Crown of Slaves

It was about time, as usual, for the host to sum up the night's proceedings.

The screen moved to Underwood. His smile was as suave as ever, but this time it seemed to have a slightly wicked gleam to it.

'Well, you've all heard it. Here's what I think is happening. Yes, the Queen's sending a lot of messages to a lot of people. But I think the biggest message of all is the one she's sending to those people-whoever they might be-who murdered Hieronymus Stein. You want to play it rough, do you? Fine. I'm sending you a serious hardcase.'

The screen faded to an advertisement.

Anton winced. 'God, that's corny. Not to mention sandbox stupid.'

Berry clapped her hands. 'Well, it's about time you got some credit!'

Princess Ruth clearly shared Berry's glee, but made an effort to be analytical about it all. 'Of course, it has pretty well ruined the Captain's career as a spy. After this, he's going to be one of the most famous people in the Star Kingdom.'

'I don't care,' insisted Berry.

'It also,' grumbled Zilwicki, 'plays merry hell with our plans for this trip. How am I supposed to-'

He was interrupted by the appearance in the lounge of the lieutenant in charge of Ruth's guards. The man was scowling at Anton ferociously.

'Is there a problem with the ship, Lieutenant Griggs? I thought the liftoff was as smooth as you could ask for.'

'The ship is fine, Captain Zilwicki. I came to express my deepest concerns over the crew. My people and I have been making a reconnaissance, and it is our firm conviction that possibly a good third of this crew is composed of Audubon Ballroom terrorists.'

Du Havel was obviously trying to keep from grinning. Anton sighed and rubbed his face.

To his surprise, Ruth piped up. 'Seventy-three percent, actually. At least, I think so. Sixty-eight percent, for sure. I'm not positive about a few of them. Just about everybody except the department heads and the most skilled ratings. I'm pretty sure the Captain's doing the same thing with this ship he is with all seven of the Anti-Slavery League's armed vessels. Using them as training grounds for Ballroom privateers-to-be.'

Anton's hand dropped. So did his jaw. For one of the few times in his life, he was genuinely astonished.

The princess gave him a nervous, apologetic smile. 'I hacked into your data banks yesterday. Well. Not your personal data banks. I'm not sure anybody could hack into those. I bounced like a rubber ball. But the ASL itself is a lot sloppier about its security than you are.'

'I will be damned, Sir,' the lieutenant began to roar, 'if-'

The princess cut him off. 'Don't be stupid, Lieutenant Griggs! There's not a chance in the universe that Ballroom members would hurt me-quite the contrary, and you know it perfectly well. So why waste everyone's time with official huffing and puffing?' Sharply: 'You have your orders. Go about them.'

Griggs snapped his mouth shut, goggled at her for an instant, and then hurried out of the ship's lounge. Anton was impressed. The girl might not have any Winton genes, but clearly enough she'd picked up the Winton knack for authority. Of course, given the way her mother had come to be a Manticoran in the first place…

He was more impressed, however-quite a bit more-by Ruth's other talents. Even given the quality of training he was sure she'd gotten, and even allowing for the fact that hacking was often a youngster's forte, the fact that she'd been able to get into the ASL's data banks was remarkable for anyone, much less a twenty-three-year-old. True, Anton didn't manage that system himself, and he knew the ASL's specialists tended to be a bit slack about security. Still…

'I'm curious,' he said. 'Did you tell the Queen about your findings?'

' 'Course not! Aunt Elizabeth's a frightful worrywart.' Ruth gave him that little nervous, apologetic smile again. 'You know how it is. If I'd told her most of the crew of the ship I was going on were a bunch of bloody-handed terrorists, she'd probably have made a fuss about it. Might even have grounded me.'

'This might just work,' he murmured. Cap'n Zilwicki, retired rogue of the spaceways. Now a tutor to the royal house. One of whose princesses has the makings of a rogue herself. Good start on it, anyway. She's got breaking and entering down pat, that's for sure.

PART II:EREWHON

Chapter 7

The trip from Manticore to Erewhon was complicated but not all that difficult. There was no direct junction terminus connecting the Star Kingdom to Erewhon's solar system, but there was a connection via the Phoenix Cluster, the rather inaccurate name given to a three-star system republic (of sorts) which was home to the Phoenix Wormhole Junction. Compared to the Manticoran Junction, the Phoenix Junction scarcely deserved the term. The Phoenix terminus of the Manticoran Junction was associated with the Hennesy System, but the Phoenix 'Junction'-which boasted only two termini and linked the Cluster to Erewhon-lay in the Terra Haute System. To get there, the Pottawatomie Creek had to first go to Hennesy via the Manticoran Junction and then make a five-day-long trip through hyper across the intervening twenty-five light-years to Terra Haute. Since junction transits were effectively instantaneous, it was the Hennesy-Terra Haute leg which accounted for virtually the entire length of the journey.

Of course, if Phoenix had been inclined to be sticky about it, the Pottawatomie would have been unable to use the Phoenix Junction at all up to less than six T-months before. The cluster had closed its wormhole to all military traffic the moment war broke out between the Star Kingdom (and its Erewhonese allies) and the late, unlamented People's Republic of Haven. In the absence of a formal peace treaty between Manticore and Haven, Phoenix had declined to rescind the prohibition until quite recently. Rumor said that the initiative in dropping it had come from Erewhon, not Phoenix, but not even Zilwicki's sources were positive about that.

Still, Anton's ship might have been allowed to transit even before the change in policy. She was a private vessel, after all, not a warship in the service of the Crown. But that didn't change the fact that she was also the equivalent of a frigate-in fact, she was a frigate in all but name, designed and built by one of the Manticoran yards which did a lot of naval construction. The Tor fortune made Cathy one of the few private individuals able to finance Pottawatomie's construction. Actually, not even she could have afforded such a project, but she'd been able to advance enough seed money to begin a subscription campaign which had rapidly tapped into a deep well of Manticoran opposition to genetic slavery-a well made deeper than ever by widespread public anger over the way High Ridge had been able to contain the damage done by Montaigne's files.

Among that opposition, oddly enough, had been Klaus Hauptman. By far the wealthiest man in the Star Kingdom, Hauptman was not normally the sort who would have had any sort of truck with 'terrorists,' however noble their particular cause might be. But the man was a quirky individual, and one of his quirks was a detestation of genetic slavery. He'd made support for its extirpation one of the major philanthropic commitments of the Hauptman Foundation his father had endowed seventy T-years before and whose board his daughter Stacey now chaired. Hauptman himself had not actually participated directly in the subscription campaign, although Stacey had done so rather discreetly. But what he had done was even more valuable: he owned the shipyard which built the Anti-Slavery League's frigates, and he did the work at cost, with no profit and none of the usual padding which went into military projects.

For all their expense, frigates were too small in this day and age to be really suitable for the navies of star nations. On the other hand, the vessels were very well designed and equipped to deal with the slavers and pirates