“AND THAT’S ABOUT IT, Sir.” Lieutenant Roger Winton flicked off his memo board and looked across the briefing room table at his commanding officer. “Better than I really expected it to be, but the delay on those missile pallets is . . . irritating.” He grimaced. “‘As soon as practicable’ isn’t what a good, industrious XO likes to tell his captain when we’re pushing a deployment deadline.”
“No, I suppose not,” Commander Pablo Wyeth, HMS Wolverine’s commanding officer said judiciously. He tipped back in his chair, regarding his executive officer sternly, then smiled. “On the other hand, if that’s the worst thing that happens to us, we’ll be luckier than we deserve. And while I realize it’s likely to undermine my slave-driving captain’s reputation, I can’t see how I can reasonably construe it as your fault, Roger.”
“As always, I am awed by your restraint, Sir.”
“I’m sure you are.”
The treecat on the back of Lieutenant Winton’s chair tilted his head, ears twitching in amusement, and Wyeth shook his head, and found himself—again—wondering just why his exec had decided to pursue a naval career. Part of it was obvious enough. Lieutenant Winton had the talent, drive, and innate ability to succeed at anything he’d cared to turn his hand to, and his love for the Queen’s Navy was obvious. Yet he had to find it immensely frustrating, as well. Promotion was glacially slow, and likely to get more so as the prolong therapies began extending officers’ careers. There was more cronyism than Wyeth liked to think about, as well, although it was nowhere near as much a problem in the Royal Manticoran Navy as in some navies. (The Solarian League Navy came forcibly to mind, as a matter of fact.) And the RMN had its cliques, its little mutual-protection clubs, too many of them built on birth and privilege, which had to be especially frustrating for Winton.
Thirteen T-years out of the Island, and he’s still only a lieutenant, Wyeth thought. Of course, I was four T-years older than he is now before I made lieutenant, but not all officers are created equal, whatever the Island likes to pretend. I can think of at least a dozen of his classmates who’re senior to him by now, and not one of them is as flat out good at his job as Roger is.
And that, he reflected, was particularly ironic given the fact that cronyism, patronage, and raw nepotism accounted for most of those accelerated promotions . . . and that it was only the lieutenant’s own fierce refusal to play those games which prevented him from being senior to all of them.
Once upon a time, I would’ve thought being Heir to the Crown would have to work in someone’s favor, the commander mused. But that was before I met Roger. I know some of the “upper crust” think this is some sort of silly hobby on his part—or that his refusal to trade on the family name is some kind of perverse hairshirt he’s chosen to wear—but that only confirms their idiocy. The Navy’s important to him, and at least he by God knows he’s earned every promotion that came his way. It’d take someone with big brass ones to blackball Crown Prince Roger Winton when his name comes before a promotion board, however it got there, but I’m inclined to think it would probably take a pronounced lack of IQ to go ahead and promote him just because of whose son he is. He’s going to be King himself one day not so far down the road, and Wintons have long memories. Somehow I don’t think the career of any brown-noser who “helped” his career along in hopes of some kind of payback down the road is likely to prosper when that happens.
Oddly, that thought gave Commander Wyeth a certain profound sense of satisfaction.
On the other hand, there was no point pretending Lieutenant Winton was just any old lieutenant . . . even if he had insisted his fellow officers address him as if he were.
“I read Captain Janacek’s response to your letter to the Proceedings,” Wyeth said after a moment, his tone carefully casual.
“So did I, Sir.”
Winton’s calm reply would have fooled most people, but Wyeth could watch his treecat, and Monroe’s ears flattened instantly at the mention of Janacek’s name. The captain was less than five years older than Roger Winton, but his family was deeply involved in politics, one of the movers and shakers of the Conservative Association, and they’d pulled strings mercilessly to speed along his promotions.
Probably never even gave it a second thought, either. Hard to blame them, some ways. Promotion’s slow enough and plum command slots are thin enough on the ground to make just about anyone figure he’d better use whatever edge he can if he wants to get command of a major combatant before he’s too old and senile to remember what to do with it when he’s got it!
It was an ignoble thought, and Wyeth knew it. Worse, he’d found himself thinking it more often as more and more of the officer corps became prolong recipients. The therapies had reached the Star Kingdom barely fifteen T-years earlier, and Wyeth had been too old to receive them. In fact, Roger himself had been close to the upper age limit when the treatments became available. But Pablo Wyeth was already fifty-two T-years old; the chance that he would make flag rank before his age-mandated retirement was virtually nil, whereas an arrogant prick like Janacek—just young enough to sneak in under the wire for prolong—would probably make it within the next five or six T-years . . . and then have something like a century in which to enjoy it.
Calmly, Pablo, he told himself. Remember your blood pressure, you antiquated old fart!
The self-reminder made him snort mentally, and he saw Monroe’s ears flick back upright as the telempathic ’cat picked up on his own amusement.
“I thought the good Captain went out of his way to be gracious while he was stomping all over your suggestion with both feet,” the commander observed out loud.
“With all due respect for Captain Janacek’s seniority, I’ve never been especially impressed by the scintillating brilliance of his intellect,” Winton replied. “He was careful about exactly how he phrased himself, though, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was,” Wyeth agreed with a grin. Then his expression sobered slightly. “On the other hand, you realize he never would’ve written that if he didn’t know quite a few other officers—especially senior ones—agree with him. I know you don’t really like me to mention this, Roger, but it takes a fair amount of chutzpah to publicly sign your name to something likely to piss off your future monarch. I don’t see Janacek doing that if he didn’t figure there’d be more than enough senior officers around to back his view of things.”
And if he didn’t have a pretty shrewd idea of just how much you hate the family interest game, Wyeth added mentally. You’re right about his lack of brilliance, whatever he and his cronies think, but he’s not really outright stupid, however he acts sometimes. He’s got to know you’re not going to use your “family interest” to step on him the way he probably deserves, or he never would’ve opened his mouth.
“I know there are. That’s the problem.” Winton reached up, and Monroe flowed down from the chair back to curl in his lap, his buzzing purr loud as the lieutenant stroked his fluffy coat. “We’ve been thinking in one direction for so long that two-thirds of our senior officers are so invested in it they don’t even realize they’re not looking at what’s really happening.”
“Oh?” Wyeth cocked his head, raising one eyebrow.
“It doesn’t take a genius to realize how juicy a target the Junction is,” Winton said. “Hell, Sir! All it really takes is a working memory! There was a reason I mentioned Axelrod of Old Terra in my letter.”
Wyeth nodded, yet he couldn’t help wondering if there was more than simple historical memory involved in his executive officer’s position. Unlike quite a few of their fellow officers, whose attention was focused almost exclusively on the Navy’s commerce-protection duties, particularly in the face of the worsening situation in the Silesian Confederacy and the Andermani Empire’s increasing interest in fishing in those troubled waters, Wyeth tried to keep an eye on the broader picture. He wasn’t especially happy about what seemed to be happening in the Haven Quadrant these days, mainly because of the People’s Republic’s naval buildup, despite what most of the pundits believed had to be a rapidly disintegrating fiscal position. Still, there were possible explanations for that buildup that were relatively innocuous. It wasn’t the way he’d go about creating jobs and pumping money back into the economy, but he wouldn’t have done most things the way the People’s Republic’s political leaders had done them for the last, oh, two T-centuries or so. And whatever they might be thinking, nothing he’d seen so far suggested that Haven might be considering reprising Axelrod’s attempt on the Manticoran Wormhole Junction. For that matter, even if it was, and much as it pained Pablo Wyeth to contemplate agreeing even conditionally with Edward Janacek, the Junction fortresses and the new Royal Wintons and Samothraces—assuming the idiots in Parliament actually did go ahead and built the rest of the originally requested SDs—should be able to handle the People’s Republic’s battleships if it came to it.
All of that made nice, logical, reassuring sense. Unfortunately, whatever his own attitude towards his birth, Lieutenant Winton was also Crown Prince Roger of Manticore, only a single heartbeat away from the crown. As such, he received regular in-depth intelligence briefings unavailable to any other junior officer. Or to the commanding officers of any of Queen Samantha’s destroyers, if it came to that.
And he’s not about to let a single classified word slip, either, is he? Wyeth reminded himself. He wasn’t even willing to suggest obliquely in his letter that he might know something Janofsky doesn’t. He’s going to make one hell of a King one day.
“Well, you’re young,” he said out loud. “You’ll have time to wear them down.”
“I hope so, Sir.” His executive officer sounded grimmer than usual, Wyeth thought. “At the moment, though, I’m feeling like a character out of an Old Earth fairy tale.”
“Really?” The commander chuckled. Ancient fairy tales and fables happened to be a hobby of his, and Winton knew it. “Let me see . . . If we asked Captain Janacek, I’m sure he’d be able to come up with quite a few. Like the little boy who cried ‘Wolf!’ for example. Or did you have Chicken Little in mind?”
“Actually, Sir, I was thinking of the Three Little Pigs. Especially the last one.”
“So you’re trying to convince the rest of the Navy that it’s time to build a house out of bricks instead of straw—is that it?”
“Mostly, Sir.” Winton nodded, looking down at his hands as they stroked the purring cream-and-gray treecat in his lap. “Mostly.” He looked up, brown eyes dark and very level. “Except that if I’d been the third Little Pig, I’d have held out for something even better. I think steel would’ve worked very nicely, actually.”