House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion (4 page)

“I have reason to believe he’s at least a bit more sympathetic to my wild-eyed lunacy than Sir Frederick,” Roger said. “Captain Wyeth’s his chief of staff these days. He’s been, ah, priming the pump a bit for me, I think. And if I very quietly suggested to Pablo that it might be a good idea to have the heir to the throne closer to hand, and if
he
suggested it to Sir William, and if Sir William suggested it to Truman, well—”

He shrugged, and his mother nodded. Slowly at first, then with increasing approval.

“I see your father was right when he said you’d learn plenty about politics and infighting with the Fleet.” She stopped nodding and smiled a bit bittersweetly, remembering her husband. Then she shook herself and her eyes narrowed as she contemplated her son. “On the other hand, why do I have the feeling you’re planning to hit more than one bird with that particular rock?”

“Because you know me so well.” His own smile was fleeting, but it was also much closer to a grin. “If I have to give up
Daimyo
, then I know what I want instead, and I think we can probably convince Sir William to give it to me.”

“And that would be what, precisely?”

“Well, I don’t want a dirt-side command, that’s for sure. And I’m sorry, Mom, but I’d cut my throat if they tried to stick me in BuPlan.”

His shudder was only partly feigned. Vice Admiral Bethany Havinghurst, as head of the Bureau of Planning, also headed ONI, which meant she was responsible for the intelligence analyses Admiral Truman used to justify his emphasis on Silesia, instead of worrying about “the remote possibility” that the People’s Republic might someday become a threat to the Star Kingdom. The possibility of becoming a staff weenie shuffling papers somewhere in the bowels of BuPlan—and with an idiot like Edward Janacek as his direct superior—held no appeal at all.

“That’s what you
don’t
want,” his mother observed. “What is it you
do
want, dear?”

“BuWeaps,” he said, and his voice was suddenly very, very serious. “Lomax isn’t who I’d have chosen to head BuWeaps, Mom, but she’s at least a little more open-minded than Truman or Havinghurst. I think she’s too conservative in her approach, under the circumstances, but she’s not part of the ‘old boy and girl network’ the way Truman and Low Delhi are. I’d like to get more hands-on experience with our R and D programs, and BuWeaps is small enough—way
too
small, in fact, given what’s going on—that a lieutenant commander would be at least a moderately middle-sized fish. I think I could actually do some good over there.”

“More than at BuShips?” Samantha asked shrewdly.

“
Lots
more than at BuShips.” Roger grimaced. “Low Delhi’s an idiot. Or his policy recommendations are idiotic, at any rate.”

That wasn’t something he could have said to a fellow Navy officer, of course, nor was it anything he’d
ever
say in public, but that didn’t make it untrue. Third Space Lord Robert Hemphill, the Baron of Low Delhi, headed the Bureau of Ships, responsible for the construction and maintenance of the Navy’s space stations and vessels, and he did not respond well to criticism, however constructive.

“In fairness, I don’t suppose he’s any more of an idiot than a few other senior officers I could name,” he continued. “The problem is he’s got too much invested on a personal and a professional level in the building policies Truman’s been driving for the last several T-years. He’s not going to recommend any radical changes, and BuShips is too damned big. I’d disappear into it and never be seen again—professionally speaking, that is—until
my
coronation!”

“And you really think you could have some influence with Lomax?”

“I think it’s at least possible,” Roger replied. “Like I say, Dame Carrie’s a little too conservative for my tastes, but I understand why she is. In fact, in some ways I have to agree with her.”

“Excuse me?” His mother sat back in her chair, and Magnus bleeked a laugh as he tasted her emotions. “You actually
agree
with one of the space lords?”

“I
did
say ‘in some ways,’” he pointed out with a smile. “And the truth is, Mom, none of them are malevolent, ill-intentioned manipulators. I’ll admit I don’t much
like
Truman, and I think Havinghurst is too much of a brown-noser where he’s concerned, but he’s absolutely sincere in what he believes the Navy’s requirements are. Low Delhi’s more concerned about keeping his skirts clean than I’d like—or than someone who’s attained his superiority
needs
to be, for that matter. I mean, my God, the man’s
Third Space Lord!
It’s not like his career’s going to turn into a dismal failure if he should slip up and do something innovative for a change. But despite that, I think his positions are sincere and I don’t doubt that he’d put patriotism above career if he were genuinely convinced the situation required it. The problem is that he doesn’t think there’s anything
wrong
with the situation, and nobody’s going to be able to change his mind about it, as far as I can see.

“As for Countess Mailey, she’s doing an excellent job at BuMed. I don’t think anyone could complain about her. Earl Three Pines is too much in lockstep with Truman over at the BuTrain, but that’s inevitable. The First Space Lord has the overriding voice when it comes to formulating operational and strategic doctrine, and that’s the way it ought to be, however . . . inconvenient I personally may find it at the moment. And I actually
like
Sir William.”

“Well, that’s nice to hear,” Samantha said dryly. “But what’s this business about agreeing with Lomax?”

“Mom,” Roger’s voice turned suddenly very serious, “you know how much I’ve been thinking about this ever since the intelligence types started warning us about Haven. And the truth is that just like I said in that first letter to the
Proceedings
, we can’t go toe-to-toe with the kind of navy Nouveau Paris can build if it really puts its mind to it. We’re a hell of a lot richer on a per-capita basis than almost anyone else in the galaxy, but we just not
big
enough, and unless we want to start conquering people ourselves, there’s no way we’re going to
get
big enough in the time I’m afraid we’ve got.”

His mouth twisted as if he’d bitten into something sour.

“We’ve got what’s probably the biggest, most efficient single-system shipbuilding infrastructure in known space, but it’s overwhelmingly oriented around building civilian ships for private owners.
Hephaestus
and
Vulcan
can churn out freighters like nobody’s business, but we don’t have the scale of
military
building capacity Haven’s already built up, and all of your reports suggest they’re still increasing that capacity when we haven’t even
started
increasing ours yet. And even if that weren’t true, they’re getting bigger with every system they gobble up. Even with the BLS’ drain on their economy, they’ll probably be able to lay down at least twice as many ships as we’ll be able to, especially when we’re stuck with peacetime budgetary constraints and they’re already operating on a wartime footing.”

Samantha’s expression had darkened with every word her son said. Not because she disagreed with him, but because she
couldn’t
disagree with him.

“I absolutely agree with what you and Sir Abner are trying to do,” he continued. “We’ve
got
to build up our wall of battle, but even if Parliament was willing to give you the budgets you’re asking for, we still couldn’t match the Peoples’ Navy’s numbers. That means we’ve got to have
qualitative
superiority, and enough of it to offset their
numerical
superiority. I realize that’s why Sir Abner’s pushing for superdreadnoughts, although I don’t think he’s going to get them yet. Not with Truman still arguing about the need for increasing numbers of medium-weight platforms for Silesia and commerce protection and the Conservatives and Liberals denying Haven poses any sort of credible threat. So as far as I can see, we’ve got to find a way besides sheer tonnage to give us that qualitative edge, which is why I say Dame Carrie’s more conservative than I’d really like. I think we need to be pushing the envelope, working to find some kind of technological equalizer, and she’s not really in favor of blue-sky concepts.

“But I understand
why
she isn’t, and it’s hard to blame her. The
Proceedings
did an interview with her a few months back, talking about the
Samothrace
’s weapons suite, and she said something very interesting. ‘A ship-of-the-wall is too important, too big a financial investment and too big a piece of our Navy’s combat potential, to be an experiment.’” He looked at his mother across the table. “She’s not about to go haring off after some elusive, technological silver bullet. Some sort of . . . of
panacea
, I suppose. Not unless and until she’s convinced it’s going to be a significant improvement on what she’s already got, at any rate. With the Star Kingdom’s military security at risk, it’s her
job
to avoid buying into a fleet mix that turns out not to work, and she takes that seriously. But she’s also still wedded to the notion that one lonely little star system can’t possibly be capable of pushing R and D farther and faster than something like the Solarian League. That’s why she’s continuing the policy—the
long-standing
policy, to be fair; she’s not the one who originated it—of emulating the SLN instead of pushing the envelope right here at home.”

“And you seriously think we
could
push ‘farther and faster’ than the League?” Samantha asked.

“I think we damned well better find out whether or not we can, Mom,” Roger said grimly. “I think we need to increase BuWeaps’ R and D funding. I think we need to find the best talent we can to look at every conceivable way we can improve our war-fighting capability. I think we need to keep it as ‘black’ as possible while we do it. And I think that if we
can’t
come up with some kind of ‘equalizer,’ then in the end, we’re screwed, no matter what happens.”

September 1850 PD

“
I’M SURE YOU CAN UNDERSTAND
why I might have a few . . . reservations about this particular routine personnel transfer, Commander,” Dame Carrie Lomax said dryly. Lomax was in her early sixties, her red hair going steadily gray, and her blue eyes were shrewd as she contemplated the newest addition to her command. “I can understand why it might have seemed like a good idea to Earl Mortenson and even to Admiral Spruance. I’m not too sure it’s going to be a good idea from
my
perspective, however.”

“I beg your pardon, Ma’am?” Roger Winton said respectfully, standing in front of her desk with Monroe on his shoulder.

“Just between the two of us, it’s going to be difficult for most of my people to forget who your mother is, Commander Winton.” Lomax leaned back in her chair. “Speaking for myself, I find your insistence on being treated like any other Queen’s officer laudable, but I doubt there’s much point pretending that everyone around you is
really
going to think you’re just one more lieutenant commander. And that leads me to all of the waves I can’t help thinking you’re likely to send scudding across my own personal hot tub here at BuWeaps.”

“It’s not my intention to make waves, Ma’am. In fact—”

“Please.” She raised one hand, interrupting him. “I didn’t fall off the produce shuttle yesterday, Commander. And that wasn’t intended as a criticism, really. But I
have
read your letters in the
Proceedings
, as well as reviewing your file, and your performance reports, and the systems critiques and analyses in your end-of-commission reports. With all of that rattling around in the back of my mind, I can’t
quite
convince myself that Sir William just decided out of a clear blue sky that BuWeaps was the ideal place to put you. And that suggests to my naturally suspicious personality that someone else might have suggested to him. Which, Commander”—she eyed him very levelly—“brings me back to
you
.”

Roger Winton didn’t need the tip of the treecat’s tail brushing very gently against his lower back or the true-hand resting lightly on the top of his head for balance to realize he’d underestimated Admiral Lomax rather badly. He thought hard for a moment, then shrugged.

“I suppose there’s some fairness in your point, Ma’am.” He smiled briefly. “I didn’t call in any favors to get what I wanted, but I did . . . suggest BuWeaps to Sir William after the Prime Minister pointed out to my mother that the Star Kingdom can’t really have me gadding about the Confederacy any longer. And I’ll admit I had a bit of an ulterior motive.”

“Wonderful,” Lomax sighed. “Another one.”

“I beg your pardon, Ma’am?” Roger said a second time, but she only shook her head and punched a combination into her desktop com.

“Yes, Admiral?” a baritone voice with an obviously foreign accent said from the com.

“Come in here, Jonas. I’ve got someone you need to meet.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Lomax sat back once more, regarding Roger with a somewhat odd expression. A few moments later, her office door slid open and a tallish, dark-haired, gray-eyed commander—obviously at least a few years older than Roger, without prolong—stepped through it. He glanced at Roger without apparent recognition, then came briefly to attention before Lomax’s desk.

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“Commander Winton, I’d like you to meet Commander Adcock,” Lomax said a bit dryly. “I think you’re going to be working for him. Jonas, Commander Winton. I’m sure you’re likely to recognize him from the HD and the ’faxes, but we’re not supposed to know who he is. Or, since we actually have working brains, we’re supposed to
pretend
we don’t know who he is.”

Her expression was humorous, but something in her blue eyes made it plain she was serious, and Adcock nodded. Then he turned to Roger and extended his right hand.

“Welcome aboard . . . Commander Winton,” he said.

“Have a seat,” Adcock invited, waving at the two bare-bones chairs sitting in front of his equally bare-bones desk in his small cubicle of an office.

Roger inspected the chairs for a moment, carefully removed the box stuffed with chip folios from the less cluttered one, and settled into it. Monroe hopped down from his shoulder and started rummaging curiously through another box—this one full of discarded folios—and Adcock smiled.

“First time I’ve actually met a treecat,” he admitted. “He’s bigger than I expected.”

“Monroe’s one of the larger ’cats I’ve ever met myself, Sir,” Roger replied. “I hope there’s nothing critically important in that box, but he won’t damage them. He just likes to play with them. He’s got half a dozen sets of building blocks at home, too.”

“I see.” Adcock studied him for a moment, then sighed. “I see you’re serious about military formality, too. I appreciate that, but I have to tell you I’m not entirely comfortable with your calling
me
‘Sir.’ I know that’s been the tradition with your family for a long time, and I can appreciate it, but I didn’t grow up on Manticore. I’m finding it’s a bit difficult for me to pretend you aren’t a prince.”

“It’s a problem sometimes,” Roger acknowledged. “But the Navy’s a military hierarchy, Sir.” He emphasized the rank title very slightly. “That’s the seniority that has to be observed, at least on the Navy’s clock.”

“I see,” Adcock repeated, sitting back in his own chair. “Then I’ll just have to learn to live with it.” He smiled. It was a fleeting expression, but the twinkle in his eye seemed genuine to Roger. “I’m sure it won’t be any harder than some of the other things I’ve had to adapt to over the years.”

“I hope not, Sir. I don’t want it to be a problem for anyone, but my family’s found it’s best to get started on the right foot. If we don’t, then as sure as God made little green apples, we’re going to find an ass-kisser screwing everything up at some point.”

Adcock’s lips twitched and he shook his head.

“I don’t think you’ll have that particular problem in our shop, Commander. Since at the moment, ‘our shop’ consists of you, me, a young fellow named Sebastian D’Orville, and half a dozen enlisted personnel.”

Roger felt his lips tighten, and Monroe’s head came up, looking in his person’s direction. Adcock glanced at the treecat, then looked back at Roger with a shrewd expression.

“I’m guessing from your friend’s reaction that you were less than delighted to hear that, Commander. And I don’t really blame you. It does sound like one of those makework little offices that get attached like pre-space barnacles to every military organization. We’re not going to get much done with that short a personnel list, are we?”

“Well, since you ask, Sir, I’d have to say that, no, it doesn’t sound like we are,” Roger replied slowly. “On the other hand, I don’t think you
would
have asked if the answer was quite that simple.”

“Indeed not,” Adcock agreed. “You see, Commander Winton, I’ve been banished. I made a few too many noises about possible improvements in our hardware that no one wanted to hear—especially over at BuShips. I was coming along quite nicely as a yard dog before that happened; but then, somehow, I wasn’t getting the duty slots that would have moved me up within BuShips. And then I was ‘counseled’ by a representative from BuPers who suggested someone with my talents and mindset might be more comfortable over at BuWeaps. That was when Admiral Hewitt was Fourth Space Lord.”

He regarded Roger expressionlessly, and Roger stifled a wince. Adenauer Hewitt had been of the opinion that fire was still too radical an invention to be fully trusted. For all of Roger’s own disagreements with Sir Frederick Truman, he had to admit Truman’s decision to retire Hewitt had been a long overdue breath of fresh air at BuWeaps. Admittedly, he hadn’t thought Lomax was all that much of an improvement, but he was coming to the conclusion that there were several minor points he was going to have to reconsider carefully.

“Now, there are a few things
I
can tell you that Dame Carrie can’t,” Adcock continued, and his eyes were very intent. “On the other hand, and bearing in mind that title I’m not supposed to be calling you by, there’s a certain degree of . . . let’s not call it
‘risk
,’ but that’s possibly a step in the right direction, in doing that. I don’t think she would have handed you over to me if she didn’t want me to brief you in fully, though.”

He paused, and Roger wondered if he was supposed to say something. Since he couldn’t think of anything especially brilliant, he kept his mouth shut, and Adcock snorted in what could have been amusement.

“Admiralty politics are as nasty as any politics in the known universe,” he said after a moment. “There are a lot of powerful egos involved; nobody gets to be a space lord without paying his or her dues, regardless of family connections, and they expect people to do things
their
way; and the stakes are whether or not we’re going to have an effective Navy, so people are disinclined to pull their punches. And I’ve been following your correspondence in the
Proceedings
. I imagine you’re as well aware as I am of just how . . . irritating your comments have been in certain senior quarters?”

“Something of the sort
has
been intimated to me,” Roger acknowledged. “Politely, of course, bearing in mind that title you’re not supposed to be calling me by.”

“I’m afraid they were a little less polite to me,” Adcock said cheerfully. “And Dame Carrie’s too good at playing the game to tilt at any windmills. Sir Frederick made it abundantly clear what his spending priorities are—both in terms of platform procurement and in terms of R and D—when he helped kill the rest of the
Samothrace
program. Given his seniority and his current position, locking horns with him would be . . . counterproductive. At best, it’d end up wasting a lot of energy, burning a lot of political capital, and not accomplishing a hell of a lot. Understand me, that’s not because Sir Frederick has any ulterior motives; it’s just that he knows what he knows that he knows, and as the man responsible for calling the shots, he’s going to do it the way his own best judgment says he should. And God knows he was absolutely right about how many eighty thousand-ton cruisers we can build for every seven
million
-ton superdreadnought we
don’t
build. I may not fully agree with the decisions he makes, and I have to say that I’d just as soon not have my kneecaps broken by someone as good at political infighting as he is, but I understand why he feels the way he does and I can follow his logic, even if I think it’s flawed.

“So can Dame Carrie, and she’s not about to wreck her personal working relationship with him and create the kind of general disruption that fighting with him about R and D direction in public would produce. Especially not”—he shot Roger a very level look—“when Sir Frederick’s going to be retiring within the next three T-years. No one knows who’ll be tapped to replace him as First Space Lord at this point, but with Baron Castle Rock as First Lord, it seems likely that whoever it is will be more supportive of the baron’s policies. Which I presume must bear at least some faint resemblance to your
mother’s
policies, given how firmly she’s supported him.”

“I think that would be a not unreasonable assumption, Sir,” Roger said, picking his words slowly and carefully, and Adcock smiled crookedly.

“Well, what Dame Carrie’s done is to create what she’s rather grandiloquently dubbed the ‘Concept Development Office.’ Um, that’s
us
, Commander. You, me, Lieutenant D’Orville, and a batch of remarkably senior and closemouthed ratings and petty officers from the various technical branches. We don’t appear under that particular title on any of the BuWeaps organizational charts, and we don’t have an actual R and D budget, and no one’s letting us play with any hardware at the moment. But we
do
have direct access to Dame Carrie and quite a remarkable reach in terms of the information available to us. We’re not being allowed to do any development, but we’re doing one hell of a lot of
research
.”

“What sort of research, Sir?”

“We’re going through every technical report ONI’s generated in the last twenty T-years, Commander,” Adcock said flatly. “And we’re going through every report any of our reservists serving in the merchant fleet might happen to file between voyages. We’re also auditing every current R and D project BuWeaps is being allowed to pursue and looking back at all the ones BuWeaps
wasn’t
allowed to pursue, and we have subscriptions to all of the Manticoran—and Beowulfan—
civilian
technical journals, as well as the SLN’s
Naval Quarterly
. And the reason we’re doing that, Commander Winton, is because it’s our job to look at
everything
, whatever the source, and assume
nothing
about practicality or feasibility until we’ve put it under a microscope and looked at it molecule by molecule. For example, this”—he tapped the reader on his desk—“is Aberu and Harmon’s internal report on that ‘laser head’ they tested back in ’33. The Sollies turned it down, and I can see why, based on the tests. But we’re not going to simply take their word for how useless it was, because that’s our job: to come up with blue-sky ideas, concepts, possibilities—and they can be pretty screwy ones, I’ll grant you—for brand-new research projects.
Off the books
ideas and concepts that Dame Carrie doesn’t have to fight with Admiral Truman or Admiral Low Delhi about because none of them are official. I expect most of them to turn out to be just as impractical and unworkable as Admiral Truman would expect, but it’s just possible we might turn up a few worthwhile nuggets, while we’re at it. And I wouldn’t be so very surprised, actually, knowing Dame Carrie as well as I’ve come to know her, if she didn’t see your assignment to our little workshop as a way to generate friends in high places—possibly even
very
high places—when the time comes to dust off some of those more preposterous ideas and see what happens.”