SotU3 Chpt 3

=Chapter 3=
==State of the Union - Book 3==
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The Triad, Tharkad
Donegal Province, Federated Commonwealth
22nd April, 3067
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Yvonne Steiner-Davion felt somewhat betrayed by her older brothers. She knew that it wasn’t rational to wish for but she’d somehow hoped that during the eighteen months when Peter was in the Lyran half of the Federated Commonwealth, she’d be able to hand over all her responsibilities as regent. She had her own planetary duchy to govern and was even getting married this year!
But no, Victor and Peter had both run off to the Clan frontier; and it was likely neither would be back until July at the earliest - and that assumed that the Clans were considerate.
Ha. That was a joke. Well the tears were real, even if the laughter wasn’t.
The only consolation was that she could take over Peter’s office again. She liked his desk much better than the one in the smaller office she’d been using since he returned from New Avalon. Smaller was relative, of course. It was still one of the royal office suites and the desk wasn’t technically less well-fitted out. In fact, it was perhaps a better height for her ergonomically. But her grandfather, Arthur Luvon, had handbuilt this one for his wife and it made her feel closer to her maternal grandparents.
She’d no living memories of either - Arthur had died the year their only child was born and Katrina had gone to join him less than eight months after Yvonne’s own birth. A photo of the late Archon holding her was one of Yvonne’s most treasured possessions.
Right now, reports from the Free Worlds League painted an unfortunate situation for the young regent to deal with. It was tempting to wonder what her grandmother would have done; but even though Katrina had reigned through two different civil wars in the Free Worlds League, neither had been quite like this one.
A knock on the door stirred her from reading the analysis. Looking up, Yvonne felt the corners of her mouth lift as she saw her fiancee. “Tancred! Have you come to take me away from all this?”
He smiled back at her. “For a while, at least. You have a press briefing scheduled and I did promise some morale support for that.”
Yvonne frowned and checked the clock. “You’re a little early for that.”
“Well, whatever will we do with the time?” he asked
She laughed and left her seat to join him on the couch.
Sometime later, taking advantage of the fact that she’d need to have her hair done again anyway before the briefing, Yvonne lay along the couch, head in Tancred’s lap and looking up at him. He brushed some stray locks of her hair back from her face with careful fingers. “Something’s bothering you today?” he asked, delicately not actually asking what it was.
“I’m not sure that Peter’s right to let the Blakists off the hook.” she admitted.
He rested one hand on hers, letting their fingers interlace. “That makes three of us, since he didn’t seem sure himself. But given the alternatives...”
Yvonne made a face. Tancred had been told about Catherine’s predictions, so he was aware of the nightmarish war that she’d described. While the Federated Commonwealth was probably in a much stronger position to win such a war, it seemed best to try to avoid needing to fight it in the first place. And if they actually got kicked out of the Star League, then the chances of extremists like St. Jamais seizing the helm still seemed awfully high. “A part of me says that we should just lance the boil,” she confessed. “even though I know how horribly high the cost would be.”
“There’s always the temptation as a military officer to go for a decisive engagement.” the Sandoval heir admitted quietly. “Sometimes it’s the right thing to do, to ‘put it to the touch, to win or lose it all’. But the downside of that is…”
“We might lose.” she finished flatly.
“I don’t think anyone really won the war Catherine describes.” Tancred shook his head. “Not even this Devlin Stone that we can’t even put a face to. Why is this bothering you today, particularly?”
The fact that he knew her well enough to read that eased some of the weight Yvonne felt on her shoulders. She hoped to one day have such an understanding of him as well, as their marriage grew and blossomed. “Two new pieces of news.”
The Sandoval heir said nothing, his thumb rubbing across the back of her hand in a comforting fashion.
“From the League… the Regulans have invited ComStar back in to take over their HPGs again.”
“That’s a bold move.” he conceded.
She nodded before resting her head against his thighs again. “They must have been in touch with Mori and Dow ahead of time - elements of the ComGuards are supporting the removal of the Blakists, but it’s getting nasty where the Blakist Militia is trying to hold out.”
“Reinforcements from Gibson?”, he asked
She sighed. “Kirc Cameron-Jones is also talking about ‘liberating’ the world from the Blakists. I think Gibson was a Regulan world once…”
“Mmm.” He bit his lip lightly as he thought. “Back before the Camlann decision, yes.” That had been the legal precedent that led to the relatively small number of provinces that had once made up the Free Worlds fragmenting into the current mess. Or rather, to the mess that had been the case under Janos Marik and his successor. The current morass was another matter entirely - and was bringing many of those fragments back together again as worlds looked for strong leaders to follow, giving up some of their freedoms in the hope of security.
“So if Cameron-Jones is sliding into a war with the Word anyway…”
“It’s a concern,” Tancred admitted soberly, “but we’ve all seen it coming.”
He was right, but Yvonne struggled to say it. Tancred stroked her hair soothingly, not pushing.
“The engineers taking over Odessa found something.” she managed at last. “Construction orders for jumpdrive fittings, but not for any ship that the Blakists working there say that they’ve heard of. It’s as if they were trying to hide it even from the people that were making them.”
“Fittings?” Her fiance frowned slightly and then shrugged. “I’m not really well-versed in jumpship construction.”
“Not the core itself, but the systems that are used to control it.” Yvonne swallowed. “They match exactly the specifications used at the McKenna yards on Avalon-class cruisers.”
Tancred’s thumb stopped moving and for a moment she saw his face freeze. Then he took a deep breath and pulled her up to sit in his arms. “I can see why you’re bothered.”
Unless the Blakists were, for some reason, building a copy of a Federated Commonwealth cruiser, their only need for the parts would be if they were repairing one… and there weren’t many Avalon-class ships. Every single one of them was accounted for as active parts of the Federated Commonwealth Navy… except for the FCS Lucien Davion that had fled New Avalon four years ago, carrying - as far as anyone knew - the self-proclaimed ‘Archon-Princess’. The woman who might - or might not! - be Yvonne’s older sister.
The question of what had happened to her - and of her actual identity once Peter’s companion Catherine (spelt with a C, as in cat, the woman insisted) had been confirmed as a Steiner-Davion sibling - hung over the Federated Commonwealth like a sword of Damocles. While it seemed incredible that Kathrine might be able to threaten the vast realm with only a single warship and it’s crew, she could still do a lot of damage. And no one had really expected her to successfully take over both halves of the realm in the first place. But she’d managed that once already.
She was very dangerous, very capable… and now it seemed that at a minimum she might have backers within the Word of Blake. Given a vessel that was presumed to be the Lucien Davion had supported the Capellan attempt to seize Saiph more recently, it was also possible that House Liao was backing her.
“Do they know when those parts were made?” Tancred continued after a few moments.
“Not quite three years ago.” Yvonne told him. “Which would fit if the Lucien Davion had suffered jump drive damage and needed repairs at some time before it was seen at Saiph.”
“Hmm and they didn’t know what they were making?” her fiancee asked
She shook her head. “Or so they claim. It was just parts for a classified project, according to their records. As well as restoring the ships that had been mothballed around Odessa IV, apparently the workshops attached to the yards have built a fair number of parts to be used elsewhere. They had a backed up request for the same sort of parts to fit an Aegis-class cruiser that’s kept being bumped back by higher priority work.”
“Ha.” Tancred shook his head. “Probably for the Immortal Spirit.”
“Oh?” she asked
“A Blakist cruiser that hasn’t been seen in a few years. If it suffered a jumpdrive fault then that could explain it, although it’s a long time to put that work off.” He shrugged. “Does the bad news come in threes?”
Yvonne thought for a moment, but nothing came to mind. “No, I don’t have anything else about the Blakists, but I think it’s enough.”
Tancred leaned closer and kissed her cheek. “Well, let’s count our blessings. At least we now know more about where the Lucien Davion has been, so we’re one step closer to catching it.”
“I suppose that’s so.” she conceded 
“St. Jamais is supposed to be standing down as their Precentor Martial, and his replacement should be more moderate.” he commented
Yvonne couldn’t help but smile at that. She’d seen the recording of the conversation where Peter had essentially bullied the Ruling Conclave into removing Cameron St Jamais. “Catherine found that hilarious.”
“Given your sister’s sense of humor, that doesn’t surprise me.” Tancred held one hand out, ticking off blessings. “With the Odessa yards will be working for the Federated Commonwealth in the future, giving us a new repair yard and depriving them of a naval base deep inside our territory. That’s three blessings to two problems; and I haven’t got to the warships we’re receiving yet. It’s not all great news, but overall I think we’re coming out ahead so far.”
Another knock on the door disturbed them.
“Who is it?” called Yvonne, annoyed that she might have to stop snuggling with Tancred.
“It’s Adele, your grace. You need to get ready for your public appearance.”, Adele spoke through the door
With a reluctant sigh, Yvonne got up and started looking for her shoes. She found one on her own, but Tancred had to reach under the couch to recover the other - how it had got there she wasn’t sure.
Half an hour later, Duchess Yvonne Steiner-Davion of Donegal, Regent of Tharkad, was immaculately dressed and made-up, standing before hot lights and a ravening horde of journalists. Holo-cameras were recording her for transmission across the Federated Commonwealth and probably to most of the rest of the Star League.
“I can announce today that the Federated Commonwealth Navy will be reinforced later this year by five warships salvaged and then re-constructed at the Odessa yards, restored for us by the Word of Blake. Upgrades are still being completed on the vessels, necessary as these are pre-Star League hulls, but crews are already being assembled.”
Holograms sprang to life either side of her, portraying artist’s impressions of the completely restored vessels. Yvonne gestured first to one side and then the other, hoping that the images were being shown on the correct sides. “The two Pinto-class corvettes will be commissioned as the FCS Sword and the FCS Sabre. The pair of Carson-class destroyers will be commissioned as FCS Maul and FCS Mace.”
She paused to give the audience time to count up to four and realize she wasn’t finished yet. “In addition, the Fox-class corvette FCS Invincible will be renamed as FCS Tabitha Steiner in honor of my cousin who died fighting against the usurper on New Avalon four years ago. This will be necessary to avoid confusion…” she gave pause in her announcement
There was a rush of questions from the journalists and Yvonne held up her hand for silence. When the noise had quieted, she lowered her hand and tapped the podium in the agreed signal. Another hologram appeared above her head, this time showing off the original art of the battlecruiser that had been used on the fifty-sovereign bank note.
“Found and restored at Odessa after more than two centuries lost, the victor of the Eighth Battle of Hesperus II…” Yvonne smiled at the eager faces looking up at her… “The battlecruiser Invincible herself has returned to us.”
The room exploded with cheers.
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