Heris Serrano (135 page)

"Wits?" Now it was Koutsoudas who gave her a startled glance. "You're planning to trick him out of his ships? How—at the gambling table, perhaps?"

"No. I'm not going to gamble with his notions of honor. We will have to capture his ships, and since frontal assault won't do, it will take wits."

"You're planning to walk onto his ships and just take over?" Meharry asked. "Just say 'Please, Commodore, I think you're a traitor, and I'm taking over'?"

"Something like that," Heris said with a grin.

"And you expect him to agree?"

"I expect him to die," Heris said. A silence fell, as her crew digested that. She went on. "He's not going to surrender and risk court-martial—neither he nor his fellow captains. The only way to get those ships is by
coup de main
—and then great good luck and the Serrano name."

"I was going to mention," said Meharry, "that most crews don't take kindly to someone murdering the captain and taking over."

"You do realize the legal side of what you're doing?" Petris gave her a dark, slanted glance.

"Yes. I'm proposing treasonous piracy, if you look at it that way, and some people will. A civilian stealing not one but three R.S.S. combat vessels in what will be time of war."

"You won't get all three," Ginese said. "One, maybe. Two if you're very lucky. Not all three."

"That may be. I will certainly try to get all three, because if I don't, I may have to destroy one." She had faced that, in her mind. She could not leave a ship loose in this system committed to helping the Benignity invasion.

"If you're wrong about any of it," Petris said, "you'll have no alternatives. If the Benignity doesn't invade through here, if Garrivay is just a detestable bully, but not a traitor, if you're not able to get the ships—"

"Then I'm dead," Heris said. "I've thought of that. It means you're dead as well, which is bothersome—"

"Oh, it's not that, Captain," Meharry said. "I wouldn't miss this for anything, and it's a novel way to die, after all. Trying to steal one of our own ships for a good cause. More fun than jumping that yacht out of nearspace."

"If you try it and aren't killed," Petris said, "you'll be an outlaw . . . you can't stay in Familias space."

Heris stared at him; he did not look down. "Petris, if you think I can't do it, say so. If you think I shouldn't do it—if you think I'm working with bad data or logic, say so. But trust that I can do elementary risk analysis, will you?"

He didn't smile. "I know you can. But I also know how much you want to set foot on a cruiser bridge again. Have you factored that into your analysis?"

"Yes." Despite herself, her voice tightened. She forced herself to take a long breath. "Petris, I do miss—have missed—that command. You're right about that, and it is a factor. But I'm not about to risk our lives, and the lives of everyone in this system, crews and landborn alike, to satisfy my whims. There's something I haven't shared with you." Before anyone could comment, she flicked on the cube reader; she had already selected the passage.

Her Aunt Vida's face, an older version of her own Serrano features, stared out at them. She spoke. "I have complete confidence in your judgment," her aunt said. "In any difficulty. You may depend upon my support for any action you find necessary to preserve the honor and safety of the Familias Regnant in these troubled times."

"I don't think my aunt admiral anticipated pirating Fleet warships," Heris said. "But it gives me a shred of legitimacy, and I intend to weave that into something more than a tissue of lies."

"How?" Petris asked bluntly. "Not that I don't believe you, and not that I'm opposed, but—how?"

In the pause that followed, while Heris was trying to work out why Petris was being so antagonistic, Oblo spoke. "What it really is, Captain, is that we never had a chance to be this close while you were planning before. We enjoyed the result, but we never got to see the process."

Petris grinned. "All right, Oblo. You're partly right. It still seems impossible to me that she's going to take over three warships all by herself—well, we'll help, but it's not much. The peashooters we have on this thing wouldn't hurt those ships, and they'd blow us away before we could get a shot off anyway. There's no way to sneak aboard, and even if we could, I don't see how the four of us could seize control of the ship against resistance. She can't just stroll over and say 'By the way, Garrivay, I'll be the new captain as of today.' " He made the last a singsong parody of the traditional chanty.

The delay had given Heris time to come up with the outline of a plan. "Like this," she said. "You're half right, Petris. We're going to walk in peacefully, invited guests—"

"They'll scan us for weapons—" Ginese warned.

Heris grinned. "What is the most dangerous weapon in the universe?" A blank pause, then they all grinned, and repeated the gesture with which generations of basic instructors had taunted their recruits. "That's right. What's between your ears can't be scanned . . . and you're all exceptional unarmed fighters."

"So we stroll in for afternoon tea, or whatever—" Meharry prompted.

"Properly meek and mild, yes." Heris batted her eyelashes, and they broke into snorts of laughter.

"Begging the captain's pardon, but if you did that at me, I'd think you were having a seizure." Oblo, of course.

"And then we jump Garrivay and kill him? It's going to take all of us, and no one's going to notice?"

"Petris, for a bloodthirsty pirate, you're being ridiculously cautious. No, we're going to walk into as many of the traitors as we can find gathered with Garrivay—Koutsoudas's ongoing sound tap will help us there—and kill all of them. You notice that they like to gather and gab—Koutsoudas has them on three separate occasions already. I'd like to take out all three ship captains, but I doubt we'll find them
all
together. Four or five traitorous officers, though, will reduce the resistance we face. Admiral Serrano's reputation will do the rest. Or not, as the case may be."

"Everyone knows you're not in Fleet anymore," Meharry said.

"Yes . . . officially. But suppose the whole thing was a feint—suppose I'm on special assignment." They stared at her, this time shocked into silence.

"You're . . . not . . . really, are you?" asked Ginese finally.

"See?" Heris grinned at them. "If
you
can think that, even for a moment—after what we've been through—then it can work."

"But seriously—you didn't resign because your aunt—" Ginese continued to stare at her with an expression blank of all emotion.

"No! I resigned—stupidly, I now admit—for the reasons I told you, and without hearing a word from my sainted aunt. But if she
had
intended something like this, no one would know. It is plausible—just—with the Serrano reputation. And it's our chance. A slim one, but a chance."

"I've seen fatter chances die of starvation," Petris said, but his tone approved. He sighed, then stretched. "One thing about it, Heris . . . Captain . . . it's never dull shipping with Serranos." She ignored that.

"So now for the details. It's tricky enough, so we'll have rehearsals—and hope we're not still rehearsing when the Benignity arrives."

Cecelia felt a certain tension as she entered the stable office. Nothing she could put her finger on—dear Marcia smiling so amiably, and Poots with an even more foolish grin. Slangsby, the head groom, with no grin at all but something twinkling in the depth of his little blue eyes. Were they upset, perhaps, because she had visited two other breeding farms before coming here? They hadn't been that sensitive in years past.

"Such a fortunate escape," Marcia said. "We've heard all about it."

Now what did that mean? Lorenza's attack, or something else entirely? "I'm surprised such a minor matter stayed on the news this far out," Cecelia said. "With the king's resignation—"

"As if you didn't have something to do with that!" Poots sounded almost annoyed with her. Cecelia blinked, assessing the undercurrents.

"I think perhaps my influence was considerably exaggerated," she said. "Of course, I was at the Grand Council meeting, but—"

"Never mind, then." Marcia's smile vanished, replaced by her more usual expression, which had always reminded Cecelia of one of those toys with a spring-controlled lid that snapped tight. "If you don't want to trust your oldest, dearest friends—"

So that was it. Plain jealousy, and feeling left out. None of the honest replies that sprang quickly to mind would work, because, though true, they were insulting. Marcia and Poots were so far from being old and dear friends that they made the phrase ridiculous. Yes, they were rich, in the same class as those who played with the titles of vanished aristocracies. Yes, they considered themselves the equal of anyone. But half of that was the fraternity of horsemen, who allow no rank but that earned in the saddle. She had known them for years, ridden with them, bought and sold horses in the same markets . . . friends? No. Cecelia tried to think of something placating, but Marcia was already in spate again.

"I suppose you're upset that we didn't come at once to help you," she said. Cecelia had not thought of that, and now resented the suggestion that she might have held such a foolish hope. "I'm sure we
would
have," Marcia said, "except that we didn't even find out for months and months, and by then it seemed—and it was foaling time anyway—and it would have taken us months to get there, because as you know we don't have a private yacht. . . ." The explanation, like most explanations, simply dug a deeper and muckier hole in the claimed relationship. If they could "know all about it" so soon after the king's resignation, then they should have known about her collapse that soon too. Foaling season was a weak excuse; no one would have expected them to load up a ship full of pregnant mares, and it had been years since Marcia attended foalings herself. As for "don't have a private yacht," that was, strictly, true. Their
Fortune's Darling
was well out of the yacht class, and might have served as the flagship of a small shipping company.

Cecelia reminded herself that she had not expected help from them, and wasn't (despite the clumsy excuses) upset that they hadn't provided it. "Never mind," she said, trying to drag the conversation back to her reason for being there. "All I'm really interested in is your bloodstock. Mac said you still had some of that Singularity sperm available?"

"What are you doing, restocking the royal—excuse me, formerly royal—stables for yourself?"

That was too much. Cecelia felt her neck get hot, and didn't really care what her face looked like. "Not at all," she said with icy restraint. "I am trying to do a favor for some friends who saved my life and assisted my recovery. Since you are, as you say, old and dear friends—" The accent she put on "friends" would have sliced through a ship's hull plating. "—I had hoped to purchase both sperm and time-locked embryos from you. However, it seems that other suppliers might be more convenient."

Marcia turned red; Poots, as usual, looked as if he might cry. Slangsby now had the grin the others had discarded.

"I didn't—you don't have to take it that way—"

"What way?" Cecelia considered herself a reasonable person, and she could put no friendly interpretation on Marcia's words. But, as a reasonable person, she would let Marcia try to wriggle out of this. It might even be interesting, in a purely zoological way, to watch the wriggling.

Marcia tried a giggle that cracked in midstream. "Cecelia, my dear, you take everything so seriously. I was just teasing. Honestly, my dear, that rejuvenation seems to have affected your temper." But the oyster-gray eyes were wary, watchful, entirely unlike the frank tone of the voice.

Cecelia let her eyebrows rise of themselves. "Really?"

"All right; I'm sorry." Marcia didn't sound sorry; she sounded very grumpy indeed. "If you want Singularity genes, we've got 'em. Sperm and embryos both. I suppose you're thinking of the Buccinator line you favored so?"

Buccinator, Cecelia thought to herself, had only been the most prepotent sire of the past three decades for performance horses. Minimal tweaking of the frozen sperm gave breeders options for speed on the flat or substance for jumping; Buccinator had been almost a sport, but his genome had enough variety for that. But Marcia had refused to jump on that fad, as she'd called it, and out here in the boonies she had produced, after decades of work, one horse not more than fifteen percent worse than Buccinator. Singularity's sperm would offer genetic diversity, but she intended to have top equine geneticists do some editing before she turned it over to her friends.

"Perhaps," she said, "you'd be kind enough to show me what you've got available. I'd like to see the breeding stock, then the ones in training, then the gene maps."

Slangsby twinkled at her, but she distrusted that twinkle. Marcia and Poots said nothing, and simply led her out into the aisle of the great barn. Cecelia looked up. Marcia's pigheadedness about Buccinator aside, she had excellent judgment elsewhere, and this barn proved it. Local wood, used as logs, so that even the most irate equine couldn't kick through the walls. Good insulation, too. Wide aisles, perfect ventilation for this climate, utilities laid safely underground—no exposed pipes or wiring—and kept immaculate by the workers Slangsby supervised. Tools properly hung out of traffic, the only barrow in sight in active use . . . and down the long aisle, one sleek head after another looking over the stall doors. The horses were under roof in the daytime to avoid the assaults of local insectlike parasites, who lived lives too short to learn that horse blood wouldn't nourish them. The bites—otherwise harmless—were painful and made horses nervous.