The heat radiating off Garsina’s face—partially illuminated, and almost pink with anger—was palpable.
She made a noise of disgust, and stormed out of the observation bubble.
Wyo put a hand over his eyes, and sank lower into the gee chair.
“Way to go, Mister Company Man,” he said softly, self-mocking. When we get back, he thought, look for Antagean to get its corporate ass booted completely out of Oswight territory. Seinar is going to chew me out hard when that happens. We need the facilities orbiting Planet Oswight. If Family Oswight simply chooses to make those facilities too expensive for us…what recourse do we have?
And then Wyo went back to being angry about the First Families all over again. It was absurd that any man should have to worry about being on the good side of those people, simply to keep a storefront open. Didn’t Constellar make a lot of patriotic noise regarding freedom? Where was the freedom in a society which still afforded the First Families so much arbitrary power? Especially when so many of them had done nothing to earn it?
“Classy,” said a familiar voice.
“Captain,” Wyo said, recognizing his old friend and former mentor. He suddenly sat up, and absently rubbed a thumb under his nose. “How much of that noise did you hear?”
“Enough,” Loper said.
“Where did she go?”
“Not a clue. She went past me like a clipper burning at one hundred and ten percent, and I knew better than to open my mouth. Wish you could say the same, sir.”
“It’s an impossible task,” Wyo grunted, as Captain Loper descended into a gee chair opposite to where the Lady Oswight had most recently been sitting.
“Your father knew that when he started the business,” said the older man. “But he always had a head for the political side of the job. The First Families are a pain in the ass, to be sure. But they’re also part and parcel of our national fabric. They need us, and we need them, though we don’t often like to admit it. And certainly not at the Constellar Council, where the long war between people who make money—and people who are born with money—continues.”
“See, this is why I never wanted to sit in Dad’s chair,” Wyo admitted. “I knew I wasn’t going to be very good at playing the game, in this regard. I think dad knows it too, though he’s certainly tried over the years to help me see the value in it. I’m too much like my mom. And she didn’t think much of the First Families either.”
“No she didn’t,” Loper said, and chuckled quietly.
Silence descended for several minutes, then Wyo asked, “But if I’m not sitting in Dad’s chair, what happens to you and everybody else who’s depending on us—the Antageans—to keep the company running? Dad built the company because he loved the sport of it all. He loved working on starliners when he was young, and got it into his head that someday he’d run his own fleet of them. And that his fleet would be the best. Not the biggest. Not the most favored among his competitors. Just the fleet known for quality and competence, above all. It was the thing he staked the family reputation on. And both me and Seinar have done our damnedest to try to live up to that. But I am not sure it’s enough.”
“You talk like Wyograd’s death is a foregone conclusion,” Captain Loper said.
“Each time he gets sick,” Wyo said gravely, “we find out it’s worse than the last time. Treatments can bring him back to full health, for a while. But each new low is lower than the last. I wouldn’t tell this to anyone other than you, but I am not sure Dad’s got it in him to pull out of it again. You haven’t seen him, because he refuses to see anyone but family, and the doctors. But he’s a tired ghost of himself. Very little strength left. If he wasn’t so damned stubborn, I think he’d be gone already.”
“And watching him die means suddenly the weight of the company is all on you,” Loper said.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe Seinar can handle it, in concert with the board? You could step away?”
“No,” Wyo said. “I know my sister. She doesn’t like dealing with the board. And they don’t like dealing with her. The board sees me as Dad’s natural successor, and they expect me to continue in his stead. Which I’ve been doing. But it’s the least enjoyable work I’ve ever had to plow through. Far tougher than any head you made me clean when I was a kid. I sometimes think I’d happily go back to scrubbing gee toilets again, just because there wouldn’t be so much damned pressure.”
The older man looked down at his hands folded in his lap, then turned his chair to face directly at Wyo’s own.
“Would you believe me if I told you your father voiced similar sentiments to me?”
“He did?” Wyo said, sitting up straight. This was news. Dad had always seemed an implacable force where company welfare was concerned. No wavering.
“You two aren’t that different,” Captain Loper said. “As much as Wyograd is immensely proud of the business he’s built—and proud of all of us who elected to share in his dream with him as foundational employees—that dream came with a fairly severe cost. Because deep down, Wyograd still wants to be that wide-eyed third-class ship’s mate, newly signed on for his very first stint aboard a starliner. He wants that magic back, and he never really got it. No matter how successful the business became.”
“Dad never said anything to me,” Wyo admitted.
“Of course he never said anything to you,” Loper said. “You are his son. For you, and your sister, he wants to be the immovable mountain. The man upon whose shoulders your reality solidly rests. But it was never easy for him. And when he got sick, and then got sick again…well, there are a tiny handful of us old-timers who have managed to keep in touch with him, and know the true toll that’s been taken. Though, once the correspondence stopped, I knew he’d gotten so sick, recently, that this might be it for him.”
Wyo studied the older man’s face, and thought he saw a tear slip down Captain Loper’s cheek.
“I guess I’ve been feeling sorry for myself,” Wyo said sheepishly.
“Damned right you’ve been feeling sorry for yourself,” Loper said sternly.
“That’s not going to cut it on this trip, is it?”
“Nope,” Loper said, matter-of-factly.
“So I’d probably best suck it up, and go find a way to make nice with the Lady Oswight?”
“You might consider it.”
“Any advice on that?”
Loper paused, his profile looking particularly aged in the light from Planet Oswight’s far home star, then he said, “Appeal to her scholarly expertise. Get her talking about the Waymakers, versus First Family business. And find enough humility to slip a genuine apology in there somewhere, okay?”
“Okay,” Wyo said, then stood up, and patted the older man on the shoulder, before walking through the hatchway, back into the innards of the ship.
Chapter 12
The picture:
Two orange-yellow dwarf stars, enormously far apart.
Also, two small squadrons of starships, each squadron moving rapidly away from its respective star, toward an invisible point in space on the fringe of that star’s gravitational domain.
And two conventional fleets of war vessels, perpetually stationed around those points. Each fleet forever on alert against invasion. Which can happen at any moment. Or not.
Connecting the points is an alien Overspace architecture, which is newly aimed at a third point which previously did not exist—on the edge of a yellow dwarf star’s territory, into which one starship has already disappeared. With no word on that ship’s fate.
Commodore Iakar wasn’t a betting man. In his career with the Constellar military, he’d gotten where he was through determined vigilance against unpredictable outcomes. Which was precisely how he ran his crew aboard the Comet, which in turn reflected how he ran his security flotilla, over which Iakar had presided for the better part of an Oswight solar year. He was boringly methodical, and he knew it. Just as he knew that his style drove many of the junior officers nuts. Which was
just fine. Iakar had been one of them, once. He’d paid his dues. If somebody in his direct chain of command didn’t like his style, he didn’t have to care. Because while he was in charge, the security flotilla would be ready to repel any and all invaders. To the last DSOD ship, if necessary. No slacking off. No exceptions.
So they maintained their ships, and drilled for battle, then drilled some more, did still further maintenance, drilled for battle once again, then drilled for battle a final time, after which, there were always…more battle drills.
Thus, life this far from civilization wasn’t glamorous. But there was a comfort to the routine which suited Iakar’s personality. He could wake up every day knowing exactly what his job was, which meant knowing exactly what everyone else’s job was too, and so long as they all did their jobs the way they were supposed to, Planet Oswight and its system were kept safe from the Nautilan threat. A threat Commodore Iakar took very, very seriously.
Until…now, Iakar’s flotilla was to be broken up. Which made Iakar ferociously surly toward even those officers he normally liked. Enough so that everyone around him had begun giving Iakar a wide berth, lest the man erupt with a fresh series of expostulations about how Admiral Mikton’s pending Slipway voyage to the mystery star—which would eventually entail pulling across some or perhaps even all of Iakar’s carefully managed force—was going to cripple his ability to carry out his first assignment: to protect Oswight space.
The commodore imagined that his counterpart on the Nautilan side was in a mirrored state of agitation. No Waypoint security commander wanted to get caught undermanned or outgunned. The flotilla was what it was, precisely for the purpose of ensuring that any adversary trespassing into friendly territory would be met with as much firepower as possible. It didn’t take a starship to mount lots of missile silos and railguns. There was no great secret to the calculus of winning, either. The battle group with the most ships, able to shoot first, usually took the day. Time after time, this was how almost all invasions—in any Starstate—had played out.
So, faced with seeing his resources halved—or worse—Commodore Iakar had to work extraordinarily hard to keep his temper in check while he communicated with Admiral Mikton and her expeditionary team.
“Still no word from the Daffodil?” the admiral asked, her message taking mere seconds to travel the distance from the Catapult to the Comet.
“No, ma’am,” Commodore Iakar said. “Either she’s waiting patiently for you and your people to make the crossing, or she’s run into trouble the likes of which we can only guess at. Which is why I am still very unsure about your plan, to be honest. You’re going over the Slipway knowing exactly nothing about what you may face. And my understanding is you have an heir of Family Oswight with you? It’s madness to take a First Family member on what may amount to a suicide mission, ma’am.”
“Your opinion is noted,” Admiral Mikton’s visage spoke, after a few seconds’ delay. “And like I’ve told your old friend Commodore Urrl, all things being equal, I’d like to wait until DSOD sends us a true task squadron. But since the Daffodil decided to risk everything for the sake of being first on the scene, I feel like we have to hedge our bets, and jump over too. Once I’m on the other side, I can ascertain what’s needed to hold our new position, then send back at least the Oswight yacht to begin the process of transferring your command to the star’s Waypoint.”
“And leave Oswight space with only partial or no protection,” Iakar said dubiously, his arms crossed over his chest while he talked to his boss—across almost a million kilometers.
For this conversation, Iakar had ordered everyone out of the Comet’s tiny briefing room, which was adjacent to the command module. If things got heated, he didn’t want the noise spilling over to the rest of the Comet’s crew. People were already on edge. Listening to the Commodore quarrel with his superior wouldn’t do any of them any good.
“I am willing to wager that Starstate Nautilan only has eyes for the freshly minted Waypoint,” Admiral Mikton replied. “Just like we do.”
“That’s a hell of a wager, ma’am,” he said, still not convinced.
“Yes, it is,” Admiral Mikton said. “And I realize I am putting you in an unfortunate position, by making you take this wager with me. Splitting the security flotilla is not an ideal move. It’s definitely not a ‘by the book’ defensive strategy. But the book never took into account the manifestation of new Waypoints. So, this is where I have to improvise, and hope I am not wrong.”
Commodore Iakar’s face twisted up in an expression of skepticism, then he nodded his head curtly, and said, “Copy your latest orders, ma’am. My ships and I await your arrival.”
And with that, the connection dropped.
When Iakar resumed his seat in the captain’s gee chair, all of the command module was hushed. He’d taught them to expect harshness these past few days. It was a point of extreme soreness for him, not having Daffodil at his disposal. She had been his only early warning system, capable of detecting Waypoint activation and use moments before any inbound starships could arrive. Now, he was limited to conventional sensors only. Which meant an enemy flotilla could cross the Slipway and emerge—missiles firing. Absolutely no time to prepare. Iakar’s own flotilla would simply have to dump the entirety of their own stores in one panicked salvo, and hope it was sufficient.
Because there probably wouldn’t be enough of Iakar’s watch flotilla left for a follow-through strike. They’d be nuked to rubble, and the Nauties along with them—hopefully.
Strange, Iakar thought. That interstellar warfare was reduced to such a brute-force strategy. But then, he suspected it had ever been thus, dating all the way back to the ancient times. Arrive first with the most guns, had surely been written on some primitive war college’s doorstep. Back in an age before humanity went to the stars—desperately escaping what had surely seemed like the war to end all wars.
The last, big fight, Iakar mused to himself, as he checked his flotilla status display, and tapped out commands on his gee chair’s swing-arm keyboard. Sooner or later, we’re going to see the same thing happen too. One by one, Starstate Nautilan’s rivals are going to be consumed.
It was practically heresy to speak such fears openly among other Constellar commanders. But the mathematics seemed clear to a man who’d spent his entire life learning how to read the numbers, and extrapolate them to their most logical conclusion. The simple reality of it was that every time Nautilan took another system, it got bigger and stronger, while some other Starstate got smaller and weaker. And while all of the remaining Starstates combined—Constellar, Sultari, Yamato, and Amethyne—might have had a chance at repelling an all-out, determined push for total Waywork domination, there was almost no way any of the leaders in any of those Starstates could manage the diplomatic gymnastics required to forge a lasting alliance.
So, Commodore Iakar’s only real hope—and it was an outside possibility, at best—had been for Nautilan to succumb to factors of which he was not aware. An internal rebellion within Nautilan’s own borders, perhaps? Some of the DSOD intelligence literature speculated that Starstate Nautilan spent even more on troops, ships, and equipment for internal security than it did on war fleets designed to seize new territory.
Never had Iakar thought it possible that the Waywork itself would surprise him.
A whole ship’s day passed as Iakar waited for the expeditionary Task Group to arrive.
When Admiral Mikton’s ships finally showed, Commodore Iakar thought them an even more fragile-looking bunch than he’d first surmised. The civilian starliners, while seemingly state-of-the-art, were nevertheless toothless in battle. The two scouts and the single, bulky frigate, would be hard pressed to run defense. To say nothing of the small, delicate Oswight yacht. Which would be swatted away by the merest gust of Nautilan wind.
“I want to wish you good luck,” Iakar said to his superior as Mikton made final communication before the Slipway crossing.
“I want to wi
sh us good luck too,” she said, her image hovering in front of Iakar’s face.
He did not know the admiral very well. What little he did know of her history spoke of a capable officer who’d nevertheless been overwhelmed by events. Just as it now seemed she might be overwhelmed again.
“I’ll wait for the return of the Oswight yacht,” Iakar said. “But in the event that the yacht does not come back—nor any other ship from your group—Admiral…what are your orders?”
Now Iakar could see Commodore Urrl’s face moving into the picture, where he whispered quietly into Mikton’s ear.
Mikton nodded once, then squared her shoulders, and addressed Commodore Iakar formally.
“In the event that no ship from this Task Group returns, you are to notify the ICC of this fact, and maintain readiness at the Waypoint proper. Do not assume anything, Commodore. Failure to return could mean any one of a dozen different things. The ICC has one courier starship in reserve, which can be dispatched to relay messages to the rest of the Starstate. It’s vital that you keep the Waypoint defended, and open to friendly traffic. I say again, if we do not return, it’s vital that you maintain the security of the Waypoint. The fate of systems beyond Planet Oswight’s may depend on this.”
“I copy your orders, ma’am,” Iakar said. “I hope I won’t have to follow them.”
“Me too,” Admiral Mikton’s visage said. Then she disappeared, and Iakar was left to brood in his gee chair, wondering how the future might unfold.
Chapter 13
The Lady Oswight was upset with herself. It was very uncouth to lose one’s temper in the fashion she had lost her temper with Lieutenant Commander Antagean. Even if everything she’d said was true, she knew her father would be ashamed of her for letting the veneer of Family manners slip far enough to show a mere corporate man that, yes, First Families really are people after all. Special people, true, according to both law and custom. But still people just the same. And it didn’t do to bring oneself down to a common level. Especially in the midst of an argument with somebody who, in seriousness, had no right to talk to Garsina the way he had. Going so far as to question the legitimacy of First Family preeminence in the Starstate, for Exodus’ sake! Who by the Waymakers did that Antagean man think he was?
A Star Wheeled Sky Page 8
