"Orders, Sir?" the exec asked harshly, and Young wrenched his wild eyes back to his own display, face white and stark with terror, and watched the Peeps savage the ships his desertion had exposed to their fire.
"Orders, Sir?!" the exec half-shouted, and the muscles of Captain Lord Pavel Young's face ridged as he clamped his jaw and hunkered down in his command chair and stared at his display in silence.
"No response from Warlock, Ma'am." Stunned surprise echoed in the voice of Harrington's com officer as Nike quivered to yet another hit, and the captain's head whipped up.
The com officer flinched back from her, for her face was cold and focused no longer. Shock and fury and something moresomething raw and ugly with hateblazed in her eyes, and her voice was a lash.
"Give me a direct link to Captain Young!"
"Aye, aye, Ma'am." Her com officer stabbed buttons, and a screen at Harrington's knees lit with Young's sweat-streaked face.
"Get back into formation, Captain!" Harrington snapped. Young only stared at her, his mouth working soundlessly, and Harrington's soprano was harsh with hatred and contempt.
"Get back into formation, damn you!" she barked... and the screen went dead as Young cut the circuit.
Harrington stared at the blank com for one shocked second, and even as she stared, her ship heaved and shuddered to fresh hits. Frantic damage reports crackled, and she wrenched her eyes from the screen to her com officer.
"General signal to all heavy cruisers. Return to formation at once. Repeat, return to formation at once!"
The system tactical display shifted and changed once more as four of the five fleeing cruisers reversed course. They socketed back into the task group formation, locking back into the point defense net. All of them but one. HMS Warlock continued to flee, racing away from the rest of the formation while Young's exec shouted curses at him from the holo of his command deck and Young returned a screaming torrent of invective raw with panic, and then the entire holo tank went blank and the lights came up once more.
"I believe," Captain Ortiz said into the dead, stunned silence, "that that concludes the relevant portion of the evidence." A JAG Corps commander raised his hand, and Ortiz nodded to him. "Yes, Commander Owens?"
"Did Warlock return to formation at all, Ma'am?"
"She did not." Ortiz's voice was flat, its very neutrality shouting her own opinion of Pavel Young, and Owens sat back in his chair with a cold, hard light in his eye.
Silence returned, hovering for long, still moments, and then Vice Admiral Cordwainer cleared her throat and looked at Sir Lucius Cortez.
"I don't think there's any question that Lady Harrington exceeded her own authority in failing to pass command, Sir Lucius. At the same time, however, there can be neither doubt about nor excuse for Lord Young's actions. I endorse Admiral Parks' recommendation without reservation."
"Agreed." Cortez's voice was grim, his eyes and mouth even tighter than what they'd just seen seemed to justify, then he shook himself. "As for Lady Harrington's actions, Admiral Sarnow, Admiral Parks, the First Space Lord, Baroness Morncreek, and Her Majesty herself have all endorsed them. I don't think you need to concern yourself over them, Alyce."
"I'm relieved to hear that," Cordwainer said softly. She drew a deep breath. "Shall I have Data Services begin officer selection for the court-martial board?"
"Yes. But let me add somethingsomething for everyone here." The Fifth Space Lord stood and turned to the white-faced JAG officers seated behind the two admirals, and his expression was stern. "I wish to remind youall of youthat what you have just seen is privileged information. Lady Harrington and Lord Young have not yet even returned from Hancock, and neither this briefing nor anything else which you have heard, seen, or read concerning this case is for public consumption until the formation of the court itself is announced by my office. Is that clear?"
Heads nodded, and he jerked a nod of his own, then turned once more and walked slowly from the silent, shaken amphitheater.
CHAPTER ONE
The tall, glass-fronted clock in the corner ticked slowly, endlessly, its swinging pendulum measuring off the seconds and minutes in old-fashioned mechanical bites, and Lord William Alexander, Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Manticoran government's second ranking member, watched its mesmerizing motion. A modern chrono glowed silently and far more precisely on the desk at his elbowthe clock face was actually divided into the twelve standard hour increments of Old Earth's day, not Manticore's twenty-three-plus-hour dayand he wondered, not for the first time, why the man whose office this was surrounded himself with antiques. Lord knew he could afford them, but why was he so fascinated by them? Could it be because he longed for a simpler, less complicated time?
Alexander hid a small, sad smile at the thought and glanced at the man behind the desk. Allen Summervale, Duke of Cromarty and Prime Minister of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, was a slender man whose fair hair had turned silver long since, despite all prolong could do. It wasn't age which had bleached his hair or cut those deep, weary lines in his face; it was the crushing responsibilities of his job, and who could blame him if he hungered for a world less complex and thankless than his own?
It was a familiar thought, and a frightening one, for if anything ever happened to Cromarty, the burdens of his office would fall upon Alexander's shoulders. He could conceive of nothing more terrifying... nor understand what in his own character had driven him to place himself in such a position. Which was only fair, for he couldn't even imagine what had compelled Cromarty to shoulder the office of prime minister for over fifteen years.
"He didn't say anything about his reasons?" Alexander asked finally, breaking the ticking silence that gnawed at his nerves.
"No." Cromarty's voice was a deep, whiskey-smooth baritone, a potent and flexible political weapon, but it was frayed by worry now. "No," he repeated wearily, "but when the leader of the Conservative Association requests a formal meeting rather than a com conference, I know it has to be something I'm not going to like."
He smiled crookedly, and Alexander nodded. Michael Janvier, Baron High Ridge, was not high on either man's list of favorite people. He was cold, supercilious, and filled with a bigot's awareness of his own "lofty" birth. The fact that both Alexander and Cromarty were far more nobly born than he seemed beside the point to him, a mere bagatelle, something to be resented, perhaps, but not something a Baron of High Ridge need concern himself with.
That was typical of the man, Alexander thought sourly. Alexander seldom considered his own birthexcept, perhaps, to wish from time to time that he'd been born to a less prominent and powerful family, free to ignore the tradition of public service his father and grandfather had bred into his blood and bonebut it was the core of High Ridge's existence. It was all that really mattered to him, a guarantor of power and prestige, and the narrow-minded defense of privilege lay at the heart of his political philosophy, such as it was. Indeed, it was the rallying point of the entire Conservative Association, which explained why it had virtually no representation in the House of Commons, and it went far to explain the Association's xenophobic isolationism. After all, anything that might cause stress and change in the Manticoran political system was one more dangerous force to conspire against their exalted lot!
Alexander's mouth twisted, and he slid further down in his chair, reminding himself not to curse in the Prime Minister's office. And, he thought, to strangle his own dislike when High Ridge finally turned up. If only they didn't need him and his reactionaries! Their own Centrist Party held a clear sixty-vote majority in the Commons, but only a plurality in the Upper House. With the alliance of the Crown Loyalists and the Association, the Cromarty Government could poll a narrow majority in the Lords; without the Association, that majority disappeared, and that made High Ridge, insufferable as he was and loathsome as he might be, critically important.