Against the Odds

by Elizabeth Moon

  "He was going to take her away? Where?" Kate looked at Brun; Brun felt a chill that struck through her like a spear of ice.

  "I . . . don't want to know," she said, struggling to keep herself from showing the panic she felt. Had she really come so close to another captivity? But her mind went on working. "Sirialis. If he took me to Sirialis, the people there would think it was me. I mean, they'd think it was all right, at first, and then—"

  "A hostage." Kevil said. "Against your sept, certainly against anything the people on Sirialis might do. And—Brun, you have the family codes for the communications and data storage systems on Sirialis, don't you?"

  "Yes, of course. Everything but Mother's private ciphers."

  "Would he know about hers? About your not having them?"

  "I don't know." Brun felt a wave of panic, and shoved it down.

  "Our files on him are at Appledale," Kate said. "We didn't bring them into town—didn't see a reason to. He was detained, we thought." She sounded annoyed.

  "Gentleman's detention—he wore a scan bracelet," Kevil said. "His attorneys argued that he wasn't going to bolt, and he'd posted a huge bond. Anyway, he claimed to have a toothache; apparently his dentist took the bracelet off for him early yesterday morning. Nobody realized he'd slipped away for hours: the dentist claimed he had an emergency ahead of Harlis, and the bracelet returned a signal. The dentist's now in detention himself; they found the bracelet tucked under the cushion of one of the chairs."

  "Did Harlis go to Appledale?" Brun asked.

  "No. We've called out there; no intrusion."

  "He has the family codes," Brun said suddenly.

  "What?"

  "Harlis. He has the codes. Some of them, anyway, the general ones. I'm sure—unless Mother changed them, when she left, but she would have thought he was in detention. No reason to change them. And nobody's there."

  "The staff are," Kevil said. "The others . . ."

  "No family," Brun said. "No one who can change the codes, and lock him out."

  "If that's where he's going, with a Fleet warship, just changing the codes wouldn't help."

  "I'll bet that's how they got in, in the first place," Brun said.

  Kevil looked blank, and so did George. "Who got in? When?"

  "Lepescu and his . . . hunters. I'll bet it was Harlis, or my cousin Kell."

  "You could be right. Your father never did figure out why that fellow who was Stationmaster of the Pinecone let him in. If Harlis had pressured him, it makes more sense."

  "But now—we have to stop him getting there. I'll have to go—"

  "Brun—you can't. You have to be here."

  "But Kevil—we can't just let him go in there and terrorize people . . ."

  "What could you do if you were there?"

  "Warn them. Try to help." But she knew it would be futile; she wasn't a battle group of Fleet ships, all in herself. No. She had to give that up, and do what she could for the Familias as a whole. She could warn them, that was all.

  * * *

  She suspected that Fleet would not do anything, but she had to make the attempt. Sure enough, after taking her report, the admiral minor on the screen shook her head.

  "I'm sorry, sera, but in the present situation we can't detach troops to protect one world." One rich family's playground world was the implication.

  "I understand that," Brun said. After the expense of her rescue, she knew she could not ask Fleet for favors. "But you needed to know that we suspect one of the mutineers' ships—or maybe more—is headed there."

  "Yes, I understand that. But that's a fairly isolated world with a small population. Better they should go there than attack a more populous planet. It has no manufacturing capacity, has it?"

  "No—only light industry."

  "It would take them five years to build up a shipyard capable of producing FTL ships, and that's with stolen parts, not from scratch. That gives us time to cut them off. I doubt very much they have the resources to mount a proper systemwide defense. In the meantime, we have urgent concerns elsewhere. As soon as possible, we'll go get them."

  "I've already warned the population that Harlis may be coming with an armed ship. I don't want to interfere with your dispositions, but may I at least tell them you won't be coming?"

  "Of course, sera. In fact, if the mutineers go there, and find that out, perhaps they'll stay in what they think is a safe haven until we can get there. Quite frankly, sera, we have no resources that could reach Sirialis before the mutineers can, if you're right about when they might have started."

  "Thank you," Brun said. She wanted to rage, to kick desks and stamp the polished floor and scream . . . but that wasn't the way to get things done, not now. "Do you have any idea what force of ships that man Taylor might have?"

  "I'm sorry, sera, I don't have that information."

  * * *

  After Miranda and Cecelia left, Sirialis subsided into summer somnolence, with Opening Day a safe hundred or more days away. Not that its inhabitants were idle, not on an agricultural and recreational world. Sirialis fed itself and the guests who descended on it yearly. The early crops of grain were in; the first cutting of hay lay open to the sun, drying before baling. Truck farms were in full production and so were the food processing facilities that took the surplus and preserved it for the season. For most of the planet's population, life went on as usual: the schools and stores and other services for the locals didn't change much with the activities of the owners. The changing seasons and the vagaries of local weather were more important. Dredges grumbled away at the entrance to Hospitality Bay where unusually severe winter storms had raised a sandbar and caused problems for the fishing fleet. In the other hemisphere, scattered settlements—timber camps, mining camps—prepared for the depths of winter. Many people migrated with the seasons, but a few chose to stay in one place.

  Whenever family members weren't in residence, the big house went to a skeleton staff except for maintenance. This spring, plumbers worked on the balky pipes of the east wing, which had given trouble off and on for over fifty years, and the engineering consultant prodded at timbers in the attics in the triennial structural inspection. Stables and gardens, of course, were fully staffed year round. Horses and roses needed constant care; grooms and gardeners both preferred the quiet seasons.

  System defense, at Sirialis, had been minimal for over a century. There was the communications ansible, by which the family alerted the system to their arrival. The landing fields at the main residence and Hospitality Bay had longscan capability, but system defense and traffic control was handled mostly by the Stationmaster at the largest orbital station. All three orbital stations had longscan and there were a few batteries of anti-ship missiles from the old days, which no one had tested in at least five years.

  Brun's first ansible message set off a flurry of activity. There were not enough shuttles and ships within the system to evacuate everyone from the surface; Sirialis' population was small only by comparison with more developed worlds. They had no weapons that would stand up to a military invasion, and Brun had not been able to say how many ships might show up. She had been able to get Fleet to transmit the specs of various kinds so they'd have a clue.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Rockhouse Major

  Goonar heard nothing from Bethya the next morning—or afternoon. Had she changed her mind? Was she trying to think of a way to let him down easily?

  When the call finally came, he'd immersed himself in a study of the shipping figures for a colony Terakian & Sons was thinking of offering regular service to. He picked up the buzzing comunit absently. "Captain Terakian—how may I help you?"

  "Goonar—" It was Bethya. His heart started to pound. "It's done. I'm still at the hotel, and I'm really too tired to move tonight. But I'd like to have dinner—would you mind coming here?"

  "Of course not," Goonar said, dragging his mind away from the profitability analysis of the colony. "How formal?"

  "Not very."


  * * *

  Bethya looked very tired, almost wan in fact. He wondered if the execrable Dougie had been nagging at her and felt a strong urge to hunt Dougie up and push his face in.

  "Are you up to this?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said. "Don't be fooled by theatrics, Goonar. I—came up with something.

  "The problem," she said, over the salad, "was money. It usually is, in theater. Money or jealousy, or both. In this case, both."

  Money Goonar understood. "They owed you?"

  "They owe both of us," she said. "We still—they still—haven't paid for the passage, beyond the first segment. And when we founded the company, the four of us—Merlay, Dion, Sarin and I—all contributed equal shares. Merlay died five years ago—the most ravishing tenor you ever heard, and it was just a stupid traffic accident. Dion got an offer from his homeworld's most prestigious school of the arts a year later, and we bought out his share. We being Sarin—who's our set and costume designer—and me. Well, we were short two males, and Sarin and I decided to look for more partners. What we really wanted was another good male lead and a business manager, but the people you want don't necessarily have the money when they're available. Usually, in fact."

  "So . . ."

  "So Lisa, already in the company, wanted to buy in. She had the money—an inheritance, she said. We couldn't reasonably refuse. Dougie was working for the Greenfield Players—he'd pulled them out of a financial hole, and he said he wanted to travel. We still didn't have enough capital, so we talked to the rest of the troupe, and most of them scraped up enough to buy a share when we restructured."

  "Is it equal shares now?"

  "No . . . the way it was, Sarin and I each had four, and everyone else had one. I thought it was fair, as long as we were all together. But when I leave, I'll want to take out my shares in cash, and they won't want to pay it."

  "What did you do?"

  "I went to a clinic, and came back looking the way I look now, and explained I'd had a shock."

  "A shock."

  "Yes. I reminded Lisa that she'd been saying my voice was not what it had been—I could have smacked her for smirking at me—and that I hadn't wanted to tell them where I was going ahead of time. And the doctors had found a problem—that I was going to have to give up singing, and have surgery, and it might never be as good after. That it would be months—it was something difficult, which regen wouldn't fix."

  "Is that true?" Goonar asked. "When Brun Meager's voice was lost—"

  "Goonar, what Lisa and Dougie know about medicine would fit in a single pill. They want to believe I'm over the hill, that my voice is going; they ate this up like whipped cream with honey in it. I said I'd decided to leave the troupe and wanted to buy out my shares. That's when the haggling started, but since I was leaving for reasons of sickness, I had the high ground."

  "Did you . . . ?"

  "Goonar, there's truth and truth. I've known since before Lisa started carping at me that my voice isn't as good as it was. I've pushed it to the limit in some of the theaters we've played. It's time and past time for me to quit. This is a reason they can accept, and still fork over my share; if I told them it was to marry you, they'd say `Oh, he's a rich trader, you don't need the money.'" Her trained voice conveyed both the whine in theirs, and the scorn she felt for that whine.

  "I'm not shocked, Bethya," Goonar said. "We traders know about creative explanations."

  "Good. I'd hate to have burned all my bridges and then found I'd alienated you."

  "What about a wedding? Do we have to wait until they go away?"

  "No. They saw us on the ship; they know I think you're a fine man, and that you admired me. Lisa even had the gall to suggest that perhaps I should console myself with the nice Captain Terakian, if he didn't mind the fact I wasn't the same offstage as on."

  "So . . . this dinner . . ."

  "Lets them think I'm working their suggestion. In the meantime, I have the bank draft."

  "You are a wicked woman, Betharnya," Goonar said. "You might have been a trader born."

  "My grandparents were, in a minor way," Bethya said. "If you count wholesalers in kitchenware and restaurant supply."

  "So . . . what about a wedding?"

  "There are some I'd like to invite, including Sarin—we've known each other fifteen years—which means there's no way to exclude the others without causing trouble."

  "Fine with me," Goonar said. "At this point, we might as well wait for the Princess to come in—" He explained the crisscross of routes. "She's insystem now. It will make the Fathers happier if we have another Terakian witness. What kind of wedding party do you want?"

  They dove into wedding planning, and when Goonar came back to the ship that night, Basil looked at his face. "Did you ask her?"

  "Yes, cuz, I did," Goonar said, and grinned. "And she accepted, too. We'll have the wedding when Princess gets here."

  "I don't suppose she's brought much dowry," Basil said. "Not that it matters, really."

  "As a matter of fact, she has," Goonar said. She had shown him the bank draft. "Or rather, she has some money of her own."

  "That's what I meant," Basil said. "I didn't expect her to turn it over or anything."

  "That's good, because she won't. She's investing it."

  "Trust you," Basil said, "to find a second wife who is beautiful, talented, and rich."

  * * *

  Sirialis

  * * *

  "She said we're on our own." The militia captain from Hospitality Bay glared at the militia captain from the home village. "Fleet can't come, and we sure can't fight off an invasion. My men know what to do with drunks, thieves, and stupid younglings who think it's funny to cut the nets of fishing boats . . . not NEMs in battle armor."

  "So what are you saying, we should all take to the woods? Or just stand around to be beaten up or shot?"

  "No—but I can't see wasting any time on fancy stuff—pictures and books and that."

  "I'd like to save as much as we can. The Thornbuckles'll be back some day."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. You heard what she said. What if she meant it? Then it's our choice."

  "If it's my choice, there's things in there I'd save," the other man said.

  "I don't want to see war here," said another. "I served in the first Patchcock mess, you know."

  "We know, Gordy."

  "You don't realize what they can do from space. If we go hide out in the bush, if they don't have time to bring us in, it's a lot safer."

  "We can't possibly move everything—that house is stuffed with treasures—art, books, furniture—"

  "And the stables with horses—"

  "Horses can move themselves, house furnishings can't."

  "People first, then the animals, then things . . ."

  "Yes, but—"

  "We don't have time for anything else."

  * * *

  Much of the main landmass had been kept a hunting preserve, dotted with small camps and lodges here and there. Every flitter and aircar on the planet was pressed into service, moving family groups and neighborhoods out to the remote areas. When everyone who would go had gone, the same flitters and aircars descended on the home village. Already the staff had prepared what they could of the furnishings—the jewels, the old plate, the oldest and rarest books in the library, the pictures known to be family favorites. The heaviest went down the service lifts into the basements . . . maybe it would be enough protection. The rest went into the vehicles, to be dispersed as far as possible.

  Meanwhile, Neil had organized the stable staff—first to move feed and supplies, then horses. The staff tacked up every rideable animal and set off with the others in a long, uneven string across the hayfields and grainfields that spread for kilometers south and east. Almost all the mares had foaled; Neil assigned the lightest riders to the mares, and the foals romped alongside. That group necessarily lagged, as they had to stop for the foal to nurse every hour or so. Lumbering along with them were the village
's milk cows and their calves, the sheep and goats skittered along in their own flocks, chivvied by excited dogs that had never had this much fun. The foxhounds trotted along in their couples, obedient to the huntsman's horn.

  The only animals Neil didn't take were those that couldn't travel; it broke his heart to leave them behind, but they would be all right in the home paddocks if the mutineers didn't specifically attack them. He'd left his log—or what looked like his log—in his office, with the comment that he had sprayed for graylice, and evacuated the stable for 60 days. If the attackers believed that, they might not come looking. At least, not if they were in a hurry.

  * * *

  Former R.S.S. patrol Gaura Secundus

  * * *

  Harlis had interacted with Fleet only at the higher levels, when, as Seated Family and younger brother of the Speaker, he had been treated with great courtesy. He had gone aboard ships, certainly—ships docked at Stations, whose crews stood for inspection. He had been impressed with the crisp salutes, the obvious discipline, the spotless cleanliness, the deference accorded superiors. He had imagined himself as another admiral alongside Lepescu, commanding ships in battle . . . cool, imperturbable. Let Bunny play with politics: he would have real power, he had thought often, remembering the racks of missiles, the orderly arrays of power coils for the beam weapons. Of course, he couldn't actually join Fleet, not with his Family responsibilities. But he could befriend admirals, and know that he, under his civilian exterior, was at heart a warrior.

  The reality aboard Gaura Secundus was very different from his earlier brief experiences. Order, discipline, efficiency—yes. The crew, still in Fleet uniforms, with the Familias insignia removed, saluted crisply and moved briskly to their work. But the deference due him, as a Family member, as a Seat in Council, as the brother of the former Speaker . . . that was missing. They were coolly polite—they addressed him as Ser Thornbuckle—but they did not consider him one of them.