The Serrano Succession (17 page)

"So . . . seen any crazy admirals lately?"

"There's always Lepescu," Kaim said. He had reported to the family about Lepescu before.

"He was born mean," Goonar said. "That kind existed before rejuv."

"I know that." Kaim shifted uneasily. "Look—this is still very, very classified."

"Yeah, right," Basil said. He crossed his heart elaborately and spat to the left.

"It's not the admirals—at least, I haven't seen any crazy admirals, not that I see that many. But there's a medical directive out on senior NCOs . . . anyone rejuved in the past ten years is being called in for immediate evaluation. And I have solid data that at least eight master chiefs have had negative performance evals in our sector alone, in the past half standard year."

"Sounds like a bad drug batch to me," Goonar said.

"Yeah—if the admirals, who've been rejuved longer, haven't gone loopy, why would you think it's anything else?" asked Basil.

"Mostly Lord Thornbuckle," Kaim said. "I just cannot fathom a man of his caliber—his supposed caliber—getting us involved in a war to save that brainless twit of a daughter."

Goonar reached out for Basil's arm again, and found it, as he expected, knotted with angry muscle. "Trust us," he said mildly. "Fathers are like that. Even yours."

"But it could also be intentional," Kaim said. "If someone wanted to ruin Fleet, making master chiefs nuts would be a good way to go."

"And who would be doing this? Who would have access?"

"Across the whole organization—if it is that widespread—it would have to be sabotage in procurement, or upstream from them. Another traitor . . ."

Goonar shrugged. Kaim's father, if not Kaim, had always had a thing about conspiracy theory, and that's why his son had had to go into Fleet, because he had ignored profit for politics too long and couldn't afford to launch his son as a family member should, with his own ship-shares.

"All organizations have some traitors," Goonar said.

"Yes, but . . . what the NCOs are worried about is that it was a plot to start with, so that they could justify not giving rejuv to enlisted personnel. I don't see that myself—admirals cost more and do less; everybody knows the senior NCOs are more valuable—but it's spooking 'em. And having 'em spooked would suit our enemies. The Benignity, I can see them doing something like this, through agents of theirs. Fleet brass is worried about more traitors in the operational end, like Garrivay and Hearne, but why wouldn't the Benignity suborn procurement as well?"

"I suppose." Goonar was much less interested in who might be a Benignity agent than in how such information could be turned for profit. "So . . . either they're going to find out it was a bad batch, and the price of any remaining Morrelline/Conselline stock will drop through the floor, and the whole combine will be bankrupt, or they'll find the basic process is flawed and all rejuv-related products will go down?"

"You lot!" Kaim glared at him. "Is profit all you care about? Doesn't it mean anything to you that if all the master chiefs go bonkers, we can't possibly stand against a Benignity or NewTex invasion?"

"New Texans are amateurs," Goonar said absently. "That silly drunk—"

"Isn't the whole story. Just as you said, any organization has traitors, and any organization also has fools that get drunk."

"Still," Basil said, with a silky tone that alerted Goonar. "Still, I do not see that finding your traitors—assuming you have them—is our responsibility. We do, on the other hand, have a responsibility to the family which, by paying taxes, pays your salary too, Kaim, so I wouldn't be so smug about your moral purity."

Goonar spread both arms. "Stop it, both of you. None of us wants to see the Familias fall to invasion, and none of us wants to see the Terakian family go broke. We're one blood." Which might, in a few minutes, be mingled on the porch floor, if the other two didn't quit posturing.

"Daddy!" Basil's daughter burst through the door from the dining room, leading her mother by a good ten feet. "Found you!" Basil scooped her up, and the child flashed a wide grin at the other men. "Lunch time!" she announced.

"Sounds good to me," Goonar said, pushing himself up. "Come here, little one, and let your father get up." The child bounced from her father's lap to Goonar and he lifted her slight weight to his shoulder, where she crowed in delight. "Don't forget to—"

"Duck," she said, leaning over his head. Inside, her mother shook her head.

"Sorry, Goonar. Lydia's Jon had put something down the toilet in the children's bathroom, and we were coping with the overflow. Jessie got away from us."

"Good timing," Goonar said in an undertone. Berish was almost as pretty as little Jessie, and he envied Basil at times like this, remembering those first years of marriage, when the children were sweet lumps of brown sugar and a wife was an inexhaustible cavern of enchantments. He'd thought of remarrying, but the pain of losing Sela and the children still stabbed; he could not risk that again. He swung Jessie down, and followed the others to the great dining table.

After lunch, the rain stopped for a while, and Goonar chivvied the men into a walk along the shore, past the orange squares of fish pens. Here, with the distractions of uneven footing and a breeze freshening into a blustery wind, Basil and Kaim were less inclined to quarrel. Kaim opened his mind, like the net of a fisherman, spilling a mixed lot of information which Goonar knew he and Basil would pick over at leisure. By dinnertime, when the wind had blown the clouds south for a time, Kaim was clearly enjoying the once-hated planet.

Goonar himself wanted nothing more than to be back aboard one of the Terakian family's ships, preferably one with the new decryption algorithms, that could intercept transmissions via the financial ansibles. He tried to settle calmly to the after-dinner word games, but he couldn't concentrate. After the third time that Kaim crossed his entry with a 10-point bonus, he gave up.

"I'm fuzzed," he said. "I'm going up to bed."

"To bed?" Basil asked. "It's not that late."

"No, but I'm that tired." Goonar yawned, and climbed the stairs to his tower room. Basil undoubtedly knew what he was going to do, and could be counted on to keep Kaim out of the way. The problem was that no security system could really keep his communications clean, not down here. He opened a line to the family headquarters on Caskadar, requested a data dump of the past two days of market reports, and told the duty operator he'd be in the next day to put something in the batch for the ansible.

"By midday, local, Ser," the operator said. "It goes off at 1300, and we have to have all the data encrypted."

"I'll be there by 1000," Goonar promised.

When Basil came up, hours later, Goonar was still picking through the data dump.

"I thought you were fuzzed," Basil said.

"I am." This time the yawn was genuine. "But I'm also worried. There's something going on with the Consellines—look at this—"

"Not now. In the morning. I had to ply Kaim with more brandy to keep him downstairs, and if I don't sleep now I'll be very sorry in the morning."

"You'll be sorry longer if you don't look at this. I'm serious, Bas. Something's going on, and it's big. Look at the fluctuations in the rejuv index."

"It's been volatile ever since the Patchcock mess," Basil said. "Took it six months to recover at all, and every little rumor shakes it like a windchime."

"So quit talking and look," Goonar said. He tapped the chart.

"Oh." Basil pushed his lips out and back in. "What about the raw—"

"Over the top," Goonar said, shuffling through the pile to find what he wanted. "There—I can't be sure without getting a hook in one of the big lines, but I'd bet that's from the Conselline plants; they're the only single source big enough to draw those resources this fast."

"And they'd lost market share, and . . . damn, cuz, I wish we could access the employment figures."

"So—we tell—"

"The Fathers," Goonar said. "And we don't tell Kaim. I'm preparing an ansible load for tomorrow."

"Today. What time does it have to be in? You want help?"

"Just keep Kaim out of my way."

Goonar's line of command ran through Basil's father, not his own—typical of the Terakian family's organization. So he was surprised when the next message came from his father.

"Goonar—tell Basil to keep Kaim onplanet another 48 hours, without fail. Then get yourself on the next shuttle up."

"As God wills," Goonar said, with both piety and practicality: the family code for "What's going on?"

"In his grace," said his father and signed off.

So he had put his finger on the lion's eyelid. Well, now to convince Basil to trap Kaim and let him run off.

The shuttle ride to the orbital station seemed to take forever, though he knew it was the standard flight time. When he arrived, he went directly to the Terakian Shipping offices, where staff were bustling around as if a ship were arriving.

"Who's coming?"

"We just got word by ansible.
Flavor
is on her way through, fast-transit, with something urgent. If you want a lift, I'm sure they'll have room for you."

Favored-of-God
, nicknamed
Flavor
, was the Terakian's fast courier . . . and the family's most advanced recon vessel, loaded with the best scan equipment money or influence or trickery could obtain. "There she is—" one of the techs said, pointing to the display board. A bright splash on the screen meant something had come through the jump point at max vee, and the color shift meant she was making a dangerously fast approach.

So whatever it was, the Fathers were willing to let everyone know they had some urgent chore in hand. Usually Terakian ships moved in the same stately arcs as any other commercial carrier, never showing all their capacity unless they ran into trouble.

"What's his ETA?" Goonar asked.

"At this rate? Under twenty hours."

Twenty hours . . . so why had his father told him to leave downside immediately?

So he would be gone before word of
Flavor
's arrival got to the surface? So perhaps Kaim wouldn't connect the two? So there would be no transmissions to the surface which Kaim might intercept?

Goonar sighed. While the station had a perfectly comfortable lodging house for transients, and he had more than enough credit to use it, he knew—without even asking—that his father expected him to stay in the office. In the off-duty bunkroom for low-level staff, with its hard narrow beds.

"I'm going over to Spotted Lamb for lunch," Goonar said. "If anyone wants me."

He was almost through with dessert—honeyed figs stuffed with chopped bitsai nuts—when the call came. A tightbeamed packet for him from
Flavor
.

Adhem, the office manager, gave him a look, which Goonar had no trouble intepreting. He wasn't that senior in the family; he was just another of the young men moving up through the ranks . . . so why was he suddenly in the office at just the right time for the appearance of
Flavor
on a fast run, and why was he getting this packet, instead of someone more senior? He was moving up, not down or sideways, because he knew better than to give Adhem any information at all.

Flavor
's commander met him at the hatch and threw her arms around him. Laisa, Basil's sister, had the same dangerous energy as her brother. As Goonar's chain of command went through his uncle, so Laisa's went through Goonar's father.

"You're coming with us," she murmured in his ear.

"That's nice," Goonar said, detaching himself. "Basil says to give you his love."

"We're fuel-and-go," Laisa said. Goonar nodded, and went through the hatch ahead of her.

In the next few hours, he briefed her on what he thought he had learned from Kaim and the more accessible data channels.

"Here's what you don't know," Laisa said, when he was through. "There was a distant family member captured with the
Elias Madero
—a young girl, Hazel Takeris. Some seventy years ago, a Terakian boy fell in love with a Chapapas girl—"

"A Greek!"

"Yes, from Delphi Duetti. Of course both families disapproved, so they changed their names—called themselves Takeris. Had lots of children, in defiance of everyone, including six boys, who continued the habit of defying parents by becoming perfectly ordinary merchant crewmen who married late and had few children. This girl is his great-granddaughter—her father was a son of the second son—and his wife died young, leaving him with one daughter. He was killed by the NewTex that boarded
Elias Madero
, and the girl captured."

Goonar listened, trying to find some connection with the news he'd brought from Kaim. Laisa went on.

"At the time we heard about the ambush, we didn't know that. The original connection's name was off our books. Then Aunt Herdion saw a news report and thought the newsie had misspelled Terakian. You know what she's like—she got on the com, all ready to chew bones. They gave her all the information they had, just to get her off their backs. Shortly after the rescue, when the newsies reported Hazel's survival, she barged into the remaining Takeris family discussion of Hazel's future, and insisted on having a say. In fact, she was all set to adopt the girl herself. They're not too happy with her, but they're also not rich, so her offer to pay for Hazel's education sweetened the deal."