Elizabeth Moon - Winning Colors

“I don’t see any reason to butcher the cash cow,” said the Senior Accountant. “Breed her, and we’ll have more calves to send to market.”

“She’s a shy breeder,” muttered one of the diplomatic subordinates, who should have kept quiet. It was his last mistake.

When the meeting resumed, several people walked across the damp patch on the carpet as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t unusual, and it didn’t really reflect on Sasimo, whose protégé had been unwise. Every senior man present had discovered that a first appearance in the Boardroom could unsettle a youngster previously considered promising.

“Still, he had a point,” the Chairman said. No one asked who, or what point; those who couldn’t figure it out didn’t belong there. “The Familias walks like a tart, and talks like a tart, but carries a hatpin in her purse.” The hatpin being, as they all knew, the Regular Space Service’s unbought fraction, which they knew down to the level of cook’s assistants.

After a respectful silence, the Senior Accountant coughed politely and began again. “It is a short hatpin, not long enough to reach the heart of a strong man. A little risk, a prick perhaps, and—better a marriage than a disgrace, eh?”

“Quite so,” said the Chairman. “If it is only a flesh wound. Perhaps our admiral would review the situation?”

But indeed, the situation looked good. Not only were so many Fleet personnel on the Compassionate Hand payroll, as it were, but they had been placed into critical positions. Given a good start, with new forward bases increasing the number of jump points they could reach undetected, the Regular Space Service should be immobilized by uncertainty as well as internal problems.

“We start here,” the admiral said, pointing out the system on the display. “They’re used to neglect from the R.S.S.; Aethar’s World raiders took out their stationary defenses last year, and they’ve been issued nothing to replace them. It’s an agricultural world, thinly populated; we’ll lose no essential industries if we scorch it lightly.”

“Resistance?”

“Negligible. Farmers with hand weapons, even if they scatter and survive the scorch—we can ignore them.”

“Principal crop?”

The admiral chuckled, a daring act in that room. “Horses, if you can believe it.”

“Horses?”

“And not workhorses. They export sperm and embryos of fancy horses.”

The Chairman leaned back, thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. “Show horses . . . I like horses. If they survive the scorch, I’d like a souvenir, Peri.” Which meant they had better survive the scorch . . . it was punishment, mild enough, for laughing in the Boardroom.

“Of course,” the admiral said, making the best of it.

“My granddaughter, you know,” the Chairman said to the others, as if he needed to explain. “She likes pretty horses.” He turned back to the admiral. “Be sure to bring one ’Lotta would like. White feet, a long tail, that kind of thing.”

“Of course,” the admiral said again, tallying in his mind the extra time it would take to scorch selectively, so that the Chairman’s granddaughter could have a pretty horse for a souvenir. It shouldn’t be too bad, even if their agent betrayed them. He would add another couple of ships to the advance strike force, which would give them the margin for a careful scorch.

“Why not this system?” asked one of the others, pointing. “It has the same advantages.”

“Nearly,” the admiral admitted. One did not directly contradict one of the Board, not if one wanted to leave the room with breath intact. “But it connects directly to only one jump point, with only three mapped vectors. As well, it’s near enough to Guerni space that the Guernesi might take notice. Our chosen target connects directly to two jump points, offering a total of eight mapped vectors, most of them into high-vector points. And of course, its other border is the unstable one with Aethar’s World, from which the raiders have come.”

“Quite so,” said the Chairman. “We have already approved your target, Admiral.” That was dismissal, and the admiral saluted, bowed, and left.

When he reached his office, he found that he had been given a final command . . . interesting that the Chairman had not wanted to say that in front of the others. The Chairman would be honored if the admiral would allow the Chairman’s great-nephew, now in command of a heavy cruiser, to be part of this expedition. Unmentioned was the young man’s record; neither needed to mention it. The young man had risen more by influence than ability, everyone was sure . . . and yet he wasn’t stupid or cowardly. Dangerous to both friends and enemies, the admiral thought. Convinced of his ability; convinced he had not been given a chance because of the relationship . . . that his real successes had been overlooked, along with his mistakes. Perhaps it was true.

The admiral considered. Was this the Chairman’s way of letting the younger man hang himself, or his way of sabotaging the admiral, whose own grandson might otherwise have been chosen? He couldn’t take both—he could afford only one less experienced captain. Of course he must take the Chairman’s choice, but he need not make it easy. He would assume—he would document that assumption—that the Chairman wished to test his kinsman, wished him to prove himself.

He grinned suddenly. Let him be the one to find and bring home a pretty horse for Carlotta.

Uncertain, Heris thought as she closed her end of the secured comlink, was a mild term for the swiftly unraveling tangle of political yarn that had so recently seemed to be a stable web of interlocking interests. All her life—for many hundreds of Standard years—the Familias Regnant had had its Grand Council, and commerce had passed between its worlds and stations as if no other way existed. She knew of course that other ways did—that Familias space was surrounded by other ways of doing things, from the cold efficiency of the Compassionate Hand to the berserker brigandry of Aethar’s World. But aside from those whose business it was to keep the borders safe and enforce the laws, most of the Familias worlds and the people on them had behaved as if nothing but fashion would ever change.

And now it had. With the king’s resignation, with Lorenza’s flight, the founding families looked at each other with far more suspicion than trust. If the king had poisoned his own sons—or if Lorenza had done it for him—if she had attacked the powerful de Marktos family through Cecelia—then who else might have been her target? Her allies? Those who had used her services through the decades tried to cover their tracks, and others worked to uncover them.

What bothered Heris the most, in all this, was the civilians’ innocent assumption that “the Fleet” would never let anything bad happen. She had heard it from one and then another—no need to worry about Centrum Rose; the Fleet will see that they stay in the alliance. No need to worry about the Benignity attacking; the Fleet will protect us. Yet she knew—and Bunny should have known—that the Fleet itself was suspect. Lorenza hadn’t been the only rat in the woodpile. Admiral Lepescu and whoever cooperated with him . . .

But she could not solve everything, not all at once. She had other work to do before Cecelia came aboard the yacht.

Her personal stack had a message from Arash Livadhi. Now what, she thought. It had been a long enough day already, and she had hoped Petris would get back in time for some extended dalliance. She called Arash.

“How are things going?” he asked brightly, as if she had initiated the contact.