A Call to Vengeance (Manticore Ascendant Book 3)

by David Weber

  “Yes, yes,” Winterfall interrupted him. “What about his friend, Lisa Donnelly?”

  “No idea,” he said. “She doesn’t live in any of my buildings. But I think she shipped out about the same time Long did.”

  “And she’ll be gone a year, too?”

  “No idea,” he said. “They don’t exactly check in and out with me. You need to talk to someone in the Admiralty if you want that kind of information.”

  “I may do that,” Winterfall said. “Thanks.”

  Still, he reflected as he walked back toward his aircar, it might not be a problem. Breakwater had said he would be giving the Queen an ultimatum soon, but he seemed to have changed his mind. Certainly he hadn’t said anything about the confrontation happening any time soon.

  He hated to sit on this any longer than he had to, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Travis would probably be back in seven months, and Breakwater had already dithered that long on this. If the Chancellor dithered another few months, Winterfall could still pull this off.

  And if, somewhere down the line, Breakwater informed him that the ultimatum’s delivery was imminent…well, he would worry about that when it happened.

  “Hello, Gavin.”

  Winterfall jumped, nearly wrenching his back as he spun around. Invisibly, inaudibly, Baroness Castle Rock had managed to come within three meters of him. “My Lady,” he managed. “You startled me.”

  “Really? My apologies,” she said, her lined face showing bemusement. “I didn’t realize I was walking so softly. What brings you to this neighborhood?”

  Winterfall felt his face stiffen. Did she somehow know about his private research? What could he say?

  An instant later, he realized that he didn’t have to come up with anything at all. He had the perfect reason to be here.

  “I was hoping to drop in on my brother,” he said. “But the landlord told me he’d been deployed somewhere.”

  “Yes, out to Silesia,” Castle Rock said, her eyes steady on his face. “I thought you knew that.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not as good at keeping track of Travis as I should be,” Winterfall admitted. “What about you? You have family or friends around here?”

  “I enjoy long walks sometimes,” she said. “You could have saved yourself a trip if you’d just screened him.”

  “Yes, I suppose I could have,” Winterfall agreed. “Probably should have, too. But sometimes I just have to get out of the Lords. That place can drive even the sanest person crazy.”

  Castle Rock smiled. But it was a perfunctory smile, without any warmth Winterfall could detect.

  And really, why should she offer him a genuine smile? She’d startled him, thrown a couple of perfectly innocent-sounding questions in his path, and watched him stumble over them.

  She knew something was up. Hopefully she hadn’t guessed any of the details. But she’d certainly come to the obvious conclusion that it was probably something neither she nor Breakwater would like.

  Or maybe she had guessed the details. Maybe she, or Breakwater, was fully aware of his nighttime researches or his evening visits to archivists.

  And suddenly, Winterfall was freshly aware of the damning data chip in his pocket.

  “It’s not always a pleasant place,” Castle Rock agreed. “But it’s where the business of the Star Kingdom gets done. Speaking of which, I’m sure you have some meetings or debates you should be attending.”

  “Yes, I have one later today,” Winterfall said, resisting the urge to slowly back away from her. He already looked guilty—there was no point in adding the appearance of panicked paranoia to the mix.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll see you back there, then.”

  “Yes, My Lady,” Winterfall said.

  She gave him another perfunctory smile and turned away. Winterfall watched her for a few steps, to make sure she was actually leaving, then turned and continued on toward his aircar.

  At least she hadn’t called the police and had him searched. He had no idea whether she could make that work legally, but he was pretty sure she had tricks up her sleeve that he’d never heard of.

  Thankfully, he was off the hook. For now.

  But his time was running out. He had to find someone to pass this information to, and fast.

  In the meantime, he was still a Member of Parliament, and he had a job to do. He would head back, and he would do that job.

  After all, the House of Lords was a big place. Surely he could avoid running into Breakwater or one of his cronies for the rest of the day.

  And later tonight he would figure out what he was going to do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Most business between the Lords and the Commons went via digital transfer. But occasionally there was a document that was deemed too sensitive or too cumbersome, and a courier was engaged to hand-carry the data chip between the two buildings.

  It took Winterfall a week to contrive such a document, and to find a reason to deliver it himself.

  He hadn’t been to the Commons for nearly three years. But as he walked the corridors, he could see that the place hadn’t changed. Whereas the Lords always seemed to resonate with activity and purpose, the Commons seemed almost placid, even lethargic.

  On one level, it made no sense. When Queen Elizabeth I had taken over from her father, she’d worked hard to upset the neat little members-only governing club that the Constitution’s framers had made of the House of Lords. The Queen had taken that carefully constructed centralization of power and spread it out to both the Commons and the Crown. The Lords had squawked furiously, but with the Commons’ help the Queen had forced it through.

  But on another level, it made perfect sense. Governing was hard work that required time, attention to detail, and sheer perseverance. Most of the Peerage had been raised to think of themselves as leaders and governors, even those who had to split their time between Parliament and their day jobs, but most commoners hadn’t. And so, despite the legacy of shared power that Elizabeth I had tried to leave them, over the years the Commons had gradually ceded much of their power back to the Lords.

  Most of the Lords undoubtedly thought of that as a good thing, if indeed they thought about it at all. Winterfall himself was of two minds. Concentration of power was certainly more efficient, but it could also be more easily abused.

  Fortunately, political philosophy wasn’t on today’s agenda. All he had to do was deliver his data chip and a short message and get out. Preferably without anyone important seeing him.

  His target office was in an otherwise unremarkable hallway. There was a name on the wall beside the door, but no secretary or other gatekeeper sat watch outside. Very unlike the circle of high-level Lords he usually ran in. The door itself was half open; taking that as a tacit invitation to potential interlopers, Winterfall tapped gently on the door and pushed it open.

  The office was smaller than Winterfall had expected, and only sparsely decorated. The man sitting behind the desk was equally unadorned, his jacket off, his neckwrap undone and hanging loose, his sleeves rolled partially up his forearms. But as he looked up, Winterfall had the sense that the man felt completely at home here.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Excuse me,” Winterfall apologized. “The door was open. You don’t know me, Mr. Miller, but—”

  “Oh, I know you, My Lord,” Joshua Miller interrupted calmly. “I daresay everyone in Landing knows you. At least, those who follow politics. What can I do for you?”

  “I need to ask you a favor,” Winterfall said, reaching behind him and closing the door. Miller’s eyes narrowed slightly as he did so, but he made no comment. “I have a document I need delivered to the Queen. I was hoping you’d do that for me.”

  Miller’s eyebrows went up a fraction of a millimeter.

  “The Palace really isn’t that hard to find,” he said. “Just ask someone on the street. They’ll point you the right direction.”

  “I can’t take it to her myself,” Winterfall
said. “It’s…let’s just say it’s of a sensitive nature. I can’t afford for there to be any public notice taken of the delivery.”

  “So what makes you think there’ll be less notice if I take it?”

  “Because I’m guessing the guards at the door are more familiar with you,” Winterfall said. “They may let you in with less fuss.”

  “I think you’ve got the wrong person,” Miller said. “I’ve been to the Palace exactly twice, and the last time was six months ago. You want an unobvious courier, you’d do better to send it in with your patron, Breakwater. He’s always walking the halls there.”

  “Yes,” Winterfall murmured, feeling his throat tighten. Yes, that would be a clever idea. “But you’re also a prominent MP. No one will worry if you—”

  “Let me see it.”

  Winterfall frowned. Miller’s expression hadn’t changed, but he was now holding out his hand.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Let me see the document.”

  “Will you take it to the Queen?”

  “I can try,” Miller said. “I know a couple of people in the Palace. But I’m not going to bother them until I know it’s worth wasting their time over.”

  “It can’t go through anyone else,” Winterfall warned. “It has to go to the Queen directly.”

  “Yes, I got that,” Miller said. He wiggled the fingers of his outstretched hand. “The document.”

  Winterfall hesitated, a sudden surge of doubt freezing his resolve. Miller’s speeches and bill submissions clearly showed that he was one of those who wanted the Commons to regain some of its eroded power. That was the main reason Winterfall had decided to approach him. On top of that, he was on Burgundy’s list, so he must at least be a decent man.

  But even decent men could be ambitious for power, and the document in Winterfall’s pocket cut in more than one direction. If Miller’s true goal was personal power, with the restoration of the Commons’ authority merely a means to that end, taking Winterfall’s data chip elsewhere would guarantee him all the power he could ever want.

  And it would spell Winterfall’s instant and permanent ruin.

  It was a risk. But then, all of life was a risk.

  And eventually, every man had to trust someone.

  Steeling himself, he pulled the chip from his pocket. “For the Queen,” he said, placing it in Miller’s outstretched hand.

  “Interesting choice of phrase,” Miller said, peering briefly at the chip and then slipping it into his own pocket. “Did you mean that in the sense of Deliver it to the Queen, or more along the lines of a formal battle cry.”

  “Actually, a little of both.”

  And to his mild surprise, Miller smiled.

  “I’ll do what I can, My Lord,” he said. “No; better. I’ll do everything I can.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Miller,” Winterfall said. “Good day to you, sir. And good luck.”

  * * *

  “I’m bored,” Hester Fife declared, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Really?” Llyn asked, eyeing her across the table.

  “Really.” Hester unfolded her arms and started pointing to the four chess boards set up between them. “I’ve won this one, this one, and this one.”

  “Really,” Llyn said again, dropping his gaze to the boards. They were barely ten moves into each of the games. And she was declaring victory already?

  Apparently so. The worst part was that she was probably right. “What about this one?” he asked, pointing to the fourth board.

  “You could still win,” she conceded. “But you probably won’t. You have a bad habit of only thinking five or six moves ahead, so you’ll probably blow it. You usually do.”

  “Well, let’s at least give me a fighting chance,” Llyn said, frowning down at the board. A minute ago, he’d been confident about his strategy. Now, he probably ought to give his plan another quick review.

  “Whatever,” Hester said. “Can I reset these?”

  “Sure,” Llyn said, still mentally running through the moves. “Go ahead.”

  Normally, of course, he hated to lose. Hated it with a passion. But with Hester he was willing to put his Alpha-male instincts aside. Partly it was because fighting against her in chess was futile anyway, but mostly it was because she was too valuable to be left to spin her wheels in frustration and boredom. Anything that kept her sharp, even if it was rolling boulders over him, was worth whatever pain it cost.

  And speaking of spinning wheels…

  “How are you doing on that other little problem I gave you?” he asked as he eased his remaining knight to a cautious attack.

  “Oh, I’m finished,” she said as she pushed all the pieces to the side of the first board with the back of her hand and began returning them to their starting positions. “I figured it out just before you traded me the bishop for the knight in the second game.”

  Llyn frowned. “So you haven’t finished it?”

  “Yes, I finished it,” she said with strained patience. “I just said that.”

  “But you haven’t broken the encryption yet?”

  “Yes, I broke the encryption,” she repeated, her patience even more strained. “I just haven’t written it down yet, that’s all.”

  “Ah,” Llyn said. “Had you a time in mind for doing that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, starting on the second board. “After a couple more wins, probably.”

  “I guess that’ll work,” Llyn agreed, making a mental note not to try too hard to beat her on this new round of games.

  “I don’t know what you want Gensonne’s com encryption broken for, anyway,” she added, pausing in her board resetting to counter Llyn’s knight move with her rook. “They’re not really going to say anything important when you’re close enough to tap in, are they?”

  “You never know,” Llyn told her, glaring at the rook. That was not the move he’d expected her to make. “Gensonne’s arrogant enough to think he can get away with it.”

  “And stupid enough to try?”

  “Basically.”

  “Idiots.” Shaking her head, she returned to her resetting.

  “Don’t disparage idiots, Hester my dear,” Llyn said. “They’re quite useful. Find a stupid person who thinks he’s clever, and you can get him to do almost anything you want.”

  “You mean like getting him to play chess all afternoon even when he hates to lose?”

  “Or like getting her to solve an encryption problem even though she gets bored with the datawork part of it.”

  She gave him a startled look. Her shoulders rounded, and she lowered her gaze to the table. “That wasn’t very nice,” she said in a low voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Llyn said, silently berating himself. The woman was a mathematical genius, but her sense of self-esteem was a piece of pie crust, and he of all people should know that. “It was a joke.” He reached over, put a finger under her chin, and eased her head up to face him again. “Just like yours,” he added, giving her a reassuring smile.

  She frowned, and then her face cleared. “Oh. Right. Jokes. Because neither of us is actually stupid.”

  “That’s right,” Llyn agreed, starting to breathe easier. “We’re not stupid, we’re not expendable—”

  “—and we’re not going,” she finished the old comedy routine line, grinning brightly now, the momentary hurt forgotten. The grin vanished into another frown. “We’re not going, are we?”

  “Not at all,” he assured her. “At least, not all the way.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because it doesn’t sound like fun.”

  “It’ll be fun for us,” Llyn said. “Just another game. Like this one.”

  “Right.” She gestured to the reset boards. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” he said, moving his king’s pawn on the first board. “And you’ll program in the decryption coding right after the games. Right?”

  “Yes,” she said, jumping her knight over her home-row pawns. “Right after the g
ames.”

  * * *

  Making rendezvous turned out not to be quite is easy as Kane had implied when he laid out his projected movements.

  It was no one’s fault, really. Coordinating interstellar movements was hard enough even when both ships had firmly fixed schedules. Coordinating them when neither side knew exactly when the other would reach a given point made it far more difficult.

  Clegg had known from the moment they left Walther that her window for catching Kane at Lau Hiler would be a bit tight. But there should be enough time. Moreover, it was only four T-days in hyper to Lau Hiler but nine T-days to Sachsen, the next target system on Woodburn’s list. If she caught Kane at Lau Hiler, she could save eight full days. If she missed him there, though, it would cost ten more T-days to make the trip to Sachsen on his heels.

  As it happened, she didn’t catch him at Lau Hiler.

  Clegg sat in her command chair, glowering at the display. Travis sat at the TO’s station, trying not to make himself noticed. It was hardly his fault that Kane wasn’t on his planned schedule, but he suspected Clegg would try to make it his fault just the same.

  Unfortunately, Pasha was Lau Hiler’s only inhabited planet. If Hamman wasn’t there, or on her way in or out, she wasn’t likely to be anywhere else in the system.

  “Kill our acceleration, XO,” the captain said after a moment. “Com, is Pasha’s station in laser range?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Sulini Hira said.

  “Lay a laser on the station and transmit a request for any stored messages.”

  “Aye, aye, Ma’am. Transmitting now.”

  Travis checked the status board. Casey had been in-system for an hour and forty minutes, putting her roughly five minutes and four point eight million kilometers inside the hyper-limit, sixty-two million kilometers short of Pasha’s orbit. At that range, a round-trip transmission delay was almost seven minutes.

  Stifling a sigh, Travis, along with Clegg and everyone else on the bridge, settled in to wait.

  The seven minutes passed, plus four more, before a soft chime sounded.