Petron

by Blaze Ward

  She was stretched out in a big chair, tilted back with her feet up. Didn’t look like she had slept much in the last three weeks, but Yan wasn’t an expert on the topic. He’d been away raiding both times his young’uns had been born. Putting food on the table, as it were, although avoiding adult responsibilities also factored in there to some extent.

  He hadn’t grown up until much later.

  “Mostly got it covered, Pint-sized,” Yan replied. “Checking up on you.”

  “Desianna’s been by every day, acting like surrogate grandma,” Moirrey smiled tiredly. “Kimiko as well, introducing Arnulf and little Jessica to their new cousin, more or less.”

  Yan laughed quietly at that as he took a spot on the couch. He supposed it was as close a relationship as zu Wachturm and Casey had, family of choice usually being better than family of blood.

  “The Bartender sends his love and hopes you’ll come by at some point, so he can meet the little one,” Yan smiled at her. “I’m guessing he thinks you and Digger’s brood are all guaranteed to become engineers, so he wants a head start on the next generation.”

  “I wonder whether or not that’s a good idea,” Moirrey turned a little serious on him. “Ya looks at what Suvi dids to Aquitaine, making the Story Road over into an empire, sorts of. What would the Bartender do’s to Corynthe?”

  “Casey’s had the same doubts,” Yan said. “As well as Jessica and Torsten. Short of killing him outright, I’m not sure how to stuff the genie back into the bottle. It might solve the short-term issue, but at what cost to humanity?”

  “You gettin’ phil’sophical on me, pirate-boy?” Moirrey grinned.

  “Morbid, maybe,” he replied. “Looking at you and Dina reminds me that I’ll be fifty soon. Got kids older than Casey. Dunno what happens to the Bartender when Ainsley’s gone. He’s her only kid.”

  “Been thinking about Summer?” Moirrey asked.

  “Yup,” Yan nodded. “What’s it like to outlive everyone you know? What it must be like to outlive even the civilization that created you.”

  “Hows ta live alone for seven hundred years because the locals think yer a witch,” Moirrey added.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to get maudlin,” Yan derailed himself back on track. “Hazards of the job these days. Been working my way through your old notes on Project Mischief, looking for more weapons we could build, on the presumption that Aquitaine eventually sends a raid this direction, maybe to distract Jessica. Maybe to dethrone her, depending on how angry they are.”

  “Ya thinks they gots any chance of that?” Moirrey asked.

  “If something happens to David, then potentially everything unravels around here,” Yan said. “He’s got the best bodyguards that Desianna can locate, so I’m not that worried about an assassin. A warfleet camped in orbit blowing shit up until he surrenders or they start bombarding the surface is a bigger risk.”

  “We can’t build a counterfleet, Yan,” Moirrey said. “These folks be wedded to their MotherShips’n’SnubFighters fer a generation, yet.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said grimly. “But we need to be able to stop someone trying. And I’ve been talking to the Bartender about it, me and Ainsley by ourselves. He’s game to help us nudge weapons technology forward a few steps now, maybe bringing a century’s worth of developments into the present tense.”

  “Vishnu, Yan,” Moirrey whistled. “Are ya nuts?”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m here, Pint-sized,” he replied, blowing a heavy breath out. “More genies. More bottles. Maybe upset this entire quadrant of the galaxy, technologically. Might piss off Casey even more than we do Aquitaine. And now I’ve got the same problem Jessica and Casey were racing to head off, with both of them at the far end of space and a fuse burning here.”

  “What’s ya want’n fr’m me, Yan?” Moirrey leaned forward to stare hard at him now.

  “As Ainsley occasionally threatens me: adult supervision,” he said simply. “Pops and I can design bigger and better than anybody else in the galaxy right now, especially after we built the Butterfly. But neither of us really know Jessica as a person, really. Just a boss and a legend. And Casey’s a friend of a friend. I need you to look at some of the things we want to do and tell me when to stop.”

  “When to stop?” Moirrey’s eyes narrowed.

  “Lincolnshire’s generally running second-hand gear they bought when Aquitaine was done with it,” Yan said. “Even the catamaran designs are second rate, Pops’s hand in them or not. After Kali-ma, the yards around here know how to build hulls close to the Expeditionary Cruiser for size. Galen’s Patrol Cruiser, for example, rates as a Light Cruiser for tonnage, and could probably eat a Founder-class Heavy Cruiser from Aquitaine.”

  “Ya wanna build Expeditionaries out here?” she asked.

  “No,” Yan admitted. “That was for sailing clear across the galaxy to hit someone. Logistics trains were the key design element. Pops and I have been talking about a super-dreadnaught kind of monitor right now. Slow, but mean enough to argue with Valiant or Vanguard and all their escorts, especially if they can’t maneuver away from us into JumpSpace after your JumpMines trap them in range.”

  “Yup, genie ferever outs the bottle, ya does that,” Moirrey nodded.

  “Defensive as hell, right now, Pint-sized,” Yan countered. “Even for us. Nobody else would have the technology to build something comparable, nor the need, since the first and only time I’m hoping to use it is when we quicksand somebody and cut their throats.”

  “Unnerstoods,” she nodded. “And yups, will come down to the lab, s’longs as you sets up a crib and toys fer the girl.”

  “Thank you,” Yan said, rising. “There are times, especially after Carthage, that I need someone stopping me from turning into a mad scientist from the vid and trying to conquer the whole galaxy myself. That ain’t going to be Pops. He’s almost as bad. Hopefully, it’s you and Ainsley.”

  “Will keeps ya in check,” Moirrey promised.

  He gave her a kiss, checked in to see little Dina still napping, and let himself out quietly.

  Like Moirrey, every once in a while an idea snuck up on him that was so incredibly dangerous that the galaxy might be a better place not knowing it. But he’d stopped feeling charitable about two months ago, for some reason.

  Maybe Corynthe needed to break Lincolnshire and Salonnia for good. He and Pops both owed those miserable bastards a thing or two.

  PART FOUR

  CONFRONTATION

  CHAPTER XXX

  IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 183/06/01. COXAND HALL, STRASBOURG, ST. LEGIER

  THEY HAD TRIED good cop and failed miserably, so Reinhard had been expecting someone to finally lose their temper and go for bad cop. In his wildest dreams, he would have never expected this level of escalation, however, but the men he was confronting liked to play for big stakes, and had the egos and appetites to go with it.

  Reinhard studied his guest, seated across the desk from him. Reinhard’s office was immaculate today. He and his staff had cancelled several meetings and spent an hour tidying things up.

  After all, it wasn’t every day that you got to meet the Duke of your homeworld in an official capacity. Even fewer when he was coming to you.

  It wasn’t a hat-in-hand situation. Gerig and Warner had already misplayed that hand in their rage. Howalt Rosson, Duke of Trenga, would have been perfect for such a role, to come in here polite and exuding bonhomie, offering and exchanging favors. Warner had done it instead, botching the event and making it obvious how little respect for commoners a man like the Duke of Andhrimohr really had.

  So the Duke of Trenga was here, in the office of one of his own planet’s representatives, sipping tea and trying to look fierce in his apparently-assigned duty as Bad Cop. He might have even looked the part once. A geological age ago.

  The man was in his eighties now. He almost looked like someone had deflated him, leaving too much skin to wrinkle and flop over a skeleton with no muscles on them. He would have been
nearly translucent but for the liver spots cropping up everywhere.

  At least the brain was still mostly there, even if the eyes were failing and the hearing was augmented by electronic assistance.

  “Is everything to your tastes, Your Grace?” Reinhard had to pitch his voice louder than was comfortable for him, especially in a closed office. The walls echoed badly. “Perhaps some scones or sandwiches?”

  “Hmm?” The old man perked up from contemplating his tea to study Reinhard, almost as if he had forgotten who he had come to berate.

  If a rabbit had been capable of berating someone.

  “Is the tea good, sir?” Reinhard almost yelled.

  “Quite so,” the duke agreed.

  Reinhard didn’t have any axes to grind with the man. Rossum had been pretty good, as far as Dukes went. Taxes sufficient to maintain governance and his palaces, without going off on a binge of debauchery, like some lords were wont to do. Few scandals attached to the main Ducal family, although a few distaff branches had been perhaps less than subtle about their failings.

  Reinhard wondered if he might actually manage to swindle the man into drinking tea, talking about nothing for an hour, and departing, having forgotten what, or who, originally drove him into this office.

  “I come as a messenger, Hjördís,” the Duke suddenly spoke up, as if he had finally remembered.

  Certainly, there was no fanatical fire in those eyes. Reinhard paused to consider that maybe the man was literally working his way down a mental checklist, good manners mixed with aristocratic privilege, then blended with need and authority. Reinhard had certainly never met the man before.

  Hell, four years ago he hadn’t even planned to be a politician, more comfortable owning a bookstore back home and eking out a lower-middle-class living. But the man who had held this job before Reinhard had been on St. Legier that day. Had perished with all the millions of others.

  A small rage had ignited in Reinhard’s soul.

  For reasons he still couldn’t explain, even to himself, he had filed to stand for the special election to fill the slot. Others had been more professional. More slick. More something.

  Reinhard Hjördís had brought with him only a love of old books and a fire to see justice done.

  He was still amazed that he had won. And it hadn’t even been a particularly close election that saw him suddenly half the Empire away from home while his wife and family ran the store.

  “How may I serve your needs, Your Grace?” Reinhard replied to the old man, perhaps filling in his own checklist of grace and manners.

  The Empire was built on such things, regardless of one’s social station. The only difference in the modern age was that commoners had rights, too.

  Some Dukes still hadn’t gotten over that. Might never, but that wasn’t Reinhard’s problem.

  The Chief of Deputies, the man who answered directly to the Emperor, had asked him to do a thing. Called upon his patriotic duty to help make the galaxy a better place. Perhaps a forgotten footnote, in the grand scheme of things, but it was the little men of history that rose up and knocked the grand personalities off their plinths.

  Reinhard Hjördís, Accidental Revolutionary? The galaxy had seen stranger things. He served a woman Emperor.

  The Duke might have fallen asleep. Or lost his train of thought.

  “Your Grace?” Reinhard prodded him politely.

  “The House of Dukes has taken notice of your activities, Hjördís,” the old man finally said.

  It probably would have qualified as a threat, from a younger man. Or an angrier one. This only just missed peevish by the lack of energy the man put behind his words.

  Reinhard nodded politely and held his tongue. For everything else, this man was still his Duke. And had been a good one. Had raised several fine sons and daughters who had generally married well and maintained the decorum one would expect. Especially compared to some other worlds.

  Reinhard’s beef was with the office, not the man.

  “The House of the People was never intended to be more than a salon for intellectuals, Hjördís,” the man continued. It was almost like reading along with the script at a play. “The Dukes will make the decisions. They understand what is best for the Empire.”

  “I understand your position, Your Grace,” Reinhard deflected the old man carefully, no doubt into one of the paths someone else had mapped out ahead of time. “However, the law stands. The Emperor has empowered the People to have a voice, and thus it is incumbent upon us to speak for those we represent.”

  “The law is wrong,” the man finally found some fire. Must have wandered off script now, as he wasn’t a good enough actor to suddenly shift gears like that. “We will fix it.”

  “With all due courtesies, Your Grace, the Emperor is the only one that can alter the situation. Those were her commands that allowed this very situation. Have you spoken with the Chief of Deputies and asked him to rescind Karl VIII’s orders?”

  Ask. Such a polite term for what had apparently been a shitshow of rage and conflicting personalities in a small office, as Cameron had simply told a deputation of Dukes to go piss up a rope and stop bothering him as he attended Her Majesty’s business. Reinhard had gotten a synopsis from the man later. Enough to taste the flavor of the night, along with a warning that they would probably come for him next. And they had.

  Gerig and Warner hadn’t gotten any luckier attempting to bully an obscure shopkeeper who had accidentally emerged as the voice of the people of the empire.

  So they had sent his Duke, after everything else had failed.

  “Her Majesty’s Government refuses,” the old man practically hissed, finally finding energy.

  Reinhard could see how this man might have been a pretty effective bad cop, but that time had passed. Maybe about the time Reinhard was born.

  “Then I am at a loss to understand how I might be involved, Your Grace,” Reinhard let the rain spill harmlessly off his back.

  “You have driven the People into revolt against the natural order of things,” the old man raged, finally letting his inner truths out.

  The natural order of things.

  As if there was such a thing. Even the Empire was a nation of laws and social contracts. The rulers had the acquiescence of the ruled. As long as the people continued to accept being ruled. Aquitaine didn’t even bother with the mask of hereditary privilege, letting wealth, breeding, and marital connection forge a stronger nation, where anyone could Aspire.

  Even a bookseller from Trenga.

  “It is my understanding, sir, that the treaty from Aquitaine is quite popular,” Reinhard pulled out one of his trump cards and played it now, just to see if he could provoke the man to outbid his play. “Given the overall course of action, I expect that the House of the People will see to favoring the document, and communicating such to our Emperor when Karl VIII returns and reviews our actions in the lack of an Imperial presence.”

  Reinhard carefully avoided gendering his Emperor right now. He wasn’t sure just how sexist the old man was, but only a handful of the Dukes truly supported her as a woman, as opposed to the last of Karl VII’s children to survive the disorder of the last decade.

  “That is not the point, Hjördís,” the man finally thundered, going so far as to quietly slam a soft fist onto the desktop to make a point.

  He didn’t spill any of his tea in the process, however.

  “Then what is the point, Your Grace?” Reinhard smiled obsequiously. “I must admit to ignorance of the grander scheme of things, being a mere shopkeeper elevated beyond my station.”

  And pigs might fly, old man, but we’re here to be polite. To accept the Natural Order Of Things, as it were. At least until it becomes necessary to change that structure.

  Then maybe there won’t need to be a House of Dukes to argue with. And maybe then, we won’t need aristocrats to genuflect to, to show us that Natural Order.

  Reinhard suddenly understood why Cameron Lara, Karl VIII’s Chief of
Deputies, had picked him out of the thousands of men, and dozens of women, who represented the commoners of the Empire.

  He had found Rage.

  It was a polite one, to be sure. But implacable.

  “The People must give way,” the Duke of Trenga snarled, moving up now to an angry, teacup Chihuahua, perhaps. But those dogs were known to bite. “The Dukes will decide what is right. The People can go back to being a debating society, and stop meddling in the affairs of their betters.”

  “No,” Reinhard said simply, letting some taste of that rage take root on his tongue.

  It wasn’t fire or salt, but he might have enough in him to burn the edifice down and then salt the earth when he was done.

  If they pushed.

  “No?”

  “That’s right, Your Grace,” Reinhard glowered at the man. “The Emperor has set the two houses as co-equals. Partners in governance, if you will. She expects us to continue to exercise the legislative authority that we did when Werder was destroyed and the House of the People was the only thing keeping her government in motion. The Dukes can continue as always, but the People will join them. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you take it up with her when she returns. Or not. Your House can presumably handle their own affairs without my House offering unwelcome advice.”

  Had he slapped the old man and challenged him to a duel, the shock in those eyes might not have been as great. The Duke stopped breathing for several seconds as he probably got barked at by a commoner for the first time in his life.

  “Mind yourself, Hjördís,” the Duke of Trenga finally sputtered. “I am still your Duke. I can make life miserable for you and yours, back home.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Reinhard leaned forward and spoke carefully, so the old man could read his lips as well. “You govern Trenga according to ancient custom and a variety of legal means. Legal means. Anything you threaten me with now falls outside of those laws. You might fall outside of them, if you were to carry through with such threats. I have the law on my side, as well as the House of the People. I suggest you not step outside the laws that govern us all, in your petulant rage, Your Grace. Bad things might happen, as the people you threaten outnumber the people you represent by several orders of magnitude.”