Debt of Honor (The Embers of War)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  His terminal chimed, loudly. “Captain?” Commander Patti Ludwig sounded as tired as William felt. “Captain Young requests a holoconference.”

  “Put him through,” William said. “And then contact System Command and inform them that we wish to confirm our departure time.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  William leaned forward as the starchart blinked out of existence, to be replaced by Captain Gary Young’s head. He was a strikingly handsome young man, at least in appearance; his navy file made it clear that he was only five years younger than William himself. William wasn’t sure what to make of Young’s vanity—he seemed to spend half his salary on cosmetic rejuvenation—but there was no denying his competence. His red hair and too-perfect face masked a very sharp mind. William would never have hired him if he’d had the slightest doubt of Young’s skills.

  “Commodore,” Young said.

  “Captain,” William said. He was both Dandelion’s commanding officer and the squadron commander. It wasn’t something he could maintain forever, particularly if Asher Dales started to grow a bigger navy, but for the moment he was happy to wear both hats. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I’d like a battlecruiser and perhaps a few more freighters filled with supplies,” Young said, “but I’m really calling to confirm that we will be ready to depart as planned.”

  “Good,” William said curtly. He’d like a battlecruiser too. “Did you manage to link up with a convoy?”

  “Yes, sir,” Young said. “We’ll be traveling to Cadiz with Convoy Golf-Echo-Nine, then proceeding through the Gap to Maxwell’s Haven with Convoy Sierra-Alpha-Three. After that, we’re on our own. They pulled too many ships off the front lines to search for Supreme.”

  William winced. A cruise liner, even one the size of a superdreadnought, was tiny on an interstellar scale. The odds of finding her were so low that . . . that William had greater odds of being declared King of Tyre and Emperor of the Galaxy. If pirates had taken Supreme, the ransom demands would have started to come in by now. Far more likely the ship had suffered a catastrophic failure in hyperspace and either been destroyed or made a crash-transition back into realspace. And if she’d lost her vortex generators, she wouldn’t have a hope of reaching the nearest inhabited planet before life support failed.

  But the navy can’t say that to the rich and powerful aristocrats who had family on the liner, he reminded himself. They have to make a show of hunting for her, even though they know it’s useless.

  “There’s no immediate hurry,” he said. He would have preferred to use all four destroyers to escort the freighter, but he didn’t like the way things were going in Parliament. Better to have two destroyers on station before it was too late. “That freighter has got to be protected.”

  “I understand, sir,” Young said. “I shall guard her with my life.”

  “Very good,” William said. “And I expect you to avoid engagement, if possible. No heroics.”

  “Yes, sir,” Young said.

  He didn’t sound disappointed, William noted wryly. But then, any sensible naval officer would know better than to go looking for trouble when they were on escort duty. The convoys tended to attract trouble. Pirates knew better than to engage escorted freighters, but the Theocracy had managed to take out a number of supply convoys during the early days of the war. Their efforts hadn’t been wasted, William conceded. They’d probably prolonged the war by several months.

  “There is another point,” Young said. “I heard . . . I heard that the dealers were facing new regulations on what they can and can’t sell to foreign governments.”

  “So far, nothing seems to have firmed up,” William said slowly. Asher Dales was, technically, an ally, but Tyre seemed to be having second thoughts about selling modern technology to anyone. Parliament was starting to think of the Commonwealth and the liberated worlds as potential rivals rather than allies. It didn’t bode well. “Still, we need to secure as much as possible before it’s too late.”

  “Yes, sir,” Young said. “But are we foreigners?”

  William hesitated. He might be a colonial, but Young wasn’t. He’d been born and raised on Tyre. And yet . . . he’d taken service with a foreign government. William didn’t think there was any prospect of Asher Dales going to war against Tyre, but technically . . . He shook his head, dismissing the thought. The little squadron had obtained the proper clearances to go to Asher Dales and join the fledgling navy. That was all that mattered.

  “They don’t want to sell their most advanced technology to anyone,” he said curtly, using his annoyance to hide his own misgivings. They weren’t doing anything wrong, or illegal, but they weren’t in the navy any longer either. “But we don’t need it to swat pirates.”

  “It still feels odd,” Young complained.

  William smiled, humorlessly. “Welcome to life on the poverty level,” he said. Tyre was a rich world. The aristocrats could purchase a squadron of superdreadnoughts out of pocket change. Asher Dales was lucky to be able to scrape up enough cash to buy and equip four destroyers and a freighter. “You were on half pay when I snapped you up. Do you want to go back to it?”

  “No,” Young said quickly. “But it just feels off.”

  “I know,” William said. “But you will have to cope with it.”

  He smiled, rather thinly, as Young’s image vanished. Young had never lived anywhere but Tyre. He probably didn’t understand, at an emotional level, the realities of life on a rougher world. Or, for that matter, how people in distant offices could make decisions that wreaked havoc on defenseless planets. William doubted the restrictions on tech transfers would cause any immediate problems, not for him and his little squadron, but they might cause all sorts of issues in the future. Such limitations would hamper Asher Dales and the other liberated worlds as they sought to take control of their destinies.

  But they have a long way to go before that becomes a problem, he told himself. First, they have to survive.

  He spent the next few hours reading through the final reports from the four destroyers and the freighter, then downloading news bulletins from the planetary datanet and reading them too. It looked as though no one could make up their minds about anything, although there was no shortage of talking heads ready to expound on The Meaning of It All. William read through one explanation, noted that the writer clearly knew nothing about the realities of naval life, and dismissed the rest of the bulletin unread. Whoever was running the news service wasn’t interested in facts. There was no shortage of officers on half pay who’d be happy to supplement their income by writing articles for the media companies.

  Tanya returned to the ship on time, to his private amusement. He checked on her as she settled into her cabin, reminding her to spend time in VR simulations or something else that might distract her from the bulkheads pressing in, then hurried to the bridge. It was tiny, compared to Uncanny’s, but still the nerve center of the ship. He sat down in the command chair and surveyed his kingdom. The weight of command responsibility fell around him like a shroud.

  I never thought I’d command a ship again, William thought. Losing two ships in quick succession and suffering the first mutiny on a naval starship had blotted his record beyond repair. The mutiny hadn’t been his fault, and the inquest had made that clear, but he’d been lucky beyond words to get a second command. And I won’t lose this one.

  He sucked in his breath. “Engineering, power up the drives.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  William smiled as he felt a low rumble echo through the ship. They’d powered up the drives before, just to make sure they were in working order, but this was real. He watched the power curves form on his display, the drive fields readying themselves to push the ship out of orbit, and felt his smile widen. He’d been deluding himself, when he’d gone to live with his people. A starship command deck was where he belonged.

  “XO, signal System Command,” he ordered. “Inform them that we are ready to depart.”

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p; “Aye, sir,” Patti said.

  William tapped his console, bringing up the near-space display. Tyre was surrounded by green and blue icons: hundreds of orbiting asteroids, thousands of military and civilian starships coming and going. It was hard to be sure, but he thought there were fewer civilian starships than he’d expected. The economy was having problems transitioning back to a peacetime footing. He grimaced. No wonder the politicians were considering cutting their military commitments. The end of the war had brought a severe drop in tax revenue.

  And they can’t rely on the Commonwealth to soak up much of their production, he thought. He didn’t pretend to understand how the interstellar economy worked. Every explanation he’d heard sounded like a junior officer’s attempt to explain just what he’d been thinking to an annoyed superior after his bright idea had gone spectacularly wrong. No wonder so many spacers are out of work.

  “System Command has cleared us to depart, sir,” Patti reported.

  “Very good,” William said. “Helm, take us out of orbit. When we reach the gateway point, take us into hyperspace.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And then set course for Asher Dales,” William added.

  “Aye, sir.”

  William settled back in his command chair as Dandelion moved out of orbit, Primrose following at her heels. The destroyer wasn’t a heavy cruiser, but she was his. He was the last of the absolute monarchs, as long as he sat on her command deck. Tanya wanted him to train up local officers and crew to take his place, but it would be a long time before he stepped down. He felt a flicker of pity for Kat. She should never have let them promote her to flag rank. How could she command a starship now?

  A shame she can’t join us, he thought sincerely. But her family will never let her go.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  * * *

  TYRE

  Peter Falcone had never liked his father’s business office. It was immense, yet empty: a single desk, a large window overlooking Tyre City, and a handful of expensive paintings on the walls. There was none of the charm and elegance of his father’s private office, or even the homeliness of Peter’s original office. Its only role was to impress guests and, perhaps, host people Lucas Falcone hadn’t wanted to take into his private office. Peter rather suspected that the two men facing him fell into that category.

  He kept his face carefully blank as he studied the two men. His father had hired them personally, buying out their firm, Masterly and Masterly, to ensure that he had sole call on their services. Peter wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Alexander and Clive Masterly were good and experienced men, according to his father’s private files, but he’d never been able to escape the sense that they were always keeping their eyes open for ways to exploit matters to their own advantage. Peter’s own people hadn’t been able to dig up any evidence, one way or the other, yet that was meaningless. The network of financial transactions that made up the heart of the Falcone Corporation was so complex that anyone with the right access could hide a money transfer, or something more subtle, and be reasonably sure it wouldn’t be noticed.

  And anyone with that sort of access would know if we carried out an audit, he thought. By the time we had proof, they’d be halfway to Marseilles.

  “Very well,” he said, stiffly. “Please, explain it to me.”

  Alexander Masterly leaned forward. He was a dapper man in a neat business suit, with a rather large nose. Alexander was established enough not to have to care what he looked like.

  “We have been carrying out a prolonged financial assessment of the corporation and its subunits over the last two months,” Alexander said. He had an aristocratic burr to his voice, although it was strong enough for Peter to be reasonably sure it was an affectation. The two men had been born commoners. “Our conclusions have been extensively detailed . . .”

  “Summarize them,” Peter snapped. “What is the problem?”

  Alexander tapped a switch. A giant holographic chart shimmered into existence. It looked like a galaxy, featuring hundreds of planets orbiting countless stars, but it was in fact far more detailed. Peter sucked in a breath as he studied the image, feeling a flicker of the old awe. The hologram in front of him was the Falcone Corporation, from the industries owned directly by the family to the sidelines, from people who worked for the family to a network of clients who didn’t know where their patronage chains actually ended. It was hard, even for someone who’d grown up surrounded by wealth and power, to trace the tangled threads from one end of the display to the other. Peter didn’t know how his father had endured his role for so long.

  He liked the idea of being a spider at the center of the web, Peter thought. And he knew which threads he needed to pull if he wanted something.

  “We have two main problems, at the moment,” Alexander said. He centered the display on a profit-loss statement. “First, in the short run, our military contracts are going to come to an end within the next twelve months. I’ve heard that the military is already trying to figure out ways to get out of the contracts early, as they don’t need the ships, weapons, and components any longer. We may be able to rationalize some of the contracts down to a more reasonable level without losing them altogether, but it seems unlikely that we will have many military contracts by the end of the year. There simply isn’t any need for them.”

  “I see,” Peter said.

  “What makes this worse,” Alexander added, “is that the bulk of the military production line cannot be converted for other markets. A third of the technology we produce is thoroughly embargoed for civilian use, at least not without extensive licensing, while the remainder doesn’t have much use for civilians. They don’t need military-grade sensor suites, particularly when the mil-grade equipment is five or six times as expensive as the civilian models.”

  Peter tensed. “I was under the impression that military gear was highly sought after.”

  “It is,” Alexander said. “But smaller companies and independent freighter captains also have limited funds. We’ve been looking at ways to reduce prices, in hopes of picking up extra sales, but we’re already running on the margins as it is. The military contracts were relatively steady, sir. They weren’t going to make us rich.”

  “We did cream a profit, didn’t we?” Peter studied the charts for a long moment. “I believe the money was reinvested.”

  “It was,” Alexander confirmed. “But the vast war machine we built to fight the war is no longer required.”

  And so we have to scale back our operations, Peter thought. Which is going to be very bad.

  Clive cleared his throat. “The second problem is that we, and most of the other corporations, are going to have to cut costs sharply. This will necessitate getting rid of a great many subdivisions, and people. A considerable number of employees will have to be downsized and . . .”

  “You mean sacked,” Peter said sharply.

  “Yes, sir,” Clive said. “We may have to lay off up to 30 percent of our workforce.”

  Peter swallowed, hard. The age-old contract between employers and employees was about to be broken. They’d promised the workers that they’d take care of them, hadn’t they? A job with a big corporation was a job for life. Peter’s father had aggressively encouraged his subordinates to seek out new talent and promote it, encouraging ambitious youngsters to rise to the limits of their competence. A man could start on the ground floor and climb to the very top. Peter’s former office had contained a whole string of success stories that had boosted the corporation’s profits and given hope to the workers that competence would be rewarded.

  But not now, he thought. No one was fired without due cause. God knew the corporation worked hard to put square pegs in square holes. What will happen when we tell 30 percent of our people that they have to go?

  “It may get worse,” Clive added, slowly. “If the rumors about Cavendish are true . . .”

  Peter gritted his teeth. There was a yawning financial black hole at the very heart of the Cavendis
h Corporation. Duke Cavendish was doing everything in his power to patch together the cracks in the edifice, but he might as well be putting a tiny plaster on a broken arm. It wouldn’t be long before people, important people, started jumping ship. And once that happened, the Cavendish Corporation was doomed. Millions of people would be out of work.

  “There will be a planetary economic downturn,” Clive said. “If vast numbers of people lose their jobs, they’ll stop buying things; if people stop buying things, more and more sub-businesses will go bust. And then, chaos.”

  “And there’s no way we can save even part of Cavendish,” Peter said. Cavendish was technically a rival, but if one ducal corporation went under, the others would tremble. “We can’t afford it.”

  “No, sir,” Alexander said. “We could snap up a few of their subdivisions, at bargain- basement prices, but the cost of saving even a small percentage of their operations would bankrupt us.”

  Clive nodded. “What makes matters worse, sir, are the subsidies. And the military tax.”

  Peter winced. “How do you imagine they’ll play out?”

  “It depends on the politics.” Alexander looked acutely uncomfortable. “The military tax has not—yet—been repealed. If it isn’t repealed, for whatever reason, it will be yet another expenditure we will be hard-pressed to meet. Even if it is repealed, we will still have difficulty meeting our usual obligations. The king needs to be made aware of the dangers of excessive taxation.

  “The subsidies, both to the Commonwealth and the former Theocratic worlds, are a different kettle of fish. In the short run, canceling them would save money; in the long run, they would cause economic trouble for our allies, which would lead to resentment. I’d honestly advise doing a full audit on the subsidies before we consider canceling them, but . . .”

  He shrugged, expressively. Peter understood. The king considered the subsidies to be a necessary payment, one of his flagship projects to build the Commonwealth into a genuine interstellar power. Peter agreed with his reasoning, but he was concerned about the cost of the project. When times were good, people didn’t care where the money went; when times were hard, people got angry when payments, even minor ones, were made to those who didn’t work. People who paid taxes felt they should get something in return and woe betide any government official who tried to tell them otherwise.