Which means I’ve probably forgotten something, he thought sourly. He looked down at the manifests, tiredly. They’d need something they hadn’t thought to bring. Years of experience convinced him of it. And yet, what? There was no way to know. We’ll just have to wait and see.
His terminal chimed, loudly. “Captain?” Commander Patti Ludwig sounded as tired as William felt. “Captain Young requests a holoconference.”
“Put him through,” William said. “And then contact System Command and inform them that we wish to confirm our departure time.”
“Aye, sir.”
William leaned forward as the starchart blinked out of existence, to be replaced by Captain Gary Young’s head. He was a strikingly handsome young man, at least in appearance; his navy file made it clear that he was only five years younger than William himself. William wasn’t sure what to make of Young’s vanity—he seemed to spend half his salary on cosmetic rejuvenation—but there was no denying his competence. His red hair and too-perfect face masked a very sharp mind. William would never have hired him if he’d had the slightest doubt of Young’s skills.
“Commodore,” Young said.
“Captain,” William said. He was both Dandelion’s commanding officer and the squadron commander. It wasn’t something he could maintain forever, particularly if Asher Dales started to grow a bigger navy, but for the moment he was happy to wear both hats. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, I’d like a battlecruiser and perhaps a few more freighters filled with supplies,” Young said, “but I’m really calling to confirm that we will be ready to depart as planned.”
“Good,” William said curtly. He’d like a battlecruiser too. “Did you manage to link up with a convoy?”
“Yes, sir,” Young said. “We’ll be traveling to Cadiz with Convoy Golf-Echo-Nine, then proceeding through the Gap to Maxwell’s Haven with Convoy Sierra-Alpha-Three. After that, we’re on our own. They pulled too many ships off the front lines to search for Supreme.”
William winced. A cruise liner, even one the size of a superdreadnought, was tiny on an interstellar scale. The odds of finding her were so low that . . . that William had greater odds of being declared King of Tyre and Emperor of the Galaxy. If pirates had taken Supreme, the ransom demands would have started to come in by now. Far more likely the ship had suffered a catastrophic failure in hyperspace and either been destroyed or made a crash-transition back into realspace. And if she’d lost her vortex generators, she wouldn’t have a hope of reaching the nearest inhabited planet before life support failed.
But the navy can’t say that to the rich and powerful aristocrats who had family on the liner, he reminded himself. They have to make a show of hunting for her, even though they know it’s useless.
“There’s no immediate hurry,” he said. He would have preferred to use all four destroyers to escort the freighter, but he didn’t like the way things were going in Parliament. Better to have two destroyers on station before it was too late. “That freighter has got to be protected.”
“I understand, sir,” Young said. “I shall guard her with my life.”
“Very good,” William said. “And I expect you to avoid engagement, if possible. No heroics.”
“Yes, sir,” Young said.
He didn’t sound disappointed, William noted wryly. But then, any sensible naval officer would know better than to go looking for trouble when they were on escort duty. The convoys tended to attract trouble. Pirates knew better than to engage escorted freighters, but the Theocracy had managed to take out a number of supply convoys during the early days of the war. Their efforts hadn’t been wasted, William conceded. They’d probably prolonged the war by several months.
“There is another point,” Young said. “I heard . . . I heard that the dealers were facing new regulations on what they can and can’t sell to foreign governments.”
“So far, nothing seems to have firmed up,” William said slowly. Asher Dales was, technically, an ally, but Tyre seemed to be having second thoughts about selling modern technology to anyone. Parliament was starting to think of the Commonwealth and the liberated worlds as potential rivals rather than allies. It didn’t bode well. “Still, we need to secure as much as possible before it’s too late.”
“Yes, sir,” Young said. “But are we foreigners?”
William hesitated. He might be a colonial, but Young wasn’t. He’d been born and raised on Tyre. And yet . . . he’d taken service with a foreign government. William didn’t think there was any prospect of Asher Dales going to war against Tyre, but technically . . . He shook his head, dismissing the thought. The little squadron had obtained the proper clearances to go to Asher Dales and join the fledgling navy. That was all that mattered.
“They don’t want to sell their most advanced technology to anyone,” he said curtly, using his annoyance to hide his own misgivings. They weren’t doing anything wrong, or illegal, but they weren’t in the navy any longer either. “But we don’t need it to swat pirates.”
“It still feels odd,” Young complained.
William smiled, humorlessly. “Welcome to life on the poverty level,” he said. Tyre was a rich world. The aristocrats could purchase a squadron of superdreadnoughts out of pocket change. Asher Dales was lucky to be able to scrape up enough cash to buy and equip four destroyers and a freighter. “You were on half pay when I snapped you up. Do you want to go back to it?”
“No,” Young said quickly. “But it just feels off.”
“I know,” William said. “But you will have to cope with it.”
He smiled, rather thinly, as Young’s image vanished. Young had never lived anywhere but Tyre. He probably didn’t understand, at an emotional level, the realities of life on a rougher world. Or, for that matter, how people in distant offices could make decisions that wreaked havoc on defenseless planets. William doubted the restrictions on
