentful or angry. They would often vote against you out of spite. Here … who knew?

“We shall accomplish great things together,” Francis finished. He liked the sound of his own voice. “Mr XO, remain with me. Everyone else, dismissed.”

His eyes flickered back and forth, before focusing on Leo as the rest of the welcoming party filed out of the compartment. He hadn’t saluted the flag. Leo was tempted to point it out, although he knew it would just cause trouble. Francis seemed to have gathered himself in the last few hours, no doubt after being given a pep talk by his uncle. Leo wondered, suddenly, if the Blackthrones had a rivalry with the Sullivan clan. It would explain a great deal, if they did. Leo’s exploits had reflected well on his patron. Cutting him down to size would put his patron in an invidious position.

Francis sniffed. “There’s a faint ordure in the air.”

“That’ll be the air circulation filters,” Leo said. He should have expected Francis would notice that. “We’re currently in the middle of a maintenance cycle, in which we have to modify civilian-grade filters to fit our systems. It’ll take us some time to complete the cycle.”

“Really?” Francis seemed unimpressed. “And you can’t just draw supplies from the naval depot?”

Leo cocked his head, innocently. “What depot?”

Francis glared. “The depot established here!”

“Oh. That depot?” Leo caught himself before he could push harder. “The majority of the pre-placed supplies were stolen by the rebels, as we discovered after the fact, and we have worked our way through the majority of the supplies we brought with us. The local fabbers are incapable of producing compatible filters without reprogramming, and that would limit the development of local industry. I decided to modify civilian filters without putting demands on local producers …”

“The navy has priority,” Francis said. “Always.”

“The navy has orders to foster the development of local industry,” Leo countered. “And restricting their growth will do the exact opposite.”

Francis conceded the point with a shrug. “Very well,” he said. “Show me to my cabin.”

“As you wish,” Leo said. “Follow me.”

He tried not to feel anything beyond bland attention to duty as Francis shadowed him through a maze of corridors, constantly pointing out issues that were impossible or simply too costly to fix. The corridor plating looked as patchwork as the hull, thanks to a lack of proper replacement planting, but it worked … Leo had no qualms about trusting his life to it. A number of open hatches, left accessible so the crew could swap vital components without delay, drew sardonic noises from his companion, although he didn’t look inside to check if the components were actually approved by the navy. Some were, some had been purchased or captured and reconfigured to fit Waterhen. The ship’s age told against her, Leo knew all too well. There were quite a few components that simply weren’t produced any longer, not on Daybreak. Or anywhere else.

The hatch hissed open. Francis snorted. “What is this?”

“My cabin.” Leo corrected himself a moment later. “Your cabin.”

Francis made a rude noise. “This isn’t the captain’s cabin, Morningstar.”

“No, sir,” Leo said. He turned to face Francis, keeping his voice as maddeningly innocent as possible. “Captain Archibald has not yet moved out of his cabin.”

“Not yet …” Francis started again. “He’s still on the ship?”

Leo managed, somehow, to keep his face still. That would have been hilarious, a routine right out of Commander Blackadder, in which the character was forced to keep his idiot of a captain from making deadly mistakes without exposing his shortcomings to his superiors. The show was frowned upon for being subversive, and there had been calls to ban it on Daybreak, despite which it had one hell of a cult following. He wondered, idly, if Francis had ever watched the show. It was unlikely, but possible.

“No,” Leo said. “He’s on Daybreak. But he is still the legal commander of this ship.”

Francis reddened. “Are you telling me …”

“That is the legal position, as outlined by Commodore Blackthrone,” Leo said. “Captain Archibald is still the legal CO.”

“He should be arrested for desertion and put in front of a court martial,” Francis muttered. It was the first thing he’d said, ever, that had Leo’s wholehearted agreement. “Did he ever set foot on his ship?”

“I believe he travelled to Daybreak two months before I was assigned to this ship and never actually returned,” Leo said. “No one was inclined to question his absence. He might come back.”

Francis snorted. “Were we not taught that certain matters had to be reported to the IG? Such as a CO deserting his command?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said, neutrally.

“And?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo repeated.

He sighed inwardly. Francis wouldn’t understand. How could he? His family name was a sword and a shield, a powerful weapon he could use to advance himself and a defence against the spite and hatred of jealous enemies, even those who technically outranked him. He had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, a degree of wealth and privilege so intense he literally couldn’t imagine what it was like to be without it. He was at no risk from a man like Captain Archibald, no matter the gulf between their ranks, and the hell of it was that, if he had been a good man, he could have done the XO’s traditional job of shielding the crew from a tyrannical captain. But instead …

Sure, the old XO could have reported her CO’s absence and technically she should have, Leo reflected. But the last thing she wanted was him ordered back to his post.

Francis said nothing for a long moment, then scowled. “Take me to the captain’s cabin.”

“Yes, sir.” Leo led him through two hatches and then stopped in front of the third hatch. “The compartment has remained sealed since our departure from Daybreak.”

“I do hope he didn’t leave a little surprise for unwanted guests,” Francis said. Perhaps he had been watching the comedies after all. “That would be quite awkward.”

Leo shrugged, and pressed his hand against the sensor. The hatch hissed open. A faint whiff of perfume drifted out, the lights coming on a moment later. Leo had been shocked when he’d seen it for the first time, half-convinced he was stepping into a cross between Aladdin’s Cave and a particularly high-class brothel, and he was depressingly unsurprised by Francis’s lack of surprise. He’d probably seen worse. He probably didn’t see anything wrong with them either.

He stepped aside to allow Francis to enter, allowing his eyes to wander over the compartment. It had been refurbished two years ago, the bulkheads stripped down to the point they’d explode into fragments if the internal compensators started to lose power. Leo had ordered them inspected carefully to ensure there was no risk to the rest of the ship, then left them in place. If the captain wanted to live in quarters with bulkheads that could easily become oversized antipersonnel mines, that was his problem. Whoever had done the refit clearly hadn’t expected any sort of acceleration. A slight shift in the compensator field would ruin every artwork in the cabin.

“And you just left this compartment sealed up?” Francis sounded incredulous. “Why didn’t you move the artworks to storage?”

“Captain Archibald is still this ship’s legal commanding officer,” Leo said. “I …”

Francis rounded on him. “Will you please stop saying that?”

“Yes, sir.” Leo hid his amusement. “It is technically illegal to remove anyone’s possessions as long as they have a legal right to be on the ship. There was no grounds for doing so, at least until the captain was finally relieved of command. Which hasn’t yet happened.”

“Get a crew up here and get this shit put into storage,” Francis ordered, curtly. “Somewhere on the planet below. It must be safe now.”

“Certainly, sir,” Leo said. He tapped the order into his datapad, then held it out. “Can I get a thumbprint?”

Francis glowered, but pressed his thumb against the reader anyway. Leo kept his face completely blank. The order wasn’t precisely illegal, he thought, but it was going to be an interesting debate if the matter ever reached a courtroom, one that would keep the military’s legal team busy for months or years. And make a great deal of money for civilian lawyers, if the matter got that far.

His lips twisted. “Might I also suggest shipping them back to Daybreak as soon as possible? There is nothing to be gained by leaving them on Yangtze.”

“If he wants them back, he can come get them,” Francis said. He stepped into the next compartment and stopped, dead. “Did he have a companion?”

“Not that I’m aware,” Leo said. Flower didn’t count, which suggested all kinds of worrying things about the ghostly captain. Captain Archibald hadn’t taken her to bed, despite owning her contract, and … Leo would have thought it the mark of a decent man, if the CO had shown any hint of actually being decent. “He spent much of his time in the pleasure dens.”

“But was still aware enough to sign off on requests for supplies,” Francis said. “Or did you somehow obtain his command keys?”

“I suspect he didn’t bother to do more than sign the requests,” Leo said, carefully. The fact Flower had used the codes to get what the ship needed was a secret he had no intention of sharing. “It wouldn’t be out of character.”

“Duly noted.” Francis was still staring at the bed. “Who knows what we can do with this space?”

Leo shrugged. The bed was easily big enough for two or three full-grown adults. There was no reason Francis couldn’t keep a companion in the cabin if he wanted, although it would be a breach of regulations. He wasn’t the captain … Leo was tempted to point it out, again, and then put the thought aside. He didn’t really want Commodore Blackthrone to relieve Captain Archibald in absentia. It would lead rapidly and inevitably to someone else, probably Francis, being promoted into the command chair. And that would doom his dream of returning to his post.

“You won’t have much time to do more than rest,” he said, finally. “There’s always something to do on a ship this size, from simple tactical sims and training to repair and maintenance work.”

Francis gave him an odd look. “You handle it yourself?”

“I had to know every last detail of this ship’s operations,” Leo said, a little stung. The crew wasn’t big enough to keep the officers from doing their share of the work. He had no qualms about doing everything from inspecting the mishmash of components to even scrubbing the decks. “The original plans are out of date. Half the stuff they show has been replaced and most of the rest isn’t where it was. If you don’t know what you have, and what you can do with it, you won’t know what you can rely on when push comes to shove.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Francis snapped.

He took a breath. “While I familiarise myself with this ship, you will continue routine operations and preparations for our next patrol,” he added. “We will be expected to depart orbit shortly.”

You mean, you want me to do all the work, Leo thought. Charming.

“My uncle expects great things from us,” Francis said. “And there will be rewards aplenty for those who do well.”

“Of course, sir,” Leo said, hiding his disbelief. “In order to familiarise yourself, would you like me to give you the files? They contain all the required information.”

“Of course,” Francis echoed. “And when I have read them, you can give me a tour of my ship.”

 

Chapter Five

“I found this in the captain’s closet,” Francis said, two days later. “What do you have to say for yourself?

Leo sighed inwardly. Francis had spent most of his time in his cabin reading reports and complaining about paperwork that hadn’t been updated because Leo and his crew had had a near-endless series of problems to handle before they turned into outright disasters. Leo had been taught the importance of keeping records straight, and documenting everything he did so his successor wasn’t caught by surprise by a particularly creative piece of repair work, but there were limits. Francis had never served in a position of independent command, perhaps not even a brief period of detached duty, and it showed. He certainly seemed to expect Leo to have been filing paperwork even as photon bursts and laser blasts flashed past his head.

He frowned as he eyed the datapad. It was nicely anonymous, suspiciously so. A civilian model, remarkably high-end, designed for businessmen who were deployed to corporate officers on uncivilised worlds. One of millions, if not billions. Captain Archibald owning one was odd, but not unprecedented. Leo hadn’t given it a second thought, when he’d checked the cabin before sealing it. The datapad hadn’t seemed important.

“It contains some of the most disgusting porn that isn’t outrightly illegal,” Francis said, waving the datapad as if it were a gun. “Why didn’t you report it to superior authority?”

Leo swallowed several sharp answers. The datapad had belonged to the captain. If he’d taken command after the captain’s death or incapacity, he would have had a legal right and responsibility to check the datapad for orders that might not have been uploaded into the ship’s datacore, but instead his command had been trapped in legal limbo and there’d been no reason to suspect the Admiralty might have given Captain Archibald sealed orders. Leo had seen their orders, issued before he’d been assigned to Waterhen. Captain Archibald’s private datapad had never been a matter of great concern. It had been left in the sealed cabin until now.

“There was no reason to inspect the cabin, let alone the captain’s datapad,” Leo said, finally. He didn’t want to know what sort of porn was on it. The navy had never been fond of pornography and possessing anything more than nude images and videos was asking for trouble, even if some poor crewman’s private stash didn’t cross the line into something outrightly illegal. “It would be a gross breach of privacy.”

“And in this case, it might well have been justified,” Francis pointed out. “This material” – he waved the datapad under Leo’s nose – “is against regulations.”

“In which case, I suggest you forward the datapad and your complaints to the redcaps, sir,” Leo said. He hadn’t had much sleep over the last two days, not least because Francis had refused to let him return to the XO’s cabin. The spiteful bastard was trying to put Leo in his place. “The matter is none of my concern.”

Francis glowered, his mind clearly weighing up the pros and cons. He might get a reward for exposing a captain who possessed such material, but it would also earn him some powerful enemies. Captain Archibald’s family were clearly looking out for him, if he hadn’t been arrested and put in front of a court martial board for not returning to his ship before departure, and even a proud Blackthrone might not survive their retaliation. Hell, his family superiors might not be pleased Francis entangled them with another clan, when the last thing they needed was more enemies. If Francis sent the datapad to the IG or the redcaps, matters would be completely out of his hands. And who knew where the pieces would fall?

Leo waited, allowing his eyes to wander around the chamber. Francis had made a good start on refurbishing the cabin, directing the enlisted men to tear out most of Captain Archibald’s possessions and pack them up for transport to the planet. The crew were clearly dawdling, a sign they weren’t happy with their new commander … Leo hoped, prayed, Francis wasn’t smart or experienced enough to realise it. He might think they were taking extreme care with the goods or he might work out what was really happen and blow a gasket. The bulkheads looked weirdly bare now, stripped of all the décor; perversely, they were actually safer now. Leo was almost disappointed. He’d filed a number of reports commenting on the lack of safety precautions and he knew exactly what would happen if the internal compensators flickered. The thought of Francis being shredded by flying claptrap was almost pleasant.

“I’ll discuss the matter with my uncle,” Francis said, finally. Leo knew him well enough to tell he was planning to simply hide the datapad with the rest of the boxed goods and pretend he’d never seen it. Taking the matter to his uncle might work out well for his clan, but when Captain Archibald’s family started looking for someone to blame they’d have no trouble zeroing in on him. “There are other matters that need to be addressed.”

“Of course, sir,” Leo said. It was hard to keep the tiredness off his face. “I am at your disposal.”

“Of course,” Francis echoed. He scooped up another datapad and held it out. “What is this … Flower Primrose doing on my ship?”

Leo hid his surprise with an effort. “I do beg your pardon?”

“She appears to lack formal qualifications,” Francis said. “There are no clear service records, nothing written down to explain her transfer. Why is she even on the ship?”

“She is a fully-qualified supply officer,” Leo pointed out. “Her files show as much …”

Francis glowered at him. “She shouldn’t even be on the ship.”

Leo took a moment to consider his next step. Technically, Francis had a point. Flower had been Captain Archibald’s executive assistant, a title that covered a multitude of sins, and her training was more geared towards boosting her master’s career and serving him in any way he saw fit than anything more naval. Captain Archibald really hadn’t made good use of her, or even any use. Leo had grown to depend on her instead, over the last year. Flower was easily one of the most perceptive and skilful people he’d met.

“I should have her removed,” Francis said. His lips twisted into a leer. “Unless you have some reason for keeping her onboard …?”

“Yes,” Leo said. He didn’t take the bait. “First, she is a dedicated supply officer. Her qualifications might not come from the academy, but they are real and her service record backs them up. She is very good at scrounging the supplies we need, from requisitioning gear from planetary depots diplomatically to trading for supplies we would not otherwise be able to obtain. She is not in the chain of command, but without her the ship would not be able to function.”

Francis leaned forward. “And why should I not have her replaced by someone with a more … conventional … career?”

“Well, first, she is very experienced in meeting this ship’s needs,” Leo said. “A supply officer from Pompey will be far less prepared to scrounge up whatever we need, and probably less capable of being diplomatic. Pushing locals around has a tendency to backfire, sir, and handling the matter diplomatically tends to work out better in the long run.”

Francis snorted. “Weakness.”

Leo took a breath. Legally, Francis had a point. Daybreak had first call on everything in the sector, from starship supplies to mining rights, and everyone else had to get in line behind them. It was perfectly legal to seize supplies if the fleet needed them and while payment was normally offered in return, it could take weeks or months for the money to reach its destination and if that was too late for the locals … well, they had no legal recourse. Leo had learnt the hard way that the locals tended to keep things off the books, in return, and play dumb whenever a starship commander tried to throw his weight around. Better to be polite but firm instead of pushy and rude. Passive resistance could be hard to prove at times, if all the locals had to do was keep their mouths firmly shut.

“We are on the end of a very long supply chain,” Leo pointed out. “The last thing we need in this sector are more enemies.”

“Hah,” Francis said. He scowled down at the datapad. “And the second reason I should let her stay on my ship?”

“She was selected by Captain Archibald to fill a very specific billet,” Leo pointed out. It was technically true, if one squinted at the paperwork. “If you reassign her, you not only have to answer to your legal CO for your decision, but you also have to replace her. And that will be very difficult.”

“There are a dozen supply officers who would be glad of the promotion,” Francis snapped. “I could get any of them under my flag.”

“None who could hit the ground running,” Leo countered. “And none who would have her experience of dealing with the locals.”

He shrugged. “You can’t take everything you want at gunpoint.”

“We have money,” Francis pointed out.

“Money is useless unless you have someone willing to take it,” Leo said. “And that isn’t guaranteed. Remember the Singhs?”

Francis looked displeased. “Those … immigrants … have nothing in common with us!”

Leo shrugged. The Singhs had been a wealthy and powerful family on their homeworld and they’d played a major role in arranging for their planet to be incorporated into Daybreak without a fight, and then they’d tried to move to Daybreak and use their wealth to establish themselves at the centre of the republic. It hadn’t worked, because they hadn’t understood Daybreak. No one had been willing to sell them property near the centre of power, no matter how much money they offered. The whole affair was still talked about as a cautionary tale, illustrating the danger of trying to move too far too fast. They would have been smarter to try to work their way into the system over the next few decades, earning the citizenship they craved. It wasn’t something any amount of money could buy.

“You have been too accommodating to the locals,” Francis said, finally. “My uncle will change that policy, for the better.”

“The smallest ship in your uncle’s squadron has more firepower than Waterhen,” Leo pointed out, dryly. Waterhen had gone up against a much bigger ship and emerged victorious, but Leo was honest enough to admit that luck had been just as important as tactical skill. “If I had tried to push people around, sooner or later they would have called my bluff.”

“You certainly shouldn’t have been bluffing,” Francis said. He scowled at the datapad. “And if I choose to reassign her anyway …?”

“You will have to fill her billet,” Leo pointed out. “That will not be easy. The chances are good that whoever you select, no matter how capable they are on paper, will not be up to the task. And that will reflect badly on you.”

He smiled, inwardly. Waterhen had been used as a dumping ground, and someone – he doubted it was Captain Archibald, if only because he lacked the imagination – had gone to some trouble to create a paper trail keeping most of the crew firmly trapped on the ship. Leo had to admit it looked good, at least from a distance. The handful of officers and enlisted men had specialities and advanced training that made them suitable for Waterhen, too important to be reassigned or simply unprepared for any other ship. It wasn’t entirely true, he’d noted after going through the files very carefully, but it was just true enough. The only way out was down. Or out.

Francis looked as if he’d bitten into something sour. Leo wondered just what was going through his mind. Had he tried hitting on Flower? It wasn’t impossible. She wasn’t in the chain of command and a sympathetic judge might just rule that dating her wasn’t quite a breach of regulations. Or had he realised Flower was important to Leo, that she’d played a major role in his success, and was trying to get rid of her out of spite? He would be cutting off his own nose to spite his face, if so. Leo hadn’t lied. Flower was a pretty good supply officer.

“Noted.” Francis made a very visible decision to change the subject. “Why didn’t you put Crewman First Class Wostyn and Crewman Second Class Codman off the ship?”

Leo winced, inwardly. The decision hadn’t been an easy one. The two men had been running a private still, selling alcohol to their peers. It was winked at on bigger ships, which normally had two or three such operations that were generally ignored as long as they didn’t cause problems, but Waterhen was too small to take the risk. Leo had ordered the destruction of all stills when he’d taken command, and the order had been respected longer than he’d expected. But eventually two crewmen had tried their luck.

“I decided a week’s imprisonment and a stern lecture were enough,” Leo said. It wouldn’t stop there. The fact they’d been brigged for a week was noted in their service records, and would be held against them if they sought transfer to another ship; not, he supposed, that there’d been any other ships in the sector at the time. “There was no need for a harsher punishment.”

Francis lifted his eyebrows. “You weren’t annoyed at your orders being disobeyed?”

“I was very annoyed,” Leo said. “The last thing I needed was someone showing up for duty drunk off his arse. But I could not allow my anger to affect my judgement. They did not get away with it.”

“With disobeying their commanding officer,” Francis said. “A serious offense.”

“They didn’t plan to desert, or mutiny, or even hurt their peers,” Leo said. He’d heard of far worse problems, including some that had been so heavily classified that all he’d heard were rumours. Gambling rings, sexual assaults, outright plans to kill the CO and take the ship … an illicit still was small beer, compared to such atrocities. “They are good crewmen, despite a few minor lapses in judgement. They did not deserve a worse punishment.”

“An error of judgement on your part,” Francis said. “You had the legal right to flog them. Or to hang them.”

“A flogging would have been extreme,” Leo said. He might have had the legal authority to order it done, but not for something minor. “And hanging even more so.”

“A commander’s authority cannot be flouted,” Francis said. “You should have put them off the ship.”

“And replaced them with whom?” Leo met his eyes. “I had a relative handful of naval crewmen and a few hundred auxiliaries, none of whom could be vetted or trusted completely … few having the skills I needed to replace even one of the guilty men. I had reassigned too many crewmen to man the captured ships, and I didn’t have anything like enough men in the first place.”

“This ship can be operated by five men,” Francis said.

“On paper,” Leo corrected. “There will be no damage control teams, no one who can patch up the hull or bypass disabled sections of the datanet. The damage will mount rapidly, once the enemy scores a hit, and the ship will rapidly and brutally be disabled, or destroyed. We don’t have big crews because we need them under normal circumstances, but because we need manpower to patch up the hull, serve as prize crews, and a hundred other duties that cannot be ignored for long before disaster threatens.”

Francis looked murderous. “Those two men are on very thin ice,” he said. “Make a note of it, Mr XO.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said.

“Good.” Francis stood. “My uncle assures me we’ll have our orders in a couple of days. He is currently getting to grips with the situation below, but …”

Leo felt a flicker of sympathy for Commodore Blackthrone, even though he was Francis’s uncle and patron. A year ago, Yangtze had been firmly incorporated into Daybreak. The Governor had been from Daybreak, of course, but his Deputy and much of his staff had been locals. It should have worked out well, and perhaps would have if the Deputy Governor hadn’t been plotting treason. Now, the Commodore didn’t know who he could trust, which meant he’d have to rely on his own staff, which would in turn foster distrust amongst the locals … it wasn’t going to end well. Yangtze was lucky the entire planet hadn’t been demoted in the wake of Bridgerton’s treachery. It still might happen.

“I’m sure we’ll be ready to depart on time,” Leo said. He hoped the crew would have a chance for some shore leave, before their departure. They had been on a long patrol and returned to discover the task force had arrived. In hindsight, he should have authorised leave before he was relieved of command. “We have …”

Francis stood, cutting him off. “We shall inspect the rest of the ship together,” he said, firmly. He carefully didn’t mention the fact he should have taken a full tour shortly after arriving on the ship and taking command. A captain could not afford to be ignorant of his ship. There were few vessels in the navy that matched their designs perfectly, even ships that had only just been launched into space. A tiny mismatch could easily prove disastrous. “You will join me.”

“Of course,” Leo said. He was tired, but it would probably be better if he stayed with Francis and took the heat for any questionable decisions. The crew had done a great many things to keep their ship running that weren’t in the book, for all sorts of good reasons. “It will be my pleasure.”

 

Chapter Six

“You’re too angry,” Boothroyd said, as Leo aimed a punch at him. “Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. And suffering builds character.”

He darted forward and aimed a punch into Leo’s chest. Leo gritted his teeth, feeling the impact even through the protective vest. He’d thought himself to be in pretty good shape, and he’d done very well in the academy’s martial arts classes, but Boothroyd was light years ahead of him when it came to dirty fighting. Leo threw another punch, anger flaring through him, only to find his legs swept out from underneath him. He tumbled backwards, landing hard on the map. His opponent put his food on his aching chest a moment later, holding him firmly in place.

“Dirty pool, sir,” the spotter said, cheerfully.

Boothroyd ignored him. “Yield?”

Leo gritted his teeth. “Yield.”

“You’re letting your anger guide you,” Boothroyd said, as he stepped back to allow Leo to sit up. “Anger is a good servant, but a bad master.”

“Hah.” Leo was aching, as well as dripping in sweat. “Do you have to speak in misused movie quotes?”

“They’re words of timeless wisdom,” Boothroyd said, dryly. “Except the bit about suffering building character. That’s only true in moderation.”

“Everything in moderation, sir,” the spotter said. “Including moderation.”

“Dismissed,” Boothroyd told him. “I’ll see you back at the barracks.”

He waited for the younger man to leave, then held out a hand. “You did better before the newbie arrived on this ship.”

“Yeah.” Leo wiped his brow. He was younger and fitter than Boothroyd, yet the older man regularly wiped the floor with him. It would have been incredibly humiliating if he hadn’t read Boothroyd’s service record, ensuring it was only a little humiliating. Even so … he took the hand and allowed Boothroyd to help him to his feet, the pain fading rapidly as he straightened. There’d still be bruises, he was sure. The vests didn’t provide complete protection. “I think I need to take my frustration out on someone.”

“Get a punching bag,” Boothroyd advised, dryly. “Or do you want to talk about it?”

Leo honestly didn’t know. Francis had gone through the entire ship carefully, inspecting every last compartment. Leo would have approved, if Francis hadn’t felt the urge to question everything from the lack of modern components to the jury-rigged repairs that the engineering crew simply hadn’t had time to fix. The engineers were on the brink of open mutiny and the rest of the crew weren’t much better, despite Leo’s best efforts. It was one thing to be questioned by someone who understood the principles of basic engineering, and had the experience to understand the ideal solution wasn’t always available, but quite another to be raked over the coals by someone who clearly didn’t understand either. Francis might as well read a child’s anatomy textbook and think himself a doctor, ready to perform a complex operation. He should know better. He’d taken the same courses as Leo himself.

And he wasn’t like the idiot who kept asking why Hitler hadn’t been defeated by orbital bombardment, Leo reflected. The Allies simply didn’t have orbital battlestations back then.

“I don’t know,” he said, tiredly. “Is it wrong for me to be pissed?”

Boothroyd passed him a glass of lemon water. “About being relieved of command, or about the new commander poking his nose into everything and scribbling notes in a notebook?”

Leo glanced at him. “He was doing that while he was talking to you?”

“And asking pointed questions about why I kept half my team,” Boothroyd said. There was a hint of irritation in his tone, odd from someone who rarely showed emotion. “I left the corps because of nit-picking from officers who didn’t know what was actually important.”

“Yeah.” Leo knew Boothroyd had selected men he knew he could trust when the shit hit the fan, including a number who had black marks on their service records. Nothing major, nothing that would get them dishonourably discharged or a one-way ticket to a penal colony, but … Leo had to admit it looked bad, if one lacked any sense of perspective. Drunkenness, disrespect, reporting back late … although never missing the flight to orbit, which would be considered desertion. “How bad is it?”

“It’s annoying,” Boothroyd said. “But I have had worse commanding officers.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Leo said. “Why does he keep scribbling everything down?”

“He’s planning to report to his uncle,” Boothroyd said. “Believe me, I know the type.”

Leo snorted. He had a very high opinion of himself – he’d yet to meet an Academy graduate who didn’t – but he knew he wasn’t that important. He was just a poor boy from a poor family, who had earned his admission to the Academy and wound up in command of a starship through a series of unlikely events. Hell, he hadn’t even had that. He hadn’t been the formal CO or Commodore Blackthrone would have had to work a great deal harder to get him out of the command chair. His lips twitched at the thought. Perhaps it would be wise to send an unsigned note to Captain Archibald, reminding him of his stash of porn and suggesting he reclaimed his command before it was too late. That would put the cat amongst the pigeons.

“Why bother?” Leo shook his head. “If he wanted to reassign me, there are easier ways to do it.”

“He wants you to make him look good,” Boothroyd said. “And if something goes wrong he wants you to take the blame.”

Leo wasn’t sure that would work, not really. A commander was ultimately responsible for his ship, even if he didn’t know he was in command or someone below decks was doing something incredibly stupid. His instructors had told him horror stories of junior officers who’d found themselves in command, after their superiors had been killed, too late to actually do anything to salvage the situation. Some hadn’t even realised they were in command, until they found themselves staring at a court martial. They’d been formalities, designed to establish the truth, but nonetheless harrowing to the poor officers caught up in a seemingly unjust system. He wondered if Francis truly thought he could escape the blame, if something went spectacularly wrong. It wasn’t as if he’d become the senior officer bare seconds before disaster struck.

“Fuck it,” he muttered. “If I stay here …”

He sat on the bench, staring at his hands. It was rare, almost unknown, for the new commanding officer to remain on the ship he’d commanded, after being relieved. The navy felt it was better to have a clean slate, when someone assumed command, and Leo could see their point. He was mildly surprised he hadn’t been reassigned, something that could only be explained by Francis wanting to rub his face in his loss of command. Perhaps his uncle hadn’t cared enough to tell him not to be an asshole, or perhaps he wanted to give Francis enough rope to hang himself.

“You can apply for reassignment if you like,” Boothroyd said. “But you might be better off staying here.”

Leo glanced at him. “How so?”

Boothroyd smiled, but there was little real humour in the expression. “I’ve met a great many young officers who were promoted a little too fast. Some were smart enough to realise their flaws and work to correct them, others listened to their NCOs and Senior Chiefs and eventually grew up into better officers. Or at least stayed on the sidelines and let the experienced men do the heavy lifting. Others … never learnt better, sometimes even doing their best to threaten their NCOs with relief to cover their own mistakes and failings. Some … aren’t even that. Your old chum appears to be amongst the worst, someone who is ignorant of his own ignorance. His best idea of how to lead involves bullying, shouting, and running back to mommy whenever he runs into something he can’t handle.”

“That sounds like Francis,” Leo said. His mood darkened. “And if I stay here, he’ll try to blame me for anything that goes wrong.”

“At which point, you demand a formal court martial,” Boothroyd said. “It will be a great deal harder for him to hide behind you, if he has to justify himself in front of a board of suspicious captains.”

“And his family will pull all the strings they need to get him out of shit,” Leo said, sharply. “It won’t work.”

“They’d be smarter not to let it come to that,” Boothroyd countered. “He’s not a Wallace, that’s for sure.”

Leo glanced at him. “A Wallace?”

Boothroyd grinned. “Walter Wallace was a boot assigned to my platoon, a few hundred million years ago. It certainly feels that long ago. Came from a very good family, one with a long military tradition and an equally long one of disinheriting any youngsters who refused to serve their time in the army. A far worse fate, according to Walter. Go figure.”

“If he says so,” Leo said, dryly. “What happened?”

“Wallace did some number-crunching one day, from what he told me when he’d drunk too much of Corporal Piper’s Very Special Ale. He couldn’t keep from being a groundpounder, he couldn’t ensure a safe posting in the rear … but from what he worked out, being a sniper was actually safer than pretty much any other combat role. His calculations told him he would have better odds of making it through his service, butt intact, if he trained as a sniper instead of a jarhead or a field medic or pretty much anything else. So he went to sniper school and graduated and went out into the field. I told him he’d never get away with it.”

Leo frowned. “And what happened?”

Boothroyd pretended to cry. “He got away with it!”

“Oh.”

“I’ll give him that,” Boothroyd said, his face returning to its normal dour mask. “He went out in the field, killed a great many insurgents from a safe distance, and then extracted himself – often under fire – before he could be killed. Didn’t try to get promoted, didn’t try to make a name for himself … did his term and left, moving into his family’s corporation and rising in the ranks. No one really liked him, and thought he had a lack of moral fibre, but he did his job.”

“Francis isn’t like that,” Leo mused. “Is he?”

“I have no idea,” Boothroyd said. “I know some people with fancy names who worked hard to prove themselves, to make it clear they reached their ranks on merit alone. Others were so entitled they washed out of boot camp, because the instructors weren’t willing to make exceptions for anyone with a fancy name. They tended to go into the rear and climb the ladder there. Francis might be as insecure as you, when you were assigned to this ship.”

“He has never been insecure in his entire life,” Leo said.

It was hard to keep the envy out of his voice. He knew how hard his mother had worked, after his father’s death, to put bread on the table. He had grown up in poverty, rarely – if ever – getting something new for himself. His clothes had been handed down from others in the community, worn until he’d outgrown them and then passed down to his younger siblings; the idea of purchasing fashionable clothes, or gadgets, was just absurd. He’d been lucky the school was a good one, if poorly supplied, and the teachers were backed by a powerful administration and the police. Two or three districts away, the streets had been dominated by gangs until the army had been called in to deal with them. Even so, he’d been caught up in more than enough fights on the streets.

Francis had never felt so insecure. He and his siblings had everything they needed, from money and security to a father. He’d been able to wear the latest fashions and get private tutoring in any subjects that interested him, or were required for his future career. Leo had heard a rumour, which had never been confirmed, that Francis had been given remedial lessons in space navigation and a bunch of other courses he needed to pass if he wanted to graduate from the academy. It wasn’t against the letter of the law, Leo thought, but it sure as hell was against the spirit. If he’d done so well without such fancy assistance, how would he have done if he’d had it?

“Then he’ll fall all the harder, when he falls,” Boothroyd said. “And he will.”

He met Leo’s eyes. “And you being here may make the difference between life and death for the rest of us.”

“I made mistakes too,” Leo said. “You chewed me out for one of them.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Boothroyd said. “There’s no way you can keep from making a mistake or two dozen. The true issue is just how well you recover from them. You did better than most.”

“Thank you,” Leo said. He finished his water and stood. “Is he giving you a hard time?”

“I can handle it,” Boothroyd assure him. “If I can cope with a bunch of bullets flying through the air, I can cope with one over-promoted officer with a severe lack of common sense.”

“You can point out that you do have the right to handle your team alone,” Leo agreed. By long custom, Marine Country was a semi-independent fiefdom within a naval vessel, although Waterhen was so small there was no way to isolate the groundpounders from the naval crew and no real reason to try. Technically, the CO was supposed to issue orders to the Marine CO and then let him pass them down to the rest of his team, rather than poking his nose into their business. “If he tries to take that to his uncle …”

Boothroyd shrugged. “He isn’t that stupid.”

Leo had his doubts about that. The Marine Corps was a world unto itself and it would be a foolish officer who put too much pressure on the relationship between the Marines and the Navy … particularly given just how much political support the Marine Corps enjoyed. It would be risky for Francis to try to push Boothroyd around too much, but was he foolish enough to try? Or would he believe the sheer distance between Yangtze and Daybreak would keep the Corps from standing up for its rights? It was hard to be sure.

“We’ll see,” he said, finally.

“Chin up,” Boothroyd advised. “This too will pass.”

Leo turned and headed into the shower compartment. It was deserted. He breathed a sigh of relief as he stripped down and stepped under the nearest shower, washing the sweat and grime from his skin. The water felt warm and reassuring, despite the nasty bruise developing on his chest. It would just have to be endured. Leo told himself, firmly, that he’d been through worse. He turned off the water and dressed, then checked his datapad. There were no less than nine messages from Francis, all detailing possible infringements of the maintenance book in a manner that suggested the crew were deliberately sabotaging their own ship. Leo groaned as he headed for the hatch. They’d all have to be checked – of course – and he’d have to write an explanation for each and every one of the apparent infringements. Again.

Flower met him as he reached his cabin. “Do you have a moment?”

“No,” Leo said, truthfully. He was supposed to be catching a quick nap before he went on duty. “What is it?”

Flower didn’t bat an eyelash at his rudeness, just stepped aside to let him enter the cabin and then followed him in. There was no sign of Lieutenant Halloran, for better or worse. Leo suspected he was on watch, but couldn’t remember for sure. The hatch hissed closed behind Flower, the gust of air blowing her perfume towards Leo. It was subtle enough to draw his attention, without making it painfully obvious. Leo made a mental note to scold her. Perfume was not permitted for officers on duty and if Francis noted …

He felt himself stiffen as he looked at her. Her uniform was as neatly cut as Captain Archibald’s, drawing attention to her curves without showing a hint of bare skin below the neckline or even crossing the line into indecency. He’d seen her naked and yet, the effect was somehow less alluring than the picture she was presenting now. He kicked himself for thinking Francis would have a problem with it. If half the stories were true, a problem would be the last thing he’d have with it.

“Charming,” he said, sitting on his bed and keeping his eyes firmly on the bulkhead. It was hard to calm himself and relax, but he managed. “What can I do for you?”

“I’ve been cultivating a handful of sources in the commodore’s staff,” Flower said, as if it was as normal an activity as getting dressed in the morning. “The formal orders for departure will likely be cut within a day or two.”

“Francis keeps saying as much,” Leo said. “They’re practically overdue.”

His lips twisted. Francis had said the orders would be coming in two days, then two more days, then … hurry up and wait was an old military reality, but it wasn’t as if giving orders to a lowly and outdated starship was a difficult task. It wasn’t as if there was anything keeping them at Yangtze. If the Commodore had wanted an excuse to relive Leo completely, he could have done it without playing games. He certainly didn’t need to wait to see what his nephew discovered, when he went poking through his new ship.

Flower didn’t smile. “This time is serious,” she said. “The Commodore wants us gone.”

“Odd,” Leo mused. “He could have ordered us away at any time.”

“Yes,” Flower agreed. “That’s what is bothering me.”

 

Chapter Seven

There was no dedicated conference compartment on Waterhen, both because the CO was supposed to be ultimately responsible for his starship and because of a simple lack of space. Leo had gotten around the problem by holding meetings in his cabin, when he’d needed to consult with his senior officers, and he was morbidly amused to note that Francis had either stolen his idea or come up with it for himself. He’d also taken advantage of the captain’s cabin having slightly more room and installed a table and chairs, a set-up that looked more like a corporate office than a military post. The whole arrangement was oddly familiar, although it took Leo a few moments to realise why. It looked a great deal like Deputy Commandant Horace Valerian’s office back home.

“Please, take a seat,” Francis said, as Leo stepped into the office. Lieutenant Halloran and Boothroyd were right behind him, their faces schooled into masks. “Take a drink from the side table, if you like.”

Leo kept his face under tight control. The whole affair felt skewed, as if something wasn’t quite right. Francis shouldn’t be inviting them into his cabin like this, let alone offering them drinks … he ran his eye down the line of bottles, then ordered a cup of tea from the dispenser. He’d never acquired a taste for expensive alcohol, not least because he’d never been able to afford it, and besides he needed to keep his thinking unclouded by drink. He’d made enough of a fool of himself, as a young teenager experimenting with alcohol for the first time, never to want to repeat the experience. It would give Francis all the ammunition he needed to get rid of him.

He took a seat and forced himself to relax, even as he sipped his tea. It was socially impossible not to drink tea on Daybreak, and asking for coffee in social occasions was considered bad manners. His lips twitched at the thought. It was a wonder the tiny colony had grown into the heart of a galaxy-spanning empire, if coffee wasn’t allowed at social events. But then, the tea was often caffeinated too.

Francis took his seat. Leo couldn’t help noticing it was elevated slightly, to give the impression Francis was staring down at them. Not a throne, but … his lips twitched again. Francis had always been good at presenting an image of himself that was very much at variance with reality, from the perfectly tailored uniform to the handsome and yet soulless face. Leo might have found the face attractive, were it not for the lack of warmth and friendlessness in the eyes. It was a wonder how Francis had had so many conquests over the years … or perhaps not. It was astonishing how attractive money and power could be.

Leo leaned back in his seat, deliberately presenting a nonchalant impression of his own. Onboard meetings were generally informal, when they were held at all, and Francis couldn’t object without making himself look silly. Leo saw his eyes narrow slightly, then relax as Francis sipped his own tea. That was odd. Clearly, he had something else on his mind.

“We have finally received our orders,” Francis said. The fact they were now ten days late was carefully not mentioned. “We are to depart within a day, escorting a convoy to Winterhome and then spending at least a week patrolling the system. Do any of you see any problems with that?”

“Yes,” Leo said, bluntly. “The crew have not yet taken any shore leave.”

Francis scowled. “And why not?”

Leo looked back at him, evenly. “We have spent the last week on a four-hour warning,” he reminded Francis. “No shore leave could be authorised, as we knew we might be ordered to leave at a moment’s notice. The crew has not had any leave for nearly two months and, quite frankly, they need it.”

Francis looked irked. “And you didn’t think to authorise leave during your earlier patrols?”

“A day or two, but we were mostly too busy keeping up the appearance of strength,” Leo said. “The hull was undermanned. It was risky to allow anyone to leave the ship, for fear of being caught short if the rebels showed themselves.”

“The rebels who have yet to be seen,” Francis said. “Are you sure they exist at all?”

“Yes,” Leo said, flatly. “That heavy cruiser didn’t appear out of nowhere.”

Francis looked as if he’d bitten into something sour. His uncle’s analysts had taken over the task of tracing the complex network of money and supplies the rebels had used to build their little fleet and drawn a complete blank. Whoever had supplied the rebels with ships – outdated, but heavily refitted to give the rebels a fighting chance – had immense resources as well as an entirely understandable determination to remain unidentified. The list of suspects was disturbingly long. And whoever had done it was still out there.

“You should have killed that bitch,” Francis said, finally. “Why did you let her go?”

“I didn’t have a chance to kill her,” Leo said. He knew he’d made mistakes, and letting Gayle pull the wool over his eyes had easily been the worst. If he’d realised there was more to her than met the eye … no, there was no point in worrying about it. All he could do was try to learn from his mistakes and do better. “She is still out there somewhere, biding her time.”

“Or still running,” Francis offered. “She knows we’re after her now.”

Leo shrugged. The sector was vast, with dozens of lawless regions and an entire underground economy that had very few links to the formal, legal, trading network that was supposed to be taking shape. A person as ingenious as Gayle would have no trouble changing her appearance, rewriting her DNA and laundering her money to break all ties to her past self, even if she were picked up on an unrelated charge and her DNA fed into the database. Leo doubted she’d taken her ship and fled into the Beyond. She wasn’t the kind of person to run. She was far more likely to be plotting her next move.

And we will never know for sure, Leo thought, in the privacy of his own mind. She might already be dead and we’ll never know.

Francis cleared his throat. “I will discuss the matter with the Commodore, but …”

Leo felt a flash of contempt. A commanding officer had a duty to his crew. Francis could easily talk his uncle into allowing a day or two of shore leave, perhaps even longer. It wouldn’t upset the schedule, not much. Interstellar shipping timetables were never that accurate, and in some places they were little more than informed guesswork. There was no reason Francis couldn’t arrange for shore leave and a number of very good reasons why he should. If he had … it would certainly mend the damage of the last few days. Some, at least.

“However, it is vitally important we depart as soon as possible,” Francis continued. “The pirates are starting to rear their ugly heads again, and they have to be stopped.”

He paused. “Once we have finished at Winterhome, we will proceed on a patrol route that will take us through Darlington, New Brunswick and finally Boulogne, before returning here. If all goes according to plan, we will check in with the Commodore and receive new orders. Are there any questions?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. “It is a minimum of two weeks from here to Winterhome, given how poorly the further parts of the sector have been charted. Probably longer, given that we’ll be escorting an entire convoy. Will you do everything in your power to ensure that the crew gets some shore leave. This isn’t a battleship or a battlecruiser. The bulkheads have a habit of starting to close in after a while.”

Francis scowled. “I will do what I can,” he said. “But I can make no promises.”

He looked from face to face. “Are there any other concerns?”

“Our requests for military supplies have been declined,” Boothroyd said. “We really need that request authorised, to standardise our kit as much as possible. Please could you try to expedite approval?”

Leo tried not to grimace. Boothroyd’s team hadn’t been equipped with modern weapons, simply because there’d been none within the sector. It wasn’t entirely a bad thing, because the gear they had was often easier to repair, but they needed to ensure they were using the same equipment as the rest of the Marines deployed to the sector. He was surprised the request had been declined and wondered, grimly, just who had done it. The Marine Corps rarely cared about political struggles within the navy’s ranks unless they infringed on the Corps in some way.

“I will speak to the staff,” Francis said. “But again, I can make no promises.”

A real captain would be hammering down doors and banging his fist on tables, Leo thought, darkly. Loyalty was hard to earn and easy to lose. You could be doing your duty. And you’re not.

Francis leaned forward. “Anything else?”

“No, sir,” Leo said. “We’ll be ready to depart on schedule, if shore leave is impossible.”

Francis nodded, a flicker of relief darting through his eyes, gone so quickly Leo wasn’t sure it had ever been there. “Dismissed, then,” he said. “I’ll let you know what the staff says, afterwards.”

Leo finished his tea and stood, heading for the door. The bridge was as cramped as ever, the watch officer scrambling to her feet as Leo entered the compartment. It still felt like his and … his heart clenched, bitterly, as he took the tactical console and brought up the latest exercise scenario. Waterhen was his ship. He’d taken command and he’d earned the right to keep her … he wouldn’t have minded, not really, a lack of any further promotion as long as he stayed in command of his ship. His ship. But she had been taken away and given to Francis, the legal loophole that had put him in command used to put someone else in his place … it was hard, so hard, not to show his bitterness openly. He’d done well. He knew it. And yet, the earned reward had been taken from him and given to someone else.

Perhaps I should invite Captain Archibald to return to his ship, Leo thought. He had a feeling it would only make matters worse, but for whom? Wouldn’t that make things more interesting for Francis?

He forced himself to concentrate, playing through the scenarios one by one. Lieutenant Halloran had taken the concept of more outdated and yet refitted ships appearing in the sector and run with it, drawing up a handful of simulations covering everything from a tiny destroyer to a refitted Revenge¬-class battleship. They’d been called superdreadnaughts back in the day, Leo recalled, although as technology advanced they’d been reclassified twice and then largely taken out of service. Modern hulls had been so much more efficient, but the rebels presumably didn’t have a modern shipyard to produce them. There weren’t many outside Daybreak’s sphere of influence.

His eyes narrowed as the simulation reached its conclusion. The rebels had crammed hundreds of missile launchers and energy weapons into the battleship, including some that were disturbingly modern. Standard procedure was to give the enemy a number of edges – their chances of scoring a hit were higher than they’d be in reality – and it told, allowing the battleship to tear his vessel apart before she could escape. Pompey might be able to defeat the battleship, with her combination of modern drives and sensors as well as weapons, but Waterhen’s only hope was to run. The simulation gave the enemy better drives too.

He looked at Lieutenant Halloran, who was working on the helm console. “You do realise a battleship cannot hope to pull that sort of acceleration curve?”

“It’s very much a worst-case scenario,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “You know they keep promising better compensators.”

“They promise force shields, teleporters and starfighters too,” Leo reminded him. “I’ll believe in them when I see them.”

He smiled, inwardly. The navy had outfitted gunboats to serve as patrol vessels, but proper starfighters were still the stuff of science-fiction. Force shields and teleporters were science-fantasy. The concept looked good on paper, but so far no one had managed to produce working hardware. Better compensators, at least, were theoretically possible. It would be a nasty shock if anyone developed and deployed them without Daybreak realising. There were quite a few associated worlds that would be delighted if they managed to do it. A tech edge might give them the power to free themselves …

Sparking off the war we dread, Leo thought, coldly. The human race can’t take another war like that.

His wristcom bleeped. “I have spoken to the staff,” Francis said. “Shore leave has been declined. I’m sorry.”

Leo gritted his teeth. The Commodore really wanted them gone. Or had Francis bothered to ask at all? It would be just like him not to bother. He’d spent his career on big ships, not a tiny little craft like Waterhen. A battleship’s crew had plenty of room to spread their legs, as well as all kinds of distractions. There was even some privacy, if you went out of your compartment and away from your work station. There was none of that on Waterhen. Leo had a nasty feeling some of his crew – Francis’s crew – would start feeling the pressure, sooner rather than later. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Understood,” he said, curtly.

“You will inform the crew,” Francis added. “We will depart in three hours.”

They moved the departure time up a bit? Leo was surprised. Why?

“Understood,” he repeated. “I’ll inform the crew of your decision.”

Francis cut the connection. Leo rubbed his forehead, then keyed the intercom and made the announcement. There was no way to sweeten it, even if he’d been inclined to try. Francis could have arranged for shore leave at any point – there was no need to keep Waterhen on alert, with the task force holding position around Yangtze – and now it was too late. He hoped the crew would be professional, and confine their protests to quiet grumbling. Anything more dramatic was likely to end badly. Francis didn’t have the common sense to treat such matters gently.

“Bugger,” Lieutenant Halloran said.

“Don’t say that too loudly,” Leo advised, dryly. “You never know who might be listening.”

He tapped more commands into the system, making the final preparations for departure. The one advantage of having everyone onboard was that there was no need to wait for the crew to be recalled, or for them to write final messages and forward them to their families. He’d quietly encouraged the crew to do just that, when he’d realised someone was playing games with their planned departure date. It wasn’t the same as shore leave, let alone a chance to actually see families, but it did have a tendency to clear the decks before departure. He just hoped no one had received a ‘Dear John’ letter in the mail packets the task force had brought.

Flower would have noticed and told me, he thought. She was effectively the ship’s counsellor as well as supply officer, with a gift for getting the younger crew to talk to her. The message would have been received by now, if it were sent.

He pushed the thought aside as he worked through the long list of preparations for departure. The power cores were run through a series of testing cycles, to ensure they were in good order, and then power was flushed into the drive nodes. A shiver ran through the hull, bringing his earlier thoughts back to the forefront of his mind. If someone developed improved compensators, they might find themselves with enough of an edge to give them a fighting chance. Gayle might be working on it even now.

Don’t be silly, he told himself. The very idea was absurd. She doesn’t have a tech base under her command.

Sure, his thoughts answered. That you know about.

“All systems check out, Captain,” Chief Engineer Bryon Harris reported. He hadn’t been too pleased with Francis poking through his domain, asking questions that were based on flawed understanding when they weren’t driven by an urge to make Leo look bad, and calling Leo Captain was a subtle revenge. “The ship is ready for deployment.”

Or as ready as she’ll ever be, Leo thought. Waterhen was too old to be slotted neatly into the task force’s formation. The Commodore wasn’t wrong to leave her on independent duty, merely putting too much faith in his wretch of a nephew. He needed to keep the rest of his ships with him … or did he? There was no reason to think the task force needed to remain concentrated. I wonder …

He sighed inwardly, as he ran through the last of the checks. They had come very close to losing Yangtze, to a plot that shouldn’t have gotten off the ground. It would have led to a complete disaster if Captain Archibald had remained in command, Leo was sure. Perhaps Commodore Blackthrone was being wary. Waterhen would have been excused for losing her engagement with the heavy cruiser, but Pompey? Commodore Blackthrone and his flag captain had damn better go down with their ship, if they’d lost. The Admiralty would have been completely unforgiving.

If, Leo thought. But it didn’t happen that way, did it?

“All checks completed,” Lieutenant Halloran reported. He didn’t look up from his console. “We are ready to depart.”

Leo nodded, keeping his voice under tight control. “Captain to the bridge,” he said, tapping the intercom. Even saying the words felt like a defeat, a grim admission he’d lost something he’d earned and had a right to keep. “I say again, Captain to the bridge.”

 

Chapter Eight

Francis looked like a Captain.

Leo’s lips twisted, very briefly, as Francis stepped onto the bridge. His outfit was carefully designed to resemble a CO’s uniform, without ever quite crossing the line into lèse-majesté; white jacket, white trousers, white shirt … the only real difference, Leo noted, was that he wore his rank pips instead of a CO’s single gold star. Francis would have made a great actor, Leo reflected in an unaccustomed burst of charity, but as a naval officer he had his limits. And his uncle was peering over his shoulder. Leo knew he’d made mistakes over the last year, including some that hadn’t gone into any official reports, but at least he hadn’t had a powerful relative watching him. Perhaps Francis was being sent away to give him a chance to bloom, or else. It was as good an explanation as any other.

“Captain on the bridge,” he said, calmly.

Francis hesitated, just slightly. It would have been unnoticeable if Leo hadn’t known the older man so well. Francis looked like a phony and probably felt like one too, if he had even a lick of sense. He had managed to get through the academy and there were limits to just how far family connections could get you, or so Leo had been assured. A cadet who was a danger to himself and everyone around him would be invited to leave quietly, if there was no other choice, rather than risk a public scandal. The thought made him wonder just how many other scandals had been carefully buried over the years. God knew, he would have been at the epicentre of a major embarrassment if the staff hadn’t gone to so much trouble to get rid of him.

“I assume command,” Francis said. He took the command chair, managing to look more like a junior officer than a genuine commander. There was none of the assurance Leo had learnt to expect from men who knew they were in command, who didn’t have the slightest doubt they were in charge. “Mr X, how do we stand?”

You could have read the bloody reports, Leo thought, coldly. He disliked paperwork at the best of times, but not filing the reports could easily have been used as evidence against him if Francis had wanted to get rid of him. The answers were on your terminal all along.

He controlled himself with an effort. “All systems are in working order, sir, and we are currently holding postion at the front of the convoy,” he said. He’d asked permission to randomise their position and been denied. Francis wanted Waterhen to take the lead, although it was something that only looked good in the holovids. “Drives are charged, ready to jump on your command. Active sensors are online, weapons are on standby.”

Francis looked doubtful. “You expect trouble during the first jump?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. On paper, jump coordinates were effectively random; in practice, it wasn’t that hard to predict a convoy’s arrival coordinate and get into position to ambush the freighters before they recycled their drives and jumped again. Most pirates would think twice before ambushing any warship, even Waterhen, but the rebels had at least two mid-sized capital ships and he dared not assume there weren’t others. “The freighter convoy is a valuable prize.”

He turned back to his console, wondering idly if Francis would countermand his orders. Keeping the weapons on standby did put wear and tear on systems that were already outdated, systems that couldn’t be easily replaced. It wouldn’t be a bad decision, on paper, and it would go unquestioned if the convoy made the trip without incident, but if the rebels showed up a delay – even a few seconds – could get them all killed. Or worse. The convoy departure date might have been more variable than its arrival coordinate, but there had been plenty of time for a rebel agent to learn when the fleet was actually departing and report it to his superiors. Leo had urged, in his reports, a more careful approach to local traffic control. The Commodore hadn’t bothered to put his recommendations into practice.

If he bothered to read them at all, Leo thought, with a flicker of vindictive glee. He was a lowly jumped-up Lieutenant-Commander, but he had been the ranking officer on Yangtze Station until Commodore Blackthrone had arrived and his recommendations should have carried weight. It wouldn’t have been that hard for the commodore to read the reports, implement the suggestions and steal the credit, particularly if the procedures Leo had recommended saved a convoy or two from destruction. But then, he clearly didn’t intend to keep me around.

“Keep the weapons on standby,” Francis said, finally. “Time to departure?”

Leo glanced at his console. “The convoy has formed up, and is ready to jump as planned,” Leo said. It was hard to hide his concern. There had been no attempt to conceal the exact departure date or time, no attempt to keep it vague. It was an ambusher’s dream … he wondered, sourly, why the commodore hadn’t ordered the convoy to leave earlier or later, or even change its planned arrival coordinate at the very last minute. “We can jump out on your command.”

He scowled, thankful Francis couldn’t see his face. Commodore Blackthrone’s service record was first-rate, save for a couple of entries that appeared deliberately vague. Flower had pointed out that that probably concealed covert operations of one kind or another, something classified beyond the reach of Captain Archibald’s access codes. The navy might have covered up a scandal, if it was too embarrassing to be openly admitted, but Commodore Blackthrone would never have been trusted with an independent command again. A man as capable as his service record suggested should know he was practically inviting the pirates to try their luck … perhaps that was the point. If he wanted to lure them into engagement range …

He’d better hope we don’t attract the rebels instead, Leo thought, darkly. They know better than to take Waterhen lightly.

Francis took a breath. “Alert the convoy,” he ordered. “We will jump in twenty minutes.”

Right on time, Leo noted. There’ll be no steps taken to confuse the enemy.

He eyed the system display. Yangtze had blossomed in the last few months, after more colonists and investment had arrived, and there were dozens of starships and interplanetary spacecraft within sensor range. It was a given that some would be working for pirates or rebels, their true masters impossible to identify without a great deal of luck. Hell, it might be nothing more than one or two people on the ships, the remaining crew utterly unaware they served two masters. It was what he would have done, if he were plotting a way to keep a covert eye on the system. The crew couldn’t reveal what they didn’t know.

And they don’t need active military-grade sensors to keep an eye on us, he thought. Passive civilian sensors will be more than good enough, and utterly unnoticeable.

A timer appeared on his display, counting down the moments to jump. He frowned to himself – Francis didn’t seem inclined to order the coordinates checked and double-checked, something Leo had done as a matter of course – and ran through a quick checking procedure, making sure they were all heading to the same coordinate. It wasn’t impossible for a convoy to wind up scattered across dozens of light years, through simple technical failure to outright sabotage, and while there were contingency plans they’d be worse than useless if some cunning infiltrator had carefully directed a freighter straight into enemy hands. It was a common trick, out on the fringe, where vetting space-capable personnel was practically impossible. Leo had done what he could about it, but he’d barely scratched the surface of what needed to be done. He hoped the commodore would continue the program. The sector’s security was his problem now.

“Jump in ten seconds,” Lieutenant Halloran reported. “Nine … eight …”

Leo had to bite his tongue to keep from giving the order. That would have been awkward.

“Jump,” Francis ordered.

The universe seemed to blur around him, just for a second. Leo gritted his teeth as the tactical display blanked, fingers flying over the console to reboot the sensors before any waiting ambushers emptied their missile tubes into Waterhen. Francis hadn’t authorised a jump that would put them at the rear instead, or somewhere – anywhere – that wasn’t completely predictable. Leo could practically feel enemy missiles roaring towards them, taking advantage of Waterhen’s brief blindness to get the attack underway without needing to worry about the outdated ship returning fire. If they didn’t act fast …

He breathed a sigh of relief as the display cleared. The convoy was alone, two light years from the nearest star. He leaned forward as his active sensors pulsed the darkness, trying to make sure they really were alone. Space was vast and a starship, even a battleship, was tiny in comparison, nothing more than a grain of sand on a desert world. An entire enemy fleet could be within touching range, its drives and sensors stepped down to ensure it couldn’t be detected until it opened fire. It wasn’t as if it would need active sensors to target the convoy, if destruction was what it had in mind. The flash of the convoy’s arrival would offer all the targeting data it needed.

Francis snorted. “Are we clear of encroachments?”

Leo winched, inwardly. Anything within encroachment range – close enough to be a major threat, close enough to put missiles into their hull with no warning – was always assumed to be hostile. It was the safest approach, although it had caused some problems over the years. And it was his duty to report that local space was clear …

It was hard to keep his embarrassment from showing in his voice. “Local space is clear, sir,” Leo said. This close to the convoy, anything within encroachment range should be easy to spot … unless they had some kind of cloaking technology Leo had never heard of, something that wasn’t even considered theoretically possible. It wasn’t impossible. If he’d been in command of a rebel faction, or one of the multistar systems that chafed under Daybreak’s rule, he would have gone looking for a silver bullet too. “No contacts within sensor range.”

“The pirates would not dare to launch an attack so close to Yangtze,” Francis said. He sounded pleased with himself, as if he thought the pirates had seen him coming and run for their lives. “We taught them a lesson months ago.”

Leo wondered, sourly, why the Commodore hadn’t taught his nephew the fundamental realities of interstellar combat. It was difficult to comprehend the true scale of a lone star system, let alone a sector, and Leo knew he’d had difficulty coming to terms with it when he’d left the academy and discovered what the instructors had been trying to tell him all along. They were two light years from Yangtze … they might as well be on the other side of the galaxy, or halfway across the universe, for all the good being so close would do them. If they were attacked, no one on the distant star would notice until it was far too late, if they noticed at all. They wouldn’t even pick up an emergency signal until two years after the attack. It would be far too late.

And I taught them that lesson, he thought, bitterly. He had no idea where Francis had been, six months ago, but he knew where Francis hadn’t been. Me.

“The convoy is recycling its drives,” Midshipwoman Abigail Landor reported. “The coordinator notes they’ll be ready to jump again on schedule.”

“Order them to expedite matters,” Francis said. “We have orders to reach Winterhome as quickly as possible.”

Leo tried not to roll his eyes. The convoy was composed of twelve civilian ships, rather than military-grade transports. Several were older than Waterhen, without the advantages of several refits and a first-rate engineering crew. The spacers would be recycling their drives as quickly as possible, naturally, but the convoy wouldn’t be able to jump in less than thirty minutes … if they were lucky. They just didn’t have the fusion cores they needed to recharge their drives, nor did they have the multiple redundancies built into naval systems as a matter of course. Pushing their drives too hard could easily end badly.

“They’re acknowledging, sir,” Abigail said. She sounded nervous. She’d had a rough time under Captain Archibald and deserved better. Leo had actually recommended her for promotion and transfer, but his words of praise had probably become a kiss of death. Perhaps it would have been better if he’d been rude and sarcastic about her instead. “However, they note they cannot recycle their drives in less than twenty minutes …”

“Which is being optimistic, sir,” Leo put in. If Francis was going to take his frustrations out on someone, better it be him. “They won’t be ready to jump for thirty.”

Francis glowered at him. “They’re lying to us?”

Leo shrugged. “Sir, most merchant skippers are optimists about such matters,” he said. It didn’t help that navel officers often tried to urge them to move faster, as if it were possible. It was physically impossible to recharge the drives any quicker, and no amount of whining and threats of reporting the freighter crews to the registers would change it. “They like to think they can do it quicker, but it simply cannot be done.”

Francis snorted. “Why can’t they tear out their drives and replace them with modern technology?”

Leo smiled. “Are you going to pay for it, sir?”

“Watch your station,” Francis ordered.

Leo turned away, feeling his smile grow wider even though it wasn’t really funny. The shipping lanes near Daybreak were dominated by powerful shipping combines, wealthy enough to purchase the very latest technology available to civilians and well-connected enough to use a combination of legal and semi-legal means to exclude smaller shipping firms and independent traders as much as possible. The smaller outfits and independents simply didn’t have the money to purchase modern drives, let alone refit their ships to military standards. Leo had been on some freighters that could have passed for pirate ships, the owners simply lacking the funds to do more than the bare minimum. They would be pushed further out as the big shipping combines advanced into the sector, he reflected, if they weren’t forced to give up completely. Or become part of the underground economy.

He could feel Francis’s impatience as the minutes ticked on, each second feeling like an hour. It wasn’t unreasonable – the convoy was dangerously exposed, if there were enemy ships creeping towards them – but he was doing a bad job of hiding it. Leo kept his eyes on his sensors, gritting his teeth at the hints of impatience. There was nothing to be done about it, no matter what Francis did. The convoy could no more speed up the recharging process than Leo could get himself instantly promoted to Admiral.

His eyes narrowed as he spotted a faint energy flicker, right on the edge of sensor range. An enemy contact? Or a random vacuum fluctuation? It was gone almost as soon as he saw it, but that was meaningless. Space wasn’t as silent as groundpounders thought, if you had the right equipment, and a skilled enemy CO could hide his cloaked ship very effectively. There was no such thing as a perfect cloaking device, but …

Leo cleared his throat. “Sir, we have a faint contact …”

“Show me,” Francis ordered. He sounded caught between relief and fear. “Is that an enemy starship?”

“Uncertain, sir,” Leo said. “The contact was brief, but it could be an enemy ship.”

Francis stepped forward, until he was staring over Leo’s shoulder. The projections were guesswork piled on guesswork, a vector that might – or might not – be accurate combined with a sensor contact that might not even be there. Leo couldn’t be certain of anything, although the fact the convoy’s course and timing hadn’t been remotely secure suggested someone might be interested in taking a sniff. The pirates might not like the idea of tangling with a warship, but if they managed to snatch a freighter …

Leo looked up. “Sir, I request permission to launch a drone.”

“You’re already using active sensors,” Francis snapped. “Aren’t they good enough?”

“If there is an enemy contact out there, she’s beyond the range we could guarantee detection,” Leo said. “Ramping up the active sensors will extend their range, but also reveal our exact position to any watching eyes.”

“As if they were in any doubt,” Francis said.

Leo bit down on the urge to point out that Francis had ordered them into an position that was entirely predictable. Francis had a point, not least because they were using their active sensors. But then, he’d leant that lesson the hard way. Leo had used it against him, four years ago …

He stared down at his console. A skilled CO who knew his ship very well could get alarmingly close without being detected, given that there was only one vessel watching for possible contacts. He might be sneaking closer even as they spoke, or circumventing the convoy to approach from a different direction, using the freighters to mask his drive emissions. Or he might back off and leave Waterhen wasting her time looking for him. Or he might not be there at all. It was maddening not to know, to be sitting on their rears sweating as the freighters recharged their drives. It could be a diversion, the rest of the attack fleet sneaking up from the other side, or … it might be nothing at all. There was just no way to be sure.

“Sir,” Abigail said. “The convoy is ready to jump.”

Francis returned to his chair, visibly relaxing. “Helm, jump us out,” he ordered. “Now.”

“Aye, sir.”

 

Chapter Nine

The sensor records were frustratingly vague.

“I can’t draw anything from them that isn’t there,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “If there was an enemy ship, we didn’t pick up enough to be sure.”

Leo scowled at the datapad. He’d downloaded the sensor records into the datapad and gone through them piece by piece, before running snippets through the tactical analysis datacores. The results hadn’t sharpened, leaving a mystery. Had there been an enemy ship lurking on the edge of sensor range? Or had they merely been misled by a flicker of background radiation and found themselves panicking over nothing. He suspected they’d never know.

“There’s no way to enhance the sensor records to make them any sharper,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Are you saying the holovid lied to me?” Leo snorted crossly. “Never have I been so deceived.”

Lieutenant Halloran made a face. “The less said about the little scriptwriters know about the real world, the better.”

Leo nodded. In the holovids, vague sensor readings could be enhanced and sharpened to reveal the truth … and it was always an enemy battleship, just biding her time before going on the offensive and opening fire. The scripts always showed the Daybreak Navy as the underdog, outmatched and outgunned, but victorious through a combination of implausible tactics and a stiff upper lip that ensured they were always bloody-minded, even as they were outmassed fifty to one. The real world was rarely so obliging. Leo knew he’d been very lucky to win the Battle of Yangtze and the enemy CO had been a little smarter, he would probably have lost. And now … there was just no way to be sure. He wanted to believe they hadn’t been under covert observation, but …

If they were targeting us, a voice in his head point out, they’d have opened fire before we jumped out again.

Leo made a face. The voice sounded like Francis. He’d made the same point and, on paper, he might be right. The enemy ship, if indeed there had been an enemy ship, hadn’t opened fire, nor had she supplied targeting data to other ships creeping up from the rear. There was no doubt about the lack of incoming missiles, which meant … what? Francis seemed unable to decide if there hadn’t been a real contact, or if there had been an enemy ship which had been frightened off by Waterhen’s reputation. Leo had seen his report. It waffled back and forth in a manner bound to irritate Commodore Blackthrone, if he ever saw it. Francis had several weeks to calm down and rewrite it before Waterhen made contact with Pompey again.

He put the datapad down. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “We’ll just have to file it under unsolved mysteries.”

“It could be worse, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “We could have picked up one of the big black ships of legend.”

Leo snorted. The human race had been exploring the universe for nearly a thousand years and it hadn’t found a single trace of non-human life. No dead cities, no super-advanced megastructures … nothing. Nothing that could be substantiated, at least. There had been a roaring trade in faked non-human artefacts, at first, but that had died away when humanity had slowly realised that they were alone in the night, at least in this corner of the universe. That hadn’t stopped fake sensor reports, and spacer tales of strange encounters along the rim of explored space, but hardly anyone took them seriously. They might make good ghost stories, he’d often thought, and they were often just as substantial.

“There are no reports of sightings by a starship with a trained crew,” he said, finally. “The reports all come from drunken asteroid miners, or private survey teams heading out into the beyond. Funny, that.”

Lieutenant Halloran looked reflective. “My uncle always swore to his dying day that he’d seen an alien ship,” he said. “He never changed his story.”

“He was probably mistaken,” Leo said. There had been a flurry of excitement twenty years ago when an odd-looking starship had been detected, but further investigation had revealed it was a cruise liner designed more for elegance than practicality. “I think …”

The intercom bleeped. “Morningstar to the bridge! I say again, Morningstar to the bridge.”

“It’s time to make the final jump,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “Good luck.”

Leo nodded stiffly, then stood, brushed down his uniform and headed for the hatch. The ship felt oddly stifling after two weeks of travel, the crew starting to fray as the effects of no shore leave started to catch up with them. Leo hoped Francis would have the sense to authorise a few days on Winterhome, even if it was largely restricted to the spaceport and the surrounding district. He made a mental note to put the suggestion in writing, ensuring there would be a record for any later investigation. Francis might not be the ship’s legal commanding officer, depending on how one squinted at the situation, but he was very definitely the one in command.

And if I ask him in person, Leo mused, he might brush me off and refuse on the grounds it was my suggestion.

He felt a twinge of disconnect as he stepped onto the bridge, his heart twisting painfully as he saw Francis lounging in the command chair. It would have been easier if he had been transferred, perhaps with a promotion to sweeten the bitter pill. He had been in the command chair too long to take his demotion with any grace … he knew, now, why relieved commanding officers tended to leave the service, or drink themselves to death, or even turn against the navy so bitterly they became its most dangerous foes. It was one thing to briefly hold the conn, when the captain wasn’t on the bridge, but quite another to be the de facto commander for months and then lose the post. And he was still on the same ship.

Give Francis time, he thought, vindictively. He’ll find a way to screw it up.

“Nice of you to join us, Mr Morningstar,” Francis said. “Take your station for the jump.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leo took the hastily vacated seat and checked the sensors. The convoy hung in interstellar space, four light years from Winterhome. They were quite some distance off their target coordinate, an issue Francis had either missed or chosen to ignore. Leo hadn’t pointed it out. A tiny error in calculating jump coordinates could put them millions of kilometres from their planned arrival point, making interception impossible. Probably. The enemy would have to get very lucky to detect their arrival, let alone vector ships into attack range without being detected. Leo wouldn’t rule it out completely – the rebels had shown themselves revoltingly ingenious and willing to risk everything on one roll of the dice – but it was unlikely. No doubt Francis’s final report would insist he’d done it on purpose. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea, if he had.

“Sir,” Abigail said. “All ships report they’re ready to jump.”

Francis nodded. “Signal the convoy,” he ordered. “Jump!”

The world seemed to dim, just for a second. Leo braced himself for trouble as the display blanked and rebooted. The odds of jumping into a coordinate already occupied by something else were practically zero, but Winterhome had no dedicated arrival zones and it was impossible to be completely certain … he allowed himself a moment of relief as the display cleared, showing nothing within encroachment or engagement range. They’d made it, without a single pirate attack. He was almost disappointed. The chance to rid the sector of yet another band of murdering thieves and rapists was one he couldn’t pass up in a hurry.

“All sensors are clear, sir,” he reported. “No contacts within attack range.”

“Excellent,” Francis said, as if he could claim personal credit for the lack of hostile contacts. “Set course for Winterhome, best possible speed.”

“Aye, sir.” Lieutenant Grison said.

Leo frowned as the display continued to fill with blue and yellow icons. Winterhome was technically on the edge of the sector, yet interplanetary space was surprisingly active … a sign, he suspected, that the planetary government was either trying to build itself up as quickly as possible, in hopes of earning more status within Daybreak, or engaged in contact with planets and settlements beyond the Rim. Or even working with the rebels, in hopes of securing independence or at least autonomy. His eyes narrowed. There were dozens of outdated interplanetary ships moving between the planet and the asteroid belt, a pair of cloudscoops orbiting the gas giant and a network of orbital stations surrounding the planet itself, backed up by a handful of automated planetary defence platforms. Not enough to hold off a proper warship – Commodore Blackthrone’s squadron could trash the entire system from well beyond their engagement range – but certainly enough to deter pirates.

“But where are their warships?”

He didn’t realise he’d spoken aloud until Francis cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon?”

Leo flushed. “They should have a handful of warships backing up the defences,” he said, keeping his voice under tight control. “Where are they?”

Francis sounded unimpressed. “There are strict limits on warship tonnage, for worlds that don’t have autonomy,” he said. “They’re not likely to risk breaking them.”

Leo wasn’t so sure. The rules were strict, true, but it didn’t take much ingenuity to bend the regulations without actually crossing the line. Most systems had at least some patrol ships, even if they were utterly incapable of facing down a real warship. Winterhome didn’t seem to have anything bigger than a gunboat, although it was possible some of the freighters had been resigned to carry weapons and military-grade sensors. They wouldn’t be real warships, no matter how many guns were crammed into their hulls, but they’d be better than nothing. And Winterhome could hardly rely on Daybreak’s protection. The navy had only recently deployed any ships to the sector.

He kept the thought to himself as the convoy neared the planet. Winterhome was surprisingly patchwork for a world that had been settled for over two hundred years, with settlements scattered randomly over the surface instead of following a more conventional pattern. It looked like national borders on one of the older colony worlds, the planets that had been settled with diverse populations rather than homogenous groups. The UN bureaucrats who’d insisted on strict ethnic and racial quotas had missed the simple fact that such divisions rapidly and inevitably led to civil unrest, even to outright war, and once the planets had been tamed there had been nothing stopping the war from breaking out. They’d wasted a great deal of time trying to fix the unfixable rather than admit they’d messed up … thankfully, the later generation of colonisation missions had learnt from their experience. They had all been relatively homogenous, at least legally. But Winterhome was different.

There’s probably some reason for it, in the files, Leo thought. Maybe the disparate groups learnt to cooperate.

He frowned, inwardly. Daybreak took a dim view of civil war or ethnic conflict within its imperium. If you wanted to fight with your neighbours over small differences, Daybreak would happily beat some sense into your head with kinetic strikes and limited, targeted, military interventions. If that wasn’t enough to teach you to behave, Daybreak would forcibly relocate one group to another world, assuming – probably correctly – that a few dozen light years between you and your enemies would make it harder to go to war. There had been a great many rank injustices over the years, as peace was imposed at gunpoint, but Daybreak didn’t care. The republic was honest enough to admit that it wasn’t trying to be diplomatic, not in any real sense of the word. It was just keeping the peace.

“Captain,” Abigail said. “System Command is welcoming us, and has cleared orbital slots for the convoy.”

“Very good,” Francis said. “Forward the coordinates to the convoy.”

“Aye, sir,” Abigail said. “The Secretary-General of Winterhome is also requesting permission to speak with you.”

Leo blinked in surprise. It wasn’t uncommon for the sector’s governments to be surprisingly informal, even by Daybreak’s standards, but it was rare for a government to signal a ship directly, rather than inviting the CO and his officers to visit the centre of government. Most planetary leaders disliked the idea of treating a Daybreak naval officer as a peer, even a superior, and did what they could to ensure it didn’t look as though they were bending the knee, even though it was unlikely anyone was fooled. Daybreak was the power and her officers had a status few planetary governments could match. If anyone had any doubt about it, Daybreak would dispatch a battle squadron to make the point.

“Of course,” Francis said, as if talking to planetary leaders was routine. He adjusted his cap, making him look even more of a holovid star. “Put her though.”

The display changed, projecting the image of a beautiful young woman. Leo had learnt a few lessons about letting his little head do the thinking for him, over the last two years, but even he had to admit the Secretary-General was stunning. Dark skin and darker hair, her face timelessly cute in a manner that made her look in her late teens, although she had to be in her early thirties at the very least. There was something wide-eyed and innocent about her soft brown eyes, something that made Leo instantly suspicious. He hoped Francis had the sense to realise not all was what it seemed, not now. He certainly should. Francis himself was the product of a combination of genetic enhancement and cosmetic modification. And sometimes he acted like a child wearing his father’s clothes, as if his body didn’t entirely suit him.

“Captain Blackthrone,” the Secretary-General said. She had a rich thrilling voice, one that caught and held Leo’s attention. “I am Sedona Sharona, Secretary-General of Winterhome. I bid you welcome.”

“I thank you,” Francis managed. He sounded dazed. Leo was surprised. Francis had grown up surrounded by beautiful people, none owing their looks to nature. “It is good to be here.”

“On behalf of my government, I look forward to welcoming you in person,” Sedona continued, her eyes sparkling with promise. “However, I must also ask a favour of the navy.”

“It will be our pleasure,” Francis said.

Idiot, Leo thought, coldly. You don’t know what the favour is yet.

“A number of independent freighters have been attacked recently, by a lone pirate ship,” Sedona explained. “We have been unable to capture or destroy the vessel. Please would you take care of it?”

“We would be delighted,” Francis said. “In fact, it will be our pleasure.”

Leo kept his face under tight control. A world as advanced as Winterhome certainly should have a warship or two that could be used to intercept a pirate ship, or perhaps an armed freighter that could be sent out to lure the pirates into a trap. The bastards wanted to live long enough to spend their ill-gotten gains and the slightest hint their target was armed would often make them think twice, if their commander had the sense to back off. It was odd that Winterhome wanted the navy to do it … hell, there was something about the whole scenario that didn’t seem quite right. But it wasn’t something he could say now.

“I’ll forward you our tactical files,” Sedona promised. “And I look forward to meeting you in person.”

Her image vanished. Leo nodded to himself as the promised files appeared in front of him. They weren’t anything like as detailed as he’d expected, suggesting that most sensor data had been gathered from extreme range, but … he had to admit the planetary defence force had done a good job, with what few tools they had. The data suggested one pirate ship, one powerful enough to take out a gunboat and fast enough to outrun anything tough enough to kill it. They wouldn’t have to stay out of weapons range for long, not if the pirate commander had the sense to keep his drives on standby. A few moments would be all he’d need to recycle the drives and jump to a randomly selected coordinate.

“Mr XO, Lieutenant Halloran, my office,” Francis said. “Now.”

Leo handed the tactical station over to his replacement, then allowed Francis to lead him into the captain’s cabin. It didn’t look to have changed much, in the last ten days. Leo wondered just what, if anything, Francis had been doing when he was off duty. Leo had never had any trouble finding things to do, but Francis had stayed in his cabin. It was odd. So was the sudden request for assistance.

“I don’t like it,” he said, as he took the proffered seat. “There’s something about the request that doesn’t make sense.”

Francis eyed him. “What?”

“They should be capable of dealing with a lone pirate ship themselves,” Leo said. “Why can’t they?”

“Planetary militias are not up to our standards,” Francis said. “They don’t have any warships as far as we can tell.”

“Yeah,” Leo agreed. “Why not?”

Francis scowled. “You are jumping at shadows,” he said. “Just because you were fucked, in all senses of the word, on Yangtze …”

“Yes,” Leo said. “And if I had been a little more careful, I might have realised the trap before it was too late. There’s something about this that doesn’t make sense.”

“So you keep saying,” Francis said. “What?”

“She might want to keep us busy,” Lieutenant Halloran offered. Leo admired his nerve. He was both the oldest man in the chamber and the lowest-ranking, and playing peacemaker could easily get him in hot water. “We have a duty to inspect passing ships to ensure they’re complying with regulations. How many ships here are in compliance?”

Leo had to admit it was a good point. “Fifty credits says none.”

“I’d take that bet, if I was allowed to gamble.” Francis relaxed, slightly. “And now, gentlemen, we have an interception to plan.”

 

Chapter Ten

Waterhen returned to realspace so violently that Leo feared, just for a second, that their faked accident had turned into something all too real.

“Damage report!” Francis sounded unnerved, not the most reassuring thing to hear from your commanding officer. “What happened?”

“Nodes Two and Five overloaded and burnt out,” Chief Engineer Bryon Harris reported. He sounded unsurprised. He’d predicted that one of the nodes would be lost if they put too much pressure on the outdated structures. “Damage control teams are already on their way.”

Francis cursed, just loudly enough to be heard. “Any other damage?”

“Not as yet,” Harris said. “We’ll still combing through the datanet reports.”

Leo gritted his teeth. The one advantage of Waterhen’s design was that most of her internal components, including the drive nodes, could be pulled out and replaced without help from a shipyard. Later refits had added a surprising degree of redundancy into the ship’s internal structure, allowing her to keep flying and fighting while soaking up an astonishing amount of damage. Leo had privately wondered if the designers and refit crews hadn’t overdone it – anything that took out sixty percent of the internal net was likely to destroy the entire ship – but he had to admit it came in handy. Waterhen could still manoeuvre, while the destroyed nodes could be repaired or replaced and brought back online.

Abigail cleared her throat. “Sir? Should I transmit as planned?”

“Yes,” Francis ordered. “Make it sound like we’re panicking.”

Leo hid his amusement with an effort. Waterhen had jumped away from Winterhome, to the disappointment of the crew expecting shore leave, and left an ECM drone in her place to convince watching eyes she was still in orbit. Once clear of the system, the engineering crews had rigged up a masking effect to make the ship look like a small freighter, then planned a violent return to realspace that would leave them effectively trapped at the edge of the system, forced to either crawl to the planet or wait for rescue. The latter would take hours, if they were lucky; it would give any hostile eyes a chance to jump in, raid the stricken freighter and then jump out again before any help could arrive. Or so they’d planned. The pirates would not have any time to think about it, or to question the manifest they were sending. And any pirate captain who chose to ignore the bait would be threatened by their own crew.

“Signal sent, sir,” Abigail said. “Winterhome will be aware of our situation in twelve hours.”

“Excellent,” Francis said. “Let us see if they take the bait.”

Leo scowled, inwardly. The files had been remarkably vague on a great many points. Reading between the lines, Leo suspected the pirates had an ally somewhere within the planet’s defence forces, someone who could point them at targets and warn them of planned countermeasures. It was impossible to be sure the mystery ally, if indeed there was one, wouldn’t notice Waterhen’s departure and manage to get a warning out in time, but they’d done everything in their power to prevent it. There was no way to guarantee, either, that the pirates would notice the freighter before it was too late, yet … he scowled as he studied the handful of independent asteroid settlements orbiting the primary star. Such settlements tended to be tied into the underground economy, even if they weren’t completely off the books. Someone would have a link to the pirate ship, someone would hear their message and pass the word … perhaps.

On paper, the plan is brilliant, Leo thought. In practice, there are hundreds of possible variables.

He kept his eye on his console, feeling Francis’s growing impatience behind him. Leo had read through Francis’s service record again and again and there had been no trace of independent command, nothing that might have taught him the patience he so clearly lacked. The tactical simulators could be sped up, starships and planets moving at impossible speeds, to compress long engagements into mere hours … the real universe could neither be sped up nor paused, to get the affair over with or give commanders time to think. It had been nearly four years since Francis had left the academy. He hadn’t bothered to keep up with his tactical exercises.

Which would be harder on a starship, practically speaking, Leo reminded himself. His CO won’t let him have a day off to refight the Battle of Britannia.

Francis spoke into the silence. “Where are they?”

“Impossible to say, sir,” Leo said. It was quite possible the pirates would miss the whole affair until it was far too late. He could imagine some pirate commander murdering his ally in cold blood for not informing him in time, unaware he’d actually been very lucky indeed. “They may be trying to sneak up on us.”

He could feel Francis glowering at the back of his head. Waterhen couldn’t bring up her active sensors without giving the game away, which meant any approaching starship could get dangerously close without being detected. That was a problem in more ways than one, he reflected. From a distance, Waterhen looked like a freighter; at close range, there was no mistaking her lines for anything other than a warship. If the pirates got close enough to peer at her through optical sensors, they’d know it was a trap. Worse, if they had the nerve, they could get even closer and then launch missiles at point-blank range. It would be devastatingly effective. A single missile would be enough to put Waterhen out of the fight for good.

His console bleeped. “Sir, we have a contact!”

“A real one, this time,” Francis said. It wasn’t quite a question, but close enough to get on Leo’s nerves. Francis had finally decided the last contact had been nothing more than a random energy flicker and an overzealous tactical officer. “Time to intercept?”

“Nine minutes,” Leo said. The contact was solidifying rapidly, heading straight towards Waterhen on an undeniable attack vector. Anyone with good intentions would have tried to get in touch before making a beeline for the stricken ship, both to ask for an update and to keep anything unfortunate from happening. “No IFF.”

“They wouldn’t bother,” Francis said. He sounded as if he were playing a role, perhaps faking it in a desperate bid to make it. “Do we have any ID?”

Leo studied the sensor feed for a long moment. “She’s probably a destroyer,” he said, finally. It was impossible to be certain without active sensors, but the enemy ship’s acceleration suggested she wasn’t much heavier. “Her weapons load may be unpredictable.”

“Hold course and speed,” Francis ordered. “And prepare to open fire on my mark.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo felt sweat prickling down the back of his neck. The pirate ship was closing rapidly, without making any attempt to order Waterhen to cut her drives and surrender. Leo didn’t like the implications. Either the pirate had been completely fooled or he hadn’t been fooled at all, pretending to be tricked so he could get into engagement range and blow them away. It would be a rare pirate that would risk an engagement with an actual warship, and an even rarer crew that would let their commander try, but a rebel CO would certainly take the risk. Waterhen was alone, separated from the task force by dozens of light years. Picking her off would suit the rebels just fine.

And it seemed like such a great plan when we came up with it, Leo reflected. But if we’re wrong …

The display updated, the enemy ship finally revealing her lines. A Praxis-class destroyer, the hull dating all the way back to the Great War even as her drive emissions suggested she’d been refitted at least twice over the following decades. There would be no tracing her original owners, Leo suspected, or the complex network of sales and exchanges that had resulted in her refit and eventual conversion into a pirate ship. The warbook noted there’d been thousands of such starships before the war, many falling out of the records entirely. If there had been any records after the war.

“She’s a pirate,” Leo said. The rebels had maintained their ships very well. Pirates rarely did. The power fluctuations were easy to spot, if you knew what to look for. “And she’s coming in hot …”

Abigail spoke over him, an action that was only permitted in one eventuality. “Sir, we’re picking up a message. Tight-beam, aimed at us only.”

Francis smirked. “Put it through.”

The voice was flat, atonal. “YOU WILL CUT YOUR DRIVES AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED,” it said. “IF YOU FAIL TO COMPLY, WE WILL DESTROY YOUR VESSEL.”

Leo’s console bleeped. “Missile separation,” he snapped. The missile was unlikely to come anywhere near Waterhen, unless she had some way of radically altering course when under flight, but it was a pretty effective warning shot. “I say again, missile separation!”

Francis swallowed. “Evasive manoeuvres,” he ordered. “Don’t let them get into visual range.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. “They’re closing too rapidly for us to get clear.”

Leo swore under his breath. The pirate ship couldn’t be allowed to get too close or her crew would have a chance to realise the trap and escape, yet if they tried to keep the range open …

His console sounded the alert. “Missile separation,” he said, again. “I don’t think they’re playing around.”

“They’re repeating the message,” Abigail reported. “Same as before.”

“And they’re sweeping us with tactical sensors,” Leo added. It was the interplanetary counterpart to pointing a gun at someone’s head. “They have a solid lock on our hull.”

“Target their tactical systems,” Francis ordered. “Prepare to fire on my command.”

“Aye, sir,” Leo said. He’d already set up a handful of targeting options; he now sharpened the passive locks, readying his ship to engage. “Attack pattern one, ready to fire. Attack pattern two, ready to fire.”

He watched the range narrow, anticipation warring with concern. He understood the targeting logic, although he doubted it would be as effective as Francis hoped. Pirate crews were never easy to predict. Some were nothing more than dumb muscle, sadists and rapists who knew as little of their ships as Leo knew of life in the Andromeda Galaxy; others were almost as capable as military personnel, if they hadn’t started their lives in one space navy or another. There were a handful of pirate bands that had been founded by the losers in one petty civil war or another, their crews promised – at first – that they would return in triumph, only to devolve into monsters who were little better than the pirates they looked down on. His attacks might irritate the enemy or they might vaporise their entire ship. Or even destroy a handful of their consoles. It wasn’t uncommon on pirate ships. Poor maintenance was more lethal than enemy action.

“They’re issuing a final warning, sir,” Abigail repeated. “I …”

Leo’s console howled an alarm. “Radar sweep, sir,” Leo reported. “They have us!”

Francis hesitated, just long enough for Leo to notice. “Fire!”

Leo tapped his console. Waterhen fired, her plasma guns slamming pulses into the enemy hull. The pulses didn’t quite travel at the speed of light, but close enough to ensure there was almost no warning. A series of explosions blossomed on the enemy hull, power surges rolling through their internal network … Leo’s earlier thoughts came back to mock him, reminding him just what would happen when those surges reached their final destinations. The enemy datanet was likely to be badly damaged, if not destroyed. It was rare for pirates to ensure the destruction of their datacores, before the ship was forced to surrender, but their systems were so poorly maintained they didn’t always need to bother.

His console bleeped a warning. The enemy were firing, too late. Leo’s point defence sensors had gone active the moment he fired, picking out the missiles as they launched from their tubes and into open fire. The enemy were too close to let the missiles go ballistic and too far away to rely on sprint mode, ensuring the point defence vaporised the incoming threat before it could get dangerous. Leo fired another salvo, targeting what remained of the enemy sensor array. Lieutenant Halloran was already altering position, ensuring the enemy could no longer use what sensor data they had. It was possible some passive sensors had survived – Waterhen had several sensor nodes concealed on her hull – but the enemy no longer seemed inclined to fight.

Francis spoke with a cold certainty that belied his earlier hesitation. “This is the Republic of Daybreak Navy,” he said. “You have one minute to surrender or we will destroy your ship.”

Leo cursed under his breath. Standard procedure was to put the assault force in space the moment the weapons started firing, to give the enemy as little time to think as possible. He’d offered to take pirates alive – the navy normally executed pirates on the spot, without more than a brief formality – but Francis hadn’t extended any sort of olive branch. Pirates who knew they were going to be killed had nothing to lose, which meant they could do something clever with a nuclear warhead, taking out the boarding party as well as their ship. And if Francis sent Boothroyd and his men into the fire …

“They’re offering to surrender,” Abigail reported. “They’re just asking for their lives.”

“No promises,” Francis said. “They can surrender and …”

“Sir, if they have nothing to lose, they’ll try to blow up their ship,” Leo pointed out. It was a severe breach of naval protocol to say anything of the sort, but Leo owed Boothroyd. He’d recalled the older man to service. The idea of letting him fly into what was very likely a trap was unthinkable. “Give them their lives. They can live out their last few years on a penal colony.”

Francis glared at him. Leo wondered if he’d stick to naval protocol or make the concession. Commodore Blackthrone had called Leo out for a great many misjudgements, but he hadn’t said anything about that. A private acknowledgement Leo had done the right thing? Or a reluctance to openly challenge a very successful policy? Leo wondered, not for the first time, what Francis’s uncle had said to him, before he’d been shipped to Waterhen. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t given his superiors plenty of reason to scold him.

“Very well,” Francis said. He turned to Abigail. “Inform the pirates that they may keep their lives if they surrender without further ado.”

“Yes, sir,” Abigail said.

“And you will serve as the naval liaison on the boarding party,” Francis said, to Leo. “I expect a full report, as soon as you return.”

Leo nodded, curtly. “Yes, sir.”

He tapped his console, calling his relief to the bridge. Francis really should have informed him of that earlier … had he planned it that way? Or had he done it as a way to save face? Giving the pirates a chance to blow up their own ship would mean a lack of prize money, as well as intelligence that could be used to track down the rest of the pirate network and destroy it. Leo had captured one pirate base, but he doubted it was the only one. It wasn’t easy to track them down, either. Most pirates who knew the coordinates were given treatment to ensure they couldn’t be made to talk.

“They’re surrendering,” Abigail reported.

Leo glanced at his console. The pirates had powered down their drives and weapons, as far as he could tell, although the latter was meaningless. They could track an incoming shuttle on passive sensors, taking all the time they needed to aim their weapons and fire. It would be suicide – Waterhen would blow them away within seconds – but they had little to live for, even if Francis kept his word. A penal colony would be a harsh life: the best ruled by criminal gangs that enforced strict rules and brutally murdered anyone who stepped out of line, the worst so scattered that the convicts died within weeks of arrival, unable to build anything resembling a civilisation that might grow, one day, into something worthwhile. Daybreak didn’t care. The penal worlds were worthless, in the grand scheme of things. If they’d been suited for human life, they would have been opened for normal colony missions, the ones that actually worked.

“Very good,” Francis said. He nodded to Leo. “Don’t forget to bring me a souvenir.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. He passed the console to Lieutenant Grison and headed for the hatch. “I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

He checked his sidearm automatically as he hurried down to the shuttle, then collected a mask and backpack from the cabinet. His shipsuit wasn’t a proper spacesuit by any definition of the term, but it would protect him long enough for a SAR team to find him … if, of course, they realised he was missing. The suit wouldn’t provide any protection if the pirate ship fired on the shuttle, and anyone who thought otherwise was deluding himself. His instructors had made it clear, time and time again. No matter how heavily you swaddled yourself in protective gear, you would never be invincible.

“We’re ready to hop,” Boothroyd said, when Leo clambered into the shuttle. The boarding party looked intimidating, their weapons at the ready even though the shuttle hadn’t left the mothership. “Stay behind us, sir. The lads aren’t trained to have friendlies in front.”

Leo nodded, curtly. “Got it.”

The shuttle disengaged, boosting towards the pirate ship. It grew rapidly in the display, a hulking mass of scarred metal old enough to be his great-grandfather. Leo had no idea who’d built the ship – the files noted that seventeen shipyards had churned out the design under licence and several others without bothering to pay royalties – and he couldn’t help wondering if they’d feel disappointed. Or if they’d be pleased their ship was still sniping at Daybreak. Who knew?

“They’re opening a hatch,” the pilot said. “We take?”

“Yeah,” Boothroyd said. “Take us in.”

 

Chapter Eleven

Leo took a breath, and stepped into horror.

The pirate ship was in surprisingly good condition, for such an ancient vessel in such poor hands, but that only made the interior worse. The pirates looked a rough and ready bunch, some bearing the scars of blows from their superior officers; their prisoners were worse, so badly battered that it seemed they’d perish from infections and diseases humanity had defeated long ago. It felt wrong to be binding their hands too and searching them, when they wore so little their bruises were clearly visible, but there was little choice. There was no way to know how the captives would react, when confronted with rescue, or if some of the pirates had hidden themselves amongst the prisoners. The genuine prisoners might even be too scared to point out the fakes, for fear their ordeal hadn’t come to an end. The navy was rarely forgiving of captives who had been press-ganged into pirate service, and the pirates knew it. They often forced their unwilling crewmen to commit atrocities, putting them beyond any hope of forgiveness. Leo had done what he could to change that policy, but his efforts had limits. He lacked the power to make them stick.

He gritted his teeth as he walked towards the bridge. Some cabins had been crammed with stolen goods, some with little actual value. Others looked like bondage chambers out of pornographic holovids, the beds designed to keep their occupants chained down with their legs open … Leo felt sick as he stared at the blood on the sheets, unwilling to think what it might mean. He’d been told, at the academy, that women in brothels rarely wanted to be there, but this was worse. Far worse. His hand tightened around his pistol. It would be easy, so easy, to go back to the line of kneeling captives and blow their brains out, one by one. No one would try to stop him.

The thought tormented him as he resumed his walk, eventually stepping onto the bridge. It was bigger than Waterhen’s, although half the consoles had been removed at some point and half the remainder replaced by consoles from a dozen different starships. A body lay on the deck, a chunk of its head missing: Leo grimaced, wondering which of the pirate crew had fired the fatal shot. Leo didn’t blame the pirates for deciding there was nothing to be gained in letting Waterhen blow them away, but it was still unfortunate. The pirate CO might well have been the only one on the ship who knew where she was based, or how they could make contact with fences to let their cargo flow into the underground economy. Not that it mattered, he thought, as he surveyed the chamber. They had taken a ship out of circulation, along with her crew, and it was very definitely a step forward.

“There should be a chunk of prize money for us,” Corporal Maritza noted. It seemed wrong to look at such an old man, his body betraying the signs of early-generation rejuvenating treatments, with such a low rank, but he’d retired long ago and only come out of retirement because he was bored. “Even if it is shared out …”

Leo nodded, curtly. The pirate ship wasn’t worth that much, compared to a modern warship, and she’d probably be scrapped if she couldn’t be pressed into service, but she was still worth a nice little bonus for the crew. Prize money was distributed according to an arcane formula that no one pretended to understand, yet even a tiny percentage would be a blessing for the lowest crewman on the ship. Captain Archibald would have a claim to a share … Leo’s lips twitched in dark amusement. Francis would probably be shocked to discover he wasn’t entitled to the captain’s share, not that he needed it. His trust fund was worth more than some planets.

Boothroyd entered, escorting a prisoner. “Sir, I think you should listen to this man.”

Leo turned. The prisoner looked like an average spacer, wearing a ragged shipsuit rather than the absurd outfits the pirates wore. He would be in deep shit if there was a hull breach, Leo noted coldly. The shipsuit would be worse than useless if it didn’t cover his endure body. The pirates rarely bothered to enforce proper safety precautions, something Leo had never truly understood. Anyone with any deep space experience should know the importance of taking care, even on a cruise liner. The ones who didn’t rarely lasted very long.

Perhaps they don’t have the nerve to force their crew into shipsuits, he mused. Or they’re trying to ensure none survive long enough to answer questions.

“They took me off a ship, bound for Yangtze,” the man said. His accent was oddly familiar, although it took Leo a moment to place it. Eden, a world permanently on the brink of a religious war. “They forced me to … to work for them.”

Leo nodded curtly, wondering how many sins were hidden behind the words. The poor bastard might have been forced to rape at gunpoint, or worse … Leo gritted his teeth. The courts might realise the man had no choice, or they might tell him he should have accepted his death instead. It was easy for someone a thousand light years away to pass judgement … Leo put the thought aside and leaned forward. A crewman who was willing to help might be worth his weight in gold. And a starship captain’s recommendation might go a long way towards saving his life.

“I see,” he said, quietly. The story would have to be checked, of course, although that wouldn’t be easy. There was no unified database of spacers in the sector. “What did they make you do?”

“They needed someone to maintain the ship,” the man said. “I … I kept a hidden log … I … I kept track of where they went, every star they visited.”

Leo winced. The man had taken one hell of a risk, one that could have easily gotten him killed if the pirates realised what he was doing. If, of course, he was telling the truth. He might easily be a pirate posing as a prisoner, or a prisoner afraid he’d be dumped on the same penal colony as his former captors, a prisoner with only one bargaining chip to play. There was no way to tell, either, if his bargaining chip was any good. The pirate ship might not have been anywhere near a concealed base.

“Take him back to the ship, keep him isolated from the rest,” Leo ordered Boothroyd. “Get the story from him, then …”

He groaned, inwardly. Francis would be the one making the final call. Would he agree the information was worth a full pardon? Or would he take the information and then dump the prisoner on the penal world anyway? Or simply order the entire pirate crew hurled into space? It was well within his legal rights, and no one would bat an eyelid. The recordings were more than enough evidence to convince any board of inquiry, in the unlikely event of one being held, that the pirates had deserved it. It would be the shortest formality on record.

And I’ll have to go argue for someone who was forced to get his hands dirty, he mused, bitterly. Far too many people back home would argue the captive was just as guilty as the rest of the pirate crew, no matter what pressures had been brought to bear on him. They didn’t understand that people in bad situations made bad choices. Leo had grown up in Cold Harbour. He’d seen too many people make tiny compromises, which had swelled into much bigger compromises, just to stay alive. Charming.

“I’ll speak to the CO,” he said. “Oh, and get a full medical rundown.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo watched them go, his thoughts grim and cold. The medics would be able to confirm if the man had been genuinely mistreated, as well as getting a baseline for his brain patterns that could be used to determine if he were telling a lie. The process wasn’t wholly reliable, Leo had been cautioned, but given time they could be fairly certain they could catch a deliberate untruth … he put the thought out of his head as he watched the techs fiddling with the pirate datacores, trying to get access to their navigational files, and then joined the boarding party as they started to catalogue the vessel’s cargo. It would be tricky to return it to its rightful owners, unless there was a data trail; most would either be scavenged or sold on Winterhome, the proceeds added to the prize money. Or destroyed, if it was explicitly illegal. The pirates trafficked in everything from illegal drugs to even more illegal touchy-feelie porn. Once you crossed the line, Leo had been told, you no longer cared about such things.

Although child molesters rarely survive their first week on penal worlds, he thought, darkly. The guards normally made sure to inform the other prisoners of their crimes, just to make certain they didn’t prey on the settlement’s children. And good riddance to bad rubbish.

It was nearly two hours before the techs pronounced themselves satisfied with what little they’d been able to extract from the datacores, then put the ship’s datanet into suspension. Leo wasn’t too surprised they hadn’t been able to find the coordinates for a pirate base, although it was a little disappointing. Such information was rarely entered into onboard datanets, certainly not in any great detail. The captain knew the star’s catalogue designation and a handful of other details, enough to get the ship to the base without tipping anyone else off. Given time … Leo shrugged as the team packed up. It was difficult to understand just how much data flowed into the datacores, tiny pieces of information that might be individually useless but could be put together into a surprisingly useful picture. The navy’s hackers might be able to draw something useful from the datacores after all.

“We have swept every last inch of the ship,” Boothroyd reported. “If there’s anyone left unaccounted for, they’re in for a nasty shock.”

Leo nodded. The pirate ship would be depressurised once the boarding crew returned to the shuttle, the entire system powered down so completely it couldn’t be brought back online in a hurry. Anyone left alive would die within minutes, if they didn’t have any life support gear, or hours if they did. He felt little pity. The pirates deserved worse.

He turned and led the way back to the shuttle, careful to count everyone into the craft before closing the hatch and ordering the pilot to disengage. They hadn’t found any self-destruct system that might trigger automatically, when it detected the atmosphere venting and the internal network powering down, but there was no point in taking chances. Even a relatively small starship was huge on a human scale, an unwieldy structure so complex it was difficult to search it completely. Anything could be hidden with a little care, up to and including a nuclear warhead. Hell, it was tricky to be sure they’d rounded up the entire crew. A skilled crewman could remain hidden for quite some time.

“Begin the shutdown sequence,” he ordered, when they were well clear of the pirate ship. “And then take us back home.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo allowed himself a moment of relief as nothing happened, the pirate ship simply going dead and cold. He had no idea what would happen to her, but the investigators would probably go through the ship with a fine-toothed comb, just to be sure they hadn’t missed anything before sending her to the breakers. If there was one advantage to Commodore Blackthrone’s arrival, it was that they no longer needed outdated ships to patrol the spacelanes. He liked his little squadron, but he had to concede that keeping so many ships, with so many specialised demands, operating was one hell of a challenge. There had been no way to standardise everything in a hurry.

His wristcom bleeped as soon as they reached Waterhen. “Morningstar,” Francis said. “Report to my office.”

“Aye, sir,” Leo said, trying to ignore the rudeness. It was customary to address a junior officer by rank as well as name, even if the officer was in deep shit. “I’m on my way.”

He glanced at Boothroyd, who nodded. The prisoners had already been sent ahead … they’d be dealt with: the former captives interrogated and then dropped off on Winterhome; the pirates themselves kept in the brig until they could be dumped on a penal colony. After that … their fate wasn’t his problem. It was unlikely their former allies would lift a finger to help them, even if they knew where they’d been sent. Daring rescue missions only happened in bad holovids.

The thought made him smile as he walked through Waterhen to the captain’s cabin. Francis was sitting behind his desk, reading a report on his datapad. Leo suspected it was a power play, although it was hard to be sure. He knew from experience that the acting captain received hundreds of reports, from simple status updates to more complex issues, and it was impossible to do more than file most in the datacore. It would be a very interesting legal proceeding, for those interested in such things, to determine just who was to blame if something went wrong. Captain Archibald was the ship’s legal CO, and he should be keeping abreast of such matters, but he was hundreds of light years away.

Francis put the datapad aside and looked up. “Do you really think that offering amnesty to pirate crews is a good idea?”

“If we tell them we want them to surrender so we can kill them, sir, they’re not going to surrender,” Leo pointed out. “And if they have nothing to lose, they might as well try to take us with them.”

“That ship didn’t stand a chance against us,” Francis pointed out. “Did she?”

Leo shrugged. “She was in surprisingly good condition … still is,” he said. “She could have given us a much tougher fight, with a better crew. And even damaged, she could have waited for the shuttle to dock and then blown both herself and the boarding party to hell.”

Francis said nothing for a long moment, then changed the subject. “Did you get anything useful from her datacores?”

“A captive claims to have concealed data within the datacores,” Leo said. “That might be quite useful, given time. Or we might tease something else from the datacores. Even a rough idea of which systems the ship visited would be helpful.”

“Yes.” Francis sounded distracted by a much greater thought. “Winterhome requested that any captured pirate ship be handed over to them, for commissioning into their system defence force. I am minded to agree.”

Leo blinked. “But …”

Francis lifted his eyebrows. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said.

“I see,” Francis said. “And that would be?”

Leo kept his face blank. It was unwise to disagree with a commanding officer under any circumstances, but particularly so when that commanding officer actively disliked you. He had the nasty feeling he’d been baited into a trap, yet it was a trap he had no choice but to spring. Damn it.

“There are two separate problems, sir,” he said, keeping his tone as respectful as possible. “First corruption is a fact of life along the Rim. There is a very good chance that if we hand the ship over the Winterhome she’ll be handled back to the pirates shortly afterwards. That is why most pirate ships are sent to the breakers or scuttled, if they can’t be pressed into naval service. The ship herself will no longer plague us, whatever happens to her crew.”

Francis leaned forward. “Winterhome has a generally good record for cooperating with the navy,” he said. “Are you suggesting they’ll betray us?”

“She is also a Rim world, one clearly tied into the underground economy,” Leo countered. “No such world can be wholly trusted. Sir.”

Francis looked unimpressed. “And the second reason?”

“The crew is entitled to prize money,” Leo pointed out. “The pirate ship might not be worth much, but she is definitely worth something. If you hand the ship over to Winterhome, or anyone, the crew will be deprived …”

“Prize money is a bonus, not a fact of life,” Francis snapped. “I have no intention of alienating a friendly world, just to ensure my crew have a few more credits in their pockets.”

“Not a few,” Leo said, although he suspected he was wasting his breath. “A few hundred could make a very real difference, to a junior crewman.”

Francis – somehow – managed to look even more unimpressed. Leo wasn’t surprised. A man whose family thought nothing of giving him a monthly allowance of thousands of credits wouldn’t realise how many other families couldn’t afford the necessities, let alone a luxury once or twice in their miserable lives. His drinking fund could keep a poor family alive for years … the nasty part of Leo’s mind wondered if Francis’s family was quietly hoping he’d drink himself to death. It wasn’t impossible. Francis would hardly be the first family embarrassment who’d been shuffled off somewhere harmless, so he couldn’t bring his family into disrepute.

“My mind is made up,” Francis said. “The ship will be handed to Winterhome.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. That was not going to go down well. “You are going to ensure the crew gets at least some shore leave?”

Francis nodded. “I’ve been invited to visit the Secretary-General,” he said. “The crew can get some leave at the same time.”

“Be careful,” Leo said. A sudden memory – Gayle’s kisses, the warmth of her body – shot through his mind. “That’s how I managed to get into trouble.”

“I’m not you,” Francis said. “Dismissed.”

 

Chapter Twelve

“I wonder why we bothered leaving Daybreak,” Leo said. “This place …”

He waved a hand at the street outside. Winterhome’s primer spaceport looked like any other spaceport, a cluster of terminals and landing pads surrounded by accommodation, bars, restaurants and a hundred other ways for a spacer to spend his pay before staggering back to his ship with a hangover. Touts and pimps roamed the streets, the former trying to convince spacers to take a tour of the planet and the latter offering sex, anything the mark wanted as long as their money held out. Girls, boys … there were high-class brothels with girls who affected high-class accents and low-rent whorehorses where the man arrived with a handful of credits and left with a sexually transmitted disease, even some places off the beaten track that offered pleasures that were explicitly illegal. The Shore Patrol, he’d been warned, was incredibly corrupt. They were more likely to pat a pimp on the back, or make use of his services, then sent him to jail.

“It’s outside the planet’s formal jurisdiction,” Flower said. “And it could be worse.”

Leo supposed she had a point. Winterhome was an oddity, a planet with numerous national groupings and a very weak international government. The Secretary-General appeared more of a Head of State rather than a Head of Government, although there were hints she had more power than was immediately apparent. Francis had flatly refused to take an escort, when he’d been invited to visit the local governing complex, and Leo had no idea what he might be discussing with the striking young woman. Perhaps it was a power play on her part, or perhaps … hell, for all he knew, they might be having a very professional discussion. His experience with Gayle had soured him.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

He looked around the café and shook his head. The idea of a book café in the spaceport district struck him as absurd, but he had to admit it was oddly relaxing. The chairs were comfortable, the walls were lined with books, the food and drink was good and electronic devices were largely banned … he leaned back in his chair and stared outside. A pair of spacers were talking to a young woman, wearing an outfit so skimpy that the only thing keeping it on was the eyes of every young man in the vicinity. Leo felt a twinge of pity for her. The odds were good she had little choice, but to sell her body. And most of her pay would probably go straight to her pimp.

“Try and relax,” Flower urged. “You never know what the future might bring.”

Leo shot her a look. “You’ve heard something?”

“Nothing special,” Flower said. “Nothing I can point to. But …”

She shrugged. Leo understood. There was an edge in the air, one that had no apparent cause … one that really shouldn’t be there. It might be something local, something that had little to do with Daybreak, but … local problems rarely stayed local, when they occurred on spacefaring worlds. He made a mental note to try to visit the nearest city, if he had a chance. It would give him a better idea of just what the locals were thinking. The spaceport was a fun place, if you had credits, but it was an environment about as artificial as Waterhen herself. If the spacers stopped coming, the spaceport would fade away shortly afterwards.

He looked at her. “Do you have any sources here?”

“I haven’t had any time to develop them,” Flower said, reprovingly. “There are information brokers, of course, but …”

She shrugged, expressively. Leo understood. Information brokers were reliable – their careers depended on it – but they didn’t always know anything useful. Or they were unwittingly repeating something that wasn’t actually true. Or they had agendas of their own … after Gayle, Leo wouldn’t take anyone’s word on trust again. Gayle had spun him a story that had been so perfectly suited to his prejudices that it had never occurred to him to question it, not until it had been far too late. But that was the mark of a good lie, wasn’t it? No one ever made money by telling someone something they didn’t want to hear.

Flower looked up. “I think we’re about to have a visitor.”

Leo followed her gaze. Crewman First Class Wostyn was standing outside the café, looking oddly out of place. He was older than the average crewman and should have been promoted by now, probably would have been if Waterhen had a billet for him and he hadn’t been caught with an illicit still. Leo felt a twinge of pity for the crewman, mingled with irritation. He hadn’t been joking when he’d banned alcohol from his ship, and if Wostyn had been caught before Leo had established himself it would have gone very hard for him. And now … Flower was right. The only reason Wostyn would visit the café was to seek him out.

Which is interesting, Leo thought, coldly. What does he want from me?

Wostyn nerved himself up and pushed open the door, heading directly towards Leo. He looked nervous, something that bothered Leo on a very primal level. Wostyn had been in the navy long enough to have known Leo’s father, before his death, although as far as Leo knew they’d never actually met. It was a big navy, and there had been nothing in the files to suggest the two might have served on the same ship.

“Captain,” he said. He caught himself a moment later. “Commander.”

“I’m off duty,” Leo said. It wasn't entirely true, but it would suffice. “What can I do for you?”

Wostyn took a seat, glanced at Flower, then looked back at Leo. “I … I have been asked to speak to you by … by the rest of the crew.”

Leo kept his face under tight control. Waterhen didn’t have a Senior Chief … Wostyn might be the closest thing the ship had to one, an enlisted man who could serve as the liaison between the officers and their crew. Leo mentally kicked himself for not trying to arrange for a handful of newer officers and enlisted, or perhaps getting Wostyn promoted … although that might be a headache, now that Francis had noted the black mark in Wostyn’s record. God knew there were worse sins an enlisted man could commit, some which led straight to the airlock, but …

“I understand,” he said, finally. “You may speak freely.”

Wostyn’s face didn’t change, but Leo had the very strong impression the older man didn’t quite believe him. Leo had never been an enlisted man, and his father – who had – had died too young to have any real influence on his upbringing. It was very easy for a young and naive midshipman to land his enlisted men in very hot water quite by accident, or deliberate malice. Leo knew he’d done well, when he’d assumed command of Waterhen, but the rules had changed the moment Francis took his place. And no one, not even Francis himself, knew what they were.

“We earned that prize money,” Wostyn said. “Why did we lose it?”

Leo groaned, inwardly. Francis could have sweetened the pill, with a proper explanation or even a certain amount of compensation, but he hadn’t even tried. No one would have said a word if the pirate ship had been destroyed, or the pirates blew themselves up rather than risk capture, yet … the pirate ship had been taken intact, and in good shape. The crew damn well should have received their share of the prize money, and to lose it was a major letdown even if they hadn’t been depending on it. Leo hoped to hell the gambling rings had kept themselves under control. It was all too easy for a young enlisted crewman to get himself into trouble. Or worse. The academy had told him a great many horror stories about gambling below decks.

And prize money is the one issue that will unite the entire crew, he mused. He’d lost his share too, damn it. This isn’t something that will go away in a hurry.

“The lads aren’t pleased, sir,” Wostyn said. “Is there anything you can do about it?”

Leo forced himself to think. He couldn’t make up the lost money from his own funds. He no longer had control of the ship’s discretionary fund. He had the right to take the case to Francis, but he already knew Francis wouldn’t listen to him. Or any of the other officers. What else could he do? Let the injustice stand? Or complain to Commodore Blackthrone when the ship returned to Yangtze? It was unlikely the commodore would override his nephew for someone that wouldn’t seem so important to him. And complaining to the Admiralty could easily backfire.

And we don’t have anyone who can take the message and be believed, he mused, bitterly. What can we do?

“The Captain is trying to cope with a multitude of different problems,” Leo said. On paper, giving the pirate ship to Winterhome won goodwill at very little cost. In practice, he couldn’t help suspecting the ship wouldn’t stay in orbit for long. “I believe…”

He tried to hide his scowl. The idea of defending Francis was bad enough. Defending the undefendable was worse. He felt like the poor midshipman who had been given the job of defending a crewman who’d raped an officer, a crime that had been filmed and the recording shown to a number of other crewmen … there had been no defence he could offer, nothing that could save the bastard from a short march to the airlock and an agonising death, no matter how much the man had wanted his defender to plead not guilty. There was no way to defend Francis’s conduct and it tore at his soul even to try, even though he knew an officer who publicly disagreed with his CO would likely see his career come to an end.

Leo leaned forward. “I intend to raise the issue with the squadron commander, once we return to Yangtze,” he said, finally. “The Captain has made a sensible decision” – that was a blatant lie – “but it has had consequences I believe the commodore will address.”

Wostyn looked unconvinced. “And if he refuses to address them?”

“Give him a chance, before you condemn him,” Leo said. Commodore Blackthrone did have a fairly decent naval record, unlike Francis. He might understand the importance of compensating the crew for his decision, particularly if it could be spun in his favour. “If that happens, I’ll deal with it when it happens.”

“Thank you, sir,” Wostyn said. His attitude was fawning. His tone was not. “I’ll inform the crew.”

He stood and walked away, stepping through the door and hurrying up the street. Leo watched him go, then swore under his breath. The problem was one hell of a hot potato. He wasn’t worried about a mutiny, certainly not now the ship had a reputation, but an unhappy crew tended to manifest itself in all kinds of dangerous ways. And if they were demoralised … Leo swore again. It was easy to think of a ship as a person in her own right, but they were crewed by people and if they were demoralised … he wondered, numbly if any of the crew wouldn’t return to the ship. Winterhome would be a good place to desert, if they intended to try. The spaceport was poorly monitored, the different nations had so many governments that it would be hard to get them all watching for the same person, and it would be easy for a trained spacer to get a post on an unregistered freighter. Or even a pirate ship.

“I can’t raise the issue with him again,” he muttered. “He’ll say no just because I’m the one who’s asking.”

Flower leaned forward. “Perhaps you’re going about it in the wrong way.”

Leo made a face. “If I bitch to him, he’ll ignore it. If I bitch to his superior, who also happens to be his uncle, it will be held against me even if I’m one hundred percent in the right. No one wants a subordinate who went over his superior’s head, no matter the reason. Do they?”

He scowled. The academy had talked them through a controversial case in which a junior officer had reported her senior for repeatedly violating procedure, for a very good cause. It had been easy to understand why the procedures had been violated, at least at first, and easy to understand – too – why the IG had taken a very dim view of it. And easy, too, to understand why the poor junior had never been offered another post. No one wanted a sneak in their command staff. It didn’t matter that she’d done the right thing.

And the hell of it is that her superior had a good reason too, Leo thought. A more open and shut case would have been less interesting. Her prospective superiors didn’t know if they could trust her not to tattle over nothing.

He met Flower’s eyes. “What do you suggest?”

“There are independent reporters visiting the sector, including some on Yangtze,” Flower said. “And here. We drop a few hints, let them know a crew has been conned out of their fair share of the prize money – without compensation – and let them do the rest. It’ll be quite easy to let them find out, without drawing a line that points straight back to us. By the time we return to Yangtze, there should be some hard questions being asked.”

Leo frowned. He’d read some news reports about his exploits and the reporters – who had never met him, let alone visited the sector – had come up with some crazy stories that no one with a hint of common sense would believe. Apparently, he’d made first contact with aliens. Or seduced a pirate queen. Or commanded a battleship powerful enough to swat heavy cruisers like flies. Even the more sober reports hadn’t gotten everything right. It was a marvel anyone actually believed them.

“And if the story grows into something insane?” Leo tried not to scowl. “What then?”

“Commodore Blackthrone is experienced enough to know there’s often a grain of truth buried under a mountain of bullshit,” Flower told him. “He’ll ignore the crazy stories and dig into the truth, at which point he’ll have an excellent chance to turn it in his favour by compensating the crew for their lost prize money. He can claim the money simply couldn’t be paid until we returned to Yangtze and that’s not unbelievable, certainly not from a few hundred light years away. The story will lose steam at that point and the reporters will return to writing lurid stories about the Princess of Britannia’s engagement to the Prince of Edo.”

“Charming,” Leo muttered. He shook his head. “Are you sure it’ll work?”

“You’re the military expert,” Flower said. “What happens if you back an enemy into a corner with no line of retreat?”

Leo would hardly have called himself an expert, but he knew the answer. “They either surrender or fight like cornered rats.”

“Yes,” Flower agreed. “In this case, the last thing we want is to put the Commodore in a position where he has to climb down and throw his nephew to the wolves or risk a great deal of embarrassment for his family. If we give him a chance to turn the situation to his advantage, before the more reputable news organisations get hold of the story, he’ll take it.”

“Because it works out in his favour,” Leo mused. He didn’t like the sound of it. “If there was another way …”

“I can’t think of one,” Flower said. “Leo, what do you want? Your crew compensated or the entire Blackthrone clan humiliated? Because the latter isn’t going to be easy. They have enough wealth and power to survive this scandal and they’ll be hopping mad afterwards. Give them an easy out, one they can insist they meant to do all along, and they’ll take it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Leo said. He wanted Francis to eat humble pie, but … cold logic pointed out that it would be a short-term victory, if it happened at all, and a long-term defeat. “When do we start?”

“Let me deal with it,” Flower said. “You don’t want to be anywhere near it. Just in case. I’ll go find a crewman I can convince to go drown his sorrows in the right place. If he has the right audience …”

It galled Leo to rely on such tactics, but he couldn’t think of anything better.

“I’ve got a few hours left,” he said. He hadn’t landed with any real plans, not when he was the ranking officer on the ground. If any of his crew got into trouble, he’d have to deal with it before the captain got involved. “Any thoughts?”

“Don’t leave the spaceport,” Flower advised. “The captain could recall you at any moment, once he’s finished with the government, and you’ll be in trouble if you can’t get back in a hurry. And don’t trust the cheap whores. You don’t know where they’ve been.”

Leo nodded. The brothels back home had been owned and operated by the prostitutes who worked there. Here … he doubted he could trust any of the brothels. Perhaps it would be better to find a holovid simulator or sign up for role-playing … something, in all honesty, he’d always found a little strange. The idea of paying someone to pretend to be his wife for a few short hours … no, it wasn’t strange. It was sad.

“I’ll see what I can find,” he said. “Any other words of advice?”

“Not now, no,” Flower said. “Have fun.”

“I’ll try,” Leo said. Perhaps he could go to a high-class place instead. It had been a long time since he’d slept with anyone, and prostitutes – at least – were honest. “Watch your back.”

Flower smirked. “I have lots of eyes watching my back.”

 

Chapter Thirteen

Francis seemed revoltingly pleased with himself when he was piped back onboard Waterhen, barely an hour before they were scheduled to leave the system. Leo wondered just what he’d been getting into – in all senses of the word – before deciding it didn’t matter, that he should be grateful Francis had been somewhere else for the last few days. He’d taken advantage of the time to authorise some additional activities for the crew, hardly enough to compensate them but – perhaps – enough to keep them from doing something stupid. The last thing Leo needed was someone below decks planning to embarrass his commanding officer. Francis would tear the ship apart to find the culprit and it would make bringing subtle pressure on his uncle – and by extension the whole clan – a great deal harder.

“Take the conn, steer us to our next destination,” Francis ordered, once the brief ceremony was over. “And then come see me in my office.”

Leo saluted, despite an overpowering temptation to roll his eyes. There was no convoy this time, nothing to keep them on a predictable schedule, but Francis had insisted on following the plan anyway. Leo had been told Francis wanted to be able to get messages from his uncle, yet Leo privately suspected there’d be no messages. An experienced naval officer would know the problem of contacting a ship flitting from system to system and expect Waterhen to be effectively out of contact until she returned to Yangtze. Commodore Blackthrone was certainly smart enough to know it, and perhaps even to rely on it. Francis was going to be out of his sight and mind for a very long time.

But not long enough, Leo thought, as he returned to the bridge. It was a relief they hadn’t lost any crewmen, although several had clearly had hangovers and probably stowed alcohol in their bags when they returned. Leo had loudly mentioned that there’d be a search, in a place he knew he’d be overheard, in hopes of ensuring that most of the alcohol was either discarded or carefully hidden before it was too late. God alone knows what’ll happen if Francis catches someone drunk off his arse.

He took the command chair, feeling his heart twisting painfully as he brought up the main display. Waterhen was his ship … no, not any longer. A hundred crazy plans ran through his mind, each one madder than the last, to reclaim the ship for himself, even though he knew they’d all end badly even if they came off perfectly. The idea of taking the ship beyond the Rim and setting up his own pocket empire … no. It was madness. As well as mutiny and rebellion and God alone knew what other charges, if he lived long enough to face a court martial. He’d go down in history as the most notorious man in the navy’s history, if he wasn’t scrubbed from the records completely. If Flower was correct, a surprising number of incidents had been buried so deeply the truth would never be known.

“Sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. He’d taken the tactical console, leaving Grison to run the helm. Leo made a mental note to ensure more cross-training. Waterhen wasn’t big enough to have three trained officers for every console. In theory, every officer should be capable of handling every station: in practice, it wasn’t so easy. A brilliant tactical officer might make a lousy helmsman or vice versa. “All stations have reported in. We are ready to depart.”

“System Command has already cleared us,” Abigail added. “They sent the clearance two hours ago.”

They must be looking forward to getting rid of us, Leo thought. Waterhen had captured a pirate ship – Leo hoped to hell the former prisoners were safe on Winterhome – but that had been unsanctioned illegal activity. If there wasn’t a great deal of criminal activity the planetary government condoned, or at least ignored, he’d eat his dress hat. Normally, we’re supposed to ask for clearance after we get all our ducks in a row.

His lips twitched. “Run a final tactical scan of the system,” he ordered. “Flag up anything interesting.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said. The display sharpened, revealing a handful of freighters and orbital structures holding position around the planet. “Nothing of great interest, sir.”

“Duly noted.” Leo felt like a senior cadet again, when he’d had to ride herd on his juniors. Francis had been quite helpful, in a way. He’d taught Leo what not to do. It was just a shame he hadn’t taught Leo what he should do as well. “Helm, bring up the drive.”

“Aye, sir,” Grison said. “Jump drive online.”

Leo took one last look at Winterhome. A surprisingly developed world, so far from Daybreak that it was unlikely she’d ever heard of Leo’s homeworld until the expanding edge of de facto empire washed over the system. Leo knew for a fact there were thousands upon thousands of people in the sector, the former leaders and merchant kings of their worlds, who hated and resented Daybreak; he was painfully aware that many had plotted against Daybreak, coming alarmingly close to success. Winterhome hadn’t been tied to the plot, as far as they had been able to determine, but Leo wondered … it was odd that such a developed world didn’t harbour resentments. Perhaps they were just better hidden.

His eyes lingered on the distant stars, little more than catalogue numbers in the database. The first age of interstellar exploration had been terminated by the war, the destruction of hundreds of worlds and billions of lives forcing humanity to concentrate on bare survival rather than locating and developing new colony worlds. Daybreak had been surveying, of course, but the survey service had been concentrating on updating starcharts, plotting jumplines to distant worlds and trying to make contact with planets that had been out of touch for decades, perhaps centuries. There were no formal missions heading beyond the Rim … not as far as he knew. The local stars could easily be sending out missions of their own. Who knew what lurked out there?

“Helm,” Leo said. “Jump.”

Waterhen shivered as she jumped, hopping to the first waypoint. Leo wondered how many eyes had watched them go, how many smugglers and pirates had breathed a sigh of relief, then shrugged. It wasn’t his problem. He watched the display instead, feeling a twinge of regret there was no one in position to ambush them. It would be dangerous, but it would also embarrass Francis. He was supposed to be on the bridge during jump.

“Lieutenant Halloran, you have the conn,” Leo said. There was no point in wasting time any further. He wouldn’t be needed for several hours, as Waterhen recycled her drive and moved to the next jump coordinate. “Keep a watchful eye on the surrounding region. We don’t want any surprises.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said.

Leo stood and headed for the captain’s hatch, feeling a twinge of bitterness. Normally, he wouldn’t have commanded a starship for anything more than an hour or two – and never without supervision. There wouldn’t be any sense she was his ship, even if he was sitting in the captain’s chair. But Waterhen had been his … he shook his head, promising himself that he’d be back soon enough. He had no idea how, but … given enough time, Francis could screw up almost anything. And yet, if he managed to screw his ship and crew in the process …

“Captain,” Leo said. He saluted as the hatch hissed closed behind him. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, I did,” Francis said. God, Leo hated his accent, a constant reminder of his advantages of birth. “You will be pleased to know that Sedona was kind enough to assure me the pirate ship will not be sold onwards, but will instead make up the core of the planetary defence force.”

“How kind of her, sir,” Leo managed, keeping his voice light. A sharp look told him Francis hadn’t missed the sarcasm. “I’m sure the pirate ship will still be there when we return.”

“I do hope to visit again,” Francis said. His smile told the entire story. “She is a charming companion and her world has a bright future ahead of it. I look forward to working with her in the future.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. “I hope you remembered to uphold Daybreak’s primacy.”

“She was very accommodating,” Francis assured him. “I see no reason Winterhome cannot be granted autonomous status.”

Leo kept his face under tight control. Francis was not a diplomat, let alone the sector governor … and even his uncle, who was the governor until Daybreak sent out a replacement, couldn’t change a planet’s status without good reason. He rather hoped Francis tried to urge his uncle to do just that, not least because it would probably end badly. It wasn’t a harmless little prank like exploiting a loophole to put your nephew in de facto command of a starship. If his uncle wasn’t impressed by whatever argument Francis put forward, it would be the worse for him.

Francis cocked his head. “Do you have no comment?”

“Such matters are well above my pay grade, sir,” Leo said. It was perfectly true. He might have been the ranking officer in the sector, until Commodore Blackthrone arrived, but he hadn’t thrown his weight around. The locals wouldn’t be too impressed, even after he’d won a battle against overwhelming odds. “I trust my superiors can handle them.”

“Of course,” Francis agreed. “It is good you are finally getting to know your place.”

He picked up a datapad and made a show of running his eye down it. “I note you requested two new maintenance cycles during transit?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. “We have to stay ahead of any problems before they explode in our faces.”

Francis looked up at him. “And you haven’t been keeping ahead of them?”

Leo gritted his teeth. “Yes, sir,” he said. Last time, he’d been the commanding officer and he’d authorised the cycle without hesitation. “It is not a static situation. Maintenance has to be carried out constantly. Repeatedly.”

“At the risk of burning through our budget,” Francis said. “You also put in a request for more spare parts.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said, tightly.

Francis snorted. “Do you know what’ll happen if we burn through our budget?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. “Do you know what’ll happen if we skimp on maintenance?”

“Don’t be cheeky,” Francis said. “Or I’ll bust you all the way back to Midshipman.”

Leo resisted the urge to point out he’d never actually been a midshipman. “Sir, the fundamental problem with this ship is that she is outdated,” he said. “The refits have installed newer technology in some places, but others have remained unchanged for decades. The mishmash puts a great deal of wear and tear on our systems, and the lack of standardisation makes it very difficult to be sure just what’ll put the kibosh on a single component, let alone all of them.”

“Fleet handbooks include projected lifespans for each and every navy-approved component,” Francis said, tonelessly.

“Those handbooks weren’t written by spacers,” Leo said. He’d wondered, a year ago, why so many cadets who graduated as lieutenants got busted down to midshipmen within a couple of months. He knew now. They might have been brilliant cadets, but cadets didn’t deal with the real world and their mistakes didn’t have any real consequences. An experienced officer would understand that the Book, no matter how detailed, didn’t account for random chance. “They were written by groundpounders who didn’t understand just how much wear and tear would be put on those components during an engagement, nor how the interaction between components would make it impossible to accurately project lifespan …”

Francis held up a hand. “Are you saying this ship is poorly maintained?”

Leo felt his lips twist into a snarl and forced his face into a blank expression. “This ship is a mishmash of components designed over the last century and slotted together in a manner that only works because our engineering team are very good at their jobs. There is no way to predict power surges, failures in interconnectivity and a hundred other glitches that could turn into serious problems if they’re not tackled at once. That is part of the maintenance cycle.”

“Which is likely to cause problems, when they review our budget,” Francis insisted, stubbornly.

“We are a very long way from Daybreak,” Leo said. “And even if the beancounters make a fuss I am sure your uncle can knock some sense into their heads.”

He sighed, inwardly, as Francis reddened. There shouldn’t be any issue with replacing damaged or burnt-out components, even if they did spend more than their discretionary fund, but any captain who went over budget could expect some very hard questions … at least, outside wartime. Boothroyd had told him some stories about supply officers taking advantage of hostilities to file missing equipment and supplies as lost in combat, rather than face an inquest ordered by some beancounter who had long lost track of what was actually important. Waterhen needed a proper refit, her innards gutted and replaced by modern technology that could be properly standardised … it wasn’t going to happen. It would be cheaper to construct a whole new ship. Quicker, too.

And Francis will be the one who’ll have to explain the budget overrun, he thought, wryly. That’ll be embarrassing even if his uncle rubber-stamps it.

“And you have allowed this situation to continue?”

“No, sir.” Leo couldn’t keep his anger out of his voice. “Captain Archibald created this … situation … when he decided he would be better spending his time in the pleasure dens rather than doing his bloody job. He sat in orbit around the sun – Daybreak’s sun – for nearly a decade, his crew either doing everything in their power to get off his ship or drinking themselves into a stupor. Except he didn’t sit there! He was on the planet instead and …”

He took a breath. “I inherited a mess. I started to clear it up as soon as I realised just how bad it was, but the combination of a lack of replacement components and the demands of a hasty departure ensured it wasn’t possible to do more than the bare minimum. We have done a great deal of catching up, since then, yet … there’s no way to fix the underlying problems without a proper refit. It’s all in my reports. Sir.”

“I read your reports,” Francis snapped. “Half of your solutions were unorthodox.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. “The orthodox solutions were unavailable.”

“Clearly, they were inadequate,” Francis said. He waved a hand at the bulkhead. “Something came loose in there, just after jump. I heard it.”

“I’ll see to it,” Leo said, hiding his puzzlement. There was nothing on the far side of the bulkhead that could … oh. “With your permission, sir, I will tend to my duties.”

“See that you do,” Francis said. “My report is, so far, not favourable. Dismissed.”

Leo saluted, then turned away. Francis was going to have trouble if he filed a very negative report, certainly so long after assuming command. The blame would either fall on Captain Archibald, which would provoke a fight with his family, or Francis himself, on the grounds he was in de facto command. Leo’s brief spell in the command chair would be easy to overlook … he smiled as soon as he was through the hatch, then walked around the network of corridors to the nearest tube. His first thought had been right, he noted, as he opened the hatch. Crewman Second Class Codman was lying near the captain’s air vent, trying hard to be very quiet as he put the modified filter back into place. He’d clearly dropped something … he’d been lucky Francis didn’t know enough to realise what had really happened.

“Come out of there,” Leo ordered. “Now!”

Codman scrambled out, his face pale. He was one of life’s losers, a crewman who really should have been discharged years ago. The only reason he’d been assigned to Waterhen was that the navy needed a crewman to fill his slot and the only reason he’d stayed had been through sheer inertia. And a close relationship with Wostyn. They’d been partners in crime.

“I’m just trying to welcome him to the ship,” Codman stammered. “I …”

Leo gritted his teeth. “What did you put in the filter?”

“A piece of fish, sir,” Codman confessed. “It’ll …”

“Go bad and stink out the cabin,” Leo finished. It was an old trick, one that had a long and dishonourable history in the academy, right besides sending a naive young cadet on a quest for fallopian tubes. Francis had nearly fainted at Leo’s response to that trick, which had done nothing for their relationship. “Get back in there, take the fish out, and if he asks tell him that I ordered you to fix the filter. And when you’re done, keep your goddamned mouth shut!”

“But sir …”

“The CO of a starship on active duty has the legal authority to execute anyone under his command if he feels it necessary,” Leo snarled. The authority had rarely been invoked, and some COs had been offered a flat choice between resigning or dishonourable discharge, but there was no way anyone could resurrect the dead. “Do you think …”

He caught himself. Speaking ill of the CO to a crewman was another way to get into hot water.

“Don’t do anything like that, not on this ship.” Leo met Codman’s eyes. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Codman said. He sounded shaken, as if he hadn’t considered he might face the death penalty. Francis would be within his legal rights to cut off Codman’s head if he wished and even if the sentence was reversed later Codman would still be dead. “But …”

“But nothing,” Leo said. “Let me deal with the situation.”

And he hoped, as he walked away, that Codman would listen.

 

Chapter Fourteen

“No encroachments, Captain,” Leo reported. “Local space is clear.”

He hid his relief as the display continued to fill with tactical data. He’d been on edge for the last two weeks, wondering if another crewman might be stupid enough to prank the captain and smart enough to get away with it. Flower had told him that there had been a distinct lack of grumbling from the crew, something that worried Leo on a very primal level. The crew had excellent reason to grumble and the fact they weren’t bothered him, not least because it suggested trouble was brewing. Leo could only hope the ship’s crew were planning to apply for transfers or take early retirement, rather than mutiny. The latter would get them killed or declared outlaw, if they managed to take control of the ship.

“Very good,” Francis said, as if he’d arranged it that way. “Communications, signal System Command. Inform them of our arrival and request permission to approach.”

“Aye, sir,” Abigail said.

Leo nodded sourly as he checked his display. There was very little movement within the Boulogne System, something that puzzled him. The system had two gas giants and an asteroid belt that could support a modern industry, if the planet’s settlers managed to get their act together before the Daybreak corporations arrived and took control. It didn’t look as though they were even trying. His sensors could pick out a few hints of activity within the asteroid belt, but the miners didn’t seem to have any relationship with Boulogne. There were certainly no industrial refineries or fabbers orbiting the planet. The only things he could see were a conventional entry station, a satellite communications network and a lone orbital weapons platform. It looked to have come from Daybreak.

“Signal from the planet, sir,” Abigail said. “They’re welcoming us to the system and inviting us to enter orbit.”

“Helm, set course,” Francis ordered. “Take us in.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo kept an eye on his console, feeling uneasy. Waterhen had passed through two systems after leaving Winterhome, and even though they hadn’t detected any other – possible – enemy contacts he couldn’t help feeling they were being watched. He hadn’t tried to bring it to Francis’s attention, after he’d been scolded for suggesting they vary their planned schedule and change their arrival coordinates just enough to throw off anyone shadowing them. It was hard not to feel resentful. Francis’s uncle would have understood, both the fear of someone creeping up behind them and the grim reality that there was no such thing as a reliable interstellar timetable. Francis didn’t. He was acting more like a cadet who expected to be flogged and then shot for being late for class than an experienced officer. Or indeed any sort of officer.

Perhaps there’ll be a chance for some shore leave, Leo thought, instead of dwelling on something he couldn’t fix. Boulogne was relatively peaceful, from what little he’d heard, and a day or two on the surface sounded ideal. Or …

The communications console pinged. “Captain, we’re picking up a distress call,” Abigail said, grimly. “Free Trader Heorot, requesting immediate assistance.”

Francis, to his credit, didn’t hesitate. “Helm, alter course to intercept,” he ordered. “Communications, attempt to raise the Heorot, ask for an update.”

Leo grimaced inwardly. The freighter was several light-minutes from their position, the radio signal already badly out of date. He keyed his console, noting the message prefix. Pirate attack. If Waterhen made the transit in realspace, the pirate ship would have an excellent chance of seeing her coming and running, perhaps blowing up the Heorot as she fled. They needed to get closer quicker, and that meant using the drive …

“Captain, I suggest we jump closer,” Leo said. The drive had been recycling automatically, a common precaution when they had no idea what might be awaiting them on the far side. “We can bring our guns to bear before the enemy ship realises we’re coming.”

He could feel the glare Francis directed at his back. “When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,” Francis snapped. “Helm, best possible speed!”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Halloran said.

Leo cursed under his breath. There was some logic in Francis’s tactics, if their approach wasn’t noticed, but charging towards the stricken freighter was the exact opposite of a sneaky approach. The crew would have to be blind to miss the oncoming ship and even if they hadn’t thought to recycle the drives – on the grounds they had no reason to think there was anyone in the system capable of intercepting them – they would have more than enough time to start the procedure before Waterhen slipped into weapons range. Leo’s hands darted across his console, ensuring the data from the starship’s sensors was fed into a private subsection within the datacore. It would come in handy, if Francis fucked up. If the data fell into the wrong hands …

He felt sweat prickling down his back as Waterhen picked up speed, a low vibration echoing through the hull as she pushed her drives to the limit. He'd done what he could to ensure redundancy, but pressing the drives so hard ran the very real risk of burning out too many nodes to maintain a drive field. Waterhen was faster than any of her original sisters, yet her acceleration curve was far gentler than any modern ship and – assuming the nodes didn’t burn out – it would take at least twenty minutes for her to get close enough to assist. The pirates might not have enough time to start looting the vessel, but they’d have more than enough time to destroy her and vanish before Waterhen arrived. He tapped his console, running through a handful of simulations. It didn’t quite make sense. The whole situation was a little too convenient.

“Captain,” he said, quietly. “Something doesn’t make sense.”

Francis snorted. “And what about this scenario doesn’t make sense?”

“The timing,” Leo said. The pirates had had more than enough time to realise Waterhen had entered the system before committing themselves, if they hadn’t known she was coming. Francis had stuck to the original timetable, after all, and if that wasn’t common knowledge by now Leo would eat his hat. The commodore had done a good job of moving his own officers and crew into place, on Yangtze, but there were still a great many locals in position to gather intelligence and sell it to the highest bidder. “They’re too close to the planet …”

“Which can barely monitor local space, let alone do anything about what happens outside their atmosphere,” Francis pointed out, tartly. “Keep your mouth closed unless you have something useful to offer.”

Leo gritted his teeth and dropped his eyes to the console. The lines were sharpening up now, the range closing rapidly. The time delay was falling too. Not realtime data, not yet, but a hell of a lot closer than they had any right to expect. The pirates had to see them coming, which meant ... what? What were they taking from the freighter? There weren’t many goods that could be transferred in a hurry, certainly not with a warship breathing down their necks. He tapped his console, sending a request for a manifest to the orbital station. It was worth a try, but he doubted he’d get an answer. Heorot was a free trader. The breed shared as little as possible with customs officers and the locals were too weak to push the issue,

They should be running, Leo thought. Waterhen was starting to decelerate now, her sensors zeroing in on the targets as the time delay dropped to zero. Two contacts, a freighter and a makeshift warship, built on a light-freighter hull. Leo felt a flicker of contempt mingled with caution. The design was shoddy and there were limits to how extensively the ship could be refitted, no matter how much time and effort was spent on it. The pirates could have obtained a more reasonable ship for a fraction of the cost. His thoughts ran in circles. Why aren’t they running?

His eyes narrowed. The pirate ship was holding position near the Heorot, but there didn’t appear to be anyone moving from one ship to the other. No shuttles … EVA? It was much harder to detect a man in a spacesuit than a shuttle, as long as he wasn’t carrying a beacon, but what would be the point? The freighter was helpless, cowering under whatever outdated weapons had been crammed into the refitted hull. The pirate ship should be looting her, or charging up her drives to jump somewhere safe … perhaps that was their plan. Heorot probably didn’t have a modern civilian drive, let alone a military version. They might be waiting for her to be ready to jump.

Except that requires a certain degree of bravery, Leo thought. And when has a pirate ever been brave?

His console pinged. “Captain, the enemy ship is powering her drive,” Leo reported. “She’s going to make a run for it.”

“Communications, raise the enemy ship,” Francis ordered. “Inform them that they are under our guns, and that we will open fire if they do not deactivate their drive and prepare to be boarded.”

The pirate ship ignored the warning, gliding away from the freighter and accelerating rapidly. Leo’s eyes narrowed. The pirate ship could have jumped out by now … should have, unless there was some reason to stay in realspace. Did they have a boarding party on Heorot? It was rare for the pirates to risk their lives for their comrades, but Leo found it hard to believe the pirate crew would be happy if the boarding party was abandoned, left behind to face interrogation and execution. One might as well believe a king could butcher his own mercenaries, secure in the knowledge he could always hire more. It tended to end badly for the king, if he tried. And in this case, who knew what any captured pirates would offer their captors, in exchange for their lives?

“They could have a boarding party on Heorot,” he mused. “But why haven’t they got her underway?”

“I told you to keep your mouth shut,” Francis said. “Communications, raise Heorot. Ask for an update.”

“Aye, sir,” Abigail said. Leo could hear the tension in her voice and hoped to hell Francis couldn’t. “No response.”

The crew might be dead, Leo thought. He’d seen the aftermath of a dozen pirate attacks, orgies of looting and rape and crimes unthinkable to sane and reasonable minds, the pirates glorying in their outrages while ensuring their newer recruits were hopelessly compromised, enough evidence left behind to make certain they’d be tossed out the nearest airlock if the navy ever caught up with them. Or they might have their communications system disabled. Or they might be playing possum for some reason of their own.

He eyed the free trader thoughtfully. She was old, a starship that probably should have been sent to the breakers long ago. She was designed to actually make landfall, something that came in handy along the Rim, but Leo privately doubted she could get back into space once she made it down. If her crew weren’t very careful, even trying would be enough to get them all killed. There was a reason most freighters preferred to unload in orbit, rather than setting down on the planet below. But then, a barely-settled world rarely had the facilities to handle such operations.

“Helm, take us in pursuit,” Francis ordered. “Tactical, prepare to fire a warning shot.”

“Aye, Captain,” Leo said. He frowned as they picked up speed, passing too close to Heorot for his peace of mind. The freighter didn’t appear to be armed – they didn’t seem to have tried to fight – but it was impossible to be sure. If there was an enemy boarding party on the ship, they might try to turn her weapons on Waterhen. That would be one hell of a complication. He kept a wary eye on the freighter as he prepped the missile. “Warning shot loaded, ready to fire.”

His eyes narrowed. It was starting to look like an engagement from the pre-war era, a time when it had taken hours to recycle the drives and starships were forced to engage in long stern chases before they could bring their opponent under their guns. The pirate ship’s acceleration curve was no better than Waterhen’s, and judging from her drive fluctuations one or more of her nodes was on the verge of burning out. Why wasn’t she trying to run? She could start recycling her drive now, far later than any naval officer would tolerate, and still get clear before Waterhen could get into engagement range.

Francis sounded pleased. “Fire.”

Leo tapped his console. The missile lanced away from Waterhen, accelerating so rapidly it would have killed a living crew. The pirates would have ample time to see the missile coming, to plot out her course and determine she was nothing more than a warning shot … to project, if they wished, the perfect point defence solution. He expected them to fire at any moment, to put a railgun pellet or plasma pulse in the missile’s path, but instead the missile shot past its target and detonated harmlessly several hundred kilometres ahead of them. The pirates didn’t seem impressed.

“Communications, signal the enemy ship,” Francis ordered. “Inform them this is their one chance to surrender. The next missile won’t miss.”

But it will be shot down, unless we get a great deal closer, Leo thought. The only way to minimise the odds of losing a missile was to close the range to the point they could use sprint mode, and that would be risky. He’d sooner engaged with the ship’s phasers. They were effectively one-shot weapons, but the pirate ship didn’t seem tough enough to survive a direct hit. Her acceleration curve suggested she wasn’t outfitted with heavy armour. If they want to draw this out, they can just swat our missiles before they get close enough to engage.

He keyed his console, running through more simulations. The entire scenario didn’t make sense. The only explanation that did was that the pirates were trying to buy time for their comrades on Heorot, assuming they had comrades on the stricken freighter, and they had already succeeded. They’d certainly won enough time for Heorot to recycle her drives and run and … she was still there, falling behind the other two ships. What were they doing? If they were just trying to screw with Francis’s mind …

“Captain, they’re offering to surrender,” Abigail reported.

“Order them to cut drives and deactivate their tactical sensors,” Francis said. “If there is a single active sensor flicker from that ship, we’ll blow it away.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo frowned. The phasers were online, the targeting sensors updating constantly. The range was closing sharply now, as the enemy ship cut speed. Waterhen wasn’t trying to decelerate herself … Leo hoped Francis wasn't planning a crash-stop. The tactic looked impressive, but put untold wear and tear on the drive nodes and sometimes caused them to burn out, bad enough under any circumstances but utterly disastrous so far from home. Leo would have liked the idea of Francis embarrassing himself if it wouldn’t embarrass the ship, as well as everything else. His eyes narrowed as he kept his eye on the enemy ship. She appeared to be following orders. There were no emissions suggesting she was planning to jump at the last second, and they were already close enough to get a good idea of her exit coordinates. What was she doing?

“Captain …”

“I told you to be quiet,” Francis snapped. “Communications, open a channel. I wish to dictate my terms for their surrender.”

You don’t need to haggle, Leo thought, grimly. The range was still closing. Just tell them the boarding party will be on the way shortly, and that any resistance will result in the destruction of their ship.

“Sir, recommend we decelerate and keep our distance,” he said. “We’re already too close for comfort.”

Francis didn’t try to hide his anger. “Helm, begin deceleration,” he ordered. “Communications, open that channel.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo cursed under his breath. The enemy ship was behaving … wasn’t it? The whole affair just made no sense. Was it a diversion? Was the planet under attack? Or were they planning something really devastating? The two ships were too far apart for sprint mode missiles, yet close enough to pick up warning emissions if the enemy ship brought their energy weapons online … if, of course, she even had them. It was rare for pirate vessels to mount phasers. Quite apart from the power demands, they left little behind worth looting.

“This is Captain Francis Blackthrone of RSS Waterhen,” Francis said, every bit the brave and firm commanding officer. He’d missed his calling as an actor, Leo decided. He would have made a killing. “You are ordered to open your hatches and prepare to be boarded, whereupon you will be taken into custody. If you cooperate, your lives will be spared …”

Leo saw it, suddenly. The enemy ship was rotating slightly, bringing weapons to bear … horror flashed through him as he realised they’d flown right into a trap. They’d bolted a missile pod to the ship’s hull and … the range wasn’t quite out of sprint mode’s engagement envelope. They were using Waterhen’s own emissions to target her and her drives to narrow the range …

“Fuck!”

Francis rounded on him. “I said …”

Leo ignored him. There was no time. They were doomed unless ...

“Crash stop,” he barked, hoping to hell the order would be followed. “Firing phasers! Point defence on automatic …”

He keyed his console. The phasers fired at point-blank range. The enemy ship fired too, a second before the phasers blasted through her hull, setting off a chain of explosions that ripped her apart. Waterhen shook violently, the gravity field flickering madly as she came to a halt … just in time to save herself. The engagement had come very close to destroying the entire ship.

Francis spoke with cold fury. “Report to your cabin and stay there,” he ordered, as the last traces of the enemy ship died away. “Now.”

Leo had never been so tempted to do something stupid in his entire life. “Yes, sir.”

 

Chapter Fifteen

Francis, Leo decided, had leant nothing from his experience as a senior cadet.

Sending a junior cadet back to the barracks to await a lecture or even a caning was one thing, but doing the same to a starship officer was quite another. Leo had expected Francis to lock out Leo’s command codes at once, ensuring he couldn’t do anything that might cause trouble until Francis decided what to do with him, yet he hadn’t thought of it. Leo had no trouble downloading copies of the engagement records to his terminal, then making sure a copy was sent to Flower and another to the secure storage datacore that was normally only accessible to the captain. Francis might – he certainly should – know the datacore existed, but he might not realise that Leo had access. He’d obtained Captain Archibald’s codes from Flower and, as far as he knew, Francis didn’t know it. Leo certainly hadn’t told him.

He lay on the bunk and waited, silently replaying the brief engagement in his mind time and time again. They’d been lured into a trap, set up so carefully they’d come within bare seconds of impaling themselves on enemy missiles, and only sheer goddamned luck had saved them from being crippled or destroyed. Francis could throw whatever fit he liked, Leo told himself, but there would be no escaping the simple fact he’d come very close to getting the entire ship blown away. Leo had saved his life. Somehow, Leo doubted Francis would be very grateful.

We all make mistakes, he thought, darkly. And …

He shook his head, tiredly. It hadn’t been a mistake. There were sixty-seven officers, crew and marines on Waterhen and none deserved to die, not like that. Leo knew he wouldn’t waste time mourning Francis’s death, if he got himself killed through ignorance or stupidity, but it would be a disaster if he took the rest of the crew with him. He wondered, rather sourly, how Francis intended to explain the incident to his uncle, if he was even going to bother. The cover story was no doubt already being prepared … no, Francis wasn’t smart enough to realise he needed a cover story. Perhaps he intended to execute Leo on the spot and come up with an excuse afterwards. Leo knew it wouldn’t last. The files would be extracted, eventually, and all hell would break loose.

The hatch chimed. Leo made a mental bet with himself that Francis was on the far side. Lieutenant Halloran was the only other person who had the right to enter and he didn’t need to knock. Anyone else would stay away. Leo was mildly surprised Lieutenant Halloran hadn’t returned to the cabin. He should have come off duty an hour ago. Leo hoped Lieutenant Halloran wasn’t in trouble, not for following orders. His heart twisted. Leo could take any sort of punishment for his misdeeds, but it wasn’t fair to have someone else punished for his actions.

“Come,” he said.

The hatch hissed open. Francis stepped into the cabin, his nose wrinkling as he looked around. Leo gritted his teeth, reminding himself – sharply – that they weren’t cadets any longer. Francis didn’t have the right to inspect his quarters, or make a fuss about his bedding being one micron out of place, or anything else the senior cadets could do to put the juniors on their place. Leo caught his fists clenching and forced himself to relax, keeping his hands behind his back. Francis hadn’t thought to have his service weapon confiscated either. Leo supposed that was a good sign.

And if he starts to draw his weapon to shoot me on the spot, he thought, I’ll shoot him first.

Francis didn’t bother with any preliminaries. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Leo felt his fists clenching again. Francis’s voice had always annoyed him and all the more so now, after he knew he’d saved the ship. A smart captain would be lavishing his subordinate in praise, all the while trying to come up with a cover story that would explain his blunder and clarify he hadn’t actually meant to do it … or, perhaps, admit his mistake and make certain never to do it again. The navy did tend to tolerate mistakes, after going through a long and painful process to ensure lessons were learnt and errors wouldn’t be repeated.

“I saved the ship,” Leo said, bluntly. He keyed his terminal, bringing up the records. “They were already spitting missiles at us. If I hadn’t fired, we would have been vaporised.”

Probably, his thoughts added. The combination of the crash-stop and the point defence, activated not a moment too soon, had kept the missiles from striking their target. It was hard to know if they’d been nukes or anything else, but it hardly mattered. At that range, kinetic strikes would have done considerable damage. We came within seconds of being destroyed.

“You issued orders on my bridge,” Francis snapped.

“Captain Archibald’s bridge,” Leo pointed out, before he could stop himself. “You’re just keeping the command chair warm.”

“Your reports never acknowledged that you weren’t the legal commander of Waterhen,” Francis snapped. “And I was the ranking officer.”

“There was no time,” Leo countered. “They had us bang to rights.”

Because you let them lure you into a deadly trap, he added, silently. If you’d listened to me …

“I have had quite enough of your insubordination,” Francis said. “You have pushed the limits to breaking point.”

Idiot, Leo thought, coldly. You could come up with a neat little cover story, tell the navy you were about to issue the order yourself … even credit me with having the wit to save the ship, and insist you put me at the tactical console to ensure I could. The story would be believed because your uncle would want to believe it. But instead you’re punishing me for daring to save your miserable hide.

He swallowed the urge to point it out. If Francis wasn’t smart enough to put together a cover story that would stand up to scrutiny, that was his problem. Leo had other things to worry about.

“I can have you shot,” Francis said. He sounded as though he’d regressed to being a cadet again, threatening his juniors with penalties he lacked the authority to carry out. “You disobeyed orders in the face of the enemy.”

Leo tensed. If Francis made a move for his pistol, Leo would hit him and to hell with the consequences.

“You could,” he agreed, keeping his voice cold. “But any such action would be examined, carefully, by a Board of Inquiry. Your conduct in the hours leading up to the execution would come under heavy scrutiny, which would reveal how close Waterhen came to destruction – and how your mistakes led to near-disaster. It wouldn’t be hard for your family’s enemies to claim you killed me to cover up your fuck-up. Sir.”

Francis’s lips thinned. “The crew are loyal to me.”

Leo snorted. “That may be so,” he said. It was a flat lie and they both knew it. “But no amount of loyalty will keep them from spilling their guts, when the inquest begins. The interrogations will be carried out by experts, who will use a combination of drugs and lie detectors to ensure that nothing is hidden from them. You know procedure as well as I do. Do you really think you can offer anything that will convince the crew to hide something? Do you think they could actually succeed?”

He allowed himself a tight smile. “And what do you think my patron will make of that?”

Francis’s lips moved soundlessly for a long moment. He hadn’t thought ahead, Leo noted, certainly not far enough to consider his second or third moves. Leo had a patron and that patron was high enough to cause real trouble, both to defend his client and embarrass his rivals. It would not be a guaranteed victory for his family, if push came to shove. His uncle might just decide to push Francis under the shuttlecraft instead.

“You could have talked to me in private,” Francis said, finally. “If you …”

Leo couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

“We were on the bridge, in the middle of an emergency,” he said. “What should I have done? Raised my hand and asked if I could use the bathroom?”

Francis reddened. “By long custom, you can ask for a private meeting at any moment.”

“Not in the middle of an emergency,” Leo said. Technically, Francis was right. Practically, he was dead wrong. “And I told you there was something suspicious about the whole encounter.”

He sighed inwardly. The inquest was going to be a nightmare. He almost pitied Francis. His enemies wouldn’t need much time or ingenuity to figure out how to put the blame on him, from his insistence on sticking to the timetable to his carelessness in letting the enemy lure him into the killing ground. Leo was fairly sure Francis hadn’t meant to do any of it, but anyone who’d been through a mock inquest would know how easy it was to attribute malicious motives to someone who’d been ignorant or stupid. His family’s enemies were going to have a field day.

“I have spoken to the Governor of Boulogne,” Francis said, apparently changing the subject. “He is very relieved we destroyed the pirate ship, and has recommended me for a medal.”

“How nice,” Leo said. “Did you check to see what was happening on Heorot?”

“Apparently, the pirates told her CO that they’d butcher the crew if they tried anything stupid,” Francis said. “That’s why they didn’t contact us.”

“Really.” Leo wasn’t sure he believed it. The freighter crew should have been relieved when Waterhen made her appearance. “There were no pirates on the ship?”

“No,” Francis said. “They were just intimidated.”

“Really,” Leo said, again. Most traders would have started powering up their drives, the moment the pirate ship was out of range. The crew couldn’t have known how close Francis would steer to disaster. “That’s odd.”

“I consider it understandable, myself,” Francis said. “They were under the guns of a warship.”

“I suppose,” Leo said.

“Quite.” Francis smirked, as if he’d won a point. “In any case, the governor has been requesting additional military and naval support from Daybreak. She was quite insistent I supply her with a few good men and their equipment.”

“We don’t have the men to spare,” Leo said, carefully. Francis was entirely too pleased with himself for Leo’s peace of mind. “We certainly don’t have the supplies.”

“That’s why I’m sending you, and a handful of others,” Francis said. He didn’t try to hide his smile. “Detached duty. That’s what we’ll call it. Detached duty, intended to please a very important governor and keep you out of my hair.”

Leo met his eyes. “Do you really intend to reduce the crew still further?”

“I have to assist the governor,” Francis said. “And it will get you out of my hair.”

“You said.” Leo gritted his teeth. He had to admit Francis had found a neat little solution. Leo could hardly refuse to be sent on detached duty, and Francis could use the governor’s request to cover his arse. Waterhen was meant to be heading straight back to Yangtze after passing through Boulogne, which would probably ensure nothing would go wrong until he rejoined his uncle and convinced him to loan Waterhen more crewers. And Leo would be stranded on Boulogne for the foreseeable future. “Do you …”

He shook his head. He wasn’t going to beg or plead. He wasn’t going to point out Francis’s limitations as a commanding officer, that he needed a more experienced officer watching over his shoulder. Francis wouldn’t listen, even though it was true. Instead …

“One condition,” he said, finally. “One condition, and I’ll go without a fight.”

“You are under my orders,” Francis said. “You’ll go where I send you or you’ll be court-martialed. For mutiny. Which carries the death penalty.”

“A court martial would require a full and open discussion of the events leading up to the so-called mutiny,” Leo countered. “Do you and your uncle really want that?”

Francis glowered. Leo sighed inwardly. Francis was stubborn when he needed to be flexible and flexible when he needed to be stubborn, always a bad sign in a commanding officer. A smart and experienced man would have handled the situation better, but he probably wouldn’t have gotten into it first. Leo could have avoided the near-disaster, and he knew there were officers who’d been in the navy longer than he’d been alive. Very little got past them. Hell, Francis could have avoided it if he’d listened.

“Fine,” Francis said, finally. “What do you want?”

“No action against Lieutenant Halloran or anyone else,” Leo said. “Blame everything on me.”

“He did follow your orders,” Francis mused. He spoke like a negotiator, not someone in control of the situation. “Very well. You take up your new station without a fight and Lieutenant Halloran will go on to a long and happy career.”

Leo hoped to hell Francis would keep his word. It was a point of honour amongst Daybreakers that they always kept their word, sometimes to their own detriment, but Francis had never struck him as possessing the iron will and self-integrity of his ancestors. Leo had researched them and noted, ruefully, that they’d been stubborn stiff-necked idealists who’d laid the groundwork for both Daybreak and the Blackthrone Clan. Even their more hostile biographers had acknowledged they might have been hard-bitten robber barons, but they’d been men. The nasty party of his mind wondered if Francis’s ancestors would be disappointed in him. Probably. They’d worked hard to secure their predominance and they’d hate the thought of losing it because their clan was rotting away from within.

“Understood,” Leo said. He would make sure to keep the recordings. They would lose their value over the next few years, as Francis climbed the ladder, but who knew? “When do I leave?”

“Shortly,” Francis said. “I’ll be sending you down once I clear the matter with the governor.”

“Noted,” Leo said. “Any orders?”

Francis smirked. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

So I can sit on my ass and do nothing? Leo kept his face under tight control. You don’t have any more specific instructions for me?

“Jokes aside, do everything in your power to satisfy the governor,” Francis continued. “She may be quite low on the totem pole, but she does have good connections back home and I want to ensure she approves of me. Your success is my success.”

You could have thought of that a few hours ago, Leo reflected. He wasn’t sure he believed Francis. His family had so much influence they hardly needed support from a planetary governor. She couldn’t be that important, or she would have been posted to Yangtze instead of Boulogne. But as long as it keeps the crew safe.

“I’ll inform you when you are to depart,” Francis said. He turned to leave. “Make sure you pack your bathing costive. The planet is apparently quite warm, with lovely tropical seas.”

Leo rolled his eyes as Francis stepped through the hatch. There were plenty of worlds with tropical conditions, and very few that were only tropical. Desert and icy planets were actually quite rare, although more common than tropical worlds. He sagged the moment the hatch closed, feeling despair howling at the back of his mind. Francis might have won, damn him. Leo would be stuck on Boulogne for months, his seniority frozen as long as he was on detached duty, while other officers moved ahead of him. He wouldn’t be relieved and replaced in a hurry and that meant … he shook his head. Fuck.

He turned and tapped the console, downloading the files on Boulogne and transferring them to his datapad. He hadn’t bothered to do any research on the grounds they were only passing through the system, but if he was going to be stuck on the ground he needed to do a great deal more research. Boulogne hadn’t attracted any interest during his stint as de facto sector commander and, in truth, he’d barely even heard of the planet. It had been settled long enough not to require any actual support from Daybreak, without being developed enough to pose a possible threat. He hadn’t even flown through the system until now. Who knew what might be lurking in the shadows, just waiting to spring into the light?

The intercom pinged. “Sir, the shuttle will be ready to depart at 1500,” Abigail said. Her tone was carefully flat, suggesting she was hiding her true feelings. “The rest of your team have been informed.”

“Thank you,” Leo said. “I’ll be there.”

He scowled as he closed the connection. 1500. That didn’t leave him much time. He grabbed his knapsack and packed quickly, making sure to take his portable communicator as well as his datapad, a handful of personal possessions and copies of the ship’s command codes. Owning them was technically dubious, to say the least, but leaving them lying around was asking for trouble. He couldn’t bring himself to feed them into the recycler. Francis hadn’t thought to ask for them, which suggested he didn’t know they existed. Leo wasn’t too surprised. Francis was too inexperienced to look at the files and work out that Leo had never actually met Captain Archibald. But then, for all his flaws, Francis had never deserted his post and let his ship sail off without him. He wasn’t that sort of officer.

Right, Leo thought. And now I feel I’m doing the same myself.

He took one last look around the cabin, to make sure he hadn’t left anything important, then turned and stepped through the hatch. It was hard to force himself to keep walking, hard to leave the ship … his ship, except she wasn’t. She had never been his. Francis had made that very clear.

Yeah, Leo told himself. But I’ll be back.