Remnants of Trust

Nowhere to be alone, then. Of course, given her mood, perhaps that wasn’t so bad.

The pub was both overcrowded and more subdued than she was used to seeing it. All the tables were filled, and soldiers stood in groups, drinks in hand, some talking in low voices, others just looking around or staring down at their feet. The pub’s wide windows faced into the stars, the view uninterrupted by planets, space stations, or other ships. Greg would have done that deliberately: positioned them so the most popular common space on the ship would not be overlooking the wreck. He was always so careful about such things. How many hours since she had spoken to him? She could not remember. She could not remember much of the day, now that she was thinking of it. That numbness, more familiar than it should be.

God, I need sleep.

Instead she scrounged a cup of tea from the bar and wandered toward the windows, letting her eyes rest on the stars, willing the tension out of her body, trying to relax, muscle by muscle. But the stars were letting her down: all she could see, every time she blinked, was burned corpses, disintegrating filament, and the last Syndicate ship escaping into the dark. She closed her eyes, and she saw the dead woman again, and in her ear Farias whispered, “No help …”

“Songbird?”

That familiar voice, so hesitant. For a moment she felt something that was not despair. She opened her eyes and turned to face him. “Dee,” she said, and almost smiled.

Even while shifting debris with him on Exeter, she had noticed how little he had changed over the years, although she supposed her memory was selective. Apart from his formerly shaved head—now covered in half of a tight-curled centimeter of black hair—and the utter exhaustion on his face, he could still have passed for twenty-six. His face was unlined and unscarred, despite his battle experience, and his broad shoulders were still well-defined enough to show through his thick uniform shirt. She remembered wondering, when she had first met him, if any of it was fat; and then she had seen him training, half-dressed, his dark skin stretched over nothing but muscle and sinew. She remembered how his skin felt under her hands as she traced those muscles with her palm: smooth and cool, except when he woke at night, when it felt clammy, her palms sticking as she tried to soothe his nerves. The nightmares had lessened before she left, but they had not disappeared, and she wondered if he still had them.

She did.

Part of her wanted to embrace him again, just to prove to herself that he really was all right; but he was not on his own. Jimmy Youda stood next to him, looking less exhausted, but far more drunk. She gave him a nod, and a smile, and he waved his glass blearily at her. Uninjured, at least; she wondered where he had been during the battle.

He had aged less gracefully than Dee, although he had started out more handsome: lean, chiseled, striking—almost as head-turning as Greg, although without the sharp wit in his eyes. But he had more lines on his face than she remembered, more than men she knew who were older, and she wondered how his career had gone after she left. Dee had become second-in-command; not the youngest in the fleet, but still recognized earlier than most. Jimmy had acquired his M.D., and was a lieutenant commander on Exeter’s medical team. An average promotion run: not exceptional, but certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

He’s in charge of Exeter’s medical team now, she thought, remembering the quick look she’d had at the casualty list.

Jimmy had always handled his drinking impressively well, she recalled; anesthetizing himself at night seemed to leave him fit for duty during the day. She suspected he was close to numb by now. She couldn’t blame him. If she were capable of drinking, she would have taken the same approach. Of course Jimmy always got angry, she recalled, before the anesthetic took proper effect. On this day she was not inclined to blame him. “How are you holding up?” she asked him.

Jimmy snorted something that sounded like a laugh, and stared into his glass. “Is that a joke?” he asked, tossing back the remains of the drink.

“No,” she said, “but that sounds like an answer.”

His eyes shot into hers, angry and resentful. “Still judging, I see.”

“Come on, Youda,” Dee said.

“But that was always your thing, wasn’t it?” Jimmy went on, as if Dee had said nothing. “Tell us all what we should feel. How we should handle it. You going to tell me how I should handle this?”

His rage was palpable, and it felt strangely personal. “I’m not going to tell you anything,” she replied, as gently as she could. Why would she try to tell anyone how to process something like this?

Jimmy fell silent, mollified, and Dee risked looking away from him. “I heard you got Farias out of the brig alive. Have you talked to him yet?”

She shook her head. “I just got back.” And she suspected it would be some time before the man would be ready to talk to anyone. Still, while she had Dee’s attention, she risked doing some fishing. “Dee, the way we found him—was there someone in your brig when you were attacked?”

“Why do you want to know?” Jimmy asked her. His tone was just short of being openly hostile, and she remembered, then, how he had behaved after Canberra, where they had lost only one man. Jimmy’s usual, somewhat forced charm had disintegrated into prickly hostility, the reality of what they had been through removing most of his desire to get along with anyone. Canberra had knocked his legs out from under him; she could only guess what this incident had done.

She decided to be as honest as she could. “I was wondering about the dead raider I found outside,” she said. “If he was the prisoner. If they might have been trying to break him out.”

“Did a pretty shitty job of it if they were, didn’t they?”

Jimmy had always been a good medic, and she had no doubt he was now a good doctor; but when he wasn’t dealing with a patient, he could be tiresomely cynical. “Actually,” she pushed, “it occurred to me they were executing him. It’s possible he got caught in that alcove by accident, but I doubt it.”

She had expected curiosity at that remark, or even defensiveness. Instead, Dee and Jimmy exchanged a quick glance, and she brought her chin up. “What is it?” she asked.

Dee said, “Nothing,” just as Jimmy said, “None of your business, Shaw.”

Shit. Like hell it’s none of my business. “You know something.” Her eyes went to Dee, who was looking away. “Both of you.”

“We know it was a waste,” Jimmy snapped.

“Shut up,” Dee hissed at him, and shot her an apologetic glance. “He’s drunk,” he explained.

“Yeah, but he’s talking to me,” she said, turning back to Jimmy. “What was a waste?”

“He shouldn’t even have been prosecuted, if you ask me,” Jimmy declared, his thick tongue loosened. “He was following orders. He was a patriot.”

Elena began to wonder how long he had been drinking. “The raider was a patriot? What are you talking about?”

Jimmy ignored her interruption. “They hung him out to dry because they didn’t need him anymore, thanks to you. You never could mind your own fucking business, Shaw.”

“Shut the fuck up, Youda. That’s an order,” Dee snapped.

“Fuck you, Keita. I’m the fucking chief of medicine now. You have no authority over med.”

Elena ignored their squabble, her head spinning with blind confusion. “My fault? How could an attack in the Third Sector be my fault?”

“Youda, goddammit, I swear—”

“We wouldn’t have been carrying him if you hadn’t made yourself out to be a fucking hero,” Jimmy yelled at Elena, “stopping a fucking war with some backwater pirates at the expense of every other fucking thing that mattered!”

And it came to her then, with ice-cold certainty, freezing away all of her exhaustion. His court-martial, unlike hers and Greg’s, had been secret, despite the fact that his crime had been far more central to everything that had happened last year; and his punishment had lacked any mercy at all.

“MacBride. You were carrying Niall MacBride.”

“Were being the operative word,” Jimmy snarled, raising a mock toast.

She turned to Dee, dumbfounded. His face was shuttered. “Don’t ask me,” he warned her. “I’m under orders, Songbird, and I outrank you.”

She felt as if someone had wrapped a fist around her stomach and twisted. Niall MacBride, court-martialed alongside her and Greg, but for vastly different charges: incitement to war. Although, from Jimmy’s response, it seemed rumors of the truth were rampant. MacBride had been found guilty—quietly—and sentenced discreetly. And now, apparently, he had been sprung out of prison, the cost a mere ninety-seven trained Corps soldiers, and one starship.

“I think,” she told Dee, “we need to talk to Captain Foster.”

CHAPTER 8

Orunmila

All the way back to Orunmila, Guanyin stayed silent, listening to the others talking in subdued voices about what they had seen. She stared out the window as her ship, intact and safe, grew larger in the shuttle’s front window. The last few hours had been a blur of faces, some injured, some panicked, all stunned, as Exeter’s surviving crew members had regrouped and recognized what had happened to their home. To her consternation she found herself cast in the role of savior, and more than once was subjected to a grateful and rather desperate embrace. One man, some years older than she was, had started to weep, and she had held him as gently as she could until Keita’s people brought in a medic. Keita extracted the man from her arms with more compassion than she would have credited him with, and traveled with him back to Galileo with the other wounded.

She had thought Commander Shaw’s assessment had been premature, but based on what she had overheard, the crew fully expected that Exeter was going to be scrapped. Another incomprehensible Central custom. Apart from the destroyed engine room, the ship had sustained very little damage. Guanyin thought her own people could have repaired it within two months, given the parts. But there was more to it than that, she learned as she absorbed snatches of conversation: it seemed Central was inclined to quietly retire ships that had suffered such devastating damage. Instead of harvesting older ships to repair Exeter, Exeter herself would be parted out and recycled; and Captain Çelik, regardless of how well he recovered, would likely be shuffled off to some sort of bureaucratic position.

And that, she thought, as Cali maneuvered the shuttle into Orunmila’s fore hangar, would be the end of him.

She unclipped her harness and rose absently to her feet, hanging on to the hand grip toward the ceiling. It was none of her business how they dealt with their officers. After ten years as second-in-command and six months as captain, she should have learned how to let go of anger over things she could not change. At least this time she could funnel it into something useful.

Yunru was waiting for her on the tarmac, his arms full of their two-year-old daughter. Lin’s dark head lay against his shoulder, her round arms locked around his neck. Even from a distance Guanyin could see the child frowning. She quickened her step, leaving Cali behind.

“What is it, my little gumdrop?” she asked as she approached.

Lin turned and held out her arms, her face dissolving. Guanyin met Yunru’s eyes as she relieved him of his burden, bouncing Lin gently and rubbing her back as she snuffled noisily into Guanyin’s neck.

“She wanted to wait up for you,” he said. “I told her no. She has been objecting for the last three hours.”

Overtired and unhappy, just like Mama, Guanyin thought. “Lin, my love, I miss you, too. But you must sleep, dear. And you must listen to what your father tells you.”

Still carrying Lin, she fell into step with Yunru. “I’ll hang on to her if you like,” she said. “You get some sleep.”

He gave her a curious look. “You look like you need it more than I do.”

“I may,” she conceded, “but I’m too furious at the moment to close my eyes. And I have to make a comm.”

There was a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “Don’t curse in front of her, okay? She’s too good a mimic.”

“It won’t matter,” she said, giving him a smile. “I’ll be speaking Standard.”

He leaned over to rub Lin briefly on the back. Lin made an angry sound of objection, and nestled herself more firmly against Guanyin’s neck. Guanyin would have chided her, but Yunru just smiled and headed back to the suite they shared with the children.

By the time Guanyin reached her office Lin had stopped crying, and grown drowsy against Guanyin’s shoulder. She shifted the little girl as she sat, and took a few minutes to whisper to her gently until she fell asleep. It was a bad habit to instill, she knew, letting the child doze off in her arms; but soon enough Lin would be too old for it. Cali always told her she was worse with the children than she was with Samedi. Which was, Guanyin reflected, perfectly true, and one maternal luxury she never intended to give up.

When she placed the comm to Galileo, she kept the vid turned off.

They had an officer filtering all incoming messages. He sounded young, and appropriately intimidated when she identified herself, and she felt a little better. By the time Captain Foster came on the line, she had resurrected all of her outrage.

“Captain Shiang,” he began, in that measured, polite tone of his, “on behalf of Central, I wanted to thank you for coming to Exeter’s aid. She would not have survived without your assistance.”

Chanyu had spent a lot of time teaching her manners. She had never much cared for them.

“From what I have heard said,” she told him, “Exeter did not, in fact, survive. Is my understanding correct?”

A pause on the line. “Yes,” he said, and she was surprised at his candor. “But that doesn’t change the fact that three hundred people are alive now who would not have been if they’d had to wait for us.”

“PSI are not so cynical as you are, Captain Foster.” Her rage felt cold; she wanted him to feel cold as well. “We do not let any ship fight off such an attack alone when we are able to help. We would even help Galileo, if it came to that. But now that the crisis is finished, we must leave you.”

“Captain Shiang,” he said, “if this is because of our earlier exchange—”

“It is not.” Full points, though, she had to admit, for his being willing to shoulder the blame. She had read that he was an honorable man. It was the only consistent thing in all of the reports of him she had found. “Captain Foster, do you know how many people I have on my ship?”

“Eight hundred,” he replied. He sounded resigned, and she wondered if he already knew what she was going to say.

“And are you aware that it is my personal responsibility to look after each one of those people?”

“I believe our respective services view the role similarly, Captain.”

Do not try to ally yourself with me. “I will help any ship in distress, Captain, but I will not give assistance to an organization that has chosen to use subterfuge to obtain our trust, that has deliberately concealed intelligence, and that allowed us to enter a volatile situation with insufficient understanding.”

There was silence on the line again, and this time she waited for him. But when he spoke, he sounded genuinely confused. “What are you talking about?”

She felt a sudden desire to shout at him. Captain Çelik would not have bothered pretending; he would have told her flat-out that he had lied to her—or better yet, he would have been up front to begin with. “Do not tell me that this attack was not anticipated,” she continued over his objection. “You assign an additional Corps warship to this area, just before an organized Syndicate raider attack? On a scale that has not been seen in this sector in twenty years? Why is it that we were closer to Exeter than you were, Captain? Why was it that my people were first in the line of fire?”

“Exeter was first in the line of fire, Captain Shiang.”

“I am not interested in your self-righteousness,” she told him coldly. “I am not comming you to listen to more prevarication. I am comming you to let you know that once we have a tracker report from the escaped raider, we will be leaving this area, and you may pursue the criminal on your own.”

There was a brief silence. “You’re really going to ignore what happened here?”

Let him think she was foolish enough to let an organized attack pass without investigation. “Once we have given you the raider’s location, we have no intention of engaging in further contact with you or your ship.”

“Is that just Galileo, or Central in general?” She could not be certain, but she thought she caught a note of humorless dryness in his tone.

“I will accept reports on Captain Çelik’s condition,” she told him, without answering his question. “Should you find the accused raider and exact your justice, we will hear of it without your help.”

More silence. “How many Central starships have you dealt with, besides Exeter?” he asked.

Damned if she was going to tell him that. “Raiders rarely have a range of more than twelve hours,” she said. “I am expecting a signal before that time has expired. When we receive the information, we will transmit it to your ship, and our interaction will be concluded. Am I making myself understood?”

“Very clearly, Captain Shiang.”

“And please tell your Admiralty,” she added, “that they need expend no more energy trying to ease our concerns about their troop buildup here. PSI’s allegiance is to each other. We will continue to battle the Syndicates and their raiding parties as we always have—by ourselves. Your allies are your own problem. Good evening, Captain Foster.”

She cut him off and looked down to find Lin staring at her, her dark eyes wide open.

“I didn’t mean to wake you, dear,” she said gently.

Lin blinked. “Samedi?” she asked.

Guanyin carried the little girl through the interior door into her quarters. On the other side the rest of her children slept, and one room beyond that, Yunru was, with any luck, getting some hard-earned rest. Guanyin felt immeasurably better having had her say; she thought her gnawing worry over Çelik might settle enough for her to get some sleep herself.

Samedi, who had been dozing on the couch, looked up when she came in. She laid Lin gently next to him and went for a blanket. When she came back, the ordinarily irrepressible puppy had curled up against the little girl, who had hooked an arm around his neck. I should let her train Samedi, Guanyin reflected. He is certainly more mindful of her than he is of me.

She shook out the blanket and pulled it over the pair, then tugged off her own uniform to get ready for bed.

CHAPTER 9

Galileo

Raman Çelik was well-known as a pragmatic man. He always saw the reality of what was before him, with all its attendant possibility and detail, and had a knack for choosing the most efficient solution to any problem. He could fix a generator or defuse a bar fight, and he always knew when it was time to cut his losses and move on. For years people had said that Captain Çelik could turn straw into gold—or bullshit into steak. He found those descriptions tiresome. People who said such things about him tended to have slow minds and no imagination, and he almost always ignored them.

His own imagination was failing him at the moment. He supposed it was medication-induced grogginess. He had known when he woke, even with his eyes closed, that he was not on Exeter. The room smelled wrong. Even in the antiseptic confines of her infirmary—and his nose told him he was in someone’s infirmary—he knew the odors of his ship.

The infirmary was on her starboard side, opposite the engine room. It would still be intact.

The engine room.

What had they been doing? His gunners were in the engine room. They had fired, and they had missed, but why? Something was wrong. They were all dead, of course, but there was something else. His own survival, perhaps. With his ship gut-shot, he should not be here. Duty dictated that he go down with her. Perhaps he had, and this sterile, odd-smelling infirmary was some sort of near-death hallucination.

He opened his eyes and squinted into the bright light of the ceiling. “Fucking hell,” he croaked, forcing his voice through his dry throat, “turn down the fucking lights.”

A man’s deep voice said something unintelligible, and the light dimmed, but not enough. A moment later, a head and shoulders appeared in his line of sight, silhouetted by the illuminated ceiling. “How are you feeling, Captain Çelik?”

Should he know the voice? “That’s a stupid fucking question,” he said. He had been drugged. He had passed out from pain and blood loss. He was supposed to be dead. Who was this idiot?

“Mentally fit, I see,” the voice said, and Raman relaxed. “How much do you remember?”

Something had happened. What had that PSI doctor said …? “I lost my leg.”

“You did,” confirmed the voice. “Doctor Xiao did a nice job of cauterizing the wound. We shouldn’t have any trouble growing you a graft. But in the meantime, it’s going to hurt like a son of a bitch.”

And just like that, Raman’s brain registered the pain: white-hot, nearly numbing, all the nerve endings screaming with nothing attached. He could feel his toes, the toes he did not have anymore. He had always thought that was a myth. “What about the rest of me?”

“Concussion, contusions, small femoral fracture, one deep cut on your back under a left rib. About what you’d expect for a firefight.”

He liked this doctor and his dry practicality. “Who are you?”

“Commander Robert Hastings, chief medical officer, CCSS Galileo,” the man said smoothly.

Raman frowned. The name was familiar. “We’ve met.”

“Three years ago, on Aleph Six.”

“Did we get on?”

“Not even a little bit.”

That made sense. Raman preferred people who were not so easy to charm. “When can I get up?”

Of all things, that question made the doctor hedge. “The drug Doctor Xiao gave you is going to be in your system for a few more hours,” he began.

Raman interrupted him with a snort. “Cut the shit, Doctor-Commander Hastings. If you don’t know, say so.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

Another pause. Raman was becoming annoyed, and it was clearing his head. “In cases such as this,” the doctor said cautiously, “the psychological aftereffects of the incident are less predictable than the physical.”

“The ‘incident’ being the crippling of my ship. The deaths of my crew.”

“Yes.”

“Did we talk long, on Aleph Six?”

“No, Captain Çelik.”

“Then I forgive you for talking like a mealymouthed, muddleheaded psychiatrist. Please don’t call it ‘the incident.’ It was an attack, a battle, and Exeter lost. That we will remedy that situation is not in question. Are we clear here?”

“Yes, sir.” Hastings sounded unhappy, but he was, as Raman had guessed, a practical man.

“Good. Now when can I get up?”

“Six hours.”

“I’ll need a temporary prosthetic.”

“I can’t recommend that, sir.”

Good Lord, he had forgotten how aggravating doctors could be. “Why would that be?”

“A prosthetic that is not specifically grown for your physiology will be uncomfortable, and by its nature not properly functional.”

“That’s acceptable for a temporary.”

“Exactly, Captain. But if it stays on too long, or if it’s damaged while it’s grafted to you, we’d be looking at an above-the-knee amputation and a much more complicated growth for a permanent fix. Recovery time will be months instead of weeks, and you may never see full mobility out of the device.”