“I know,” Peter said.
“Right now, we have commitments we cannot hope to meet,” Harrison said. “We have committed ourselves to the Commonwealth, the king has committed us to the Theocratic Sector, we have a looming economic crisis . . . and the king wants to up our expenditures. I have reason to believe that he intends to ask for extra subsidies when Parliament reopens at the end of the summer. And he might just be able to drum up enough support from the Commons to get them into the Lords.”
Peter sucked in his breath. Once the bill was in the House of Lords, it would be harder to engage in backroom dealing to rewrite the law to something more satisfactory. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Harrison said. “I have an . . . operative . . . in the prime minister’s office.”
The report could be deliberately designed to mislead you, Peter thought. He’d never liked the cloak-and-dagger shenanigans that his father had so loved, but he knew enough to be careful. A person slipping information to someone else might have their own motives, even if they were telling the truth. The prime minister could be trying to lead you into a trap.
“There are other issues,” Harrison added. “The king has also been pushing his patronage rights about as far as they will go. A number of naval officers who happen to be corporate clients have been sidelined, while others, who happen to be the king’s clients, have been pushed forward. He’s been replacing naval officers with loyalists.”
Peter felt cold. “Are you sure?”
“I imagine your clients have had the same problem,” Harrison said. “We were at war for four years, Your Grace. That’s more than long enough for the king to put his people in the right places to take full control of the navy.”
“And then what?” Peter looked down at his hands. “We still control the orbital defenses, don’t we?”
“Yes,” Harrison said. “But even they are under threat.” He took a long breath. “The king may simply be building up his power base,” he said. “Or he might have something more sinister in mind. Either way, it poses a threat.”
“Perhaps,” Peter said. “It may also be nothing more than paranoia. How many of us would put people who weren’t our clients in positions of power?”
“We understand where the lines are drawn,” Harrison countered. “Does the king?” He glanced at his wristcom. “They’ll have noticed I came here,” he said shortly. “If you want to . . . ah . . . discuss matters further, I suggest we do it over a secure communications line.”
Peter’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think the king will intercept our communications?”
“I think the king has a black ops division of his own,” Harrison said. His tone was light, but his words betrayed just how seriously he took his concerns. “And I also think he’s too young to understand the dangers of playing with fire. His father understood the rules of the game.”
“I see your point,” Peter said. The king had always been the most powerful of the noblemen, yet there were limits on his power. Or there were supposed to be limits. War had given the king an opportunity to expand his power in ways his father could never have considered, even for a moment. “But I hope you’re wrong.”
“So do I,” Harrison said. “So do I.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
JUDD
Captain Amy Layman was deeply immersed in a Regency VR sim when the attack began.
It wasn’t something she would have allowed herself during the war. HMS Gibraltar had seen action in nearly a hundred engagements, from raids into enemy territory to convoy escort missions and, finally, the first and second Battles of Ahura Mazda. Amy knew, deep within her bones, that the alert could come at any time. And yet, as days had turned into weeks and months of boredom, she’d allowed herself to slip. She’d never really considered that anyone would attack Judd.
She tore off the VR jack as the alarm howled through the light cruiser, swallowing hard to keep from throwing up as the world spun around her. It couldn’t be a drill, she told herself sharply. God knew she’d slacked off on combat drills as well as everything else. Nausea assailed her as she jumped up from the bed, one hand grabbing her jacket while the other found the emergency hypospray. She blessed her forethought, what little of it she’d had, as she pressed the device to her arm and pulled the trigger. The drugs would make her sweat buckets later, but they’d clear her head. She breathed out a sigh of relief as the nausea started to fade, then headed for the hatch. The sound of her crew running to battlestations echoed through the hull as she hurried to the bridge.
“Report,” she snapped.
“Captain,” Commander Isobel said. “We have multiple enemy contacts on attack vector!”
“Bring up the drives and weapons,” Amy snapped as she threw herself into her command chair. “And prepare to leave orbit.”
“Aye, Captain!”
She studied the display, cursing her own stupidity as her starship powered up. The display was practically glowing with red icons, row upon row of superdreadnoughts . . . Theocratic superdreadnoughts. Panic yammered at the back of her mind, threatening to overwhelm her before she told herself, firmly, that the contacts couldn’t be real. If the Theocracy had so many superdreadnoughts, more than a hundred, according to her sensors, the war would have gone the other way. No, most of those starships had to be nothing more than fake sensor images, with no more substance than a soap bubble. But her sensors couldn’t tell the real starships from the fakes. They’d need to get a great deal closer . . .
“Launch a probe,” she ordered. If even one of those superdreadnoughts was real, she didn’t dare risk taking her ship any closer. The massed volleys of a single superdreadnought would be more than enough to reduce Gibraltar to atoms. “And alert the planetary authorities.”
A low hum echoed through her ship as the drives were brought online. Amy silently
