Remnants of Trust

Jessica was used to people thinking they could intimidate her by making her feel small. It had never worked.

“How long have you been second-in-command of this ship, Commander?” he asked her.

“Eight months, sir.” Eight long, bureaucracy-filled months—too many of them spent worrying that Greg was going to get demoted … or fired. He’d given her the job because he knew she could run the ship in his absence.

Never mind if I wanted to do it.

“And exactly how is it you feel entitled to tell me you know what the hell you’re doing?”

Well, it was hardly surprising she had struck a nerve. “Because I do, sir. I was hacking computer cores long before I hit command. Are we going to keep arguing about this, sir, or are we going to discuss what we’re going to do about it?”

He straightened a little, and she took a breath, realizing she had frozen under his looming gaze. “How’s your security?” he asked her.

“On alert,” she told him. Greg had ordered the heightened security before they started taking on Exeter’s crew—even before she had proof that the battle had been anything other than one starship overwhelmed by numbers. They had people monitoring all of the strangers, but Jessica would feel better after they offloaded them to Cassia.

And how much do I hate myself for suspecting my fellow soldiers? She had mistrusted Greg’s previous second-in-command, and with good reason, but suspicion always made her feel angry and irritable.

Çelik was looking away from her, frowning. That, at least, was a look she knew: Greg had it sometimes, when he had absorbed everything he could and was sorting through it in his head. “I need to speak to them,” he said abruptly, “and then I’ll talk with Foster.” He focused on her again. “Where are the rest of my people?”

She escorted Çelik to the pub, reflecting that his slowed-down pace was just about perfect for her relatively short legs. Bob had shoved a cane into his hands, which he carried in one fist like a spear. The crew members they passed tended to give him first a look, then a wide berth. Jessica wanted to laugh at them. Their own captain had been known to tear furiously through the corridors, although lately he had been working to do less of that; but the studied scowl of Captain Çelik was far more alarming than anything Greg ever expressed publicly.

Çelik must have caught her look, because he slowed his pace a little and tried to arrange his features into something less horrifying. “How long have you served on Galileo, Commander?”

If he had read anything about her at all, he would know. “Almost seven years, sir.”

“Did you want the job?”

“Yes, sir. I beat out sixteen people for it.”

She felt him glance at her. “Selection is blind, Commander. You couldn’t have known how many you were competing with.”

Shows what you know, she thought. “Given my background, sir, I think you’ll find you’re mistaken.”

“So you cheated.”

“No, sir.”

“You broke the law.”

That was closer. “Technically, sir, yes.”

“And Foster hired you anyway?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even knowing you could have fabricated your own history.”

Greg had offered her the position, and after her enthusiastic acceptance, he had taken the discussion off the record and told her that if he ever caught her falsifying records or using privileged information for fraudulent reasons, he’d have her thrown in jail. Youth and inexperience had made her more angry than frightened. I don’t need to fake my talents, sir, she had told him stiffly.

He had laughed.

“Captain Foster is almost as good as I am, sir,” she said. “He would have known if I’d hacked the records.”

“You have a strange sense of ethics, Commander. I could have used someone like you on Exeter.”

Jessica absorbed the odd sensation of being complimented and insulted at the same time.

There was too much ambient noise in the pub for the sound of Çelik’s artificial foot to be detected, but she was surprised it took so long for people to feel his presence. He filled the doorway, and as she stood to one side of him, she felt him change: he straightened, and all of the rage and frustration he had been radiating turned to calm confidence. She felt the hair on the back of her neck go up as the room slowly fell silent. He stood still for a moment, then walked past her to approach the bar, effortlessly becoming the center of gravity in the room. That, she thought, is not a thing you learn. It’s a thing you are.

Çelik stood steadily on both feet, one real, one artificial, hands behind his back closed over the cane. His eyes moved from face to face, one at a time; she could see in their reactions that they felt the personal touch. “I’m glad,” he said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the big room, “to see all of you.

“And I know you, like me, are thinking of our comrades who are not with us. Who were lost in this act of war against our ship, against our government. They fought with bravery and strength, as we all did. Every one of us. Why they were lost and we were not—” He broke off, and his next words were quieter. “There is no answer to that question. But I will tell you this: every one of you must take pride in how you responded today. Every one of you stood up, and did your duty, and so much more. I am proud to have been your captain today, as I am every other day. And I am humbled, constantly, by your focus, your talent, your dedication.

“We fought together. We fought bravely. We fought with strength and courage. We lost comrades, and that is a tragedy we cannot reverse. But we have not lost this war. Thanks to our allies aboard Orunmila and Galileo, we will find the enemy. We will thwart their plans. We will ensure that they will never again attack a Corps starship, that we will lose no more of our people. They will understand—completely and irrevocably—what fools they were today. What they have taken from us we will take from them a hundredfold. Why? Because we are strong. We are united. And we will not fail.”

Cacophony followed this speech as he was rushed by his crew, clapped on the shoulder, offered drinks, salutes, and handshakes. None of them, Jessica noted, seemed to register his prosthetic at all. For her part she hung in the corner, away from the throng, aware of an atmosphere that was close to hysteria. It had been a rousing speech, hitting all the right notes of nationalism and revenge.

She might have fallen for it herself had she not just spent ten minutes explaining to him that he probably had a traitor in his crew.

Without a word to anyone, Jessica slipped out the door and left him to his subterfuge.

CHAPTER 12

A nd to think I was actually worried about him.

Elena watched from the entrance to the pub as Çelik lifted a glass, surrounded by his usual crowd of acolytes. He said something she could not hear, and they all laughed uproariously as he drank. He had not changed at all, apparently, not in the nearly eight years since she had worked for him.

Not that she flattered herself that she knew him. She did not think anyone could truly know a man like him. She was not sure there was anything genuine in there for anyone to touch.

She could not, from this angle, see the prosthetic, although she spied the cane Bob had told her about lying on the bar behind him. Bob had tried to talk her down from her anger: “However he acts, Elena, he’s in considerable pain right now. That’s not going to improve anyone’s disposition.”

She did not have to ask Bob why he had let Çelik leave.

“He is DEFCON-1 pissed off,” Jessica had told her, catching Elena in the hallway before she entered the pub. “But he’s thinking. Or at least he was, before they swarmed him after that speech. You think he believes his own bullshit?”

Elena hadn’t heard the speech, but she could imagine it. “No,” she said. “But I think he knows what they need to hear.”

Jessica’s eyes had narrowed then, and Elena braced herself for compassion. “What about you, Lanie?” she asked. “What do you need to hear right now?”

Elena inhaled, exhaled, smiled. “Mostly,” she said, “that you’ll stick with me when I finally have a fucking meltdown over all this.”

Jessica had reached out and rubbed Elena’s elbow, and for one moment she had thought about falling into her friend’s arms and sobbing until she couldn’t feel anything anymore. Instead she had put her hand over Jessica’s and squeezed, then let her go.

She nudged her way through the crowd of men and women around Çelik, avoiding their eyes. The man himself watched her over his glass, gaze shrewd and sober. When he was off-duty, she recalled, he often had a drink in his hand, but it was usually the same one over several hours. She was not convinced she had ever seen him drunk.

He waited until she was directly in front of him. “Something I can help you with, Commander?” he asked easily.

Just like that, the others fell silent, waiting, and she felt her annoyance deepen. He was always surrounded by toadies, and she had never understood the appeal. He was one of the brightest people she had ever known; she had no idea why he wasted his time with such obvious gestures. “I’d like a word in private, Captain,” she said.

Behind her someone snickered. She ignored it.

But Çelik, as he always had, took her seriously. “Leave us alone, please,” he said, and the others dissipated like so much smoke. He waited until they were gone, then took a sip. “Still brimming with judgment, I see. How’ve you been, Shaw? Managed to recover from your lousy career move?”

It took more resolve than she liked to admit to keep from arguing with him. She had argued enough at the time, albeit from a much more vulnerable position. He had thought moving to Galileo was a choice to take the path of least resistance. She had agreed with him. Where their opinions differed was on exactly what resistance she was avoiding. He had refused for nearly six weeks to sign off on her transfer request, but in the end, the reference he gave to Greg was not only honest, but complimentary. Çelik could be spiteful, but he was never unprofessional.

“May I speak with you candidly, Captain? There are some things I’d like to ask you that may seem rather blunt.”

“Are there now?” He smiled, harsh and humorless, and his eyes grew hard. “And why on earth should I recognize your authority to ask me questions?”

Eight years later, and he was using the same tactics: rigidity and intimidation, but only when she hit a nerve. “Because we’re on the same side. For now.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Planning some more insubordination? In your shoes, I might give that a rest for a while.” He shrugged, and sipped. “Speak as candidly as you like, Commander. Why the fuck do I care?”

At least I’ve made him curious. “Why were you transporting Niall MacBride?”

He did not look surprised that she knew. “That’s classified. But I’m guessing you know that, or you wouldn’t be so pissed off.”

“He wouldn’t even have been arrested if it wasn’t for me,” she told him.

“So I understand. By the way, I found it fascinating that he ended up losing his career for not killing people, while you managed to stay on your feet after—what did they call it? ‘Unauthorized equipment damage’? I love military understatement, don’t you?”

Privately, she did not disagree with him. MacBride could have followed orders and made his life much easier; instead, he did the right thing. “Why did they take him, sir?”

His eyes slid away from hers. “How the fuck should I know?”

“I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Do you think it matters to anyone what you believe?” He turned back to her, his eyes bright and piercing. “Why does it matter, anyway?” he asked, curious. “What is MacBride to you, except the guy that took the heat for you?”

“It matters,” she replied deliberately, “because he’s the reason you were hit. And you know it.”

He watched her for a moment, eyes still bright; and then he relented, leaning one elbow on the bar. “Yes,” he said, suddenly serious, “I do know it. And whether he was kidnapped or rescued, it’s my responsibility, Commander. Not yours.”

It crossed her mind, then, that he might be trying to do her a kindness. Along with all of his less pleasant personality traits, he had always had a streak of military honor—a calculated form of chivalry—that surprised her. For an instant she looked at him and saw beyond his abrasive persona to a man, nearly fifty years old, body badly injured, psyche nearly mortally wounded. His rank, his patriotism, his loyalty to his command chain would seem like lifelines right now. And she could respect that.

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