House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion Read Free Page A

to remember what to do with it when he’s got it!
    It was an ignoble thought, and Wyeth knew it. Worse, he’d found himself thinking it more often as more and more of the officer corps became prolong recipients. The therapies had reached the Star Kingdom barely fifteen T-years earlier, and Wyeth had been too old to receive them. In fact, Roger himself had been close to the upper age limit when the treatments became available. But Pablo Wyeth was already fifty-two T-years old; the chance that he would make flag rank before his age-mandated retirement was virtually nil, whereas an arrogant prick like Janacek—just young enough to sneak in under the wire for prolong—would probably make it within the next five or six T-years . . . and then have something like a century in which to enjoy it.
    Calmly, Pablo, he told himself. Remember your blood pressure, you antiquated old fart!
    The self-reminder made him snort mentally, and he saw Monroe’s ears flick back upright as the telempathic ’cat picked up on his own amusement.
    “I thought the good Captain went out of his way to be gracious while he was stomping all over your suggestion with both feet,” the commander observed out loud.
    “With all due respect for Captain Janacek’s seniority, I’ve never been especially impressed by the scintillating brilliance of his intellect,” Winton replied. “He was careful about exactly how he phrased himself, though, wasn’t he?”
    “Yes, he was,” Wyeth agreed with a grin. Then his expression sobered slightly. “On the other hand, you realize he never would’ve written that if he didn’t know quite a few other officers—especially senior ones—agree with him. I know you don’t really like me to mention this, Roger, but it takes a fair amount of chutzpah to publicly sign your name to something likely to piss off your future monarch. I don’t see Janacek doing that if he didn’t figure there’d be more than enough senior officers around to back his view of things.”
    And if he didn’t have a pretty shrewd idea of just how much you hate the family interest game, Wyeth added mentally. You’re right about his lack of brilliance, whatever he and his cronies think, but he’s not really outright stupid, however he acts sometimes. He’s got to know you’re not going to use your “family interest” to step on him the way he probably deserves, or he never would’ve opened his mouth .
    “I know there are. That’s the problem.” Winton reached up, and Monroe flowed down from the chair back to curl in his lap, his buzzing purr loud as the lieutenant stroked his fluffy coat. “We’ve been thinking in one direction for so long that two-thirds of our senior officers are so invested in it they don’t even realize they’re not looking at what’s really happening.”
    “Oh?” Wyeth cocked his head, raising one eyebrow.
    “It doesn’t take a genius to realize how juicy a target the Junction is,” Winton said. “Hell, Sir! All it really takes is a working memory! There was a reason I mentioned Axelrod of Old Terra in my letter.”
    Wyeth nodded, yet he couldn’t help wondering if there was more than simple historical memory involved in his executive officer’s position. Unlike quite a few of their fellow officers, whose attention was focused almost exclusively on the Navy’s commerce-protection duties, particularly in the face of the worsening situation in the Silesian Confederacy and the Andermani Empire’s increasing interest in fishing in those troubled waters, Wyeth tried to keep an eye on the broader picture. He wasn’t especially happy about what seemed to be happening in the Haven Quadrant these days, mainly because of the People’s Republic’s naval buildup, despite what most of the pundits believed had to be a rapidly disintegrating fiscal position. Still, there were possible explanations for that buildup that were relatively innocuous. It wasn’t the way he’d go about creating jobs and pumping