Against the Odds

by Elizabeth Moon

  "Ronnie—I thought you were stuck on a colony—"

  "I am, but I had to make this session. Did my aunt tell you about the problems in colonial administration?"

  "Some—I'm glad you made it out." He got out of his seat and came over to crouch beside her.

  "Listen, Brun, we didn't even know about your being captured until after you were back. Raffa sends her love. She's my vice-governor, so she had to stay. But I'm hearing rumors that you're leading an Ageist revolt—is that so?"

  "Not exactly," Brun said. "Let me explain between sittings, why don't you? Have you heard what Stepan did?"

  "No, not yet." Ronnie gave Kell a suspicious glance. "Tell me later?"

  "Sure. Lunch?"

  "I'm lunching with George and Veronica. You could join us."

  "I'll try," Brun said.

  Now the Ministers filed in to take their places at the Table of Ministers . . . Brun knew that in the wake of Hobart's assassination and the mutiny, his appointee at the Ministry of Defense had resigned in favor of Irion Solinari who had now returned to the capitol. The head of Colonial Affairs, another Conselline appointee, looked worried and glanced several times towards the Carruthers' table.

  Stepan buzzed her and his quiet old voice purred into her ear. "Brun . . . there are more young people here today—and proxies registered for even more. Be sure you speak to their concerns."

  "I've just talked to Ronnie Carruthers," she said. "He's here in person."

  "Excellent," Stepan said. "I urged his father to ask him back for a Council meeting even before Hobart died."

  So that was how Ronnie had made it.

  The interim Speaker, Jon-Irene Pearsall, tapped the ceremonial gavel as if he were afraid the head would come off. Several weeks of power had given him no confidence.

  "We have several questions before the Council," he said. "A motion to censure the late Lord Thornbuckle's widow for the death of Minister of Foreign Affairs Pedar Orregiemos. A motion to appoint a special investigator to examine the relationship between Pedar Orregiemos' death and the assassination of Hobart Conselline. A motion to appoint a special investigator to determine the cause of the mutiny in the Regular Space Service. A motion to appoint a special investigator to determine the relationship of the Benignity of the Compassionate Hand with the Barraclough Sept. A motion of support for the loyal service of the Regular Space Service . . ." He droned on down a list, most of it motions to investigate, censure, or support.

  Brun had already registered her request to speak to certain items on the list. A Conselline representative, one of Hobart's nephews, was up first on item one. He was, she noted, in his mid-thirties, and unrejuved. He read a prepared text in a rapid monotone, with occasional nervous glances at his hearers.

  "It is clear that Pedar Orregiemos was killed by Miranda Thornbuckle as part of a widespread plot to bring down the Conselline Sept. This fiction that he was killed in a fencing accident is just that—fiction—and if the crime had not been committed on private property far away from any nonpartisan law enforcement, the murderer would have been quickly brought to book. Indeed, she has admitted her guilt by fleeing—which suggests that even the tame militia of Sirialis weren't satisfied . . ." He went on in this vein for some minutes, painting a picture of Barraclough scheming to murder Hobart and Pedar, hinting at other assassination attempts, at a Barraclough Ageist conspiracy. Finally he ran down.

  Brun stood up and waited until the murmurs had died down. She knew she was about to drop a bombshell and didn't want to waste any of its concussive power. When the silence had reached a point of tension she felt in every nerve, she spoke.

  "I realize Cerion Conselline would like to believe everything that goes wrong is our fault," she said. "It would be handy if the Thornbuckles were really just thorns, and you could be rid of trouble by plucking us out and tossing us in the fire." Her tone invited a chuckle from the unaligned, and she got it. "But such easy solutions have never worked, in the whole history of humankind. However, I'm not here to discuss human history and psychology . . ." Another chuckle; this time she spoke over the tail end of it. "Nor am I here to defend my mother. It's too late for that—" A startled murmur, this time. Brun went steadily on. "My mother is dead."

  "You're lying!" burst out Oskar Morrelline. "She's just run off."

  "She and Cecelia de Marktos were traveling to the Guerni Republic," Brun said. "Alone, in Lady Cecelia's yacht Pounce. They were captured by mutineers on the cruiser Bonar Tighe—yes, the one identified at the beginning of the mutiny—when their yacht came out of FTL unexpectedly." Now she had their attention again and a silence heavy with dread. "She and Lady Cecelia were put in the brig with other loyalist prisoners. Knowing they were doomed anyway, they all attempted an escape; my mother was with a party that made their way to the communications equipment and sent off a message giving the ship's location. Lady Cecelia was with a party engaged in disabling the ship as much as possible."

  "You expect us to believe two rich old ladies could disable a ship?" Oskar yelled. Pearsall tapped for order, and Oskar glowered at him and threw himself back in his seat, folding his arms dramatically.

  "The loyalist prisoners had the expertise," Brun said. "But my mother and Lady Cecelia made the escape possible. Because they were civilians, and rich ladies, the guards were less careful with them. They managed to disable the guards and unlock the cells."

  "How do you know all this?" called another Conselline supporter.

  "I was informed yesterday by Grand Admiral Savanche, who gave me permission to inform this assembly. The Regular Space Service will release the story to the news media today. A loyal task force seeking out mutineers found the mutineer ship and destroyed it. Unfortunately, while Lady Cecelia and some of the loyalist prisoners managed to escape in a troop shuttle, my mother died helping others get away. She drew fire from the mutineers to let others escape." Brun drew a long breath. "Fleet," she said, "considers her a hero. I don't ask you all to agree . . . but if you insist on thinking her a murderer, at least she has paid her debt by giving her own life for others."

  "Were all the mutineer ships destroyed?" asked a young man from the upper tiers. Brun didn't have to look at her list to know that this was a Kimberly-Dwight, her own age.

  "No," Brun said. "We know for a fact that others exist. But the Bonar Tighe is thought to have been the flagship of the mutineer fleet."

  "How did they disable it?" asked someone else.

  "I don't know all the details," Brun said. "But Admiral Savanche said it was one of the most imaginative schemes he'd heard of."

  "What commander destroyed it?" asked another.

  "I think that will be in today's report," Brun said. "I was most concerned with my mother's fate, as you can imagine. It's—I don't want to be maudlin, but it's been less than a year since my father died." This time she heard murmurs of sympathy as well as the buzz of curiosity. "However, I stand in opposition to a motion to investigate my mother, since she is dead, apparently with credit to herself."

  Cerion Conselline huddled with the more senior Consellines, including Oskar, and finally turned back to the Chair. "I withdraw the motion," he said. "In consideration of Sera Meager-Thornbuckle's recent loss. But I will have another motion of investigation later, since all the persons suspected of collusion aren't dead yet. There's still the matter of an Ageist conspiracy." This clumsy threat brought scattered laughter.

  "I still think it's a lie," Oskar Morrelline said. "You managed to kill my daughter, plant spies in our facility—"

  "Point of order," Brun said. Oskar glowered, but shut up.

  "The first motion has been withdrawn by the maker," the Speaker said. "We will proceed to item two. The Minister of Defense will speak to this topic."

  Irion Solinari, normally tubby, cheerful and energetic, now looked grim, his full lower lip tucked in. "Ser Conselline and Ser Morrelline have alleged an Ageist conspiracy, my lords and ladies. Unfortunately, what I have to report about the possible contrib
uting factors to this mutiny will sound like a counterconspiracy, and for that reason you might be tempted to dismiss it. I pray you will not." Silence; he sipped from a glass of water, and began with a history of rejuvenation failure in the Regular Space Service.

  "We had no trouble with the first ones, the voluntary rejuvenation of senior flag officers. Later, we offered voluntary rejuvenation to the rest of the flag ranks, until we had what we thought were sufficient data to show safety and efficacy. Then we began offering rejuvenation to senior NCOs, our most valuable personnel in actual combat. A few years ago, we began to notice that a few—then more—senior NCOs were suddenly experiencing neurological and cognitive symptoms. As the numbers grew, so did concern about the cause, and after it was discovered that some commercial supplies of rejuvenation drugs were flawed in some way, rejuvenation failure became a live target. Some alert officers noted a correlation between the drug batches and the personnel suffering mental deterioration. Unfortunately, the bulk of Fleet supplies of rejuvenation drugs had come from a single source for the past sixteen years, which meant that if that source was contaminated, all our rejuvenated enlisted personnel were at risk."

  "That's a lie!" Oskar burst out.

  "Unfortunately, it's true," Solinari said. "A Benignity plot to make all our senior personnel senile would be an effective way of damaging Fleet without firing a shot. We could not, however, be sure that it wasn't just an error of judgment, a cost-cutting decision by someone unqualified to predict the result of that change in technique. Fleet instituted an immediate program of research into rejuvenation failure—naturally we wanted to find a treatment that would prevent the loss of personnel and their own suffering. Ser Thornbuckle approved this plan, and fully understood the risks of losing up to a quarter of Fleet manpower—the most experienced quarter—to rejuv failure."

  "Aren't the younger personnel just as qualified?" That was a young voice, from behind her; Brun wasn't sure whose.

  "They're qualified, yes. But in war nothing beats combat experience. One reason we embarked on wholesale rejuvenation for our older NCOs is that we've had a period of relative peace—a few outbreaks here and there, but mostly peace—for long enough that most young personnel have never been in combat. We wanted to preserve that experience, to have it when we next needed it."

  "Well, I heard that one reason for the mutiny was the lack of opportunity for young people to advance," said someone else.

  "I'm coming to that," Solinari said. "They're actually related." He waited, but no one else interrupted. "People in Fleet are like people everywhere," he said. "They don't all agree. There are younger officers and NCOs who believed that rejuvenation froze the promotion scale, and kept them from having a normal career. To some extent this is true. No effective force can be all admirals and master chiefs. So rejuvenation at the top meant fewer slots open for promotion, and longer time in grade at the bottom. If you look at the structure over the past hundred years, promotion slowed markedly in the past ten. Ser Thornbuckle suggested adding a longevity component to pay scales to help make up for this, but the Council has never been eager to spend more money on the military."

  "I've always voted for it!" someone yelled.

  "When it's for ships," someone else said. "I've heard you talk about military pay, Jas."

  "At any rate," Solinari said, ignoring the interruption, "there certainly was a sizeable fraction of younger personnel who were feeling frustrated. Whether a mutiny would have occurred just because of this, we can't know. However, when word began to spread about the failure of enlisted rejuvenations, this led to near panic among the middle and upper enlisted grades who had been rejuved. When Hobart Conselline shut down the research and funding for treatment, this fed the fear that Fleet was deliberately causing rejuv failure to open up the career structure again."

  "What was the treatment?" someone asked.

  "Immediate rejuvenation with good drugs," Solinari said. "That froze the condition where it was. If caught early enough, the symptoms never developed. But it was expensive, and to ensure good drugs, we went to another source than that from which we'd bought the bad drugs."

  "Alleged bad drugs," Oskar said. This time there was a derisive chuckle from most of the chamber; everyone there knew about the problems at Patchcock, at least the recent one: the courts were stuffed with lawsuits.

  "Besides concerns about opportunity and failed rejuvenations," Solinari said, "there's a third source of unrest. Any military organization tends to attract some people who seek power in unhealthy ways. We had Admiral Lepescu, who became the focus for those who believed that only the harshest military values mattered. When his policy of using prisoners as human prey in hunts was discovered, we realized that he had followers throughout Fleet. We eliminated those we could identify, but we could not simply condemn everyone who had ever known him."

  "Why didn't you find out about him sooner?" asked Ser Carruthers.

  "I'd like to say, because he was careful, but probably his superiors were also careless, willing to accept his efficient performance without looking too closely at his methods. I do know that throughout history, his type of personality is one of those which military organizations both harbor and promote to higher rank. At any rate, we think the mutiny began among those who fit several of these critera: frustration at lack of opportunity, concern about the misuse of rejuvenation, and membership in the secret society that Lepescu started. We now have evidence, following the rescue of loyalists from the Bonar Tighe, that its captain, Solomon Drizh, was in fact a Lepescu protege."

  At this there was a flurry of movement and excited talk among the members. Solinari waited until the room quieted. "We certainly do need to look further into these things, but at the moment, what Fleet needs is your support in putting down the mutiny. This means not only money, but your commitment to the Familias. We know that the mutineers have approached some of you, offering protection or making threats. We know they may try to use your private worlds to hide out or resupply. We need to know that the Grand Council supports the loyal elements in Fleet, that you won't make any special deals—"

  "Well, if you're not protecting us, we have to get help where we can—" said someone from the very top row.

  "Traitor!" yelled a young Barraclough; Brun saw Viktor lean toward him, scowling.

  "It's just an excuse to ask for more money," said Oskar Morrelline. "The whole thing's a fabrication—"

  In moments, the simmering tension of the chamber had boiled over into chaos, members standing and yelling at each other, shaking their fists. The Speaker clearly lacked the presence to bring them to order, and finally abandoned the attempt. Brun, sensing that yelling might soon come to blows, rose and went down the steps to the front. They had hoped no such action would be necessary, but just in case . . .

  She noticed that people quieted as she passed their Tables; a few even spoke her name. She ignored them, walking as Miranda would have walked, cool and serene. She knew movement would draw attention, and movement like this—nonthreatening, calm—would compel by its contrast. The noise had lessened considerably by the time she got to the lowest level.

  Pearsall was wringing his hands, his face pale. Brun smiled at him, and held out her hand. "May I try, Ser Pearsall?"

  "It's—it's hopeless," he said. "You'll have to call in the security to clear the chamber."

  "Possibly," Brun said, "but it's worth a try, isn't it? We haven't had to clear the chamber in ninety odd years."

  He handed her the gavel and stepped back. Brun flicked on the Speaker's mic and glanced around. Most of the arguers were at least glancing her way now and then to see what was happening, but they weren't ready to pay attention. She reached into the recess under the podium where—as Kevil had told her—a loud-hailer was stowed for emergencies, should the power go out. She picked it up.

  "Stop this nonsense." The roar of the loud-hailer silenced them all for a critical moment, as they tried to figure out who held it and what was happening. Brun blinked
the lights, and spoke more calmly, but still in the loud-hailer. "We have serious issues to discuss—and I mean discuss, not have screaming tantrums over."

  "Who told you—!" began Oskar Morrelline.

  "Sit down, Ser Morrelline, and be quiet. If you wish to be recognized, you will request it with your button."

  "You—" he glared at her as if he would leap down three tiers and knock her to the ground, but men on either side of him pulled him back to his seat, whispering urgently in his ears.

  "Thank you," Brun said. She put down the loud-hailer and set the Speaker's mic to a medium volume. "I see many lights are lit. Please wait your turn; please limit what you have to say to factual information or a brief expression of support or opposition to the topic." She took the lights in order, according to the computer's log.

  The first to speak, having pressed their buttons before the uproar, now had trouble remembering what they had wanted to say. Brun waited for them, not rushing them. By the time ten had spoken, the others were all settling down, like a team of restive horses that now felt an experienced hand at the reins. She was careful not to grin, not to let them see the triumph she felt. She went on being calm and cool and perfectly fair until even the Consellines were able to leave off sarcasm and discuss the issues. She had seen her father do this often enough. Boring them into good behavior, he'd called it.

  When the debate on Ageists and Rejuvenants heated up again, Brun stepped in.

  "This is an important issue. We must come to some new understanding of how to constitute our government. But right now, at this time, we need to make sure we have a government, and a polity to govern. We have heavily armed warships roaming around inside our borders, any one of which could hold a planet hostage. Suppose one or a group of them decided to take over a colony world? Some colonies do not even have efficient communications access out of their own system. You know more and more of your children have been going to the colonies—do you want to deliver them to slavery?"