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CHAPTER TEN

“If Your Majesty prefers,” Prime Minister Harwich’s voice drifted in through the mental fog, “we could reconvene at a more convenient time.”

Queen Elizabeth snapped her eyes open, realizing only then that she’d closed them. At four and a half months old David was mostly sleeping through the night, but that pattern was broken just often enough to keep her tired and off-balance.

Last night had been one of those exceptions. He’d been especially fussy, Elizabeth had been up three times with him, and she was now paying the price.

There were others who could help with her baby, of course. Many others. They were all willing and able, some of them pushing the line of insistence right to the edge of insubordination.

But Elizabeth was David’s mother, and she was damn well going to do as much of that job as she possibly could.

“I’m fine, My Lord,” she assured Harwich, forcing back a yawn and resisting the urge to rub her eyes. “You were saying, My Lady?”

“I was talking about our analysis of the new grav coil manufacturing techniques Fregattenkapitän Li Gong-hu gave us,” Baroness Crystal Pine said, eyeing her sovereign with the sort of veiled concern that Elizabeth had seen a lot of from everybody in the past four months. “I imagine Emperor Gustav thought it nothing more than a nice, simple goodwill gift, but it’s going to make a huge difference in how we do counter-grav.”

“Anything we can use with the new Phoenix-class frigates?” Dapplelake asked.

“Probably not right away,” Crystal Pine said. “At the moment, the new techniques will probably be most useful for civilian projects. We’ve only begun experimenting with making replacement parts for our impeller drive systems, but I doubt much of this will be directly transferrable to that. I’m sure we’ll pick up some very useful information on the manufacturing side, though, and we may well be able to apply some of what we learn to our assembly lines, including the ones for impeller parts. Frankly, that would be extremely worthwhile in its own right. I’m afraid we’re well behind the curve for modern industrial techniques as a whole, and opening a window on that could be very beneficial. But we’re still buying full impeller rings from the Solarian League for any major construction, and we will be for the foreseeable future, whatever else happens. And I’m afraid that even if we do see some unexpected manufacturing efficiencies, retooling the Navy’s building slips would be too expensive and cost too much time. For now, at least.”

“We also probably don’t want to jump too deeply into this until we know exactly what we’re doing,” Harwich said.

“Agreed,” Crystal Pine said. “We need to be sure we know what we’re doing, and that it’s going to be advantageous enough to justify the inevitable cost—and delays—inherent in any major changes to our existing shipyards before we start making them. I recommend that we start with air-car manufacture. Once we have the techniques down pat and have figured out the benefit/cost parameters, we can decide out how much retooling is worthwhile.”

“I understand,” Elizabeth said, wondering if anyone in the room had missed the fact that Crystal Pine’s own consortium handled the same air-car manufacturing work that she was talking about renovating.

Still, many of the Lords had interests that overlapped their governmental responsibilities and decision-making. All she and Harwich could do was keep an eye on those overlaps and watch for any blatant conflicts of interest.

“Perhaps you could work up a list of lines that would lend themselves to this kind of experiment,” she added.

“I already have, Your Majesty,” Crystal Pine said. “Far and away the best would be Hopstead Manufacturing in Mourncreek.”

“Hopstead,” Elizabeth repeated, trying to hide her surprise. As far as she knew, Crystal Pine had no interests or connections whatsoever in that particular barony.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Crystal Pine said. “Jeffrey Hopstead has three separate assembly lines, so closing down one for retooling would be a smaller impact on his overall production than for most of the other air-car manufacturers. I don’t know Baron Mourncreek very well, but he seems the sort who’d be willing to try something new.”

“I’d agree,” Harwich put in.

“Very well,” Elizabeth said. “Talk to Mourncreek, get your ducks lined up, and let’s see where this goes.”

“I’ll get on it right away,” Crystal Pine promised. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“If there’s nothing else…?” Elizabeth looked around the table.

There was a flurry of head shakes. Then, Crystal Pine lifted a hesitant finger. “I have one more thing, Your Majesty,” she said. “But it’s not really related to this topic. More personal, really.”

“Then perhaps you’d be good enough to stay behind a few minutes, My Lady,” Elizabeth suggested. “The rest of you, thank you for coming. I’ll look forward to hearing what else you’re able to glean from the Andermani visit.”

There was the usual scuffling of chairs as the assembly collected their tablets and filed past the bodyguards flanking the door. A moment later, Elizabeth and Crystal Pine were alone. “Now, My Lady?” Elizabeth invited.

“It’s a small thing, really,” Crystal Pine said, wincing a little. “But I was recently contacted by a citizens’ group in Serisburg. They’re concerned that, with their duchy now absorbed into the Crown’s lands, that the name will be changed or even dropped completely.”

“And they came to you with this?” Elizabeth asked, frowning.

Crystal Pine’s nose wrinkled. “Yes, I know. My best guess is that since I’m the one who replaced Duke Serisburg in the Lords that I…I don’t know. Owe them, I suppose.”

“They do realize you had nothing to do with the duke, don’t they?”

“I would certainly hope so,” Crystal Pine said fervently. “Actually, I never even met the man. Regardless, Your Majesty, I promised the group that I’d ask you about it if I had a chance.”

“And so you have,” Elizabeth said. “And you can assure them that no one has any intention of eliminating Serisburg’s name or identity from the Star Kingdom.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Crystal Pine said, bowing her head. “I just…I hate zero-sum games. You know? Someone has to lose so that someone else gains.” Her lip twitched. “If I may be so bold, Your Majesty, I dare say no one on Manticore understands that feeling as completely as you yourself do.”

“Probably not,” Elizabeth said, wincing. Her brother and niece having to die to make way for her own ascension to the Throne… “I’ve never much liked zero-sum games either.”

“Indeed.” Crystal Pine stood up. “And now, Your Majesty, I’ve taken up enough of your time. Thank you for your assurances. I’ll be sure to pass them along to the Serisburg citizens. Good day, Your Majesty.”

“Good day, My Lady.”

Elizabeth watched her trace out the same path to the door as the other lords and ladies had just taken.

As she’d similarly traced out the same path that Elizabeth herself had taken?

Stop that! she ordered herself firmly. Remembering the past was vital; dwelling on it was a trap. Life happened; one accepted and learned from it; one moved on.

Still, maybe their shared history was one reason Crystal Pine was one of Elizabeth’s most fervent supporters. Both of them knew how it felt to have been thrust by violent circumstances into political life.

Elizabeth sighed as the door again closed. God grant, she prayed silently, that the Crown never gains any future supporters in that same way.

* * *

Finding the public accident-scene pictures was easy. Chomps accomplished that minor chore the first evening.

Finding anything else proved to be a serious challenge.

There was nothing further than a handful of details in the public police records. There was nothing in the records of the towing company that had moved the duke’s wrecked air car. There was nothing useful on the social net, or in discussion groups, or people’s personal pages. He even dipped his toe into some of the conspiracy threadways, with results that were entertaining in their own grotesque way but of no help.

If he’d been at his desk in Room 2021, things might have been different. The hacking tools he’d used against so many of the Silesian Confederacy’s computers were eminently adaptable to their counterparts on Manticore.

Though even if he’d had those tools available, Lady Calvingdell probably wouldn’t have let him use them. Delphi’s charter made it laser-edged clear that their resources were only to be turned outward, toward foreign persons and governments, not inward toward the Star Kingdom’s own citizens and institutions. That particular turf was reserved for police and the Royal Investigation Division.

What really drove Chomps up the wedge was that he was within spitting distance of someone who did have access to all those lovely private police records.

The problem was that Terry refused to play ball. She wouldn’t let him into the files, she wouldn’t pull them up herself and then step outside for a cup of tea, she wouldn’t even play Twenty Questions about the details he was most curious about. He tried enlisting her parents to help, and ended up in trouble with both sides: gentle, firm, and vaguely disappointed trouble from Ralph and Eileen; double-barrel verbal trouble from Terry herself.

Maybe they assumed that he would eventually give up. Not a chance.

He went into the forest and studied the accident scene a dozen times after that first visit with Terry. He studied maps, laid out flight paths, tracked the duke’s activities for the month before the accident, and learned everything he could about that particular air car make and model. Given that Serisburg had imported it from the Solarian League, with all the priciness, prestige, and semi-unobtainable tech data that implied, that particular part of the investigation alone took over two weeks.

There was something there. Chomps was sure of it. Something that no one else had seen, or dots no one had managed to connect.

Or, more ominously, dots that no one wanted to connect.

He didn’t believe that particular reading. Not for a minute. It went completely against everything he believed about his people and his nation. In his more sober moments he could only assume that thoughts like that had come from his brief dip into the twisted world of conspiracy theorists.

But if he didn’t want to believe it, he also couldn’t afford to simply dismiss it.

He would follow this as far as he could, to whatever set of truths he could dig up, and let the chips fall where they may.

* * *

He’d been poking at the edges and provoking cold shoulders and annoyance from Terry and her parents for nearly two months when he finally got his first real break.

One of the first things he’d looked for after going through the public pictures of the tragedy was the final disposition of the air car itself. To his chagrin, the records indicated that once the investigation concluded the vehicle had disappeared.

On the surface, that wasn’t particularly surprising or suspicious. Once an accident report was filed the vehicles involved were usually sent to wreckers for salvage or, if the damage was extensive enough, simply sold off as scrap.

But as Chomps dug beneath that surface things got more confusing. The car had disappeared, but there was no official bill of sale. None of the local wreckers or junk yards had a record of receiving it, nor had it surfaced anywhere outside the duchy’s borders. He double-checked against towing service files, again coming up empty.

More than once he considered offering all of this to Terry and seeing if she had any fresh ideas as to what he could try. But given that most of his data had come from hacking various civilian files, that would probably land him in real trouble with her. He had no idea if her standard-issue cuffs could handle Sphinxian wrists, but he was in no hurry to find out.

Then, almost as an afterthought, he thought about checking whether there was anyone in Serisburg who rented out tow trucks. Again he came up dry; but digging further he found that there were heavy-duty tow bars that could be secured between a pair of air cars for the purpose of hauling heavy cargo. Eight such racks had been rented during the relevant time frame: six to construction companies, one to a group who did kayak tours and whose usual carrier broke down, and one to a normal, everyday Serisburg citizen.

A citizen who happened to be the late duke’s vehicle maintenance chief.

A citizen, moreover, who had a secluded vacation home in the Drobne Forest foothills near a town called Whistlestop.

* * *

“Do either of you know how far it is to Whistlestop?” Chomps asked casually as dinner wound to a close three nights later. “The map says half an hour, but the guidebook says it’s closer to one.”

“The guidebook’s probably giving the distance to Emerald Falls,” Ralph said. “You can’t fly all the way there—too much mist and spray for safety—so you have to put down and roll or walk the rest of the way. The nearer edge of Whistlestop itself is only half an hour.”

“What’s in Whistlestop that’s caught your interest?” Eileen asked. “Surely not the Falls—I’ve read that there are far more impressive ones on Sphinx.”

“There are,” Chomps confirmed. “I was just feeling a little cabin-feverish and thought I’d go for an evening flight. Whistlestop is supposed to have a great little ice cream place.”

“You mean Plaza Parlor?” Ralph asked, frowning. “It’s good enough, I suppose, but it’s a little far to go just for a hot fudge sundae.”

“You’re probably right,” Chomps said. “But like I said: cabin fever.”

“Well, watch yourself,” Eileen admonished him. “Unless you go by way of Serisburg Point you’ll have to cross a big chunk of forest, and the trees aren’t equipped with warning beacons.”

“Plus the moon is already down,” Ralph added.

“I’ll be careful,” Chomps promised. The fact that the moon had already set was the main reason he’d chosen tonight in the first place, instead of heading out three days ago when he’d first pinpointed the car’s possible location. Moonlight made things a little too bright for what he suspected would be a black-bag job.

Three minutes later, after helping Eileen clear the table, he was in his air car, flying through the dusk toward Whistlestop.

He’d already decided to take the slight detour around Serisburg Point, partly because it looked less suspicious, mostly because even with traffic monitors recording IDs there was always a little slippage that made it harder to backtrack a given vehicle through a crowd. That would come in handy if he had to leave the Whistlestop area in a hurry.

He drove around the edge of the city and continued on. The sky darkened further, the traffic fading with the light. Then the light and traffic were both gone, and he was there.

He landed on a slight slope a discreet hundred meters away and covered the rest of the distance on foot. A shallow and, fortunately, narrow creek crossed his path at one point, but he was able to jump over it without trouble.

The house had looked modest from the air. From the ground it was even more so, with rough-wood, half-log walls and a shake roof. From the size he estimated it held two bedrooms, or possibly three cramped ones. There were lights on in two rooms in the rear, both covered by translucent window shades, and a small light over the front door. A quick scan with his handheld IR reader was inconclusive, but given that interior security lights didn’t make much sense out here it was likely there was at least one person home.

About ten meters to the side of the house near the front was a garage, its main door opening out onto a small graveled clearing. The garage’s own IR reading was solidly cold, indicating that whoever was inside had been there long enough for his vehicle to cool down. A little ways to the side of the garage was another outbuilding, this one either a large shed or a decent-sized workshop. The former, he decided, noting the lack of any windows on the walls he could see except for a couple of ventilation slits flanking the door.

The garage was the obvious spot to keep the duke’s wrecked air car. But if the Silesian operation had taught Chomps anything, it was that people trying to hide things usually did their best to avoid the obvious.

Keeping one eye on the house’s lighted windows and the other on his footing, he headed for the shed.

The shed door was sealed with a simple key lock. Chomps got it open and off its hasp and slipped inside, closing the door silently behind him. He spent a couple of minutes laying masking film across the ventilation slits, then did the same to the crack under the door. Then, bracing himself, he flicked on his penlight.

Jackpot. The mess of crumpled metal and plastic spread out in several places over the floor could barely be identified as the remains of an air car anymore, but what was left of the ducal crest on one of the crumpled doors made it official.

Chomps took a deep breath. Okay, hotshot. He’d fought for this moment, for the chance to actually see and examine the wreckage. Time to turn that long road into something useful.

He started at the front, mindful of the sharp edges as he ran his light slowly along each part, recording everything as he went. The air car’s sides were next, then the rear, then the roof. The doors were off in their own sections of floor, obviously having been pried off to recover the bodies of the duke’s family. The underside was tricky, but there was enough room between the wreck and the floor for him to reach underneath with his recorder and get most of it.

After that came the interior. The air car had been some kind of stretch model, longer than a standard Manticoran vehicle, with extra-generous legroom between the two front seats and the four in the rear. Now, of course, all that room had been compressed to something less even than a sport coupe. The seats had mostly remained bolted to the floor, though one end of the rear bench had come loose and was angled across the space. All four sets of the rear restraints had been cut when the duke’s wife and three children were extricated from the wreckage, but what was left of the straps had unmistakable signs of stress stretching. The entire rear cocoon had deployed, the bags now hanging limp from their nooks.

The cocoons for the two front seats had also deployed. But neither of the restraint sets had been touched.

He frowned as he ran his light over the left-hand, driver’s side seat. Terry had mentioned that Duke Serisburg hadn’t been wearing his restraints at the time of the crash. He’d assumed at the time she was wrong—no sane person headed into the sky without their restraints. But the restraints hadn’t been cut, and there was no sign of any stress marks.

So why had he taken them off?

Not to look around at the family behind him, as Terry had suggested. That didn’t make any sense. Even if he had a stiff neck or some other malady that made turning difficult, loosening just one of the shoulder straps should have done the trick. There was no reason to unbuckle the whole thing unless he was getting out of the seat.

That wasn’t a problem if he’d had the autopilot engaged. But Terry had said he hadn’t.

Something wasn’t right here. Either something with the duke, or something with the car. Or something with the whole damn thing.

The black box recorder wasn’t where it would have been in a Manticoran car, and it took him a few minutes to find the proper compartment. The box itself was long gone, of course, tucked away somewhere in police custody, but Chomps took a few minutes to examine the fasteners and the molded protective shell that had held it in place. The various other equipment access panels had been torn off, either by the crash or by the investigators, and the instruments, sensor clusters, and control modules were missing. Most of the openings showed heat-stress markings, either from fires due to the crash or from the investigators having to cut them out of their warped mountings.

All of which boiled down to Chomps ending up this little expedition pretty much right where he’d started. Nothing he’d seen in the wreckage contradicted the details and overall conclusion he’d seen in the public data base. Now, more than ever, he needed to see the full police report.

Still, it was always possible he’d missed something that further thought would reveal. It wouldn’t hurt to take another pass through the air car’s interior. He activated the recorder, starting with the front…

And frowned. Duke Serisburg had been sitting there. He’d unfastened his restraints, supposedly to look over his shoulder at his ailing child, lost control of the vehicle, and slammed into that monster tree near the Three Corners Inn.

But if that was what had happened…

He was still frowning at the air car when he heard the soft creak of the door hasp being opened.

Instantly, he dowsed his light and dropped to a crouch behind the vehicle. Either he’d left some gap uncovered, or the house’s occupant was in the habit of coming out to the wreck every evening to say good-night. He braced himself, shading his eyes…

Abruptly, the door was flung open. For a second Chomps could see a figure framed against the faint starlight; and then, right in the center of the silhouette a light came on toward him.

Amateur. Even as Chomps tried to crouch a little lower, his hand shading his eyes from the worst of the glare, he could take small comfort in the fact that at least he wasn’t facing a trained professional. Standing with even a faint light behind him made his visitor a perfect target; and if a lurker inside the shed had missed that opportunity to take his shot, turning on a light right in front of him made him an even better target.

“Who’s there?” a hoarse voice called tensely. “I know you’re there. Come out. Come out with your hands up. Or I’ll shoot.”

Chomps sighed to himself. Except that the silhouette hadn’t had a weapon, and the light sweeping across the shed wasn’t showing the slight but unmistakable bobble that would have accompanied the drawing of a heretofore concealed gun. With the threat sounding almost like an afterthought, Chomps was ninety percent sure he was facing an unarmed man.

He could take him, of course. The man was starting down one side of the car, waving his light at each shadow or cubbyhole he passed. All Chomps had to do was work his way around the other side, keeping the wreckage between them, and them come up behind him.

On the other hand, if he could do that, he could just as easily sneak around the side of the car, get to the door, and get the hell out of here.

That scenario carried its own risks, of course, not least of which was the need to then make his way through unfamiliar terrain in the dark and get back to his air car before the man could chase him down. Worse, if he got driven off the right path, he might have to abandon the vehicle completely.

But there was really no way he could justify attacking a citizen who was just protecting his home and property. Keeping the wreck between him and the light, he eased toward the door. Might be a good idea to head off toward the house to throw in a little misdirection, he decided, before doubling back and heading for his car. The man with the light was at the rear of the wreck; Chomps reached the front, glanced over his shoulder to make sure the doorway was clear.

He was gathering his feet under him to make his dash for freedom when a dark shape dropped out of the sky onto the grassy ground directly in his path. Chomps barely had time to twist his face away before a brilliant floodlight blazed out from the air car, filling the shed with light.

“Police! Freeze!” a voice snapped from behind the light.

A very familiar voice.

Terry.

“Yeah, yeah, right,” he muttered in disgust, holding his hands out where she could see them. Damn, damn, damn.

“Well, well,” Terry said, the light rocking slightly as she got out of the vehicle and stalked toward him. “Chomps. Imagine my surprise.”

“Hello, Terry,” Chomps said. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure it is,” she countered. “Thank you, Mr. Devereux—you can go back inside. I’ll screen you later and get your statement.”

“Wait a minute,” the homeowner—Devereux—said, sounding confused. “You know this man?”

“We have a passing acquaintanceship,” Terry said. “Go ahead—I’ve got this.”

“Well…okay,” Devereux said hesitantly as he started back along the side of the wreck. “Shouldn’t I see if anything’s missing first?”

“I doubt he teleported anything out before you spotted him,” Terry said. “Don’t worry, if he took something we’ll find it when we process him. Really, Mr. Devereux—just go.”

The man paused as he passed Chomps, peering briefly at him through the glare of the floodlight, then continued past and out the door.

“Turn around,” Terry growled. “Hands behind your back.”

“Your parents turn me in?” Chomps asked as he obeyed. “Not sure if that qualifies as probable cause.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t bandy around words like probable cause,” Terry said. “Jailhouse lawyers aren’t popular in Serisburg.”

“I was just asking,” Chomps said mildly.

“And if you must know, Dad told me you’d said you were coming to Whistlestop for ice cream,” she continued. “I was en route when Devereux’s screen came in to the sheriff’s department. I figured it was you, so I said I’d take it and burned air. Devereux was told to wait until I got here. I guess he got impatient.”

“Or maybe worried?” Chomps suggested. “You knew he had the wreck, didn’t you?”

“Of course we did,” Terry said, walking up behind him. There was the subtle clatter of cuffs—

“I wouldn’t,” Chomps warned.

“Why, because you can break me in half? Don’t even think it.”

“No,” Chomps said, mentally crossing his fingers. “Because if you put those cuffs on me we may never find out who murdered Duke Serisburg.”


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