Heris Serrano (54 page)

"Um. Crew rotations?"

"Well . . . you'll all be on your secondary specialties. We'll have to reorganize quite a bit. Civilian regulations divide the responsibilities a bit differently. There's a manual on it—"

"I found that one," Petris said. She wished she could see him face-to-face, but she needed to be downside just a few hours longer. "But I haven't had the returning crew list from Hospitality Bay yet. Sirkin's the only one staying from the shift up here. You were right, by the way; she's a nice girl and very competent."

"Glad you agree," said Heris. "About that crew list—it was supposed to have been there yesterday. I wonder what's going on? I'll find out."

When she tried calling the crew hostel at Hospitality Bay, none of her crew answered. That seemed odd; she had sent word several days before that they would be leaving Sirialis shortly. Someone should have been there, ready to take any messages from her. She wished she could dump the whole lot of them and replace them with qualified people. She left an urgent message, and asked the hostel clerk when they were expected back.

"Sometime tonight, I 'spect, ma'am," the clerk said. "They rented a cat and took it out to Shell Island."

"Without a comunit aboard?" Heris asked.

"Well, there is one, but the charge to relay is pretty high. That Mr. Gavin said you might call, and to say they'd be back tonight." Heris grimaced, but it wouldn't help to yell at the hostel clerk.

"Tell Mr. Gavin to call here at once when he gets in, whatever the hour," she said. Should she threaten? No. Wait and see what was really going on, she reminded herself.

Gavin's call, relayed to her in the drawing room the green hunt favored, revealed a plot as spiritless as he himself. On the tiny screen of the drawing-room communications niche, he looked sunburnt and nervous.

"I'm not coming back, Captain," he said. "You'll have to find another chief engineer." It sounded almost smug, but she ignored that. She didn't need him.

"And the others?" she asked.

"They don't want to . . . they're not coming either. Not without Lady Cecelia changing . . . I mean, they're not coming." Now his expression was defiant. Heris took a long breath, conscious of the need to control her expression in a roomful of curious and intelligent observers. They couldn't hear what was said, but they could certainly see her reactions.

"Would you care to explain, Mr. Gavin?" she asked. The edge of steel in her voice cut through his flabby resistance.

"Well, it's just . . . we . . . they . . . we don't want you for our captain." That last phrase came out all in a rush. "We're not coming back. You don't have a crew. We want to talk to Lady Cecelia. She has to find someone else, or we won't come back to her." When Heris said nothing, momentarily silenced by fury, he blundered on. "It's—you're not fair, that's what it is. You got poor Iklind killed, and you're so rigid and all you do is criticize and you don't—you don't
respect
us." It was so outrageous, so ridiculous, that Heris found herself fighting back a sudden incongruous laugh as well as a tirade. The unborn laugh moderated her tone.

"I see you don't know the situation," she said without even a hint of anger. That seemed to make Gavin even more nervous.

"I don't— It doesn't matter," he said, almost stammering. "It doesn't matter what happened—what you say; we're not coming back as long as you're the captain."

"I see," Heris said. "Perhaps I'd better let you speak to Lady Cecelia." She waved her employer over, and stepped away from the comunit, out of its pickup range, for a moment. In brief phrases, she explained Gavin's message, and watched almost amused as Lady Cecelia went white with fury and then red.

"Damn them!"

"No . . . think a moment. They're incompetent, lazy, and we wanted to get rid of them anyway. Now they're also in legal jeopardy—and you have the reins. They don't know what's happened over here—none of it. They don't know you have a crew already. Have fun, milady!" Heris grinned, and after a last glower, Lady Cecelia grinned, too. She beckoned Heris to join her at the comunit niche.

Gavin's self-pitying whine had scarcely begun when Lady Cecelia cut him off with a terse and almost certainly inaccurate description of his ancestry, his progeny, his intellect, and his probable destination. Heris decided that foxhunting offered unique opportunities for invective, and found her own anger draining away as Cecelia continued her tirade.

"And I shall certainly file suits for breach of contract," she wound down, "and I daresay Lord Thornbuckle will be investigating you to see if you're involved in this other affair."

"But Lady Cecelia," whined Gavin. "What other affair? And why—I mean, we've served you—" She cut him off, and turned to face Heris, breathing heavily.

"How was that?"

"Fine. And since we know you had one smuggler in the group, I would carry through on that threat to have them investigated."

"I certainly will," Cecelia said. She stalked off, her tall angularity expressing indignation with every twitch of her formal skirt. Heris excused herself early and went upstairs to contact Petris again.

"So we're going out short-crewed," Heris said. She was not unhappy about it. "By civilian standards, that is. And over-crewed on the house-staff side, considering Lady Cecelia's guests this round." The prince had his own set of servants, and Cecelia insisted on adding another cook.

"Looks adequate to me, Captain," Petris said. He had worked up a crew rotation. "We could use two or three more, but—"

"But you're right, this is adequate. If we don't run into trouble, and if everyone works at Fleet efficiency. Which I expect you will. Something to consider is that we can hire replacements to fill out the list at Rockhouse Major. And we might think of hiring ex-Fleet personnel, while we're about it."

"Are you looking for trouble, Captain?" Petris's dark eyes twinkled.

"No. But I expect it anyway." A tap at her door interrupted. "Oh—that'll be Bunny's daughter Bubbles, I expect." She had forgotten, thanks to Gavin, that she'd agreed to talk to Bubbles after she went up to her room. "She's insisted on talking to me." Petris grinned at her expression.

"What—do you think she wants to come along?"

"Yes, and I can't let her. And I don't like the role she's casting me in."

"You'll do her no harm," Petris said.

"That's what her father told me," Heris said, shaking her head. "I'll get back to you shortly." She closed the uplink, and turned to the door of her suite. The blonde girl she'd first seen passed out drunk on a couch in the yacht had changed beyond recognition, and although being in mortal danger changed most people, this was exceptional.

"Captain Serrano," the young woman said. She stood stiffly, as if in a parody of military formality.

"Yes—do come in. We had a small crisis aboard, and I was just dealing with it."

"I—if this is a bad time—" She had flushed, which made her look younger.

"Not at all. Between crises is an excellent time." Heris led the way to a pair of overstuffed chairs beneath the long windows, and gestured as she sat in one of them. "Have a seat."

The girl sat bolt upright, not her usual posture, and looked like a young officer at a first formal dinner. Heris wondered again what this was about. Her father had refused to give any hints; Heris's own experience was that when young people preferred to talk to a relative stranger, the topic was usually embarrassing—at least for the youngster. But she didn't know what, in the current state of the aristocracy, would be likely to provoke embarrassment. What "rules" could such a girl have broken—or be planning to break—when most of society's rules didn't affect her at all?

"I want to change my name," the girl said, all in a rush, as if it were a great confession. Heris blinked. She would never have allowed herself to be called Bubbles in the first place, and she could understand why the girl would want to change . . . but not why anyone would object. Was this the big problem? Surely there was more.

"Bubbles doesn't really fit you," she said cautiously.

"No, not now." The girl waved that off as if it were trivial—which is what Heris thought it. "My full name's Brunnhilde Charlotte, and Raffa and I thought Brun would be a good version. But that's not the whole problem."

"Oh?"

"No—my parents are willing to give up Bubbles, though Mother would prefer some other variation, but it's the other part . . ."

The other part meaning what, Heris wondered. She sat and waited; youngsters usually told you more if you did.

"It's . . . the family name." Aha. That would cause a row, she could see. "I haven't told them yet, but I know they won't like it." They would more than "not like it" if she wanted to give up her family name; they would, Heris suspected, be furious and hurt. The girl—Brun, she tried to think of her now—went on. "It's just that I've always been Bubbles, Bunny's daughter—Lord Thornbuckle's daughter—and not myself. I feel—different now. When we were in the cave—" Ah, thought Heris. The rapid personal maturation by danger has left behind the social immaturity. "—I realized I didn't feel like who I was. I mean, I felt different, and it didn't match." She took a deep breath and rushed through the rest. "I want to change my name and go into the Regular Space Service and learn how to really do things and find out who I am."

Heris blinked again, remembering her own impulse (quickly squashed) to change her name and apply to the Academy not as a Serrano but purely on her own merits. She had even made up a name and practiced the signature. The silly romanticism of youth—or, if you looked at it another way, the integrity and courage.

"And you thought I could help you?" she said, keeping her reactions to herself.

"Yes. You know how things work—and you could take me to someplace I could enlist."

Now the problem was how to say no without shutting the girl off completely.

"How old are you?" Heris asked. "And what kind of background would you offer the Fleet?" She already suspected the answers. Brun was too old to enlist with the skills she could reasonably claim—having been taught marksmanship by your father didn't count, even if he was a renowned hunter—and lacking any education the Fleet would recognize. At least, under an assumed name. "Which will get you in trouble anyway," Heris explained. "After all, plenty of people the Fleet doesn't want would like to get in. Falsifying one's identity is fairly common—and nearly always detected, and when detected is always justification for rejection."

"But I thought if I explained that I just don't want to use my father's privilege—"

"To whom would you explain? A recruiting officer? That would get you sent for psychiatric and legal evaluation—are you impersonating a member of your father's family? And if not, what's wrong with you that you don't enjoy your privilege? No—" She held up her hand. "I see your point, and I admire you for wanting to make your own way, but you cannot sneak into the Fleet that way. Not with our methods of certifying identity. You'd do better, if you're intent on a dangerous military career, to travel as a tourist outside the Familias Regnant and take service with some planetary ruler. Don't try to be fancy—just say you're running away from family problems. Someplace like Aethar's World or the Compassionate Hand would probably hire you."

"But Aethar's World is all . . . those hulks, isn't it?"

"Soldiers can't afford prejudice," Heris said with an internal grin. She'd thought that would get a reaction. "Aethar's World always needs soldiers. Admittedly, that's because the Fatherland uses them up in bloody and unnecessary battles, but they do give you a glorious funeral, I hear. And yes, they're all big-boned and fair-haired—one reason they might hire you—and they have anachronistic ideas about warrior women—another reason they might hire you. But they do pay on time, if you survive."

"And the . . . the Compassionate Hand?" asked Brun, her brow furrowed.

"Not an accurate name, but you don't want to call them the Black Scratch unless you've got a battle group behind you. A
large
battle group. You may not have heard of them; the Familias discourages trade that way. We have a border incident every few years, though. They would like to control Karyas and the nearby jump points."

"Black Scratch . . . Compassionate Hand?"

"Well, you know about protection rackets, don't you?" Brun nodded, but still looked puzzled. "The motto of the families that settled Corus IV-a was 'You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.' They referred to this as being a compassionate hand—a helping hand. But the first colony they raided, on Corus V, called it the 'black scratch.' They now control the Corus system, with heavy influence in two nearby systems, and their official designation is 'The Benignity of the Compassionate Hand.' They hire offworlders for mercenary actions, often against underground groups who still call them the Black Scratch."

"But they're—illegal," said Brun.

"Not by their laws, and they're not part of our legal system. From what I read of Old Earth history, their ancestors ran the same kinds of rackets there and no one ever converted them to what we call law and order. Actually, if you're on an official visit, it looks like a model government. I've known a few people who had served in their military—said it wasn't bad, if you followed the rules exactly, but they have no tolerance for dissent."