House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion (11 page)

“I’m . . . not certain how that would stand up under interstellar law, Your Majesty.” Nageswar’s eyes were half-slitted in intense thought. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone claiming a star system while specifically
not
claiming the only habitable planet in it. I doubt there’s any precedent to support it.”

“Then we’ll
make
precedent,” Roger told her.

“Lebrun will argue that it’s easy to promise not to take over the planet
now
,” Cromarty pointed out. “Then he’ll trot out that aphorism about power corrupting and suggest that while, of course
you
wouldn’t do any such thing, Your Majesty, that’s not to say some
future
Manticoran government wouldn’t.”

“He can suggest anything he damn well wants,” Roger said flatly. “We’re going to do this, and in case anyone thinks we’re not, I’m taking advantage of Beth’s birthday to make a statement . . . and apply a little pressure of my own.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty?” Paderweski looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “Is this something that simply slipped your mind the last time you were discussing plans with, oh, your chief of staff?”

“I discussed it last night with the only person who’d actually have a veto right over it, Elisa.” Roger smiled crookedly at her. “Angel said it’s all right with her.”

“I see. And just what did you have in mind for Beth’s birthday, Sir?”

“Oh, it’s very simple.” Roger showed his teeth. “I’m going to exercise one of the Crown’s—and Commons’—prerogatives. We’re going to make Elizabeth Duchess of Basilisk.”

Despite decades of political experience, Cromarty’s jaw dropped, and Nageswar’s eyes widened. Roger tipped back in his chair, listening to the buzzing purr from the treecat draped over its back.

“Between the Centrists and the Crown Loyalists, we have a clear majority in the Commons,” he pointed out, “and patents of nobility are created by the Crown with the
Commons’
approval, not the Lords. I intend to make Beth Duchess of
Basilisk
—not Medusa—and I intend to enfeoff her with a percentage of all transit fees through the terminus. Only a tiny one, just enough to give her a
personal
claim on the terminus. But when we draw the patent of nobility, we’ll include the entire star system
except
for Medusa. The Lords can’t reject the patent, although they might theoretically refuse to seat her
as
Duchess of Basilisk, I suppose, if they’re feeling really stupid. But since they can’t, as far as everyone here in the Star Kingdom is concerned, the baby princess they adore will be the rightful duchess of the star system in question. Now,” he looked around the conference room with that same, thin smile, “does anyone sitting around this table really think even Summercross would be stupid enough to buck that kind of public attitude?
Lebrun
might, but Summercross’ advisers will insist he drop the issue like a hot rock.” He shook his head. “I imagine we’ll still have to do some horse trading, make some concessions to assuage the Liberals’ concerns over the Medusans, but tell my daughter she can’t have her first-birthday present when everyone else in the Star Kingdom wants to give it to her?”

He shook his head again, his smile positively sharklike.

“
Nobody
’s going to want to come across like that kind of Scrooge, people. Nobody.”

May 1870 PD

“
JONAS
!” An obviously pregnant Queen Consort Angelique Winton threw her arms about her brother. “Roger didn’t tell me you were coming, the stinker!”

She turned her head to glare at her husband and the treecat bleeking with laughter on his shoulder, and Roger grinned.

“I shouldn’t have
had
to tell you, Angel. He
is
your brother, and you know how he dotes on Elizabeth! Besides, it’s barely a forty-hour hop on one of the regular shuttle flights. Did you really think he was going to miss her fourth birthday party?”

“He could’ve told me he was coming, though!” Angelique pointed out. “And
you
could’ve told Beth when she was worrying about whether Uncle Jonas was going to make it.”

“I told Jacob and I told Elisa, so they made all the arrangements with an eye towards his being here. But they were the
only
people I was going to tell, since he’d sworn me to secrecy.”

“Jacob and Elisa both knew and neither of them told me, either?” Angelique glared even more ferociously. “That has to come under the heading of high treason!”

“Nonsense, there’s an ancient Old Earth tradition—goes all the way back to something called the ‘Wars of the Roses,’ I think—that no one can be convicted of treason as long as he obeyed the orders of a legitimately crowned king. And that, my dear,” he elevated his nose, “is
me
.”

“You have to sleep sometime,” his wife replied darkly.

“Yes, but I know you wouldn’t really murder the father of your daughter and your unborn son.” He put his arm around her, hugging her firmly. “That romantic center of yours is far too mushy for you to do anything like that, love.”

“Don’t think you can turn
me
up sweet, spacer!” she growled, kissing his ear.

“If it gets any mushier in here, I’m heading for the nursery and my niece,” Jonas announced, and the King and Queen smiled at him.

“Actually, I think it would be a good idea if we
all
headed for the nursery and let Beth know her favorite uncle made it after all,” Roger suggested, reaching out with his free right hand to shake Jonas’. “It really is going to be her best surprise present of the day, Jonas,” he went on more seriously, “and Katie and Edward’ll be here in about another hour. Let’s go let Beth spend some time greeting you properly before you have to start sharing her.”

“She’s growing like a weed,” Jonas said several hours later, leaning back in the comfortable chair in Roger’s Mount Royal Palace office.

Elisa Paderweski had warned them both that they had no more than ninety minutes before they had to be on stage for Elizabeth’s official cake cutting. Given the fact that Crown Princess Elizabeth had inherited her father’s temper to go along with her mother’s beauty, that was not a time limit to be lightly ignored by any mere uncle, father, or king.

“You probably notice it more than I do, actually, given the intervals between your visits.” Roger settled behind his desk, tipped his chair back, and rested his heels inelegantly on the blotter. “I expect it’ll be more noticeable to me again in a month or so, once Michael arrives and I have that newborn meter stick to compare her to again.”

“How does she feel about not being an only child anymore?”

“It’s up for grabs.” Roger smiled. “One day she’s excited about having a baby brother; the next, she’s worried Mommy and Daddy may love him more because he’s newer. She told Jacob she hoped she wouldn’t have to run away to the circus because we loved him more . . . and then, in the same conversation, she told him she hoped ‘Mikey’ would be comfortable in her old crib.”

Jonas laughed. Elizabeth had Jacob Wundt wrapped as firmly around her finger as she did most of the rest of the Mount Royal staff.

“She’ll be fine,” he said. “I remember Angel worrying exactly the same way about Jeptha and Aidan.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Roger glanced around surreptitiously, then opened a desk drawer, extracted a hand rubbed ironwood humidor, and took out a cigar. Monroe instantly hopped down from the back of his chair, climbed up onto the perch on the opposite side of the office, and made a scolding sound, and Jonas shook his head.

“Angel’s going to smell it on you,” he warned. “And when she does—!”

“No, she
won’t
smell it,” Roger said smugly. “Lieutenant Givens brought me a little present last month.” Lieutenant Patricia Givens was Roger’s personal liaison to Admiral Big Sky, in charge (among other things) of seeing to it that the King got regular summaries of new technologies being reported by the network of merchant spacers ONI had created at Roger’s suggestion. “One of our skippers brought back a new nanotech they developed in Footstep. It can be tuned to go after particular odors and clean them out of your clothes—or off your skin, for that matter—but leave everything else strictly alone and as stinky as you like, and it works just fine on tobacco smoke, thank you very much.”

“And you really think she won’t find out about it?” Jonas looked skeptical and Monroe’s bleek and half-flattened ears seconded the motion, but Roger shrugged.

“I figure I’ve got at least another three or four weeks before she does, and I plan to enjoy it while I can.” He clipped the cigar’s end, put it into his mouth, lit it, and blew a fragrant cloud of smoke in Jonas’ direction. “And I figure I deserve it. At least until she does find out.”

“Can’t argue with that, I suppose.”

Jonas studied his brother-in-law surreptitiously for a moment. After thirteen T-years on the throne, there was an additional . . . solidity to him. It was as if his shoulders had broadened to bear the weight, and he seemed
tougher
, somehow. He wore the RMN uniform to which he was entitled, with the commodore’s twin gold planets he’d earned. Eventually, he’d rise to admiral’s rank by simple seniority, even officially on half-pay, but Jonas knew that he would never don an admiral’s star until he
had
attained to that rank.

He wasn’t the first Manticoran monarch to have served in the Navy, by any means, but he
was
the first to habitually appear in uniform rather than civilian dress. It wasn’t simply to maintain his personal link to the service he’d loved, either. His drive to build up the Navy’s fighting strength had gained momentum steadily over the past decade, and he was the deliberate, public face of that buildup. Opposition cartoonists had fastened upon that uniform in their caricatures. It was suggested in some quarters—especially those of the Liberal Party—that the real reason for the buildup was simply King Roger’s desire to play with toy boats, and some had gone so far as to compare him to the original Gustav Anderman, who insisted that the members of his personal bodyguard all had to be at least two meters tall. Of course, the political cartoonists who
supported
his policies had also fastened on the uniform, although they seldom festooned it with all of the oversized rank badges and the chest full of medal ribbons the Opposition appended to it.

But he looked tired, too, Jonas thought. Not exhausted, nowhere near defeated, but . . . weary. Like a man who knew he still had a long way to go.

Well, at least he’s got prolong to get him to the end of the race, that’s something!
he told himself. At seventy-three, even with modern medical care and a vigorous exercise regimen, Jonas was finding it just a bit harder to maintain the pace he’d set since first becoming a King’s officer.

“I’ve been following your reports,” Roger said after a moment, apparently oblivious to his brother-in-law’s examination. “It sounds like you’re making some progress.”

“In several directions, I think,” Jonas agreed. “It’s still early days, though, I’m afraid. Earlier days than I’d like.”

“Yes, but Rodriguez tells me Section Thirteen’s expecting a fully successful run of test shots on Python next month, and you and I both know how much your boys and girls contributed to that from behind the scenes. We’re going to be first on the scene with an all-up laser head, Jonas.” Roger showed his teeth. “The Peeps aren’t going to like
that
one bit when they find out about it!”

“No,” Jonas acknowledged. “But it’s not going to take them all that long to duplicate it—or buy it from the Sollies—as soon as the rest of the galaxy figures out we’ve got it and goes after it in earnest. Don’t forget ONI’s reports on Astral. It took them thirty damned T-years to get A and H’s basic model to work, but they’ve got it now!”

“And they can’t convince the Sollies to buy it because of all the scandal over the original A and H tests, either,” Roger pointed out, then waved his cigar. “Oh, they’ll find a buyer eventually—maybe even the Peeps, though I’d put my money on the Andermani coming up to scratch for it first—but Rodriguez says our throughput numbers are already better than anything Astral has, and we’re just at the very start of the development and upgrade process. It’s going to get a hell of a lot better by the time Section Thirteen’s done tweaking it, and that doesn’t even consider all the other little goodies you and Gram are going to produce for us while BuWeaps is doing the tweaking!”

“We’ll certainly try,” Jonas promised.

His smile was less than completely happy, and he twitched a shrug when Roger gave him a sharp look.

“We’ve got several promising possibilities opening up, but that’s the problem. Stuff is coming in from Big Sky and our open source avenues even faster than anyone could’ve anticipated. Just sorting it is eating up more manhours than I ever expected, which means I don’t have enough capable people left over to follow up the leads we’re generating. And I’m afraid quite a bit of what we
are
getting done at this point is probably duplicating work someone else’s done somewhere else, if we only knew it.”

“Best to put our own knowledge platform in place,” Roger responded. “New advances, thy name is Synergy.” He grinned. “I’ve noticed several places where the basic research you’re doing—even if it is a case of catching up with someone else—is suggesting new possibilities, Jonas. That’s exactly what Gram is supposed to be doing.”

“I know, but we still don’t—”

“You still don’t have the manpower or the budget you need,” Roger interrupted. “I know. And Allen and I are about to fix that.”

“You are?”

“Yes.” Roger smiled unpleasantly. “Haskins caught Summercross and that loathsome piece of work Dmitri Young involved in a kickback scheme with the Treadwell Yard. A rather lucrative one.”

Jonas straightened in his chair as the cast of characters registered. Sir Sherwood Haskins was the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, the late, unlamented Baron Seawell’s Centrist successor; Dmitri Young, the Earl of North Hollow, was an ex-Navy officer—of sorts, anyway—turned politician, lobbyist, and general all round slime merchant, serving as one of the Conservative Association’s kingmakers, which gave him plenty of clout with Summercross; and the Treadwell Yard was one of the Navy’s major contractors.

“Without going into all the sordid details,” Roger continued, “Treadwell had been paying Summercross and the Conservative Association political action committee a tidy little piece of change in return for the Association’s votes on appropriations bills, and Summercross and North Hollow—although we can’t pin North Hollow to it as definitively as I’d like; say what you will, the man’s slicker than pond scum—had been laundering the PAC contributions through straw donors to keep anyone asking just exactly why Treadwell might have been feeling so generous. And pocketing a bit of it for their personal use on the way past, for that matter. So that’s embezzlement, bribery, illegal political contributions, money laundering, and conspiracy for the lot of them.”

The King blew another streamer of smoke, his eyes dreamy.

“I’d really rather send Summercross and North Hollow to prison, all things being equal, but Judge Fitzgibbons says North Hollow could probably actually beat the charges in court. We’ve got Summercross and Treadwell dead to rights, though, and the campaign laws violation would be especially devastating to the Conservatives.”

Jonas nodded in understanding. Havel Fitzgibbons was the Justice Minister of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, but he’d been a justice on the Queen’s Bench for ten years before Samantha’s death, and he far preferred the simpler title of “Judge.” More to the point, he’d been a prosecutor before he ever became a judge, he knew his law, and he hated political corruption cases above all others.