He picked up his wineglass, raising it until the deckhead lights turned its contents into a glowing ruby globe.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of Hexapuma ," he said, "I give you duty, loyalty, and Sir Edward Saganami. The tradition lives!"
"The tradition lives!" The response rumbled back as other glasses rose in answer.
"Well, what do you think?" Aikawa asked.
"About what?" Helen shot back. "About the Nasty Kitty thing?"
They sat around the table in the Snotty Row commons area, nursing their beverages of choice-Helen was enjoying a stein of Crown's Own, one of the better Gryphon dark beers-while Helen and Leo grilled Aikawa and Ragnhild. Those two had seemed to be in a state of semi-shock over the Captain's casual use of their privately bestowed nickname, but they seemed to be bouncing back. Finally.
That's twice for Ragnhild , Helen thought around a bubble of mental laughter as she looked at the petite midshipwoman. She must have been ready to crawl under the table on the spot!
"Not that," Aikawa said with a grimace that was half a smile. Then his expression sobered. "What do you think about that line the Captain was handing out about how important it is that we're assigned out here at the ass-end of nowhere."
"I don't think it was 'a line,' Aikawa," Ragnhild said, shaking off her own lingering echoes of the Captain's smiling ambush and looking up with a frown of her own. "I think he meant every word of it. You don't?"
"Hunnf." Aikawa pursed his lips and gazed up at the deckhead. Then he shrugged. "I'm not sure I do," he admitted. "Oh," he waved one hand in the air, "I don't think he was lying to us, and there wasn't a single thing he said I could really disagree with. I just can't help wondering how much of the emphasis he was putting on it was because he has to believe it's important we be assigned out here. I don't mind telling you guys," he looked around, his expression slightly troubled, "that I've had the occasional guilt attack ever since I found out where we were going. I mean, think of everyone we knew at the Island who wound up being sent straight to the front, or even Silesia, where there are real pirates to worry about. And here we are, assigned to 'protect' a bunch of people who've voluntarily asked to join the Star Kingdom!"
He shook his head, his expression an odd mixture of emotions, including both guilt and frustration and more than a touch of relief.
"Well, I wasn't there," Leo Stottmeister said slowly, "but every single word he said about how close we are to the League, and about Mesa, and about the shipping which is already moving through Lynx is absolutely true. And I may never have dealt with Frontier Security myself, but my Uncle Stefan's ship pissed off an OFS paper-shuffler, once. They didn't do anything wrong, but by the time the dust settled, that Solly bastard had condemned and confiscated their entire ship and its cargo. Uncle Stefan always figured the son of a bitch got a cut of the ship's value, but he said the profit was just icing on the cake for him. Their ship's real crime was that they'd snagged a profitable cargo out from under the nose of a Solly shipping line that had a sweetheart deal with Frontier Security."
The tall midshipman shrugged, his face unwontedly serious.
"I know Ragnhild has relatives in the shipping industry, but I don't know about any of the rest of you. I can tell you this, though-Uncle Stefan isn't the only person I've heard talk about how much some of the Solly freight lines hate us. And Frontier Security thinks of us as a bunch of neobarbs with delusions of grandeur. You mix that all up into a single ball of snakes, and God knows what you'll get out of it! Just don't expect it to be good."
"Leo's got a point," Ragnhild said, her expression more worried than it had been. "We're used to thinking of the Star Kingdom as a star nation, a military and economic power, and it is. But compared to the League, we're tiny . It wouldn't take much for some overconfident, greedy, bigoted Solly-wouldn't even necessarily have to be an OFS stooge, either-to do something outstandingly stupid."
"And if that happens," Paulo d'Arezzo put in quietly, "it's likely to have all sorts of ramifications."
All of them turned to look at him in surprise. After more than two months aboard, he was still the aloof, keep-to-himself denizen of Snotty Row. The fact that he'd been released from at least a part of the normal duties associated with a snotty cruise because of Lieutenant Bagwell's need for an understudy had actually increased his isolation, and they were surprised to hear him speaking up now. But he only looked back at them and shook his head slowly.
"If you were the captain of a Queen's ship in Silesia, and a Manticoran merchant or merchant skipper told you he'd been robbed, or cheated, or mistreated, or threatened by a Confederate Navy captain, how would you react?"
"But— " Aikawa began, only to be cut off by Helen.
"Paulo's right," she said, although it irritated her to admit it. "The situations probably wouldn't be at all the same, but that's exactly the way it would seem to an SLN skipper. Because Leo's right about how the Sollies think of us. I've been to Old Earth and seen it myself. In some ways, it's even worse than for the 'neobarbs' who don't have such close contact with Sol." She grimaced. "You know my dad was still in uniform when we were there, right?"
Heads nodded, and her grimace turned even sourer.
"Well, we were at a party one night, and I overheard this woman-I found out later she was a Solly assemblywoman, no less-pointing Daddy out to one of her friends and saying 'Look at that. He looks just like he belongs to a real navy, doesn't he?'"
"You're shitting us," Aikawa protested.
"I wish I were," she told him. "We just aren't real to most of them, even people who damned well ought to know better. And Leo's shipping lines and OFS flunkies aren't all we have to worry about out here. Don't forget how much closer we are to Mesa, because I'll guarantee you they aren't going to!"
"You may be right," Aikawa said, obviously unwillingly. But then he gave his head a little toss and grinned at her. "And while we're on the subject of Mesa and your esteemed parent, Ms. Midshipwoman Princess Helen, suppose you finally tell all of us just what went down at Congo?"
"Yes!" Leo agreed instantly. He jabbed an irate finger at Aikawa and Ragnhold. "I bet you already told your loyal henchmen all about it."
"Not all about it," Ragnhild protested with a chuckle, "or Aikawa wouldn't be asking." She turned to look at Helen herself. "Actually, I'd like to hear all of it."
"There's not really all that much to tell-" Helen began, but Aikawa laughed.
" Sure there isn't!" he said. "Now give!"
She looked around the compartment for a second, wondering exactly how to respond, and felt their eyes on her. All of them were obviously intensely curious-even d'Arezzo-and she knew she was going to have to satisfy that curiosity eventually, whatever she wanted. On the other hand, there were some aspects of that entire business she didn't fully understand herself, and others she did understand which were going to stay on a strictly Need to Know basis for a long, long time. On the other hand...
"Okay," she said finally. "First, a couple of ground rules. There are some things I can't tell anyone, not even you guys. So you're going to have to settle for what I figure I can give you. No probing questions, and no little tricks to try and get more out of me. Agreed?"
They looked back at her, their expressions slightly sobered, and then Aikawa nodded.
"Agreed," he said.
"All right, here's the short version. Back last Seventeenth Month, about six T-months before the shooting started back up with the Peeps, my dad-you know, Mr. Super Spook-and my sister Berry got tapped by the Queen to be her representatives at the Stein funeral on Erewhon. High Ridge and his stooges weren't sending anyone, and Her Majesty was a bit irritated with them about that. I don't think she really likes the Renaissance Association all that much, but they are the closest thing to a grass-roots reform party in the League, so she figured someone from the Star Kingdom should attend its leader's funeral. Anyway, she decided to send her niece, Princess Ruth, as her personal representative, and she asked Daddy to go along, both to ride herd on the Princess and also because of his relationship with Cathy Montaigne and the Anti-slavery League. She figured that would make the point that she was putting her thumb into High Ridge's eye even more strongly."
And, she thought, because the Queen and Ruth decided between them that the House of Winton needed a resident spook of its own, and they wanted the best teacher for Ruth they could find. Which happened to be my own dear Daddy.