Chapter 44: Strife

"Alarie, sweetie, honey, baby, I gotta ask a little question." Otto leaned across the desk until his face was only centimeters from his wide-eyed wife's. "Just one simple, little question."

Alarie looked too startled to answer.

Otto leaned even closer, like he was going to kiss her right there in the office, closer still till they were touching cheek to cheek and his lips were at her ear.

Then he snapped, "Where the hell are your father's ships?"

Alarie winced away. "I don't know, Otto, I swear, it's some sort of mistake, it's not my fault, I don't know –!"

"Well there's a damn surprise," Otto said. He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. "Remind me again why you even come to these meetings? It apparently isn't your dad's support, and it sure as hell isn't your keen insight."

"Leave her alone, Otto," Jack said. Every time he saw the two together, he had to restrain himself from punching his boss. Trying to, anyway. He'd thought Otto was cruel to Ellie, but compared to how he treated his own wife, he'd practically put Jack's on a pedestal.

He said, "It's not Alarie's fault her dad's ships aren't here yet."

"That's very kind of you, Colonel Hughes, but Otto's right," Alarie said quietly. "There's... really no reason for me to be here."

Jack stared at her.

She got to her feet, nodded slightly to Otto. "May I be excused?"

He waved her off. "Do whatever you want."

"Thank you, Otto." Alarie produced a bland smile, nodded again to both men, and padded from the office. The door slid shut behind her.

Otto rolled his eyes. He started to bend over the pile of papers and hologram projectors on his desk, then caught Jack's expression. "What?"

"The hell do you do that for?"

"Do what? Are you still talking about Alarie?"

"What do you think?"

"I think," Otto said, "it's none of your damn business, Colonel Hughes. So why don't you butt out of my personal life and take a look at this shit that's doing it's damndest to end same."

"You're making me hope they pull it off."

"Oh, spare me. Alarie knew what she was getting into when she pawned herself off for a share of my company."

"That's no reason for you to go out of your way to hurt her," Jack snapped.

"Aren't we just the white knight? Between this and your furry love, I'd think you were a nob in disguise."

"You leave Ellie out of this, Otto. It's pretty damned obvious you wouldn't know the first thing about actually caring for someone."

"You never can tell," Otto said. Then he picked up one of the projectors and held it up. His touch activated the device and it spewed out a hologram of Algreil Prime's star system. "Now shut up about me and Alarie and pay attention. This is important."

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm not dropping it," Jack said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's none of my damn business. I can't do anything about what Alarie lets you get away with, or what, Principle knows why, you want to get away with – but Otto, you better shape up soon."

Otto scowled at him. "If I didn't know better, old buddy, I'd say you were trying to threaten me."

"No, I'm warning you. 'Cause as it stands, you're wasting a whole hell of a lot of time with me. You think I'd bring my wife and daughter into an environment like this? Have them around someone who acts like that?"

"Obviously they're much better off with the Feds, who want to kill them," Otto said. "I mean, what's death compared to a little harsh language?"

"Maybe so," Jack said. "But you're still betting on Chloe getting on board with your rebellion, and that sure as shit ain't happening if she hears you treat your wife that way."

Otto laughed. "Did she learn to be a nosy busybody from dear old dad?"

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"Probably, except where I come from we call it common decency. You should try it some time."

"It may be decent," Otto said, "but I think you'd be unpleasantly surprised at how uncommon it is."

"I wouldn't be," Jack said, "but Chloe would. And you'd be short her help and looking at some real long odds. Especially since she's liable to decide you're the bad guy in this whole thing, and I'm halfway to agreeing. Then you've got the Feds, the nobs, and the girl you think can probably lick 'em both on your case."

"If you told her to follow orders –"

"She'd chew me out for following the orders of a man neither of us ought to respect," Jack said. "Ellie and I didn't raise her to take our word for it. We tried to do right and get her to do the same. Principle grant we did a damn fine job."

"It is none of your business," Otto snapped. "None of your business and none of your daughter's when we find her."

"Dammit, Otto, why do you care so much about humiliating Alarie? Care enough you'd risk losing my and Chloe's help, and anybody else's who's got half a heart's?"

"She knew what she was getting into," Otto repeated, "and this discussion is closed."

Otto's reactions left Jack dumbfounded. He'd always known Otto was a cold-hearted son of a bitch, sure wouldn't have wished the oligarch on any daughter, sister or cousin of his. But being actively, devotedly cruel to someone who'd never done him any harm?

Jack's instincts screamed that the situation didn't add up.

"I don't know, and you'll be glad to know don't care, how come you married a woman you obviously hate. All I know is, you're risking a lot of loss and you're not getting any reward, and that's bad business, Otto. That ain't the 'old buddy' I remember."

Otto started to snap a reply. Then he closed his eyes, exhaled, and said, "You... may have a point. I'll take it under advisement."

Score one for being able to sleep at night after I fight on your payroll, Jack thought. He didn't mind working for a bastard like Otto, provided he could tell himself Otto was being a bastard with good reason.

"But Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't forget. I only need your daughter to convince the cowards and fools I must reluctantly call 'colleague' to stand up and do what they should have done fifteen years ago. Not her power, not her inheritance. Just her presence."

Jack didn't like the sound of that.

"If I thought bringing her here would do at least as much harm as good, old buddy, I wouldn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't stick my neck out on her account or your wife's, and right now you've got exactly one chance at saving either of them: yours truly."

"That's not –"

"Do you have a backup plan, Jack?"

Jack didn't.

"Do you honestly believe I don't?"

Jack didn't.

"Thought so," Otto said. "Now shut up and look at the hologram."

What else could Jack do? Stiffly, he took the machine from Otto and turned it around so its control pad faced him. He thumbed in on Algreil Prime, where four fleets of Oligarchical vessels were gathered. Algreil Aerospace's flagship, the cruiser Journeyman, hovered beside the space station where Jack and Otto sat. Arrayed around it were its three sister ships, twenty-two destroyers, ten escort carriers and over a hundred frigates. Three smaller fleets ringed the station, each representing another corporation in the Oligarchy that had answered Otto's call.

All told, they only amounted to about half the size of Marcel Avalon's Second Fleet.

"Your thoughts," Otto said.

Jack tried a few out. You're a bastard. We are so dead. This is the craziest thing I've ever heard, even from you.

He settled on, "We need more ships."

"We'll get them," Otto said. "By the time Avalon assembles his Second Fleet and reaches this system, at least Valhalla Vehicleworks, BiStar and OBERG will have their ships in-system. Plus the Marchesses."

He sounded almost apologetic when he added Alarie's maiden name.

Almost.

"You said two of those would be here last week, too," Jack pointed out.

"And one of these weeks, I'm bound to be right. Anyway, we need to figure out how to use the assets we have. In fact..." Otto grinned. "I just had a really interesting thought."

"That sounds bad."

"Oh, believe me, it's terrible – for the Feds, if we can pull it off." Otto brought up a larger version of the hologram in Jack's hands and spun it around so his finger rested on the edge of the system nearest where they'd estimated Algreil Prime would be in its orbit. The system and its sun were both small, so fleets could come in fairly close. A big boon to commerce. To defensive war, not so much. "We've detected Avalon's compression tunnel. This is where he's going to come out."

"Okay,” Jack said.

"And this,” Otto said, swiveling the hologram slightly to point at a tunnel exit nine gigameters from the Federal one, “is where ships from our absentee allies are going to come through."

"Wonderful. Avalon can pick apart our reinforcements one at a time."

"Not if we get there first," Otto said.

"You're gonna fight them before you have all your ships, right where they're coming out of compressed space? Once the first ship drops, they'll have a complete image of our fleet in their tactical computers and we'll be guessing what they throw at us next."

"But we'll have our mecha out and waiting for them," Otto said. "Theirs will be stuck launching as each ship comes back into normal space. They'll be disoriented."

"Sounds pretty risky."

"No risk, no reward," Otto said. "It stands to reason that the bigger the risk... well, you get the idea."

"That doesn't track and you know it."

"But it'll play great with the rest of the Captains of Industry. They'll all be praying I crash and burn in the opening wave."

"They'll be playing the safe odds," Jack muttered.

Otto ignored him.

Jack was getting too damn used to that.