The Oncoming Storm (24 page)

The XO leaned forward. “Your father can’t do anything?”

“My father isn’t all-powerful,” Kat pointed out. “Someone is backing Admiral Morrison and that someone will have to be . . . dissuaded. It’s never easy when so many different political personalities are involved.”

She ran her hand through her blond hair. “We need to make some contingency plans of our own,” she added. “And we need to bring in others from the rest of the fleet.”

The XO’s eyes narrowed. “I received a message only an hour ago, inviting me to the Dead Donkey,” he said. “That’s a bar in the spaceport, Captain. It has quite a bad reputation.”

Kat had to smile. “For Cadiz?”

“Yes,” the XO said. “But it’s also one of the places the Shore Patrol doesn’t dare go.”

“Sounds like someone wants to chat,” Davidson said. “Do you want me to come with you?”

The XO shook his head. “The message was unsigned,” he said. “If it’s someone Fran might have pointed in my direction, Major, they won’t want to see a Marine. They might assume the worst.”

Kat cleared her throat. “How many officers do you know—and trust—on the fleet?”

The XO hesitated. “I’ve recognized round thirty names,” he said. “There might well be others. Pretty much all of them are mustangs with their heads screwed on properly.”

Kat took a breath. What she was about to propose was not—technically—against naval regulations. On the other hand, the admiral might well be able to class it as conspiracy to commit mutiny or barratry, both of which carried the death sentence. Kat’s father would be able to save her, if at a cost, but anyone else who took part was doing so at the risk of their life. And their reputation would be shot to hell.

“I’ll make an assessment of the other commanding officers at the admiral’s party,” she said, “but we have to assume the worst. We need to convince your friends to help prepare 7th Fleet for battle as quickly—and covertly—as possible.”

The XO frowned. “That will be difficult,” he said. “Even the most data-constipated bureaucrat would be unable to avoid noticing the sudden upswing in requisitions.”

Kat cursed under her breath. He was right.

“It has to be done,” she said, finally. She looked at Davidson. “Can you warn the marines on the ground that the system might come under attack?”

“I can try,” Davidson said. “But if the fleet isn’t ready to defend the planet, the marines on the surface will be screwed.”

“I know,” Kat said. Any other planet would have countless loyalists ready to resist the Theocracy. But Cadiz was different. They’d learn their mistake soon enough, if the refugees were telling the truth, yet it would be too late to save the forces on the ground. “Do what you can.”

The XO gave her a long look. “What guarantees can I offer my colleagues?”

“I don’t know,” Kat admitted. It was possible her father would be able to arrange for her to get wide authority, perhaps quasi-sealed orders she could use to justify her actions. But they would have to be procured from the Admiralty and there would be resistance, not least because she was such a junior captain. “They may be risking their lives as well as their careers.”

The XO didn’t object. In some ways, that worried her more than she cared to admit.

“I’ll meet with this contact,” the XO said, “and then get in touch with my old friends. No one will think anything of us meeting in a bar for a drink and a yarn about old times.”

“Thank you,” Kat said. She wished she had more contacts, but the XO had been in the Navy longer than she’d been alive. Most of the officers she knew were on Tyre. “If it does go to shit, I’ll do what I can.”

“I know you will,” the XO said. He sounded as though the last of his reservations had faded away. “Thank you, Captain.”

Finding the Dead Donkey was not an easy task in the evening darkness, William discovered. The bar didn’t have any lights advertising its presence, apart from a single slit in the door that hinted there was something inside. It had no windows and no sign, save for a drawing of a donkey lying on the ground, surrounded by flies. But it did have had one thing going for it, he decided as he walked through the door; it was the perfect place to meet someone without the Shore Patrol interrupting the meeting.

He gritted his teeth as he looked round, searching for the rendezvous point. The Dead Donkey was a large bar, decorated with pictures of animals in the wild, but the tables were separated by privacy walls, while several expensive—and only semi-legal—ECM generators were operating, making it extremely difficult for anyone to overhear anything. Even the air was tainted with foul-smelling smoke. Gritting his teeth, fighting the instincts that warned him the air was badly contaminated, he walked into the section and sat down. There was no sign of his contact.

He looked up as the bartender appeared, one hand clutching a battered-looking terminal. “A drink, sir?”

“Water, please,” William said. He wanted something stronger, but he had a feeling he’d need all of his wits about him. “And a small packet of peanuts.”

The bartender nodded and withdrew. William sighed and studied the pornographic images someone had drawn on the privacy wall. They were very imaginative, if somewhat impractical. Besides, no one would come to the Dead Donkey hoping to pick up a woman for the night. There were brothels for that back towards the more civilized parts of the spaceport.

“Billy,” a voice said. “You look as young as ever.”

William stared. “. . . Scott?”

His brother slipped into the compartment and sat down facing him, resting his hands on the table. “You were expecting someone else?”

“Yes,” William said, flatly.

He studied his brother carefully. Scott was older by ten years, but he looked younger. His hair was still brown, rather than graying; he wore a merchant spacer’s uniform and wore it well. But there was no starship ID on his collar, suggesting he was trying to conceal his vessel from prying eyes. That, William knew, was no surprise.

“I caught sight of your captain this morning,” Scott said as he pulled a privacy generator out of his pocket and placed it on the table. “She’s very pretty—and quite young.” His eyes gleamed with amusement as he activated the generator. “Do you ever feel you made the wrong choice?”

“No,” William said. His brother had always been able to get under his skin. “I don’t.”

“You should have your own ship by now,” Scott said. “You’ve had thirty years in the Navy, seven of them as an XO. But she has powerful connections and I guess those trumped your experience.”

He smiled, then twisted the expression into a leer. “But she’s young,” he said, again. “Do you ever pull her over your knee and spank her when she makes a mistake?”

William tapped the table sharply. “Is there a reason you asked me to come here?”

“Yes,” Scott said. “But aren’t you remotely pleased to see me?”

“You’re a disgrace,” William said. “I haven’t seen you for nearly thirty-five years.”

“You’ve probably heard of me,” Scott said. He leaned back, placing his hands behind his head and leaning on the partition. “Not under my real name, of course.”

William sighed. Scott had loved a girl on their homeworld, a girl he had hoped to marry when he grew old enough to start a croft of his own. But she’d been sacrificed to the pirates to appease their wrath only a year before the Commonwealth had arrived. Scott had obtained a starship and departed Hebrides, refusing to listen to either their parents or William himself. And he’d become a smuggler. There were times William wondered if his brother hadn’t crossed the line into piracy too.

“Probably not,” he agreed. “What are you doing here?”

“There aren’t many barriers to free trade here,” Scott said absently. “You never know what one might be able to pick up in this system.”

William glared at him. “Are you shipping weapons to the insurgents?”

“I never disclose secrets belonging to my clients,” Scott said. He smirked as he saw William clenching his fists. “But I have other places to serve right now.”

“Oh,” William said. “And those are?”

His brother smiled, then held up a hand as the bartender returned, carrying a tray of glasses and a packet of peanuts. William’s eyes narrowed as he realized his water was nowhere in sight.

“I took the liberty of ordering some Highland Ale for us both,” Scott said. “You do remember drinking ourselves stone cold drunk one day?”

“Yeah,” William said. He wasn’t blind to the underlying message either. Highland Ale was cheap on their homeworld, but expensive elsewhere. Scott was displaying his wealth without ever quite bragging openly. “Dad was not pleased.”

Scott tapped the privacy generator again as soon as the bartender withdrew, switching the frequencies. This time, William gave the generator a closer look. It wasn’t civilian, he saw, despite a careful paint job. It was military grade. His brother followed his gaze and smiled, coldly.

“It’s astonishing just how much falls off the back of a shuttlecraft,” he said mildly. “If you know who to ask, of course.”

“Of course,” William echoed. “Why did you ask me to come here?”

Scott took a sip of his beer. “Can I ask you to keep some parts of the story to yourself?”

“Maybe,” William said.

Scott studied him and then nodded. “I’ve been smuggling for nearly forty years,” he said bluntly. “You’ve probably heard of my alias, which I won’t share with you right now because it would cause you a conflict of interest. Suffice it to say that I have a small fleet of smuggler ships and don’t give a damn about borders.”

William put two and two together. “You’ve been smuggling goods into the Theocracy,” he said suddenly. “That’s why you’re here.”

“Yes,” Scott said simply. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “It’s astonishing how much those wankers are prepared to pay for smuggled goods. Anyone would think they didn’t believe in their religion.”

His face twisted with remembered pain. William winced in sympathy. Scott had been a regular churchgoer, just like the rest of the family, until he’d lost his girl. It might have been better if the priest hadn’t tried to convince him that one girl was a small price to pay for their safety. Scott had to be dragged off the badly beaten priest and he’d never gone back to the church since then, despite pleas from their mother and thrashings from their father.

“They want porn,” Scott said. “And luxury goods.”

“Stuff regular traders aren’t allowed to send them,” William commented. “How do you get away with it?”

“Large bribes,” Scott said. He shrugged. “Honestly. The Theocracy isn’t that different from. . . well, Cadiz. As long as you know who to pay off, and keep them sweet, no one touches you. The Inquisitors even have a sideline in very rough porn.”

William frowned. “Do I want to know?”

“Probably not,” Scott said. “You were always more straight-laced than me.”

“Oh,” William said. Their homeworld had been very conservative. It had been a shock to discover that nude photographs, video clips, and VR simulations were freely available in the Commonwealth. And then the porn just became more and more hardcore. He was used to it now, but it sometimes still shocked him, even though he knew everyone involved were actors. “Is there a point to this?”

“I’ve been hiring out more ships to work within the Theocracy,” Scott said. “I don’t mean just smuggling work, either. I mean hauling just about everything you can imagine from star to star.”

“You’d think they have their own freighters for that,” William said slowly. A very nasty idea was starting to build up in his head. “What happened to them?”

“A very good question,” Scott agreed. “Time was we couldn’t penetrate more than a few star systems into the Theocracy. The officials got more and more expensive to bribe. Hell, some systems were off-limits no matter what we offered. But now . . . now, we’re actually hauling freight for them regularly. It’s all rather odd.”

William shivered. Civilians might think of the Navy as being nothing more than warships, but the fleet train—the freighters that transported missiles, spare parts, and other essentials—was just as important. A large part of Cadiz’s importance lay in the stockpile of supplies that had been built up in the system ever since it had been annexed. But if someone had wanted to launch an invasion of hostile space, they would need freighters to keep their warships supplied with everything they might need to function.

“They’re reserving their freighters for some other reason,” William said slowly.

“That’s right, Billy,” his brother said. “And I don’t think it bodes well for your mistress.”

He smirked, then pressed on. “Not the only odd thing too,” he continued. “I’ve seen agents moving through the underground, looking to hire mercenaries and pirate ships. But I think you’ve already seen some evidence of this.”

“You have a pipeline into the admiral’s office,” William said.

“The occupation government leaks like that bucket you dropped down the gorge,” Scott said. “I didn’t have to spend more than a few hundred crowns to get a look at the report your captain filed. Most of your conclusions were correct. Someone is paying pirates handsomely to destroy ships rather than try to take them as prizes.”

“If you have proof of this,” William said, “it’s your duty to share it with us.”

“I don’t have a duty,” Scott said. “Am I a Commonwealth citizen?”

William winced again. His brother had never been quite the same since his girl had been taken by the pirates. Once, he would have been as selfless as anyone else raised by a poor but proud family. Now, he looked out for himself, first and foremost. He’d certainly never done anything to help the rest of his family, although that might have been a favor of sorts. Their parents wouldn’t have accepted anything from such a tainted source.

“If war comes . . .”

“There will be room for us,” Scott said, cutting him off. “We can make deals with whichever side comes out on top.”

“If you believed that,” William said, swallowing his anger, “you would never have come to me at all.”

Scott smiled openly. “True, I suppose,” he said.

William pressed his advantage. “The Theocracy is prepared to tolerate you—now,” he said. “That will change, I think, if they win the war. They certainly won’t want to see their civilians corrupted by outside influences. I think you’ll be invited to a meeting that will be nothing more than cover for a mass slaughter.”