'Title?' Layson repeated cautiously.
'These days he's the Earl of North Hollow, and from all I hear he's just as big a loss as a human being as he ever was. What's worse, he's reproduced, and his oldest son, Pavel, was a class ahead of Harrington at Saganami.'
'Why do I think I'm not going to like this, Sir?'
'Because you have good instincts. It seems that Mr. Midshipman Young and Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington had a small ... disagreement in the showers one night.'
'In the show -- ' Layson began sharply, then broke off. 'My God,' he went on a moment later in a very different tone, 'she must have kicked his ass up one side and down the other!'
'As a matter of fact, she did,' Bachfisch said, gazing speculatively at his exec.
'Damned straight she did,' Layson said with an evil chuckle. 'Ms. Harrington works out full contact with Sergeant Tausig, Sir. And she gets through his guard upon occasion.'
'Does she?' Bachfisch smiled slowly. 'Well, now. I suppose that does explain a few things, doesn't it?' He gazed sightlessly at the bulkhead, smiling at something Layson could not see, for several seconds, then shook himself back to the present.
'At any rate,' he said more briskly, 'Harrington sent him to the infirmary for some fairly serious repairs, and he never did manage to explain just what he was doing in the showers alone with her after hours that inspired her to kick the crap out of him. But neither did she, unfortunately, press charges against him. No,' he said, shaking his head before Layson could ask the question, 'I don't know why she didn't, and I don't know why Hartley couldn't get her to do it. But she didn't, and the little prick graduated with the rest of his class and went straight into the old-boy patronage system.'
'And cranked the same system around to wreck Harrington's career.' There was no amusement in Layson's voice this time, and Bachfisch nodded.
'That's Raoul's belief, anyway,' the captain said, 'and I respect his instincts. Besides, unlike you I did know Young's father, and I doubt very much that he's improved with age. That's one reason I have to wonder how we wound up saddled with Santino. North Hollow may not be Navy anymore, but he's got one hell of a lot of clout in the House of Lords, and he sits on the Naval Affairs Committee. So if he does want to punish her for 'humiliating' his precious son, he's in the perfect spot to do it.'
'I see, Sir.' Layson sat back in his chair, and his mind worked busily. There was even more going on here than he'd suspected might be the case, and he felt a brief uneasiness at the weight and caliber of the enemies his Captain appeared to be courting. But knowing Bachfisch as well as he did, he also understood perfectly. In many ways, there were actually two Royal Manticoran Navies: the one to which well-connected officers like Pavel Young and Elvis Santino belonged, where all that truly mattered was who was related to whom; and the one which produced officers like Thomas Bachfisch and -- he hoped -- Abner Layson, whose only claim to their rank was the fact that they put duty and responsibility before life itself. And just as the Navy of patronage and string-pullers looked after their own, so did the Navy of dedication and ability protect and nurture its own.
'Does Harrington know?' he asked. 'I mean, know that Young and his family are out to get her?'
'I don't know. If she's as observant as I think she is -- or even a quarter as good at analyzing interpersonal relationships as she is in the tactical simulator -- then it's a pretty sure bet that she does. On the other hand, she didn't press charges against him in the first place, and that raises a question mark, doesn't it? In any case, I don't think a snotty cruise in the middle of Silesia is the best possible place and time for us to be explaining it to her, now is it?'
'You do have a gift for understatement, Sir.'
'A modest talent, but one which has its uses,' Bachfisch admitted. Then he picked up the memo board and handed it back to Layson. 'But that's enough about Ms. Harrington for the moment,' he said. 'Right now, you and I need to give some thought to where we go from here. I've been thinking that it might be worthwhile to hang around here in Melchor for a while and use the system as a pirate lure, since this is the main magnet for our shipping at the moment. But if we do that too obviously, the local pirates -- and probably Wegener -- are going to get hinky. So what I was thinking was -- '
Commodore Anders Dunecki replayed the brief message and clenched his jaw against the urge to swear vilely.
'Is this confirmed?' he asked the messenger without looking up from the display.
'Yes, Sir. The SN made the official announcement last week. According to their communique they picked off Lydia a couple of weeks before that, and Commander Presley is almost a month overdue.' The nondescript man in civilian clothing shrugged unhappily. 'According to the SN they took him out in Hera, and that was where he'd said he was planning to cruise with Lydia. We don't have absolute confirmation that it was him, of course, but all the pieces match too well for it to have been anyone else.'
'But according to this -- ' Dunecki jabbed his chin at the holographic screen where the message footer was still displayed ' -- it was a heavy cruiser that nailed him.' He paused, looking at the messenger expectantly, and the other man nodded. 'In that case,' Dunecki said, 'what I want to know is how the hell the SN managed to run a ship that powerful into the area without our hearing about it. There's no way John Presley would have been careless enough to let a heavy cruiser sneak up on him if he'd known she was there to begin with. And he damned well ought to have known!'
The rage Dunecki had struggled to conceal broke through his control with the last sentence, and the messenger sat very still. Anders Dunecki was not a good man to anger, and the messenger had to remind himself that he was only the bearer of the news, and not the one responsible for its content.
'I didn't know Commander Presley as well as you did, Sir,' he said carefully after a long moment of silence. 'Or for as long. But I'm familiar with his record in the Council's service, and on the basis of that, I'd have to agree that he certainly would have exercised all due prudence if he'd been aware of the escalation in threat levels. Actually, as nearly as we can tell, at least two heavy cruisers, and possibly as many as three have been transferred into Saginaw in the last month and a half, and there are some indications that more will be following. Apparently -- ' he allowed himself a predatory smile despite the tension in Dunecki's cabin ' -- losses in the sector have gotten severe enough for the Navy to reinforce its presence here.'
'Which is probably a good thing. Or at least an indication that we're really beginning to hurt them,' Dunecki agreed, but his glass-green eyes were frosty, and the messenger's smile seemed to congeal. 'At the same time,' the commodore went on in the same chill tone, 'if they're increasing their strength in-sector, it means the risks are going up for all of us ... just like they did for Commander Presley. Which, in turn, makes timely intelligence on their movements more important than it ever was before. And that consideration is the reason I'm particularly concerned about Wegener's failure to warn us about this in time for Lydia to know she had to watch her back more carefully.'
'He may not have known himself,' the messenger suggested, and Dunecki snorted harshly.
'The man is Interior Minister Wegener's nephew, for God's sake! And he's Premier Stolar's brother-in-law, to boot -- not to mention the civilian head of government and military commander-in-chief of the sector.' The commodore grimaced. 'Do you really think they'd send so many heavy units into his command area without even mentioning them to him?'
'Put that way, it does sound unlikely,' the messenger agreed. 'But if he knew about them, why didn't he warn us? Sure, we've lost Lydia, and a good chunk of our combat power with her, but by the same token we've also lost an equally good-sized chunk of our raiding ability. And that translates into a direct loss of income for Governor Wegener.'
'If you were talking about someone placed lower in the chain of command, I'd be tempted to agree that he didn't know ahead of time,' Dunecki said. 'As you say, losing Lydia is going to cut into his revenue stream, and we've always known he was only in it for the money. But the fact is that no one in the Confed navy or government would dare send what sounds like a couple of divisions of heavy cruisers into his bailiwick without telling him they were coming. Not with his family connections to the Cabinet itself, they wouldn't! The only possible conclusion Stolar or Wegener's uncle could draw from that would be that whoever was responsible for withholding information distrusted the good governor, and that would be a fatal move career-wise for whoever made it. No, he knew about it and decided not to tell us.'
'But why?' The messenger's tone was that of a man speaking almost to himself, but it was also thoughtful, as
