Rich Man's War (33 page)

“You’re on a cruiser and you couldn’t find one woman to take to a thing like that?”

“I just reported on board! They’ve been busting my ass with getting me qualified for this, that and the other thing. You think I’ve had time to socialize with anyone? I haven’t met half of my own department yet. And I’m not gonna take a blind date to the Annual Address. What if she gets drunk and throws up on the President? Or calls him a fascist?”

“You didn’t ask Ordoñez? She’d go.”

“I asked when I called the watch section on the ship. She’s on leave.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“I’d have asked Lt. Kelly if I could, but that’d be fraternization, and—“

“Hah! I knew you had a thing for her.”

“And I can’t do anything about it, and I need someone to go with for this thing now.”

“Wait, don’t you mean
right
now? Isn’t that supposed to start in half an hour?” Tanner saw Sanjay reach for the holo screen to open up a new window. “Yeah, they’re already doing the pre-show stuff. I think you’re a little late, Tanner.”

“That’s just the spe
ech. I’m not worried about that. They’ll find a body to fill the extra seat, anyway. I need someone for the ball afterwards. Look, it’s a free dinner and drinks and you get to meet famous people. Throw on your dress uniform and your shiny new medals and hop on a rapid transport to the capital. You’ll be here in time for the ball. I’ll pay you back for the fare. I don’t have to take an actual date. You’re a shipmate and you got decorated on Scheherazade, that’s more than enough reason to get you in the door with me.”

“
Are there gonna be single women there?”

Tanner sighed. “Probably not many, no,” he admitted.

“Yeah, see, I’d help you out, but I think I might’ve accidentally glued my ass to this couch. You’re on your own for this one, buddy.”

“
Fine,” Tanner grumbled. He glanced over at the reception area. If his experiences in working security for such events on the honor guard were any indication, the best time to slip through quickly seemed to be upon him. “How’s the arm?”

“It’s okay,” Sanjay answered. Tanner’s attention turned back to the holo screen. Sanjay hesitated. “It hurts,” he added.

“All the time?” Tanner asked with concern.

“Pretty much, yeah. It works fine. I’m still in physical therapy and it’s weaker than my right arm, obviously, but it’s getting there. The doctors say the pain has something to do with the new neural tissue interacting with the natural stuff. They say it should go away, but if it doesn’t, there are drugs and procedures they might try. I’m still a little less agile than I was, too, but hell, I was right-handed in the first place, you know?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, Sanjay.”

“Hey, I didn’t want you to think I was bullshitting you, so I figured I’d tell you the truth,” Sanjay said. “You did the right th
ing, Tanner. I don’t blame you. And don’t make this weird with your accidentally not asking me out. I’m just trying not to laugh at you here.”

“Sure you don’t want to come out to this
anyway? The dinner’s pretty spectacular. They only stock the good stuff at the ball and it’s basically an open bar. Might help dull the pain in your arm.”

“You’re not gonna touch a drop tonight, are you?”

Again, Tanner sighed. “Not at a scene like this, no.”

Sanjay made a face. “Why? A
fraid you’ll say something to embarrass your press secretary
ex-
girlfriend?”

“Y’know, I’m not all that bitter about her.”

“Bitter, hell. I’m not saying you have to do anything to get back at her. But you should, I don’t know, try maybe getting over her. If anyone needs something to dull the pain, it’s you.”

“Okay, I’m cutting this off now
.”

“That’s fine. I’ve got the live feed from the media out front on another screen. I’ll watch you walk in. Try not to embarrass
the Navy, okay?”

Tanner killed the holo screen. He moved across the street, watching both traffic and the people on the red carpet at the receiving gate. He’d waited for
a thin enough line that he could slip through quickly. It had been five months since his name appeared in a media piece—he’d checked hours before, just in case. At least he wouldn’t likely receive any media attention.

A year ago, he arrived with the best of all possible guides. He expected she was with the rest of the president’s staff now, focusing more on his speech than whoever her date was for the night—if she was back yet from those negotiations on Earth.

He filed in behind a senator and her husband, and a movie star couple ahead of them.
Important people jockey all year long for an invitation to this,
Andrea told him at the ball last year.
Heads of state. Corporate presidents. Celebrities. Scientists. Royalty.

Journalists, obediently minding an invisible line of courtesy to one side of the entrance, leaned forward to catch quotes and brief little exchanges. Even they were dressed in expensive suits and high-fashion gowns. Yet Tanner knew from experience that none of the journalists out here would actually g
et inside, or go to the ball. Their colleagues with the bigger names got to do that.

Hidden behind the pair of couples ahead of him, Tanner’s eyes drifted across that line of journalists. He recognized more than one of them.

Fuck it
, he decided, and deliberately fell behind Senator and Mister Whoever.

* * *

“You might want to catch the Annual Address if you’re not too busy tonight,” said the message from Kiribati. It came directly to Casey’s holocom, bypassing the usual routing of comms traffic since
Argent
was so close to Raphael. Transmission delays at this range amounted to only a few seconds. Anyone on the ship could watch media channels on a live feed.

Some of the crew would, indeed, watch the whole
Address, depending on their duty schedules. Others would blow it off entirely, having little interest in politics. One could catch the media analysis at a later date without having to sit through the inspirational bullshit and political glad-handing that was always part of such a speech. Casey decided to turn on the live feed, watching in his quarters alone with
Argent’s
crew efficiency reports and a decent bottle of wine.

At least his restrictions
didn’t include alcohol. Though he felt little genuine loyalty to the ship or its crew, Casey’s sense of self-preservation kept him from getting drunk while in command. He could have used a couple of good drunken nights—or a couple dozen of them—since coming aboard. Yet his current circumstances beat the alternatives. The ship was still a prison, but the captain’s cabin of a converted space liner made for better accommodations than a prison cell.

The thought of
prison drew his attention from the reports to the pre-speech media coverage on the large screen on his wall. A year ago, he’d heard the Annual Address while in a holding cell awaiting trial. That same night, Kiribati had laid out his deal and his expectations. As much as Casey hated Kiribati, the government and people of Archangel and pretty much anyone he could name in that moment, he couldn’t turn down the deal. He accepted that until an opportunity for escape or an exceptional change of circumstance presented itself, Archangel’s fate and her enemies were now his.

Casey
still wondered where it would all lead. Kiribati’s message hinted that he would gain some clue about that direction through the speech. He just had to sit through all the bullshit first.

“Senator, what do you expect to hear in the president’s speech tonight?” asked one reporter as he leaned in to a passing politician and his wife. Casey rolled his eyes.
Blah, blah, blah, excuses and bad ideas and he doesn’t do things my way,
the captain thought.
Like this guy’s gonna say anything worth hearing? The fuck kind of question is that?

He called up the viewer controls on his holocom and switched to another channel. This one picked up in the middle of a close-up of the broadcasting journalist herself. She was dark-haired and pret
ty. Her blue dress, cut to tastefully show off her figure while keeping her mobile as her job required, matched her eyes perfectly. Much of the sparkle in her earrings and her necklace was likely artificially generated from within to provide extra camera lighting.
Good enough,
Casey decided. He had no idea who she was or if she’d do real reporting, but at least she was nice enough to look at.

“The crowd seems to be thinning out a bit,” said the journalist, apparently in some back-and-forth with a fellow correspondent at a different location. “We see Senator Murphy arriving with her husband, along with Uriel Shipyards magnate Stephan Alonzo and his fiancée…”

Casey’s mind tuned out while watching her. She was nice to look at. Dressed like that, she might well be more of a fashion and style reporter than a serious political journalist, but who could tell at an event like this? Ultimately, she was a reminder of a genuine drawback to his current circumstances.

He hadn’t been with a woman since leaving Paradise. He couldn’t leave
Argent
, there was no way to get a prostitute on board without Hawkins or one of his other minders blocking the whole thing, and he somehow doubted he’d get very far with any of the women in his crew.

Still. They were his only real shot at getting laid for the foreseeable future. He’d never get away with using his
position as leverage. Galling though it might be, Casey would have to jump through all the charm and romance hoops. Besides, sooner or later he’d get tired of whoever he hooked up with, and then he’d have to deal with that fallout. A jilted lover wouldn’t cause him any stress, to be sure, but he’d still have to deal with it.

He stared at the lovely face on the screen.
Christ. How hard does it have to be to get laid?

“Excuse me, Miss?” someone said off to the reporter’s side. Casey’s eyes flared. “Rebecca Krause, right? Gabriel News Media?”

“Oh, you’re Tanner Malone!” the journalist said after a beat, smiling brightly. The picture shifted, moving from the across-the-entrance view to the cameras mounted in her jewelry. Where the screen had once offered a head-to-waist image of a good-looking woman in a blue dress, now he had a close-up of Malone’s face.

“Hi,”
Malone said, offering his hand with a pleasant smile.

The wine glass in Casey’s hand broke at the stem.

“We met last year, briefly,” he said.

“Yes, of course, I remember the interview, Mister—is it still Crewman Malone?”

“You can call me Tanner, actually. Please.”

“Thank you. I’d heard you were on the honor guard? Are you here on duty?”

“I’m on the invitation list, actually. Would you like to come inside with me as my guest for the speech and the ball?”

“Oh—! Why, um… that’s
very unexpected,” she stammered, almost certainly waiting for instructions from her producer or whoever the hell coordinated these things from behind the scenes. Her surprise offered just enough cover for that, but within the space of a breath, she took his hand and said, “Yes, of course! Who wouldn’t?”

Glass shattered and wine exploded all over
the screen. The impact of Casey’s bottle did nothing other than to leave wet stains. People kept talking and moving. The stupid fucking cow in the blue dress laughed and jokingly taunted her fellow journalists as she stepped out of their line and into the stream of guests. Casey jabbed at the controls on his holocom to cut off the whole insipid scene. The room fell silent.

It was a foregone conclusion, of course. Any reporter would’ve gone for it. The story angle was obvious. No way would any one of those assholes
outside the red carpet stay on station when they could go inside instead.

None of
that dimmed Casey’s fury as he sat alone in his prison.

* * *

He couldn’t help but look for her during the speech.

Tanner knew many of the visual cues one could find in the Annual Address. As the President entered and the event began, Tanner thought back to what he’d learned in school from his social studies teachers—only three years ago now, though it seemed like so much longer—and from his months on the honor guard. He
recognized the formal etiquette and deliberate pageantry, the meaning behind certain seating arrangements, and choice of décor.

He knew
the whole scene before him was designed to emphasize domestic unity. Aguirre pulled out all the stops, walking to the dais with the leaders of all three major parties rather than walking beside his vice president. The opening prayer asked for strength in the face of tribulations and resolve against temptation in much more pious terms than Aguirre normally used. After more rousing applause, Aguirre was invited to the dais by the leader of the secular conservatives rather than his own party’s leader, another clear signal of unity.

The order of topics held meaning, too. Aguirre led off by praising Archangel’s domestic matters,
acknowledging business leaders who’d worked to help the system through the economic harm brought by the government’s dispute with the Union’s biggest corporations. Tanner knew the president would then turn to less important matters, only to return to the core theme of his speech.