Elizabeth Moon - Sporting Chance

“Of course there is a minor problem,” Lady Cecelia said, as she turned to allow her maid to take her stole. A brisk wind tossed cold rain at the windows; it hissed and rattled alternately.

“Yes?” Heris Serrano eyed her employer with some suspicion. The words “minor problem” had become an all too frequent catch-phrase between them. She resented the niggling delays that prevented their departure; they should have been in space already, two days out on the voyage back to Rockhouse Major. She had begun to long for the ship, and space. Besides, the sooner they got to Rockhouse, the sooner that young troublemaker, the prince, would be off her hands, someone else’s responsibility.

“It’s our numbers again.” Lady Cecelia waved her maid away, and settled herself into a comfortable chair drawn up before a fireplace. A small fire of real wood crackled on the hearth behind an ornate fire screen. Heris settled in the chair opposite and raised her brows. “I thought we’d be fine,” Lady Cecelia went on, “since Bunny’s children wouldn’t be coming, nor Buttons’s fiancée. George is still in the hospital, mostly for legal reasons, and I thought I could leave Raffaele and Ronnie here for the rest of the season, under the circumstances.” Heris said nothing; her mind busily subtracted the volume and resources needed for those six young people and their servants, and the crew and staff she knew were quitting, and added the same for new crew and the one passenger she knew of. “But that won’t work,” Lady Cecelia said. She ran one long hand through her short hair, and left it standing up in peaks.

“Why not?” asked Heris, since it seemed called for.

“Reasons of State, so I was told. I nearly cancelled my invitation, but that might be embarrassing too, so . . . the Crown Minister insists that if I have the young—er—Mr. Smith aboard, I must have an adequate bodyguard, a cabinet-level minister, and of course the servants. And . . . Ronnie.”

“Ronnie! Why?” Someone had made a serious mistake. She wondered how that had happened. The whole point of bringing Cecelia’s nephew Ronnie here in the first place had been to keep him away from the prince.

“I’m not sure, but it was one of the points made, very firmly. When I added the numbers, it came to fifty-six. That’s over our limit, right?”

“Yes—but how many ‘bodyguards’ are we supposed to have, and who are they?”

“They want to send Royal Security—”

“Blast.” Heris suppressed the expletives she’d have liked to use.

“—And they want us to wait until they get here. On the ship, with the prince.” That went without saying, since he could not be trusted to stay out of trouble anywhere else.

“And you planned to go where?”

“Well . . . we have to go back to Rockhouse, to take him home, but after that I’d planned on Zenebra. The Wherrin Horse Trials—”

By now Heris knew enough to recognize that name. Of course her horse-crazy employer would want to be there; she had won Wherrin more times than anyone else. “Umm. And waiting for the Royal Security bodyguard would make us late for that, I’ll bet. Silly. We’ve got former Regular Space Service combat troops, and suitable arms now: we can take care of him.”

“Are you sure?”

“With Petris and Oblo? We could keep him safe in a small war.”

Cecelia shivered. “Don’t say that. It’s like saying your horse can’t possibly miss a fence.”

“Still. We’d be safer to leave now. I haven’t forgotten that smugglers were using your ship. Somewhere there’s a very unhappy criminal waiting for delivery of whatever was in the scrubber. And I’d expect the smugglers to come looking for us, eventually. It’s not as if we’d be hard to find; everyone knew where you were going from Takomin Roads, and we’ve filed the trip to Rockhouse in Bunny’s computer—and with the Crown Minister.”

“Good point. I’ll mention that to the Crown Minister, and of course he already has the names of your crew. I assume that until the courts-martial, they were all considered loyal servants of the Crown?”

“As far as I know. If they weren’t, they could have lost us some battles.”

“Fine, then. You set up our departure as you wish; I’ll deal with the political end later.”

Heris looked after her employer and shook her head. She had not expected Cecelia—who had seemed to have a one-track mind firmly aimed at horses—to be so effective politically. Of course, she came from a political family, but every family had its black sheep. Heris shivered suddenly. She was, in her own way, the black sheep of her family. Two black sheep don’t make a white , she thought, and shivered again.

In the flurry of preparation, it was hard to remember the last few days with Petris. He was now aboard, supervising the resupply, and (at Heris’s suggestion) tucking away the new weaponry before Cecelia decided they didn’t need it.

“Nothing for the ship, I notice,” he’d said to her over a secure comlink.

“No. Not stocked locally. I know; I’ve already talked to Lady Cecelia about it.”

“Um. Crew rotations?”

“Well . . . you’ll all be on your secondary specialties. We’ll have to reorganize quite a bit. Civilian regulations divide the responsibilities a bit differently. There’s a manual on it—”

“I found that one,” Petris said. She wished she could see him face-to-face, but she needed to be downside just a few hours longer. “But I haven’t had the returning crew list from Hospitality Bay yet. Sirkin’s the only one staying from the shift up here. You were right, by the way; she’s a nice girl and very competent.”

“Glad you agree,” said Heris. “About that crew list—it was supposed to have been there yesterday. I wonder what’s going on? I’ll find out.”

When she tried calling the crew hostel at Hospitality Bay, none of her crew answered. That seemed odd; she had sent word several days before that they would be leaving Sirialis shortly. Someone should have been there, ready to take any messages from her. She wished she could dump the whole lot of them and replace them with qualified people. She left an urgent message, and asked the hostel clerk when they were expected back.

“Sometime tonight, I ’spect, ma’am,” the clerk said. “They rented a cat and took it out to Shell Island.”

“Without a comunit aboard?” Heris asked.

“Well, there is one, but the charge to relay is pretty high. That Mr. Gavin said you might call, and to say they’d be back tonight.” Heris grimaced, but it wouldn’t help to yell at the hostel clerk.

“Tell Mr. Gavin to call here at once when he gets in, whatever the hour,” she said. Should she threaten? No. Wait and see what was really going on, she reminded herself.

Gavin’s call, relayed to her in the drawing room the green hunt favored, revealed a plot as spiritless as he himself. On the tiny screen of the drawing-room communications niche, he looked sunburnt and nervous.

“I’m not coming back, Captain,” he said. “You’ll have to find another chief engineer.” It sounded almost smug, but she ignored that. She didn’t need him.

“And the others?” she asked.

“They don’t want to . . . they’re not coming either. Not without Lady Cecelia changing . . . I mean, they’re not coming.” Now his expression was defiant. Heris took a long breath, conscious of the need to control her expression in a roomful of curious and intelligent observers. They couldn’t hear what was said, but they could certainly see her reactions.

“Would you care to explain, Mr. Gavin?” she asked. The edge of steel in her voice cut through his flabby resistance.