"Yes, it does. But it does come, even to stiff-necked, conservative people like mine. Be as patient with us as you can, pleaseand please tell Captain Harrington, when she returns, that I would be honored if she would be my guest for supper."
"With a `protector'?" Courvosier teased gently, and Yanakov smiled.
"With or without, as she pleases. I owe her a personal apology, and I suppose the best way to teach my officers to treat her as she deserves is to learn how to do it myself."
CHAPTER NINE
The K4 star called Endicott burned in the view port, and the planet Masada basked in its warmth. Endicott was far cooler than the F6 furnace at the heart of the Yeltsin System, but then, Masada's orbital radius was barely a quarter that of Grayson's.
Captain Yu sat with folded arms, chin on his chest, contemplating the planet and star, and wished the government had found someone else for this assignment. He disliked clandestine ops on principle, and the superiors who'd explained how this was supposed to work had either totally underestimated the narrow-minded hesitancy of the Masadans or else lied when they briefed him. He was inclined to believe it was the former, yet one could never be entirely certain of that. Not in the People's Republic.
The outside galaxy saw only the huge sphere Haven had conquered. It didn't realize how fragile the Republic's economy truly was or how imperative that fragility made it that Haven continue to expand. Or just how calculating and cynically manipulative the PRH's leaders had become, even with their own subordinates, under the pressure of that imperative.
Yu did. He had more sense of history than most officers of the People's Navymore of it than his superiors would have preferred. He'd almost been expelled from the Academy when one of his instructors discovered the secret cache of proscribed history texts written when the People's Republic was still simply the Republic of Haven. He'd managed to create enough uncertainty over who actually owned the offensive tapes to avoid expulsion, yet it had been one of the more terrifying episodes of his lifeand he'd been careful to conceal his innermost thoughts ever since. The sophistry he practiced bothered him, at times, but not enough to change it, for he had too much to lose.
Yu's family had been Dolists for over a century. The captain had clawed his way out of prole housing and off the Basic Living Stipend by sheer guts and ability in a society where those qualities had become increasingly irrelevant, and if he had no illusions about the People's Republic, he had even less desire to return to the life he had escaped.
He sighed and checked his chrono. Simonds was lateagain. That was another thing Yu hated about this assignment. He was a punctual, precise man, and it irked him immensely that his nominal commander came from a culture where superiors habitually kept juniors waiting for the express purpose of underlining their own superiority.
Not that Haven didn't have its own warts, he reflected, falling back into the dispassionate reverie whose Social Dysfunction Indicators would have horrified the Mental Hygiene Police. Two centuries of deficit spending to curry favor with the mob had wrecked not only the People's Republic's economy but any vestige of responsibility among the families who ruled it. Yu despised the mob as only someone who had fought his way clear of it could, but at least its members were honest. Ignorant, uneducated, unproductive leeches, yes, but honest. The Legislaturists who mouthed all the politically correct platitudes for the benefit of the rest of the galaxy and the Dolist Managers who controlled the prole voting blocs were better educated and dishonest, and that, in Captain Alfredo Yu's considered opinion, was the only way they differed from the mob.
He snorted and shifted in his chair, staring out the view port, and wished he could respect his own government. A man ought to be able to feel his country was worth fighting for, but Haven wasn't, and it wouldn't be. Not in his lifetime, anyway. Yet corrupt and cynical or not, it was his country. He hadn't asked for it, but it was the one he'd drawn, and he would serve it to the best of his ability because it was the only game in town. And because serving as its sword arm and succeeding despite its flaws was the only way to prove he was better than the system which had created him.
He growled to himself and rose to pace the briefing room. Damn it, sitting around and waiting like this always turned his mind down these gloomy, worn out pathways, and that was hardly what he needed at a time like
The briefing room hatch opened, and he turned, then came to attention as Sword of the Faithful Simonds walked in. He was alone, and Yu's spirits rose a bit. If Simonds had intended simply to stonewall, he would have brought along a few of the Masadan Navy's plethora of flag officers to trap Yu in the formal channels of military courtesy and prevent him from pushing hard.
Simonds nodded a wordless greeting and found a chair much more briskly than usual, then punched the button that popped the data terminal up out of the table top and keyed the terminal on line. There'd been a time, Yu remembered, when he wouldn't have had the least idea how to go about even that simple task, but he'd learned a lot from Havenand not just about the workings of Thunder of God's information systems.
Yu took a chair facing the Sword and waited while Simonds quickly reread the report from Bres
The captain caught himself. He never thought of Thunder of God as Saladin these days, and he had to stop thinking of Principality as Breslau. Not just because of the fiction that Masada had "bought" them from Haven, either. Anyone who could count on his fingers and toes would realize the two warships represented over eighty percent of the Endicott System's annual GSP, but their formal transfer to the Masadan Navy put Haven at a safe remove, legally (or at least technically), from whatever Masada did with them. It also made it important for Yu to prevent the Masadan officer corps from suspecting he and his fellow "immigrants" regarded them as a collection of half-assed, bigoted, superstition-ridden incompetents. Especially when he did think of them that way and couldn't make himself stop, however hard he tried.
"I've taken your proposals to the Council of Elders, Captain," Simonds said at last, leaning back in his chair, "but before deciding, Chief Elder Simonds wishes to hear your reasoning from your own mouth, as it were. For that reason, with your permission, I intend to record our conversation."
He looked at Yu, and the captain suppressed a frown before it reached his mouth. So it was his proposal, was it? Well, that wasn't too surprising. The Sword badly wanted to become Chief Elder himself when his older brother shuffled off, yet he seemed unable to grasp that decisiveness was more likely than timidity to win him the council chair he craved.
On the other hand, if the responsibility was going to be Yu's, then so was at least a share of the credit, and it couldn't hurt to enhance his own power baseto the extent any "heathen" could have one with these fruitcakes.
"Of course I don't object, Sir," he said courteously.
"Thank you." Simonds switched on the recorders. "In that case, suppose you simply begin at the beginning, Captain."
"Certainly, Sir." Yu tipped his chair back and folded his arms once more. "In essence, Sword Simonds, my belief is that the departure of three-quarters of the Manticoran escort gives us a window to activate Jericho with a high probability of success. It's possible they've moved on permanently, though I think it likely that they'll be returning in the not too distant future. In either case, however, I believe that, if we act promptly, your government will be able to suppress the current regime on Grayson and regain possession of the planet." Although, the Captain thought, only a batch of certifiable lunatics would want Grayson when they already had a much nicer planet all their own.