Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 2 - Sporting Chance

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2024-12-04 0 0 697.16KB 330 页 5.9玖币
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Sporting Chance
Chapter One
"Of course there is a minor problem," Lady Cecelia said, as
she turned to allow her maid to take her stole. A brisk wind
tossed cold rain at the windows; it hissed and rattled alternately.
"Yes?" Heris Serrano eyed her employer with some suspicion.
The words "minor problem" had become an all too frequent
catch-phrase between them. She resented the niggling delays
that prevented their departure; they should have been in space
already, two days out on the voyage back to Rockhouse Major.
She had begun to long for the ship, and space. Besides, the
sooner they got to Rockhouse, the sooner that young
troublemaker, the prince, would be off her hands, someone
else's responsibility.
"It's our numbers again." Lady Cecelia waved her maid away,
and settled herself into a comfortable chair drawn up before a
fireplace. A small fire of real wood crackled on the hearth behind
an ornate fire screen. Heris settled in the chair opposite and
raised her brows. "I thought we'd be fine," Lady Cecelia went on,
"since Bunny's children wouldn't be coming, nor Buttons's
fiancée. George is still in the hospital, mostly for legal reasons,
and I thought I could leave Raffaele and Ronnie here for the rest
of the season, under the circumstances." Heris said nothing; her
mind busily subtracted the volume and resources needed for
those six young people and their servants, and the crew and
staff she knew were quitting, and added the same for new crew
and the one passenger she knew of. "But that won't work," Lady
Cecelia said. She ran one long hand through her short hair, and
left it standing up in peaks.
"Why not?" asked Heris, since it seemed called for.
"Reasons of State, so I was told. I nearly cancelled my
invitation, but that might be embarrassing too, so . . . the Crown
Minister insists that if I have the young-er-Mr. Smith aboard, I
must have an adequate bodyguard, a cabinet-level minister, and
of course the servants. And . . . Ronnie."
"Ronnie! Why?" Someone had made a serious mistake. She
wondered how that had happened. The whole point of bringing
Cecelia's nephew Ronnie here in the first place had been to keep
him away from the prince.
"I'm not sure, but it was one of the points made, very firmly.
When I added the numbers, it came to fifty-six. That's over our
limit, right?"
"Yes-but how many 'bodyguards' are we supposed to have,
and who are they?"
"They want to send Royal Security-"
"Blast." Heris suppressed the expletives she'd have liked to
use.
"-And they want us to wait until they get here. On the ship,
with the prince." That went without saying, since he could not be
trusted to stay out of trouble anywhere else.
"And you planned to go where?"
"Well . . . we have to go back to Rockhouse, to take him
home, but after that I'd planned on Zenebra. The Wherrin Horse
Trials-"
By now Heris knew enough to recognize that name. Of course
her horse-crazy employer would want to be there; she had won
Wherrin more times than anyone else. "Umm. And waiting for
the Royal Security bodyguard would make us late for that, I'll
bet. Silly. We've got former Regular Space Service combat
troops, and suitable arms now: we can take care of him."
"Are you sure?"
"With Petris and Oblo? We could keep him safe in a small
war."
Cecelia shivered. "Don't say that. It's like saying your horse
can't possibly miss a fence."
"Still. We'd be safer to leave now. I haven't forgotten that
smugglers were using your ship. Somewhere there's a very
unhappy criminal waiting for delivery of whatever was in the
scrubber. And I'd expect the smugglers to come looking for us,
eventually. It's not as if we'd be hard to find; everyone knew
where you were going from Takomin Roads, and we've filed the
trip to Rockhouse in Bunny's computer-and with the Crown
Minister."
"Good point. I'll mention that to the Crown Minister, and of
course he already has the names of your crew. I assume that
until the courts-martial, they were all considered loyal servants
of the Crown?"
"As far as I know. If they weren't, they could have lost us
some battles."
"Fine, then. You set up our departure as you wish; I'll deal
with the political end later."
Heris looked after her employer and shook her head. She had
not expected Cecelia-who had seemed to have a one-track mind
firmly aimed at horses-to be so effective politically. Of course,
she came from a political family, but every family had its black
sheep. Heris shivered suddenly. She was, in her own way, the
black sheep of her family. Two black sheep don't make a white,
she thought, and shivered again.
In the flurry of preparation, it was hard to remember the last
few days with Petris. He was now aboard, supervising the
resupply, and (at Heris's suggestion) tucking away the new
weaponry before Cecelia decided they didn't need it.
"Nothing for the ship, I notice," he'd said to her over a secure
comlink.
"No. Not stocked locally. I know; I've already talked to Lady
Cecelia about it."
"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."
"You're saying I can't really do what I was talking about,"
Brun said. "If my choices run to the barbarians of Aethar's World
or the Compassionate Hand-"
"There are others. But I'm not exactly sure what you're
looking for. A military career? If so, leading to what? Coming
back to your family someday, or retiring on your own
independent savings? How much adventure-otherwise known as
danger-do you really want? Do you have something against your
family which would prevent your adventuring within its canopy?"
"Mmm." Brun looked thoughtful; Heris was glad to see that
she could calm down and think. "I suppose-I want change.
Change from what I was, and from what people think of me."
She looked up at Heris, who said nothing. Let the girl work it out
for herself; then she'd believe it. "Lady Cecelia crossed her
family-but-she did use her own money-"
"Makes it easier," said Heris. "And there's no reason to do
things the hard way if you don't have to."
"I don't know what, really," Brun said. "I guess I just want to
serve notice to my family-to others-that I'm not the bubblehead
they think-that I'm not the designated blonde sure to marry
someone like the odious George." She grinned then. "And you're
saying there are easier ways to do that than get myself killed by
barbarians with blond braids or a knife in the ribs from the . . .
er . . . Compassionate Hand."
"I didn't say it," Heris said. "You did. I'd think you'd had
enough adventure for a while . . . although . . . if you liked that,
there's training that would help you survive other . . .
adventures."
Brun's face lit. "That's what I'd like-what bothered me most
wasn't the danger, but not knowing what to do. But I thought
you could only get that training in the military."
"No-in fact, not everyone in the military does. There are other
sources, if that's what you want. Tell you what, I'll give you a
list of skills and places I know you can get training . . . and then
you can find a use for that training. How about that?"
"I'd love it. Can't I come to Rockhouse with you? I already
know about Mr. Smith, of course."
"No-I'm sorry. We're overloaded, with the required escorts for
Mr. Smith. But if you're going back there, you can start to
acquire some of the things I'm talking about-"
"Tell me what sorts of things," Brun interrupted, eyes bright.
"Well . . . the more you know about all the technology we use
for transportation and communication, the better. Not just
classroom theory but practical stuff like being able to maintain
and repair the equipment. Lady Cecelia's taken an interest in her
yacht now, and she's finding it very helpful. I wish we had time
摘要：

SportingChanceChapterOne"Ofcoursethereisaminorproblem,"LadyCeceliasaid,assheturnedtoallowhermaidtotakeherstole.Abriskwindtossedcoldrainatthewindows;ithissedandrattledalternately."Yes?"HerisSerranoeyedheremployerwithsomesuspicion.Thewords"minorproblem"hadbecomeanalltoofrequentcatch-phrasebetweenthem....

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