“Dan!” Romanova was met at the farmhouse’s door not by her silver-haired cousin, but by someone she had not expected to see again unless there really was some kind of afterlife. She respected Linc’s intuition, but when it came to someone he loved as much as he loved their foster son she had honestly doubted him. She had been waiting for the results of Narsai Control’s investigation into the trader Triad’s explosion, which of course would include a scan of the debris for the smallest traces of organic remains—which almost always, except in cases where a gargantuan military carrier or a thousand-passenger civilian liner had suffered disaster, could confirm the identities of those who had died when a ship was lost and the debris was accessible for such scanning. Only if that had been completed without finding Dan would she have let herself begin believing that Linc might be right.
Yet here Dan was in front of her, and much as she wanted to throw her arms around him she could not allow herself that luxury. She could only draw in a breath of startled joy, and exhale it as his name.
“Better get inside, Matushka,” Archer said, and stood back from the door to invite the three females to enter.
Once the door had closed behind them, while Romanova was still hearing it seal itself, she found herself gathered into someone’s arms; but not Dan’s. Ivan Romanov was holding his cousin tightly, with a possessiveness she hadn’t felt in his touch since the days almost fifty years ago when she had been a barely-nubile girl and his intended bride. “Oh, Katy. I wasn’t expecting you, but after what almost happened to Dan I’m so glad to know you’re safe,” he said, and gave her a squeeze that took her breath before he kissed her forehead and let her go.
She’d stuffed her blaster back where it belonged, just in time. Now she stepped back from Johnnie’s arms, and saw that nearby Rachel Kane was being held close by Dan Archer.
Just for a moment. Then Archer was turning to Romanova, although he kept the female gen’s shoulders in the circle of one big arm. He asked tautly, “Were you told about the Triad yet, Matushka?”
“Yes.” Katy was aware of her daughter standing beside her, taking the whole scene in with enormous brown eyes but saying nothing. She had to be frightened, yet Maddy was more poised at the moment than Rachel Kane was with all her years of service experience. She put out a hand and touched the girl’s arm in reassurance as she continued to Archer, “Narsai Control called us, Linc and I are listed as your next of kin. But he didn’t believe you were dead, so when we came out here he stayed behind in case you tried to contact home.”
“Oh, damn,” Dan said. “I’m sorry. How in hell did Maddy wind up on Narsai, Matushka? Now of all times?”
“Papa has to go to Terra, and he asked Mum to keep me with her while he’s gone this time,” Madeleine Fralick announced, answering for herself with that calm confidence that so far nothing had been able to shake. “Who are you, and how do you know my name?”
“This is Dan Archer, sweetheart,” Romanova said, almost absently as she looked around the huge kitchen—traditionally an enormous room in Narsatian farmsteads, a leftover custom from colonial days where families had been large instead of strictly limited and when it had taken many hands to operate a farmstead like this one—and wondered with coldness in her chest why Lorena did not appear. And where Dan’s shipmates were, also. “You’ve heard me mention him before. He was your brother Ewan’s best friend, and now he lives with me and with Linc. So you should think of him as your brother, too, all right?”
“All right,” Maddy said, giving assent as if her mother really had intended for her to make a choice. “But why aren’t you dead, then, if that’s who you are? Your ship blew up, and you were supposed to be aboard her. Everyone said that, anyway.”
“Everyone was wrong,” Archer answered the child, with a taut grin that paid her the compliment of taking her just as seriously as she was taking herself. “We found the explosive before it went off. So a salvage ship went up instead, with Triad’s I.D. code and with enough traces of each of us aboard it so that the debris ought to check out to Narsai Control’s satisfaction.”
“And Triad is in the equipment barn here.” Romanova understood now, and it was so simple that she wanted to kick herself. But the little rented aircar carried no equipment for identifying a warp-capable ship’s I.D. signature. Its instruments had barely been able to tell her enough to make her come in with her suspicions aroused; so she really could not have known, and it was foolish to blame herself for not guessing. “But why, Dan? Who would try to destroy a trade-ship in orbit around a peaceful world like Narsai?”
“I don’t know, Matushka.” Archer gave Rachel Kane’s shoulders a squeeze as he said that. “We’re all former scramblers, so getting rid of us wouldn’t make anyone at Star Service Command shed any tears now that every trained officer they threw away eighteen months ago is apt to be thinking about joining the Rebs. But taking that much trouble to get rid of just five of us, for that reason only? I don’t think so. And that leaves Rachel here as the only reason I can think of why anyone might be that mad at me, or at any of my partners—and even that doesn’t make complete sense, because blowing us up wasn’t going to get her back for her owners. I might have expected them to have one of us grabbed to try to find out her whereabouts, but I wouldn’t expect them to kill when it wouldn’t gain them a thing. The Corporate Jackals just don’t operate that way.”
Romanova was barely hearing the second part of what her foster son had said. She was staring across the kitchen, and she was exhaling with profound relief because Lorena Romanova had entered the room from an inner doorway and was looking at her cousin with eyes that were just the same shade of brown as Katy’s.
Reen was a bit younger than Katy was, and her blood relationship to Ivan Romanov was one degree less close; but it hadn’t been possible for Katy’s parents to have another daughter to fulfill the marriage agreement that Katy had refused to complete, not when Johnnie had already waited an extra decade because Katy’s older sister had died in childhood and her parents had then conceived her to replace their lost heir. So the next branch of the Romanovs had been asked to contribute their daughter, and Lorena had acquiesced gladly.
How odd it was, that Reen hadn’t known Johnnie throughout her childhood as Katy had known him—hadn’t gone to his bed on her thirteenth birthday, to tremendous celebration and warm parental approval, as Katy had done—and yet it was plain that now Reen loved Johnnie in much the same way that Katy loved Lincoln Casey.
The human heart was the strangest of creatures, and no amount of discovering and settling new worlds and establishing new cultures was ever going to alter that simple fact.
Reen came to her husband’s side now, and took his hand in a gesture that conveyed intimacy far more clearly than had Dan Archer’s embrace of Rachel Kane. She said softly, “They’re all battened down to wait it out aboard their ship, dear. They say they don’t want to come inside. Now, this must be our guest—but who’s the young lady?”
Aboard the starship Archangel, Lincoln Casey found himself staring out of his cell in the brig at a person he hadn’t seen since the aftermath of Mistworld.
George Fralick had come into Casey’s life on the same day he had entered Catherine Romanova’s, when the two green ensigns had been assigned to the small ship that was Fralick’s first command. He had been a good captain, Casey remembered. A trifle colorless, it had seemed to the romantic young Morthan hybrid; Fralick was a calm man, who gave orders in a matter-of-fact tone and who left the everyday operations of the ship mostly in his exec’s hands. That was of course just what a skipper was supposed to do, but how many commanders were able to resist the temptation to continually make themselves seen and heard?
Fralick had not found it hard to do that at all, apparently. Yet when the proverbial chips were down, when things were going wrong all around them and when his ship needed its captain in full control, suddenly he would be there. Something about him would change, his tone and his facial expression—everything about him—would be altered, and from that moment until the crisis was over Lincoln Casey and every other officer on board the little Raven would gladly have followed George Fralick into the heart of a supernova.
That had to be the George Fralick with whom Katy Romanova had fallen in love. Linc had suspected it early on in his best friend’s romance with their young captain, and in later years as he became more skilled at reading her thoughts in addition to sharing her feelings he came to realize that he’d been right. The Fralick whom Katy knew in the bedroom was the same one who was seen and heard on the Raven’s bridge when the situation became tense, when the stakes became higher and when the odds got longer.
Yet Linc still wondered, even today as he looked out through another forcefield and saw Fralick standing in front of him in civilian clothing of understated, expensive elegance, whether that romantic and charismatic leader was the real George Fralick revealed—or just another role that Fralick played to near-perfection.
“Comfortable, I hope, Mr. Casey?” That calm voice, courteous and perfectly correct. Except that Linc Casey had once heard it, not aloud but through a telepathic channel to Katy that he had been only half trying to shut down, berating her unmercifully because three young men named Fralick had lost their lives while she was their fleet captain.
Never mind that on the ship carrying the twins, twenty-six other young people had died also. Never mind that Ewan Fralick had been a captain—as old as his father had been in the days of Raven, as responsible for his own fate as it was possible for a Service member to be—and that he had gone to that attempted rescue of his brothers against their mother and commanding officer’s direct orders. Ewan had done just what Katy herself would have done in the same situation, he’d shut off his comm and pretended he did not hear.
The only grief Katy had been spared was that of having to discipline her firstborn child for his act of insubordination. George Fralick certainly had spared her nothing, when the battle was over and the initial peace negotiations were concluded and the professional diplomats finally arrived. Even though she was heavily pregnant with his only surviving child, once he had her alone he’d given her no mercy at all emotionally—and Fralick had the kind of temper that once it was unleashed could make its victim wish he would substitute physical punishment for the wounds his words inflicted.
The marriage had been shaky before, but then it had died. And Linc still wondered how he had managed not to burst into the captain’s quarters aboard the old Firestorm, and take that unnaturally calm-voiced monster apart to stop him from tormenting the woman Fralick was supposed to love. The woman Casey did love, then nearly as much as now.
“I’d be a lot more comfortable if you’d left me where I was a couple of hours ago,” Casey said now, and met Fralick’s gray eyes with his golden ones. “But I don’t suppose reminding you that I’m a citizen of Terra through my father is going to do me any good. Any more than my being an honorably retired Service officer stopped you from doing this to me.”
“I’m afraid not.” Fralick had a way of watching another person, whether supposed friend or declared enemy, that reminded Casey of a scientist watching the subject of an experiment. That was the nature of his calm demeanor, although it had taken the Morthan man more years than he liked to think about to finally figure that out. “Katy made it easy for me, I’d planned a diversion to get you away from her but I didn’t have to bother using it. Do you have any idea why you’re here, Mr. Casey?”
For twenty years Fralick had called his wife’s friend “Linc,” and he hadn’t stopped doing so until the day he learned that Casey and Romanova had become more than friends. The fact that nothing of that kind had happened between them until after his own marriage to Katy was over, had not changed Fralick’s reaction in the least. He always addressed Linc this way now, coldly and correctly and with complete formality.
Fralick was at his most dangerous when he was at his most correct. But Casey did not have to dissemble in order to answer that question with a firm, “No idea at all, George. None.”
He had no reason to go back to calling Fralick by a title, or even by his surname alone. If there was a quarrel between them, it wasn’t of Linc’s making.
“I believe you.” Fralick blinked. “Well. It’s very simple, actually. War with the rest of the Commonwealth is something we in the Outworlds can’t afford. If we allow ourselves to be maneuvered into that situation we’re going to lose the independent and co-equal status that we’ve worked so hard to attain. Following me so far, Casey?”
At least he’d dropped the “mister.” Since he certainly did not mean it as a title of respect, that was fine. Linc nodded. He also stayed seated, on the bunk inside his cell, and let Fralick stand outside.
Damn the man for doing it with such perfect comfort. Fralick continued, “So how do you keep rebel forces from rising, when you have people with combat training and experience on the loose and when they’re able to lay hands on at least some of the hardware that could make them dangerous enough to start the war we mustn’t have? One thing you do is remove their obvious leaders.”
“Huh?” Casey was startled enough so that he reacted to that statement. He had commanded the Star Service Academy for several years, it was true; there was a block of junior officers now starting to work its way up that no doubt had respect for him, maybe even some affection. And during his far longer career as first Katy’s executive officer and then her adjutant after she reached flag rank, he had developed his full share of professional relationships and even of genuine friendships with his brother and sister officers; far more friends than he had ever expected he would have, during the difficult years of his childhood and adolescence.
But to picture himself as a possible leader in a war of rebellion (or of revolution, if you were taking the so-called Rebs’ viewpoint)? That thought had quite honestly never crossed his mind, and he was amazed that it could have crossed anyone else’s.
He said now, “George, that’s crazy. If the Rebs were going to look for a leader, it wouldn’t be me. It would be….”
His eyes widened, became a more liquid shade of gold. And instead of experiencing a stung ego at what he suddenly knew was the truth, he felt his insides turn over with horror.
“That’s right, Casey.” Fralick smiled thinly. “It wouldn’t be you. Not that you couldn’t be a competent flag officer; you never held that kind of rank in your own right, but you’re qualified and you could perform well enough to be damned dangerous. But you always stayed in Katy’s shadow, because that was where you wanted to be. You’re a born No. 2 man, the ‘beta wolf’ in the pack is how some sociologists used to put it when pack theory was popular among military psychologists. Katy’s the alpha, and even though there are still a few older Narsatians who spit at the mention of her name because they remember she refused to follow through with her marriage-promise to the primary Romanov heir—if she was tapped to lead the Rebs, you can bet they’d follow her.”
“Of course they would, but Katy’s about as interested in politics as she is in becoming a Sestian miner.” Casey understood now, perfectly. But he wanted to make Fralick tell him baldly what was going on that had brought him to this prison; so he sat still, and stared at his former captain, and pretended to struggle with the pieces of this already assembled puzzle.
“You’re a horrible liar even when all you’re trying to do is look innocent, Casey,” Fralick said, and he laughed without humor. “Right now Katy doesn’t think she’s interested, but she’s a Narsatian and she could get interested damned fast if something happened to motivate her. She’s also a fighter, and I’ll bet she’s been sitting there in that nice quiet little house just about long enough so that if something worth battling over came and called her name she wouldn’t take long to answer it. So the trick for us, for the people who know how important it is to keep the Rebs from coalescing into a real fighting force, is to make sure Katy can’t become their leader.”
“That sounds damned easy to me. You don’t want someone to be able to lead a fighting force? You kill that someone, and your worries are over.” Casey said it in a tone so even that he was almost mocking Fralick’s famous calm.
And he hit his target, torpedo dead on center. Fralick flushed. The diplomat said quietly, but with the mask down and with hate plain in the wintry gray of his eyes, “That’s where I can’t do my duty the way I ought to be doing it. You’re right, you goddamn Morthan mindfucker! If it were anyone but Katy, I’d have had her killed this morning instead of sending the only child I have left to stay with her. But she is Katy—whether you believe it or not, I still love her—and she is Madeleine’s mother, much as I wish she weren’t. So if she’s ordered to be killed, someone else is going to have to be giving the orders; and right now that happens to be my job.”
“And while you have me where you can do anything you want to me, you figure Katy will do what you tell her. Or at least not do what you tell her not to do. Have I got it right, George?” Casey rose from the bunk at last, and walked deliberately to the forcefield and stood as close to it as he could without causing it to shock him.
Golden eyes and gray ones locked, and after a long moment the human man nodded. “Exactly,” Fralick said. “If it wasn’t for Katy, there’s no way I’d have you where I’ve got you now and not do everything to you that I’ve ever imagined. The mindfucker who turned my wife against me after our boys were killed, safe and warm and well-fed in the brig—and with no idea of just how lucky that makes him!”