“Good morning, Admiral,” Lucy said. She managed to sound disapproving without making it obvious. “How are you today?”
Kat swallowed a number of remarks she knew would be petty and childish. “I didn’t sleep well,” she said as Lucy uncovered the tray. “And then they woke me up.”
“You need to go to bed earlier,” Lucy said, dryly.
“Hah,” Kat muttered. She forced herself to stand, heedless of her nakedness. “There are too many things to do here.”
“Then delegate some of them,” Lucy suggested gently. “You have an entire staff under you, do you not?”
Pat would have cracked a rude joke, Kat thought. It felt like a stab to the heart. And I would have elbowed him . . .
She pushed the thought aside with an effort. “We’ll see,” she said, vaguely. In truth, she didn’t want to delegate anything. Too much was riding on the occupation’s success for her to casually push authority down the chain. And yet, Lucy was right. Ahura Mazda wasn’t a starship. A single mind couldn’t hope to keep abreast of all the details, let alone make sure the planet ran smoothly. If that was her goal, she’d already failed. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“I’ll have lunch ready for 1300,” Lucy said. “You can make it a working lunch if you like.”
Kat had to smile, although she knew it wasn’t really funny. All her lunches were working lunches these days. She rarely got to eat in private with anyone. Even cramming a ration bar into her mouth between meetings wasn’t an option. She couldn’t help feeling, as she tucked into her scrambled eggs, that she was merely spinning her wheels in mud. She went to countless meetings, she made decisions, again and again and again, and yet . . . was she actually doing anything? She kicked herself, again, for allowing them to promote her off the command deck. The Admiralty probably would have let her take command of a heavy cruiser on deep-space patrol if she’d made enough of a fuss.
It has to be done, she thought as she keyed her console to bring up the latest news reports from home. And I’m the one the king tapped for the post.
“Naval spokespeople today confirmed that the search for MV Supreme has been finally called off,” the talking head said. He was a man so grave that Kat rather suspected he was nothing more than a computer-generated image. “The cruise liner, which went missing in hyperspace six months ago, has been declared lost with all hands. Duke Cavendish issued a statement reassuring investors that the Cavendish Corporation will meet its commitments, but independent analysts are questioning their finances . . .”
Kat sighed. Trust the media to put a lost cruise liner ahead of anything important. “Next.”
“Infighting among refugees on Tarsus has led to a declaration of martial law,” the talking head told her. “President Theca has taken personal control of the situation and informed the refugees that any further misbehavior, regardless of the cause, will result in immediate arrest and deportation. The Commonwealth Refugee Commission has blamed the disorder on poor supply lines and has called on Tarsus to make more supplies available to the refugees. However, local protests against refugees have grown . . .”
“And it could be worse, like it is here,” Kat muttered. “Next!”
“Sharon Mackintosh has become the latest starlet to join the Aaron Group Marriage,” the talking head said. “She will join fifty-seven other starlets in matrimonial bliss . . .”
“Off,” Kat snapped.
She shook her head in annoyance. The occupied zone was turning into a nightmare, no matter how many meetings she attended, and the news back home was largely trivial. The end of the war had brought confusion in its wake—she knew that better than anyone—but there were times when she thought that the king was the only one trying to hold everything together. The Commonwealth hadn’t been designed for a war, and everyone knew it. And now all the tensions that had been put on the back burner while the Commonwealth fought for its very survival were starting to tear it apart.
Standing, she walked over to the window and peered out. Tabernacle City had been a ramshackle mess even before the occupation, but now it was a nightmare. Smoke was rising from a dozen places, marking the latest bombings; below, she could see marines and soldiers heading out on patrol. The civilians seemed to trust the occupiers more than they trusted the warring factions, but they were scared to come into the open and say so. They were afraid, deep inside, that the occupation wouldn’t last. Her eyes picked out Government House, standing a short distance from Commonwealth House. Admiral Junayd and his people were trying to put together a provisional government, but it was a slow job. Their authority was weaker than most of the insurgent factions. She didn’t envy them.
Her wristcom bleeped from the table. She stalked back to the bed and picked it up. “Go ahead.”
“Admiral,” Lieutenant Kitty Patterson’s voice said. “You have a meeting in thirty minutes.”
“Understood,” Kat said. She allowed herself a moment of gratitude. Thirty minutes was more than long enough to shower and get dressed. “I’ll be there.”
She turned and walked into the shower, silently grateful that Commonwealth House had its own water supply. The local water distribution network had been on the verge of failing even before the occupation; now, with pipes smashed by the insurgents and entire pumping stations looted and destroyed, there were overpopulated districts that barely had enough water to keep the population from dying of thirst. Kat didn’t understand how anyone could live in such an environment. She thought she would sooner have risked her life in revolt than waste away and die.
But it was never that easy,
