"Agreed. Thank you." From the real gratitude in his voice she knew the size of the trouble his man was in. Then what he'd said earlier caught up with her. Communications tech . . . best? That had to be . . .
"Koutsoudas?" she asked, trying to keep her face still. He just grinned at her, and nodded. "Good heavens, Arash, what is the problem?"
"I can't say. Please. He may tell you, if he wants—I don't think it's a good idea, but the situation may change, and I trust his judgment. Just take care of him. If you can."
"Oh, I think we're capable of that. When do you want him back?"
"Not until things settle down. I'll get word to you, shall I?" Then, before she could say anything, he added, "Well, that's all taken care of . . . would you like to dance?" The orchestra had just launched into another waltz. Heris thought about it. Arash had been a good dancing partner in the old days, but in the meantime she'd danced with Petris at the Hunt Ball.
"No, thank you," she said, smiling at the memory. "I had better get back to work. When shall I expect . . . er . . . your package?"
Arash winced. "Efficient as ever. Or have I lost the touch?"
"I don't think so," Heris said. "You just put the touch on me, if you think about it that way, and I do. But my owner isn't thrilled with the number of ex-military crew we have now, and she's going to have kittens—or, in her case, colts—when she finds out about this. I have some preliminary groundwork to do."
"Ah. Well, then, allow me to escort you at least to the concourse."
"Better not." Heris had been thinking. "This was a very public meeting, and I can understand your reasoning. But why let whomever is interested think you might have convinced me of whatever it is you were after?"
"I thought an open quarrel would be too obvious," Livadhi said. "If we were simply courteous—"
Heris grinned at him. "I am always courteous, Commander, as you well know. Even in a quarrel."
"Ouch. Well, then, since I can't persuade you—" He rose politely, with a certain stiffness, and she nodded. An observant waiter came to her chair, and although they walked out together, they were clearly not a couple.
In the anteroom, she said, "I'm sorry, Commander, but things have changed. It's not just being a civilian . . . I have other . . . commitments. I'm sure you'll understand. It's not wise, at times like these . . ."
"But—"
"I can find my way, Commander. Best wishes, of course." Watching eyes could not have missed that cool, formal, and very unfriendly parting.
The newly refurbished yacht Sweet Delight lay one final shift cycle in the Spacenhance docks, as Heris Serrano inspected every millimeter of its interior. Forest green carpet soft underfoot . . . she tried not to think of its origin, nor that of the crisp green/blue/white paisley-patterned wall covering in the dining salon. At least the ship didn't smell like cockroaches anymore. The galley and pantries, left in gleaming white and steel by Lady Cecelia's command, had no odd odors. In the recreation section, everything looked perfect: the swimming pool with its new screen programs . . . Heris flicked through them to be sure the night sky had been removed. Lady Cecelia didn't want any sudden darkness to remind her of the months of blindness she'd endured. The massage lounger had its new upholstery; the riding simulator had a new saddle and a whole set of new training cubes, including the two most recent Wherrin Trials recordings.
The crew quarters, while not quite as luxurious as the owner's section, had more amenities than crews could expect anywhere else. Heris's own suite reflected a new comfort with her civilian status; she had installed a larger bed, a comfortable upholstered chair, and chosen more colorful appointments. Down in the holds, she checked for any leftover debris from the renovation. She had already found a narrow triangle of wall covering and two odd-shaped bits of carpet.
"Heris!" That had to be Lady Cecelia herself. Heris grinned and backed out of the number three hold. Cecelia would want to see for herself that every single cockroach cage had been removed.
"Coming," she called. But the quick footsteps didn't wait for her to get back to the owner's territory. Cecelia's rejuvenation had left her with more energy than she could contain; here she was, striding down the corridor at top speed.
"Did you know about this?" Cecelia waved a hardcopy at her; she had bright patches of color on her cheeks and her short red hair seemed to be standing on end.
"What?" Heris couldn't tell what it was, although the blue cover suggested a legal document. Whatever it was had made the owner furious, and Lady Cecelia furious made most people move quickly out of her way. Heris, secure in her status as captain and friend, stood her ground.
"This court decision." The blue-gray eyes bored into hers.
"Court decision? On your competency?" Of course the court would restore full competency to Cecelia; it would be crazy to pretend that this individual was anything but competent.
"No—on the yacht."
For a moment Heris was completely confused. "No—what about it?"
Cecelia bit off each word as if it tasted foul. "The court has decided against the petition of my family to set aside that portion of my will which left you the yacht. Therefore, the yacht belongs to you." Heris stared at her.
"That's . . . ridiculous. You're not comatose; you're competent. That reverses all the bequests—you told me that—"
"Yes . . . it does. It would have, that is, if that idiot Berenice and her fatheaded husband hadn't quarreled with my will and involved the court directly in that instance. Because the matter came under separate adjudication—don't you love this verbiage?—the court's decision is final, and not reversed by my regaining competence. And the court decided in your favor, thank goodness, or otherwise it would've been Berenice's. It's your yacht."
"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard of." Heris raked a hand through her dark hair. She had not even thought about the bequest or the court's decision since Cecelia had been declared competent. "I can't—what am I supposed to do with a yacht—or you, without one?" She came to the obvious decision. "I won't take it. I'll give it back to you."
"You can't give it back. Not unless you're willing to pay the penalty tax—it's within the legal limit for a bequest, but not a gift."
"Oh . . . dear." She had no idea what that tax would be, but her own affairs were somewhat confused at the moment, thanks to the abrupt changes in the government. She didn't know if she had enough to pay the tax or not.
"It's not so bad," Cecelia said. Now that she'd blown her stack, she had calmed back down, and leaned comfortably against the bulkhead. "I suppose you'll run it as a charter, and I suppose you'll let me charter it."
"Of course, if that's what it takes, but—what a mess." Still, she felt a little jolt of delight at the base of her brain. Her own ship. Not even a Fleet captain owned a ship outright. She fought back unseemly glee with little struggle when she realized the other implications of ownership. Docking fees. Repairs. Crew salaries. All her responsibility now.
Cecelia's expression suggested she had already thought of these things and was enjoying Heris's realization. "Don't worry," she said, after a moment in which Heris was trying to remember the last time the crew had been paid, and how much was due. "I'll pay generously. I'll supply my own staff, cook, gardener. . . ."
"Er . . . just so." And there were bound to be legalities associated with running a charter, too. Heris had no idea what kind of contractual agreement owners needed with those who hired them. What permits she might need from whatever government bureaus were still grinding out the daily quota of paperwork.
"Kevil Mahoney," Cecelia said, with a wicked grin, as if she really could read minds. "He can tell you where to go for legal advice, if you don't want the same person who argued your case for the bequest."
"Thanks," Heris said. "It would have been so much easier—"
"I know. And I don't blame you for fighting back when my family acted like such idiots. It's not your fault, though I was mad enough to grind you into powder too. Just when I'd
gotten her back to a decent look, instead of that lavender and teal abomination. Berenice will pay for this." She glowered. "I've filed suit against them, and I intend to make up every fee they cost me."
"I'm sorry," Heris said again, this time for the trouble between Cecelia and her family. "It's just that I thought if I had the ship, I could help you."
"And you did. And don't lie to me, Heris Serrano. I may be rejuvenated, but I didn't lose eighty years of experience. One second after you were appalled, you were delighted. You've always wanted your own ship."
Heris felt herself flushing. "Yes. I did. And I tried to fight it down."
"Don't." Her employer—still her employer, even though the terms would be different now—gave her a wicked grin. She had found Lady Cecelia de Marktos to be formidable enough as an unrejuvenant . . . clearly, that had been the mellow form. "Nobody knows what the government's going to do, now; Bunny seems to be running things with the same bureaucrats—except for poor Piercy. I don't myself think it was Piercy's fault, but everyone's afraid he was in it with Lorenza."
Surprising tolerance from someone who had been Lorenza's helpless victim, for someone planning to sue her family . . . family that had, however ineptly, tried to protect her interests. This was no time to argue, though. Heris looked away, and spotted another bit of scrap from the renovation.
"I don't hate Piercy," Cecelia said. "I don't even hate Lorenza, although if she stood in front of me I would kill her without a second thought, as I would kill anyone that vile. I do hate to think of her running around loose somewhere."
"I don't think she is," Heris said, glad to change the subject from the yacht. "A few of my crew—" Oblo, Meharry, Petris, and Sirkin, though she didn't intend to mention names where anyone might have left a sensor. "—had a bone to pick with the individual who gave the orders that led to Yrilan's death. The . . . er . . . remaining biological contaminants were salted into her quarters. In the ensuing investigation, it was discovered that she had a very efficient lethal chamber built into her counseling booths—"
"I didn't hear about this—"
"Station Security didn't allow it to be newsed. They thought it would cause panic, and they were probably right. Just the discovery of that many illicit biologicals could panic Station dwellers. Anyway, they also found items the lady could not account for, which apparently match with jewels known to the insurance databases as Lorenza's."
"And you found out because—?"
"I found out because I have the best damn datatech in or out of Fleet, milady, and that's all I'll say here and now."
"Ah. Then suppose you come to my suite—if you still consider it my suite—and we'll decide where your ship is headed, and whether I want to tag along."
Cecelia's furniture had been reinstalled, and they settled into her study. Cecelia looked around nodding. "I do like the effect of that striped brocade with the green carpet," she said finally. "Although I'm not sure about the solarium yet."
"I thought you were going to restock it with miniatures," Heris said.
"I was—but I keep thinking that I could go back to riding—" She meant competition, Heris understood, just as she herself would have meant "the Fleet" if she'd said "return to space."
"I like the ferns," Heris said, watching the miniature waterfall in the solarium; she preferred falling water to any sort of fake wildlife.
"One thing I will insist on, if you're to have me for a passenger, is a crew no more than half ex-military." Cecelia leaned back in her chair, with an expression that made it clear she meant what she'd said.
Heris bit back the first thing she could have said, took a deep breath, and asked, "Why?" Skoterin, probably, but surely Cecelia ought to realize that Skoterin had been more than balanced by that crew of civilian layabouts and incompetents she'd had before. This didn't surprise her, but she'd hoped Cecelia would be less blunt about it.
"Not just Skoterin," Cecelia said, as if she'd read Heris's mind. "I know you can argue that my original civilian crew was just as full of lethal mistakes. Of course not all ex-military are crooks or traitors, nor are all civilians honest and hardworking. But what bothered me was your inability to see past the distinction yourself. You had had superb performance from that girl Sirkin all through the earlier trouble; you had been so happy with her. And you were willing to believe that she went bad when even I, isolated as I then was, could spot sabotage."
Heris nodded slowly. "You're right; I did make a mistake—"
"Not a mistake, my dear: a whole series of them. You misjudged her not once but repeatedly. That's my point. You have a pattern, understandable but indefensible, of believing that the military is more loyal, more honorable, than most civilians. You even told me that Sirkin was 'as good as Fleet' more than once. And your inability to see past that pattern nearly got us all killed." She grinned, as if to take the sting out of it. It didn't work. "I'm doing this for your own good, Heris—as one of my early riding instructors used to say when making us post without stirrups by the hour. You have chosen to live in a civilian world; you must learn how to trust those of us who can be trusted, and recognize deceit even in former shipmates."
"And you think the way to do this is to hire civilians." That came out flat, with an edge of sarcasm. She didn't like that "chose to live in a civilian world." If there'd been any other way . . .
"I think the way to do it is to admit what went wrong and work on correcting it. Isn't that what you would do if an admiral pointed out a characteristic error?"
Heris wanted to say that Cecelia was no admiral, but she had to admit the logic of Cecelia's argument. She had mistaken the cause of Sirkin's problem; she had not even looked for sabotage, not seriously. "I don't want to fire any of our present crew," she began, crossing mental fingers as she told herself that Koutsoudas, not yet aboard, still counted as "present crew."
"No need. Just hire civilians for a while. Like Brun." Heris almost glared. Had she set this up with Bunny, as much to force a civilian crew on Heris as to help Brun? Cecelia smiled at her. "I'm sure you can find others, perhaps not as good as Sirkin, but good enough. Think of recruits, if you must, rather than the trained people you had. Surely there were good and bad recruits."
"Oh yes." Heris chuckled in spite of herself, remembering a miserable tour as an officer in charge of basic training. She had hated it, and she hadn't been very good at it. Of course there had been bad recruits—Zitler, for instance, who had come into the Fleet convinced that he could make a fortune manufacturing illicit drugs aboard ship. Or the skinny girl from some mining colony who had gotten all the way through medical screening without anyone noticing she had parasites.
"There you are, then," Cecelia said. "It's just a matter of overcoming your biases."
"Yes, ma'am," said Heris, with enough emphasis that Cecelia should know when to quit. She hoped. It was unnerving to see all those years of experience in the bright eyes across from her. She began to understand why Cecelia had been reluctant to have rejuv treatments before.
"I don't see why it makes the least difference," Ronnie said, into Raffaele's dark hair. "I didn't go along with my family; you know that. I'm the one who got Aunt Cecelia out of that nursing home. Why should your parents take it out on me?"
"They're not taking it out on you," Raffaele said. "They're pulling their investments out of your parents' operations, and they don't think that's a good time to discuss marriage settlements."
"But will they come around later?" He didn't want later; he wanted right this minute. But with Raffaele, pressure wouldn't work.
"I don't know, Ron. They're seriously annoyed with your parents, and they don't see your prospects improving any time soon. They think you'll be under a cloud politically—"
"Hang politics!" Ronnie said. "I have enough; you have enough; we could go off somewhere and just live—"
"But you have a Seat in Council now—"
"As long as that lasts," Ronnie said under his breath. While daily life seemed to be unchanged, the
political structure had shifted back and forth dramatically in the past few weeks.
"They don't want trouble between us because you're voting your family stock, and your Seat, and they're voting against you. And don't say it wouldn't cause trouble, because look how angry you are now."
Unfair. He wasn't angry because they'd voted against him in Council; he was angry because they didn't want Raffa to marry him because he might be upset later if they voted against him. That was too complicated; he fell back on the obvious. "I love you, Raffa," Ronnie said.
"I know. And I love you. But we are both wound up in our families and their rivalries, and I can't see either of us pulling something dramatic and stagey." With her hair in a neat braid behind, and a tailored soft tunic over the blouse and slacks, she looked entirely too rational.
"Brun did," Ronnie said. He could imagine himself running off with Raffa . . . he thought . . . but then again he wanted to have his usual credit line, his usual communications links. . . .
"Brun is a law unto herself," Raffa said. "Even as a fluffhead, she was, and now—we aren't like Brun, either of us. We were born to be respectable."
"We did have one adventure," Ronnie said, almost wistfully. He didn't like thinking of most of their time on the island, but finding Raffa and being comforted . . . that he could live with.
"And we'll have each other later, or we won't, and we'll survive either way. Be reasonable, Ronnie: you got your aunt out of the building, but it was Brun who thought up the hot air balloon. Neither of us could have been that crazy."
True, but he wanted to be crazy enough to live with Raffa the rest of his life, starting this moment. He started to say he'd wait for her forever, but he knew she might not. And he might not either, really. "I don't want to leave you," he said fiercely. "I don't want to lose you."
"Nor I." For a moment she clung to him with all the passion he desired, then she pushed herself away and was gone, her light footsteps barely audible on the carpeted hall.