That included, thankfully, the three siblings. Du Havel spotted Helen Zilwicki not far away, and disengaged himself from the Babbling Trio with a smooth and meaningless polite phrase.
"Who's he?" he murmured into Helen's ear, when he came alongside her. The young woman hadn't noticed him until then, because her own eyes were riveted on the Manticoran officer. Just about everyone's seemed to be-and Du Havel had already spotted Cathy making her way through the crowd toward the newly arrived guest.
"Oh. Hi, Web. That's Oversteegen. The Oversteegen. Cathy invited him, but she never once thought he'd show up. Neither did I."
Du Havel smiled. "Let's start back at the beginning, shall we? 'The' Oversteegen may mean something to you. But as someone who just arrived in the Star Kingdom two weeks ago from Terra, I'm afraid it means nothing to me."
Helen's eyes widened, as a youngster's will when she stumbles across the shocking discovery that not everybody shares her own particular interests.
"He's the captain who won the Battle of Tiberian," she replied, and shook her head at his uncomprehending expression. "The one where his ship took out four other cruisers single-handedly," she added in a tone that was half-protesting, as if leaving unspoken: How can ANYONE not know about it?
"Oh, yes. I recall reading about the incident at the time. A year or so ago, wasn't it? But I got the impression his opponents were merely pirates, not a naval force."
Helen's eyes widened still further. Du Havel had to fight to keep from grinning. The nineteen-year-old girl was too polite to come right out and say it, but it was obvious to him that her thoughts were running along the lines of: How can ANYONE be such an idiot?
She managed, however, to keep most of the outrage out of her ensuing reply. She only spluttered twice.
"Those were Gladiator-class cruisers, for Chr-" She suppressed the splutter, and continued in a calmer tone of voice. Much the way a mother restrains her indignation at the folly of a toddler. "Gauntlet's sensor records proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt."
Du Havel raised a questioning eyebrow. Helen Zilwicki had to suppress another splutter.
"How can any-?" Cough. "The Gauntlet was the name of Oversteegen's ship. Still is, I should say." The next words were spoken a bit slowly, as a mother might speak to a child, introducing simple concepts.
"Gladiators, Web. The Solarian League Navy's most recent class of heavy cruisers. They've got completely up-to-date weaponry and EW capability, probably as good as anything we've got. Solarian ships of the wall are nothing much-leaving aside the sheer number of them-because the League hasn't fought a real war in centuries. But their lighter warships always stay a lot closer to cutting edge, since those are the ones that do the SLN's real work."
Her eyes grew a bit unfocused, as if she was thinking far back-or far ahead. "Nobody's defeated a Solarian heavy cruiser in open battle in over half a century, Web. And nobody's ever beaten four of them at once, with a single vessel of any kind short of a dreadnought-much less another cruiser. Not, at least, that there's any record of, in the Academy's data banks. I know. I did a post-action study of Gauntlet's engagement for a course I just finished. Part of the assignment was to do a comparative analysis."
She bestowed a look of deep reproof upon Du Havel. "So what difference does it make if they were 'pirates'? Even chimps would be dangerous in Gladiators, if they knew how to operate the vessels in the first place."
"How did pirates ever get their hands on them?"
Helen scowled. "Good question-and don't think everybody isn't asking it, too. Unfortunately, the only pirates who survived were low-level muscle, who didn't know anything."
She hesitated a moment. "I guess I probably shouldn't say this, but… what the hell, it's nothing that hasn't been speculated on in the news media. There's really only one way they could have gotten them, Web. For whatever reason, somebody in the League with big money and just as much influence must have been behind that 'pirate operation.' Nobody that I know has any idea what they were up to, but just about everybody-me included-thinks that Manpower must have been behind it. Or maybe even Mesa as a whole."
Her scowl was now pronounced. "If we could prove it-"
Du Havel shifted his gaze back to the Manticoran captain under discussion. With far greater interest, now. However much distance there might be between him and most, in terms of intellectual achievements and public renown, there was one thing which Web Du Havel shared with any former genetic slave.
He hated Manpower Unlimited with a bone-deep passion. And though, for political reasons, he disagreed with the violent tactics used by the Audubon Ballroom, he'd never once had so much as a qualm about the violence itself. There was not a single responsible figure in that evil galactic corporation-not a single one, for that matter, on the entire planet of Mesa-whom Web Du Havel would not himself have lowered into a vat of boiling oil.
Capering and singing hosannas all the while-if he thought it would accomplish anything.
He took a deep breath, controlling the sudden spike of rage. And reminding himself, for perhaps the millionth time in his life, that if sheer righteous fury could accomplish anything worthwhile, wolverines would have inherited the galaxy long ago.
"Introduce me, would-" He broke off, suddenly realizing the request was moot. Cathy Montaigne was already leading Captain Oversteegen toward him.
It would be a while before they got there, however, given the press of the crowd and the fact that several people were stepping forward to offer their hands to the captain. Hastily, he whispered: "Just so I don't commit any social gaffes, whyare you-and Cathy-so surprised to see him here? He was invited, was he not?"
He heard Helen make a little snorting sound. As if, once again, the well-mannered girl had suppressed another outburst of derision.
"Just look at him, Web. He's the spitting image of a younger Baron High Ridge."
Du Havel's face must have registered his incomprehension. Not at the name itself-he knew enough about Manticoran politics to know that Helen was referring to the current Prime Minister-but at the subtleties which lay beneath.
Helen pursed her lips. "I thought you were supposed to be the galaxy's expert-okay, one of maybe ten-on political theory? So how come you don't know your ass from- Uh. Sorry, didn't mean to be rude."
He grinned, enjoying the girl's lapse from social manners. Given Du Havel's slave origins and present exalted status, most people were excessively polite around him. Obviously petrified lest they trigger off some buried resentment, of which they apparently assumed he harbored a multitude.
As it happened, Web Du Havel was thick-skinned by nature-and enjoyed few things so much as a sleeves-rolled-up, hair-hanging-down, intellectual brawl in which quarter was neither asked nor given. Which was the reason he and Catherine Montaigne had become very close, many years earlier. That had happened the first time they met, within an hour of being introduced at a social event put on by the Anti-Slavery League on Terra.
The argument rolling properly, Cathy had informed him, in her usual loud and profane manner, that he was a damned bootlicker with the mindset of a house slave. He, for his part, had explained to the assembled crowd-just as loudly, if not as profanely-that she was a typical upper class dimwit, slumming with the chic downtrodden of the day, who couldn't bake a loaf of bread without romanticizing the distress of the flour and the noble savage qualities of the yeast.
It had gone rapidly downhill from there. By the end of the evening, a lifetime's friendship had been sealed. Like Du Havel himself, Cathy Montaigne was one of those ferocious intellectuals who took their ideas seriously-and never trusted another intellectual until they'd done the equivalent of a barbarian ritual. Matching intellectual wound to wound, sharing ideas-and derision-the way ancient warriors, meeting for the first time, mixed their actual blood from self-inflicted wounds.