Change of Command

Chapter Eight

Brun called the Mahoney residence and, for a wonder, George answered.

“George—it’s Brun.”

“Oh . . . if you want my father, he’s still not—”

“No, I know that. I was after you.”

“Brun, I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you after your father—I mean, I’ve been so busy with Dad in the hospital—”

“I know, George. I’m not upset; I just need to talk to you.”

“Um . . . I should tell you, I’ve been going out with your cousin.” George, of all people, sounded embarrassed. And what did this have to do with his father’s injuries, her father’s assassination, or the political situation? Still, she knew what to do with that opening.

“Seriously?”

“Looks that way. We’re both in law school.”

“Which cousin?” Brun had a sudden cold worry that this was the leak through which Harlis had gained information.

“Not Harlis’s—Jessamine’s.”

Her mother’s sister’s child. The one she had dismissed so blithely back on Sirialis, the first year the girl came for hunting. “Sydney?”

George laughed. “No, that’s her older sister. This is Veronica. What did you want, Brun?”

“Information, of course. Where is everyone in our crowd, and what’s going on. Since I got back . . . things have happened too fast, and you’re the only one here I can ask without getting a lecture.”

“Ronnie and Raffa are off pioneering—you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, though I still think they’re crazy. Do you know where?”

“Some dismal colony world; I can look it up if you want. I send mail via the Development Office—rather, I did at first, but they don’t answer. What with law school—”

“Never mind, George. I hope your father’s better soon.”

“It’s—he’s not like himself at all, Brun. I remember when you were getting Lady Cecelia out . . . I never realized what it’s like when someone you know doesn’t even seem to recognize you. And he can’t talk; he just makes these noises—”

She didn’t want to think about that. She couldn’t, and stay reasonable.

“George, I’m so sorry. If it’s all right, I’ll call again—we should stay in touch.”

“All right.” He sounded tired, worried, miserable. Brun felt guilty for a moment, but then turned her mind to the more pressing problem of finding out what was going on in politics. She still didn’t expect anything much to happen in the Grand Council meeting, but it was always better to be prepared. She checked the directory her mother had left with her, frowning as one name after another came up absent. Apparently a lot of people thought nothing much was going to happen, and had not bothered to stay on Castle Rock and find out.

Brun slipped her card into the slot, unlocking her chair’s displays and communications, and settled into her chair. Aside from the formal presentation, when she became old enough to have a Seat, she had not been to any meetings, and none of her dreams in the years since had involved taking part in a routine Council meeting.

At the far end of their Family table, her uncle Harlis glowered at her, then leaned over to speak to her cousin Kell. Well, she already knew she could expect no help from him. She smiled, trying for the serenity that had always been her mother’s trademark.

The Ministers straggled in, no longer in the formal robes she remembered—when had they quit wearing them? Had her father put an end to it?

Hobart Conselline stood at the Speaker’s podium. Brun blinked, surprised. The Conselline family had lost ground in the wake of the Patchcock scandal, because the Morrellines were in their sept. Even though no one could prove that the Consellines had known about it, other Families had taken advantage of the opportunity to take market share from the largest and wealthiest of the septs. When had they regained their influence? And what did it mean? She skimmed the minutes of the emergency meeting after her father’s death.

As she adjusted the viewer to bring each face into focus, she noticed something odd. To the Speaker’s right, the Ministers’ faces expressed suppressed glee mingled with impatience and even anger. To his left, the faces seemed lifeless, sodden with despair.

What was going on? She looked around for anyone she knew, who might give her a clue, but she had been away too long. The seating arrangements had rotated again; no one was where she expected. She called up the seating chart. No one—wait—Sarah’s older sister Linnet had a chair one row over and four up. She entered the callcode, and her own name. The screen lit, and letters appeared. Good to have you back, Brun.

Thanks, she entered, then glanced at Linnet, who smiled and nodded. Any idea what’s going on today?

Yes, but I won’t put it onscreen. We’ll talk at the break.

That was clear as mud. Brun glanced over; Linnet nodded again, this time without smiling. Well . . . she would have to figure it out for herself. She referred again to the desk’s databank. The unhappy Ministers first . . . her father’s appointees, she realized by the dates. The longest in office, Foreign Affairs, Cabby DeLancre. Minor family, but a good solid man she knew her father respected. Defense, Irion Solinari. Another minor family—her father had long promoted the view that minor families should take their turn in major roles. The Clerk-Minister, Emilie Sante-Foin, who supervised the clerical staff.

The gleeful ones were all new. Her father had appointed one, at the Council meeting just before his death: Elory Sa-Consell, Legislative Affairs. A Conselline, but one Kevil had recommended—she’d found that in her father’s papers. The others had been appointed at the emergency session held immediately after her father’s death. A new Minister of Internal Security, to replace Pauli de Marktos, who had obviously just failed in his duty, and whose offer to resign had been accepted so swiftly: Bristar Anston Conselline. A new Legal Advisor, replacing Kevil Mahoney: Sera Vesell. Born a Conselline, Brun noted with a quick flick of the data to the bio section. Judicial Affairs: instead of Clari Whitlow, who had held the post since before Kemtre’s abdication, Norum Radsin, whom even Brun had heard of as a troublemaker in the legal profession. Colonial Affairs: Davor Vraimont.

So . . . it looked like a Conselline coup. In that case, why was her uncle looking so complacent? Did he not see it, or had he known already?

The excitement started before the meeting. Kemtre Altmann, the former king, came forward to stand in front of the Table. He had evidently rejuved again since she’d seen him last; he looked smooth and healthy, with only a decorative streak of white in his hair, though there was still the faint suggestion of a drooping eagle to his posture. Shocked murmurs followed him, and finally died away.

“I yield the floor to our beloved former king,” Harlis Conselline in a voice that practically dripped butter.

“Thank you,” Kemtre said. “I just want to ask you all to put the realm—the Familias—first, as you think about the issues before us. There’s been a lot of dissension, a lot of anger, a lot of conflict among us—”

There had? Brun had heard nothing of it from her father in their brief time together, but perhaps he had concealed it from her.

“We need to think about the good of the whole Familias Regnant,” Kemtre was saying. “In the face of all the threats to our stability, we must not fall prey to internal bickering. The welfare of all is more important than any petty personal grievances.”

From somewhere behind, Brun heard an angry exclamation. Across the chamber, a man stood up and yelled “Don’t you start, Viktor!”

Brun scrabbled at the databank controls trying to figure out who these people were, even as Kemtre bowed and made his way back up the aisle to a sprinkling of applause, clearly stronger in some areas than others. Viktor—that had to be Viktor Barraclough, a distant relative, the eldest of the elder branch of the Sept, though not the elected head of the Family—and the other man—she looked again at the seating chart. Alfred Sebastian Morelline-Contin.

Political instincts she had not known she possessed told her the whole thing was a setup . . . Hobart Conselline had pulled a coup, and Kemtre appealed for unity because he knew there was none. And her uncle Harlis was not surprised or dismayed, as he should have been when a rival Family grabbed so much power, which meant that he had known ahead of time. He had been bought, with what coin she thought she knew.

Contested inheritances were heard in the Court of Wills, and the Minister of Judicial Affairs had the right to appoint justices to that court. Hobart’s new Minister had promised Harlis a deal.

Rage blurred her vision a moment, as Hobart stood up and began speaking . . . something about this sad occasion, and the need for clear direction. Hobart’s voice had an unpleasant tone—monotonous and yet insistent—which made it hard to listen to the sense of what he was saying. Brun’s mind drifted to the odd division of expressions on the Ministers’ faces. She had never missed Kevil more. He would have known why Emilie Sante-Foin glowered and Davor Vraimont smirked. With a few low-voiced phrases, he could have made clear the relationship between Vraimont Industrial Arts and the opportunities implicit in being the Colonial Affairs Minister.

Buttons came down the long aisle to the table; Harlis glared, and Buttons nodded. Then he smiled at Brun, with the weary amity of someone who is too exhausted to fight.

“I’m sorry business kept me away—” he murmured.

“It’s not your fault,” Brun said. “Someone had to keep things going. I’m glad you did.”

He looked surprised at that. What had he thought she’d say? Scold him for not rushing to her side?

“Have you seen the agenda?”

“No—it wasn’t posted. Mother said it was, but I couldn’t find it.”

“What are you whispering about?” Harlis said in a harsh voice. “It’s almost time for the meeting.” He looked as confident as Buttons had looked worried, and his gaze passed over Brun with none of the affection he had once lavished on her younger self. She doubted she could flirt him into her camp now. His son Kell leered at her, the sneer on his face making clear what he was thinking about.

“My brother and I were exchanging greetings,” Brun said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Buttons laid a hand on her wrist; she ignored it.

“Well, he should have come earlier,” Harlis said.

“You never came at all,” Brun said, deliberately misinterpreting the temporal cue.

“I was at the funeral!” Harlis said, more loudly; other heads turned to look at him, and Hobart Conselline paused in his speech, glaring.

“I wasn’t talking about the funeral,” Brun said, her voice deliberately lower. “Before. When I first got home.”

“Wasn’t any need,” Harlis muttered, flushing.

Brun merely looked at him, until the gavel banged on the podium and the bell rang, signalling the end of the introductory speech.

“The first order of business,” Hobart said, “is to vote on the proposed changes in the Corporate Bylaws.”

“I object!” That was Viktor Barraclough again. “The proposals have not been submitted to the entire Council in sufficient advance—”

“You’re out of order,” Hobart said. Brun could hear the gloat in his voice. “Besides, these changes are familiar to everyone; I presented them last session—”

“And they were voted down,” Viktor said.

“You’re out of order,” Hobart said again. “If you interrupt again, I’ll have you thrown out. Now sit down. If you have anything worthwhile to say, you may say it during the discussion period.”

Brun felt her muscles tightening and took a deep breath. She had never seen anything like this in the Grand Council. From the shocked looks around her, no one else had, either.

“The full text is available at 34-888-16,” Hobart went on. “The annotations are at 35-888-29. Please try to follow along as I go over them.”

As if they were little children and Hobart Conselline their teacher. Brun called up the two files, and read quickly, with growing dismay. Proposal to limit the franchise to those presently Seated—offspring to be Seated as space allowed and in strict order of seniority. Proposal to take “suitable measures” to meet the threat of Ageists . . . what threat? Proposal to create a special commission to investigate Ageist influence in the Regular Space Service, and another to investigate the inappropriate use of Space Service resources for private purposes. With a chill, Brun realized that this was aimed at her rescue. Proposal to restrict access of news media . . . to restrict public access to records of Grand Council meetings . . . to reduce the quorum for voting on Corporate Bylaws.

Every proposal had been presented before—the links told her when, and by whom—and had been voted down before. But that had been with time for discussion, with men like her father and Kevil Mahoney to explain why the proposals were not in the best interests of the Familias as a whole. She could remember, now she was sitting here, that on the occasion of her taking her Seat, Hobart Conselline had stood up to propose limiting the franchise. On that occasion, he’d said the influence of the Grand Council was being diluted by mere fertility—that the unSeated populace had lost respect for the Grand Council because all it took to get a Seat was being born to the right parents.

She sent a private message to Buttons: Was he always like this?

Ever since I’ve had a Seat, Buttons replied.

Brun tuned back in to what Hobart was saying.

“While no one would wish such a vicious attack on anyone, it is perhaps fortunate for Lord Thornbuckle that he cannot stand before us to justify his actions.”

Brun stiffened and glanced at Buttons. His expression did not change, but his stylus pushed his pad so hard that a red light came up on the margin.

“I am truly sorry,” Hobart went on, “if this distresses his daughter, who has chosen this time to take her place among us—” The tone implied that her doing so was in the worst taste. “But private feelings must defer to public weal, in this case.” He looked up at her Seat with an expression that made her want to wipe her face with a clean cloth. She expected the chamber to erupt in her defense—but no one moved or spoke. Hobart gave her a stiff little smile and nod, and went on.

“Since Lord Thornbuckle is dead, and cannot reply, some might consider it unnecessary to detail the charges that might have been brought against him. But I believe in full and fair disclosure. The changes I propose to the bylaws are not trivial, and you need to know why I would suggest something so drastic. The fact is, the Familias Regnant is sick, on its deathbed, and if we don’t act quickly, the patient could die. Will die, I believe, without our intervention.”

Buttons muttered something Brun couldn’t quite hear. She glanced at him; for an instant, with his mouth compressed, he looked exactly like his father in a rage.

A light flashed on the panel: someone asking for the floor. Hobart shook his head and went on. “There’s no time for discussion, we need to get this done, get it out of the way, so we can move forward.”

“There’s always been time for discussion—” someone yelled loudly, from a few rows over. Brun queried her panel. Minor branch of the Dakkers Sept, coded turquoise in the Family database.

“That’s the trouble, all we do is talk!” yelled someone else. Conselline, minor branch, Hobart’s third younger brother.

A gabble of voices rose, and lights flashed on the panel. Hobart banged the gavel repeatedly and finally the turmoil died down. Brun, looking around, saw angry, flushed faces everywhere, all glaring tight-lipped at one another.

How had Hobart Conselline become Speaker? Brun raced through the database, trying to figure out the story behind the story. It had been the emergency Grand Council meeting, held in the hours after the assassination. Emergency meetings did not require the same quorum of Seats . . . so response was limited to those attending in person, or immediately available on an ansible link. Only 23.2 percent of the Grand Council had been polled. Naturally, Lord Thornbuckle’s family had not been present or available, nor had most of their friends. Hobart Conselline had received a majority of votes cast, but it amounted to only 15.8% of the whole. Yet he was acting as if he had a large majority of the entire Council.

“Look behind the obvious,” one of Brun’s instructors had taught her. “Who benefits?” The Consellines, clearly, but how? They were already filthy rich—as rich or richer than the Barraclough Sept—so why this grab for power? What more did they want?

“We’re going to vote now,” Hobart was saying. “Right now, and get it behind us, so we can move on to important external issues.”

The warning chimes of Vote in Progress rang through the chamber, and Brun’s screen lit with the proposals. Had Hobart really read through all of them? She struggled through the convoluted legalese, trying to figure out what they really meant. Kevil Mahoney had always said that legal language had more subtext than any fiction ever written, but she had not actually studied law. Some didn’t look that bad; the reasoning as given had a plausible ring to it. She chewed on her lip, struggling to find the hidden meanings.

Safer to vote against all of them, just in case. She hoped that was safer. She entered her votes, and sat back to watch the others. Kell, tip of his tongue just showing, was marking his votes slowly, one by one. Harlis had finished. And Hobart Conselline . . . Hobart was watching her, she realized.

Time dragged on, as they waited for others to complete their votes. Most seemed to have had their minds made up ahead of time, but a few earnest souls were bent over their desks, clearly checking every word of every proposition, and comparing it to other texts.

The outcome of the voting was less a surprise than it might have been . . . the bylaws changes passed, and the next vote confirmed Hobart Conselline as Speaker for a normal term. The speeches had been confusing; on both sides of what was clearly becoming a deep division, speakers seemed choked with outrage, incoherent. Brun kept quiet, watching carefully and making notes. Buttons, she saw, did the same.

After the meeting ended, they went back to Appledale in the same car, by mutual consent talking only of things they could see from its windows. After supper, they settled to business, and finally Brun’s big brother treated her as an equal.

“I have to say I was impressed with your performance today.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t pout, flounce, flirt, or storm. You sat there being attentive, intelligent, and menacing.”

“Menacing?”

“Didn’t you see our new Speaker watching you during the voting?”

“Yes. Made me itchy.”

“As well it should. The man’s odd, Brun. Well—Mother’s gone to Sirialis, I hear. Are you staying here?”

“For now, yes. I’d planned to be the person on site to deal with the Grand Council, unless you want to take it over.”

“Are you sure? Because if you can keep an eye on the Council, then I can concentrate on what our dear uncle was up to with the various family companies. It’s hard without Kevil—”

“I’m sorry,” Brun said.

He looked at her a long moment, and she knew that he knew what she meant—sorry for everything, for becoming the issue by which the Family lost ground, as well as the reason for their father’s assassination.

“Don’t be sorry for being yourself,” Buttons said finally. “And don’t be sorry for coming back—it’d be worse if you hadn’t.”

“I don’t see how,” Brun said.

“I can think of a dozen ways,” Buttons said. “And so can you, if you take the trouble. But that’s not what matters right now. We’ve got attacks on all fronts—where’d you put the babies, by the way? I don’t want them used as hostages against us.”

“Cecelia de Marktos took them somewhere. She’s trustworthy—”

“Well, unless she puts them in a barn and tries to turn them into racehorses,” Buttons said, with the first genuine grin she’d seen on his face. “Grooms, I wouldn’t mind, but you never know with her.”

Brun laughed aloud. “You’re right—but I don’t think she has them with her.”

“Good. As long as they aren’t going to cause us trouble—”

“Not for another ten or twelve years . . . I don’t want to think about them as teenage boys. . . .”

“If we have a Familias Regnant in ten years, we can worry about it then.” Brun glanced at him; his face had gone somber, and he looked far older than his age.

“Buttons—do you agree with Hobart about that?”

“That the Familias is in danger, yes. That it’s in danger because of lax leadership in the past, no. It’s his policies that endanger it most. This business of restricting the franchise—one way we’ve had of relieving strain between Families is that the small know they can enlarge by having more Seatholders. That’s let them take in outsiders as clients. Dad said the movement of power from one sept to another was a major factor in keeping the Familias stable. That’s why they instituted the kingship, originally.”

“Why can’t Hobart see it?” Brun asked.

“I don’t know. Back when I was a boy of maybe ten—and you were still in the nursery—I overheard some of the adults talking about how the new rejuv methods might change things politically. But of course, I was too young to follow it. I remember Dad and Uncle Harlis arguing, though. When I asked questions in school, nobody seemed to understand them, and later, when I was in the Royals, everyone talked as if the repeating rejuvenations were just a way to stay young for a normal lifespan, not an actual extension. It was—oh, the year that Lepescu came to Sirialis, I think it was—that Charlie Windetsson got drunk at a mess dinner and pointed out that if our parents never grew old, we had no reason to grow up. There was no future for us. Everyone laughed, and drank, and—I remember a sort of cold chill. I left the party early, called Sarah, and that’s when we decided to marry.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well . . . you were being wild at the time. Most of our set were, and I suddenly saw it myself. Our parents had been more grown up—working in family business in some way—by the time they finished their education. Sometimes even before. But their parents barely lived past their Centuries, and retired from Family work in their eighties. The first rejuv upset that a little, but the new one . . . I came home, and talked to Dad about it. He promised that he and Mother would resign their duties while I was still young—he transferred stock to me right after that Hunt Ball, and encouraged me to be active in Council as well as business.”

“And I thought you’d gone all stuffy . . .”

“So I had. But I didn’t want to go from childhood to childhood—rich enough to rejuv and be twenty or thirty all my life, with nothing to do. That’s no way to live—”

“But Uncle Harlis,” Brun said. She wanted information, not a lecture on lifestyle. “What about him?”

“He saw multiple rejuvs as a way of maintaining Family power. He wanted rejuv restricted to the Seated Families at first. So did some others, but the proposal didn’t pass. Then he tried an age restriction: no one under eighty should be eligible. That didn’t pass either, of course. The Ageists, who had used the biological problems with the earlier procedure to make repeated rejuvs illegal, expected his support with the new procedure, but he didn’t go along.”

“So . . . you’re saying the population grew?”

“Not just that. The birth rate in our set actually dropped, because people could wait to have children until they were fifty or sixty or older. It’s the shape of the population that really changed, and the power structure. Age always did confer an advantage of experience, and now it could do so without losing any advantage of physical strength and energy. Younger people needed to find new opportunities because the old weren’t dying—or even retiring. And of course people wanted rejuv, and especially when they found out how useful it was in some kinds of illness and injury. Everyone rich enough wanted it. And the Consellines wanted the profit.”

“Ummm . . . which meant expanding, somehow . . . like Dad’s proposal to open new colonies?”

“As a temporary measure. Some others wanted to annex adjacent territories, but Dad opposed spatial expansion, on the grounds that we couldn’t serve all we had. And why alienate neighbors when we had planets within the Familias outline which could be settled? But he wanted more support for colonies, too—he had been pushing the Colonial Office to make allowances for the less stable ecosystems of the worlds now being opened. That translates into concessions for the companies—and families—purchasing settlement licenses.”

Brun shook her head. “I don’t know enough to follow this.”

“Well, you can learn. Basically, the longer a world is allowed to stabilize after the terraforming treatments, the more easily it can be colonized. Until recently, this required such long-term investment that very few Families would attempt it. When the Familias Regnant came together, the Council agreed to a joint investment at one world a year. We only know how much better the old-treated planets are because of the Lost Worlds.”

“Paradise, Babylon, Oasis,” Brun said, to prove she was listening.

“Yes. All treated in the second wave of outreach, and all lost to the records for centuries in the Cluster Wars. So they had between seven and eight hundred years of stabilization after treatment. Nothing like the mature ecosystem of a planet in its natural state, but for human purposes vastly superior to most of the worlds we used . . . only now are others approaching the quality. The scouts who found Paradise found mature forests with 300-year-old timber . . . grasslands with deep soil, not a shallow dark layer . . . estuaries rich in shellfish rather than a few colonies that had still to be nurtured. A stable climate, reasonably predictable. Nobody had known what difference another five centuries could make. If we could let all terraformed planets have that long, colonists would have a much easier time. Not easy—it’s never easy—but easier.”

“But temporary, you said. Was he thinking of enforcing a limit on reproduction, or on rejuv?”

“I’m not sure. He talked about both, from time to time. But the Familias is so complicated . . . you know, we have planets populated mostly by free-birthers, and others with mostly zero-growthers, and probably eight dozen religions, not even counting the fringes. Any policy one group approves will offend someone else. And meanwhile, the percentage of the population that had been rejuved was going up every year. Every survey taken showed that Rejuvenants wanted and expected to rejuv again.”

“I wonder how the Guernesi have handled it,” Brun said. “They’ve had the process as long as we have, and they aren’t falling apart.”

“I don’t know . . . it’s a good question. Do they have our diversity of beliefs?”

“And I don’t know that one.” Brun shook her head. “This is seriously complicated stuff, Buttons.”

“It’s a seriously complicated universe, and we’re right in the middle of a whirlpool if we don’t figure it out.” He gave her a long, steady look. “You’re a grownup now, and you’ve volunteered for the job of being Council watchdog for our family. This is what it takes.”

“Being a dizzy blonde was such fun,” Brun said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

In the working passengers’ mess, the men had played the newsvid cube of the assassination and aftermath three times already without more than a few muttered cusswords. Then one of them, the oldest, shut off the player.

“So we’re too late and somebody got ’im first, so what do we do?” His glance challenged them.

“Git the rest of ’em. If he’s dead maybe they won’t be watchin’ so close. I could take that yellow-haired slut.”

“I keep thinkin’ about the chillen, Dan . . . by rights, they should be our’n.”

“Ben’s right,” another said. “Somebody stomps the rattler’s head, no matter how it thrashes around it’s not gonna attack nobody. We don’t need to be goin’ around killin’ people like criminals. But gettin’ our chillen back, that’s a good thing to do.”

“But how’re we gonna find ’em? Sposin’ they’ve already been sent to new homes?”

Dan held up his hand. “We don’t know that yet. First thing is, we’ll look for ’em in a group. Prob’ly we’ll hear, if we keep our ears open. Every port we come to. Now mind—nobody gets drunk, like that idiot on Zenebra—” They all knew about that; a whole shipload had been captured. “No fights, no arguments. We have a mission—a new mission—and that’s the rules. Got it?”

“Yessir.”

The next day, the Jessy came into Goldwyn Station, and the working passengers debarked after checking off their assignments with the captain. For once, the captain thought, working passengers had actually worked—without complaint—and he added the optional minimal pay chit to their goodbye handshake. Whatever anyone said about fanatics, he always liked to hire the pious brotherhoods, because he could count on them to work hard and keep their fingers off the cargo.

The Goldwyn spacers services section, or S-3, offered a variety of cheap lodging, food, and drink. This was an all-civilian station, rarely visited by R.S.S. ships, and the diversity of Familias spacefaring cultures showed up in decor and cuisine both. The men followed their noses to something with a familiar smoky-meat odor, and settled at one long table. On one wall, a newsvid showed scenes from some business meeting, but they didn’t recognize any of the faces or references. Then a face they did recognize, a blonde woman with short curly hair.

“—Any comments on the outcome of the meeting, Sera Meager-Thornbuckle?” The announcer’s accent was hard to follow.

“No . . . you realize our family is still in mourning . . .” The blonde woman’s accent was, if possible, worse.

“Yes, Sera, but what do you think of a Conselline as Speaker?”

“Excuse me—” She turned away, and the camera followed, showing her getting into a long dark-maroon car.

“Damn,” one of the men said. “It’s her!”

“You men are all the same.” That was a waitress in red checks and blue denim, slapping menus down in front of them. “Just because she’s young and rich and pretty—”

“We’ll have chili,” Dan said. “All of us—a bowl of chili each, and some crackers.” His glance silenced the others, who looked ready to say things they must not say.

“An’ some beer?” the waitress asked.

“No . . . not yet, anyway.” Not until they’d found out what they wanted, where the women and children were. If they could find them and bring them home—even some of them—they’d be honored among men, maybe even more than if they’d managed to kill the Speaker themselves. That would stop the Rangers of Texas True from saying they were nothing but a bunch of wifeless drifters causing trouble.

“Look—” Ben touched Dan’s arm and nodded at the newsvid. There it was again, the picture that had infuriated them all—women and children in the traditional clothes walking down a corridor from a ship’s hatch, guarded by battle-armored troops of the Familias Fleet.

Dan had trouble following the accent of the newsvid announcer, but he did understand Baskar Station. Was that where the women were in the picture, or where they were now? He didn’t know, but they could always go and find out. Somewhere there’d be a bar, and men talking, and someone would know, if he asked the right questions.