Against the Odds

Chapter Five

Heris Serrano and her great-aunt Vida—once again an admiral on active duty—crossed paths in the Sector Five Transient Officers’ Quarters, both en route to their new assignments. Heris, who had been fuming over the admiral’s tirade at the family gathering, lost no time in tackling her about it.

“I want to talk to you about Barin and Esmay,” she began.

“I don’t want to talk to you about it. They’re married now, and it’s an unholy mess—”

“You’re wrong,” Heris said. “I don’t know if it’s the rejuvenation, or what, but you’re acting like an idiot.”

“Commander—”

“I mean it. Admiral, I’ve had hero worship for you since before I went to the Academy, but not any more. First you kept me from getting the support I expected when Lepescu threatened me, and now you’ve interfered to ruin a fine young officer, someone of proven ability and courage. I have to ask myself if Lepescu was the only traitor—”

“You! You dare!”

Heris folded her arms. “Yes, I dare. Do you think a Serrano is going to be intimidated by being yelled at? Do I seriously think you are a traitor? No, not really. But the way you’re acting, it’s a possibility that has to be considered.” With the part of her mind not focussed on the older woman across from her, Heris was able to be amazed at her own calm. “I realize admirals have to do things which aren’t in the books, and which junior officers may not understand. But I also know that admirals go bad—Lepescu is only one example; we could both name others. I know admirals aren’t perfect little gold statues up on the pinnacle of Fleet rank. They—you—are human, and they make mistakes.”

“Which you think I made.”

“Which I know you made. So did I.” Heris took a breath. “Look—what I did at Patchcock was right, tactically. I don’t regret a hair of it. Afterwards—I should have stayed for—demanded—a court-martial, whether or not any Serrano backed me up. I was wrong to resign and leave my crew to Lepescu’s mercy. I was wrong to depend on family for support, to let that be my guide in what to do next. Later on, I was wrong to depend on a Fleet record to judge people—it should have been obvious to me that Sirkin wasn’t the problem, Iklind was. But the habit of trusting Fleet, like the habit of trusting family, slowed my brain. My mistakes got people killed—people I cared about, and people I didn’t even know. That’s not a mistake I’m going to make again.”

“And just what habits do you think I’m trusting, that lead to my mistakes?” The voice was deceptively mild, but Heris wasn’t fooled.

“I don’t know how you think,” Heris said. “You alone know the basis for your decisions. But when the decisions are wrong, anyone can see them.”

“And you still resent me for not coming to your aid?”

Heris waved her hand. “Resentment is not the point. We’re not talking about my putative resentment or anger, we’re talking about your actions. Your failure to allow even my parents to make contact before or after my resignation had dire consequences. And you have twice taken after Esmay Suiza, once when you believed rumors about her involvement in Brun’s capture, and now because of some old book—fossilized rumor—about her ancestors. Look at the facts, Admiral.”

Vida moved her glare to the wall, where Heris was moderately surprised not to see the paint darken immediately. “I am aware that my first displeasure with Lt. Suiza was unwarranted. I allowed myself to be distracted by other considerations. If this conversation were being held by strangers, in a story, I would have to see that someone my age would be the senile old admiral, who needs to make room at the top for the bright young officers.” She looked back at Heris. “But I don’t think I’m senile, whatever you think. I’ve taken the trouble to retest regularly, and my reflexes and cognitive markers are still where they should be. However, the tests are not designed to find areas where increasing age will change judgment on the basis of experience. Usually that’s considered an advantage.”

“Usually it is,” Heris said. “Up to a point, anyway. But no one knows how the awareness of immortality will affect judgment—particularly risk/benefit analysis.”

“Immortality! Rejuvenation isn’t—oh.” Vida mused over this a few moments. “I never thought of it that way. Of course, if someone keeps getting rejuv, it would be.”

“Long-term planning,” Heris said. “Very long term. Valuable, too, up to a point. At least in my case, I think you were operating at a time scale beyond my understanding—and with disregard of the fallout.”

“I see.” Vida steepled her fingers. “I suppose I may have. So much has happened since, it’s hard to recall exactly what I thought I was doing. Damage control for Fleet and family, but you’re right—I wasn’t particularly concerned with what happened to your people.”

“What I see,” Heris said, “in many Rejuvenants—civilian and military—is a kind of detachment from the present, and particularly from the unrejuvenated. They’re ephemerals; they don’t really matter unless they interfere in a plan, in which case they’re expendable.”

Vida frowned. “I don’t think that’s how I look at them, but—I can see where it looks like that.”

“If it’s the effect, what matters the intent?” That old saw came easily to Heris’s tongue; Vida’s frown became a fixed scowl.

“You know the dangers in inferring intent from effect—”

“And also the dangers of not doing so. But this is idle fencing, and what I need to know is whether you will reexamine your bias against Suiza and recognize the asset she is to us now.”

“Ignore the long view?”

“No. But prioritize. We have an ongoing mutiny; we have external enemies. We need every good officer we have, and she is one.”

“Was one,” Vida said. She leaned back in her chair. “Heris, she’s not on the list now; she thinks she was cashiered on my orders, and she’s now disappeared. The last we know is that she boarded a free trader, the Terakian Fortune. While that ship has a flight plan, it may or may not adhere to it.”

Heris said, through clenched teeth. “You cashiered her?”

“No, she thinks I cashiered her. The orders were presented as from Admiral Serrano. She thinks I am that Admiral Serrano.”

“And you claim you’re not?” Heris said.

“I’m not. Thanks to the wholesale idiocy of Hobart Conselline, we now have a confusion of admirals Serrano: those of us who were put on the shelf, those who were promoted as a result, and the total—both older and newer admirals—when we older ones came back to active duty. We Serranos didn’t pick up as many stars as other families—Conselline’s never favored Serranos—but there are at least five and perhaps as many as eight. Could be even more. I had no reason to ask for a list before someone ordered Suiza out, and what with the mutiny and the chaos at headquarters, I haven’t heard back from Personnel. I’m assuming one of them, hearing about my quarrel with Suiza, decided to curry favor by dumping her.”

“Or someone forged the name, and it was believable because your quarrel was known,” Heris said. She looked at her aunt. “Damn—I was ready to be really angry with you for a very long time.”

“I know.” Vida sighed. “If we hadn’t been interrupted . . . if there’d been time to talk it over, Suiza could probably have convinced me to at least consider what she was talking about. I know—objectively I know—that she’s not a social-climbing sneak. I realize that my rage then makes no sense now, anyway. If treachery were actually heritable, I can’t think of anyone I’d trust, including myself. That’s why I got in touch with her family, after she married Barin . . .”

“You did what?”

“I sent word to them about the marriage. I didn’t know what she’d told them about the quarrel, so I mentioned it and said I was convinced whatever it was could be worked out.”

“And?”

“And . . . that’s not their view at all.”

“What—that they’re guilty of all those heinous things, or that it can be worked out?”

Vida took a data cube out of the rack beside her desk and put it in the cube reader. “Take a look at this. Her family sent it.”

Heris looked at a picture of a young woman in a brilliantly colored costume.

“That’s the Landbride,” Vida said. “Look closely.” She touched the controls, and zoomed in to the face.

“Esmay Suiza?” Heris said.

“Yes. And now I know what a Landbride is.” Vida touched the controls again, and two fields came up, one clearly an old document—faded ink on some surface that had discolored, and one in crisp black print on white. “That’s the Landbride’s Charter, on the right, one of the oldest surviving documents on Altiplano. Suiza’s family provided the translation and typescript. You did know that our regulations, Fleet regulations, prohibited relationships and marriages with Altiplano Landbrides, didn’t you?”

“No,” Heris said, skimming down the closely-typed pages. The phrasing, even in translation, seemed archaic and stilted: “—and for the honor of the land, and the land’s health, she shall not be alienated from her own, for any cause whatever . . .”

“Before I read this, I’d have assumed it was the Altiplano mutiny . . . and maybe it was . . . but the duties of the Landbride are just not consistent with the duties of Fleet personnel.”

“It’s—primitive,” Heris said finally. Vida pursed her lips.

“I don’t think primitive’s quite right, though it is old. It’s far more complex than I thought, based on a sophisticated—though to me very odd—theology. And it is a theology, because they do seriously believe in the existence of one or more gods. I’m not entirely sure if the invocations imply multiples or not. They are, however, strict Ageists, though they don’t use the term.”

“Opposed to rejuvenation?”

“Yes. In any form, for any reason. Some of what they call the Old Believers were even opposed to regen tanks for bone fracture repair, and a few considered that no one should receive medical care past age sixty in their years—probably seventy Standard. They’re also committed to population control and consider free-birthers to be immoral.”

“So . . . you don’t think the Suizas are villains anymore?”

“I don’t think Esmay Suiza, or her father, are directly responsible for the massacre of our patrons. However, I do think there’s a problem with her marrying Barin, quite apart from what happened historically. She’s sworn, as a Landbride, to a religious duty that requires her to put the welfare of the land—the Suiza land, to be specific—above every other consideration.”

“But she wouldn’t—”

“It’s a conflict, Heris, however you look at it. Her oath to the Regular Space Service, the oath she swore when she accepted a commission, requires her to put the welfare of the service ahead of everything else. It’s clear to her family, and to me, that her Landbride oath conflicts. Her family is being criticized for letting their Landbride go offplanet.”

“Why did she take it, then?”

“The position passes from one Landbride to another by direct appointment—her great-grandmother had chosen her, for some reason, and didn’t change the appointment even after she left to join Fleet. When her great-grandmother died, she became the Landbride-elect automatically. And, since she was in some disgrace with Fleet at the time, she accepted it and went through the ritual.”

“Has she appointed a successor?”

“Her father thinks she’ll appoint a cousin of hers, a younger woman. But to transfer the duties from a living Landbride to another, they both have to be in the ceremony. Now she’s disappeared . . . Terakian & Sons are a respectable firm, and I’m sure she’ll show up somewhere, but I don’t know where.”

Heris thought a moment. “Wait—I can see why being Landbride is in conflict with being a Fleet officer, but not with being Barin’s wife.”

“The regulations,” Vida said. “Remember?”

Heris choked back Damn the fool regulations, and nodded. “They could be changed, surely?”

“When we’ve beaten back the mutiny and made sure the Benignity doesn’t come romping across the borders, nor the Bloodhorde pirates disrupt shipping, certainly. In the meantime . . . there’s every chance that Fleet will annul the marriage, and Barin will get a black mark in his record. As for Suiza . . . she’d get one too, if she were still in the system, but she’s not.”

“If she were no longer Landbride?”

“If she yielded the job to this cousin, you mean? Then there’d be no bar for her marrying Barin, though if the marriage has been annulled, they’d have to do it again. As for rejoining Fleet . . . I’m not sure.” Vida held up her hand, as if Heris had started to speak. “No, don’t blame me. At the moment I’m not inclined to put any barriers in her path, but you have to see that others would.”

“We need her. We need her now . . . can’t you find out who kicked her out?”

“While I’m in transit? If you’ll kindly wait until I reach my own office with my own staff, then yes, I can find out. But not here.”

“It’s not fair,” Heris said, subsiding only slightly. “Barin’s going to worry; he could get careless—”

“He won’t,” said his grandmother. “And I don’t expect Suiza to do anything stupid, either. Nor you. I don’t suppose they sent you back to your own ship—?”

“No. Indefatigable. In refitting, and the crew will probably be whatever they could scrape off the docks.”

“Then it’s a good thing they’ll have you for a captain.”

That was dismissal, and Heris knew it; she left her aunt admiral alone and went to see if she could get a message to Esmay or Barin, either one, to let them know Vida hadn’t done it. But a mere commander in transit had no clout with communications.

Barin Serrano called up the Fleet personnel-locator database and looked up Esmay. He’d done this at every station, and kept track of her progress after they parted. He wondered if she’d done the same for him. He still didn’t know why she’d been given new orders and sent all the way over to Sector Three. Luckily, Suiza was such an unusual surname that she was easy to find—

That made no sense. She’d been in the system only two weeks before. He ran through the available options on the system, but the searches all came up the same until he tried “Separated or Retired.”

Barin stared at the date. Nine days ago. Halfway across Familias space.

Rage blinded him to the rest of the screen. Admiral Serrano, his own grandmother, had taken revenge on Esmay, had kicked her out of the service she loved, and at a time when they needed every good officer. His grandmother—! She had double-crossed them, backstabbed them, and he would—would—

His thoughts steadied. He was a jig, and his grandmother was an admiral major. He could be angry; he could hate her all he wanted, but he was a Fleet officer, with a war on, and trying to quarrel with her would help none of them.

Where was Esmay? He had no idea. What was she doing? He could imagine her coming, trying to find him and let him know . . . or going somewhere—where?—to do something—what?—that he couldn’t quite imagine. Rockhouse Major to protest to Fleet Headquarters? To Altiplano to settle down as Landbride? No, surely not that. Perhaps to find evidence that his grandmother’s accusation about Suiza treachery was false.

In the meantime, he had his duty, and even if his grandmother could so far forget hers as to inject personal vengeance into a real emergency, he wouldn’t. As a jig aboard a ship headed for combat, he had plenty of duties, more than enough to keep him busy.

In the junior officers’ mess, the ensigns and other jigs looked up as he entered. They would not have heard about Esmay; that expression must mean something else.

“Have you heard anything, Barin?” That was Cossy Forlin, who had been about halfway down his class at the Academy.

“About the mutiny?” Barin said, finding his place. “No.”

“I just thought—with all your relatives—”

“I wonder—” Luca Tavernos glanced at the entrance, and lowered his voice. “I wondered about the others—it’s scary, nobody knowing whom to trust.”

“Like Despite,” Cossy said. “How do we know—” He stopped abruptly as three lieutenants came in, and Lt. Marcion took the head of the table.

Marcion glanced at the juniors, his expression unreadable. Then he pointed his fork at Cossy. “At least we know you aren’t part of any conspiracy, Jig Forlin—conspirators know better than to say things with the doors open. Be glad your specialty isn’t intelligence.”

Cossy reddened, but applied himself to his dinner.

“So, Barin, does your family network give you anything useful?”

“No, sir,” Barin said. “You know the communications aren’t exactly open.”

“And do you have any doubts about the loyalty of any personnel on this ship?”

“No, sir, but if I did I would report it to the proper authorities.”

Marcion laughed. “I’m sure you would—you Serranos are a thorough bunch. What’s your assessment of the mutineers’ tactics?”

“From the little I know, sir, I suspect they concentrated on the ships they stole, to make that strike on Copper Mountain. I’d be surprised if there were many left scattered on other ships.”

“You’re assuming fairly small numbers to start with.”

“Smaller than the loyal contingent, yes, sir.”

“Interesting. I know a lot of people who were really upset with the changes Conselline imposed, starting with the new Minister of Defense.”

“Yes, sir, but not mutinous,” Barin said. He quoted his grandmother. “ ‘Politicians come and go, but the Fleet remains.’”

“That was my reading, also—but I wanted the legendary Serrano opinion.”

Barin ignored this jibe. “What do you think the mutineers really want?” he asked. “Do you think it was Conselline’s leadership that drove them to it, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Marcion said. “I’m not one of them, after all, and imputing motives to enemies is a risky business. I’d be more inclined to think they took advantage of the absence of senior officers who were put on inactive status because of the rejuvenation issue. Your grandmother was caught in that, wasn’t she, Barin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My guess is that in the command confusion that followed chopping off at least half the flag rank, they were able to make moves that might have taken a lot longer otherwise. Personnel was going crazy, trying to find people to fill billets suddenly open; promotion boards were meeting round—the-clock.”

“How’d you know that?” asked Cossy.

“I was on a staff rotation at Headquarters. Admiral Stearns, to start with, then when she was made inactive, it was her replacement, Admiral Rollinby. I’d be there yet, except that the mutiny shuffled assignments yet again. Did you ever know Admiral Stearns, Barin? She said she knew your grandmother.”

“No sir,” Barin said. “The . . . admiral had a lot of friends at Headquarters—”

“So I gathered. Apparently she’d also been poking around the rejuvenation problem on her own—she and Admiral Stearns were on a study group of some kind.”

“Did you ever hear what happened with that, Lieutenant?” asked an ensign down the table.

“Conselline killed the study. It reflected badly on his sept, of course, since it’s very likely it was their drugs that caused the problem. But without funding for research or treatment, a lot of our people were in a pretty hopeless situation.” Marcion paused. “There are times I find it difficult to stay as apolitical as regulations demand.”

That effectively ended the topic at dinner, and Barin finished his meal with nothing more than a polite request to pass the rolls. Others talked softly of sports scores or upcoming exams.

After the meal, Barin found his mind ticking over more calmly. Why had someone hounded Esmay out of the service now? The first word they’d had back from their families had been disapproving but not explosive. Had more evidence of Suiza perfidy shown up? He didn’t believe it. Serrano tempers blew quickly, and—in the absence of further hostile action—subsided almost as quickly. His grandmother had all the arrogance of flag rank, but she had always been fair.

As far as he knew. And, he had to admit to himself, he didn’t know her as well as he might. And the entry had said Admiral Serrano.

But his grandmother wasn’t the only Admiral Serrano. Hadn’t been, even before the current crisis that brought all the flag ranks back to duty. Had the entry even said which Admiral Serrano? He hadn’t really paid attention . . .

And he couldn’t now. Alarm sirens wailed in what he hoped was another one of the captain’s drills. He double-timed through one corridor, slid down a ladder, and made it to his assigned station well within the time limit. The senior rating handed him the comp, and he started calling out names: “Ackman . . . Averre . . . Betenkin . . .” When the senior lieutenant came around, Barin had his section ready for inspection, lockers open and p-suits in hand. The lieutenant received Barin’s report, and examined the p-suits as if he hadn’t inspected them the day before.

Barin was halfway down the bay when another siren whooped.

Combat, from the bowels of a cruiser, was either boring or fatal. He’d been told that from the Academy on up. He hoped very hard for boring. Barin had a damage-assessment team which he was in nominal charge of, thanks to the shortage of senior NCOs—that due, of course, to the mutiny and the failed rejuvenations. Having been taught from the cradle that junior officers are inevitably less expert than the NCOs they command, he had a good relationship with the petty officer assigned to his section, a man with solid qualifications in damage assessment and damage control.

For the next three hours, his team had no damage to assess. They checked and reported compartment temperatures, flow rates in various pipes, and a host of other readings that Barin knew were important, but which offered no clue at all to what was going on outside. The artificial gravity didn’t fluctuate, the lights didn’t flicker, nothing at all happened.

When the stand-down came, Barin made his final report to the Damage Control Officer and returned to his regular duties. He was trying to read up on damage assessment and damage control—the junior officers’ course for command track had nothing about it, and he found it heavy going.

“It’s not that hard, sir,” one of the few remaining master chiefs told him. “Basically you’ve got stuff in pipes and stuff in wires, plus of course your air and your gravity.”

“It’s all the different kinds of stuff in the pipes,” Barin said. “And it says here that compartments may be filled with smoke or steam or—”

“Most likely’s water vapor condensation, if there’s a pressure loss,” the chief said.

“So how are we supposed to know which pipe is which if we can’t see it?”

“Well, now, that’s why you’re supposed to know your section from the frames out. Of course, if they need you somewhere else—”

“Chief, have you ever been in a ship that was badly damaged?”

“Once from enemy action—back in the first Patchcock mess—and once from an idiot coming back from leave and showing off. He managed to knock a hole in a hydraulic line down in the shuttle bay; he’d have been up for discipline except the leak went right through him.”

“A leak?”

“High-pressure line, son. See, he’d brought back a needler his cousin gave him for some holiday or other—which was against regs, of course. And he hadn’t checked the ammunition that came with it—which was, we found later, the heaviest his cousin could buy. His cousin figured somebody on a cruiser needed something that could make holes in the hull, apparently—well, not quite, but almost. Anyway, this fool had to show it to a buddy of his, and they got to playing around, and sure enough—PING. Right through the lift line. Out came a jet, drilled right through him, down came the shuttle onto the deck a good bit harder than it should, and that popped two tires; a piece of one hit another guy in the head, and another piece hit a fellow holding a torch. Couldn’t blame him for dropping it, when his arm was broke, but the torch caught something—I forget what—on fire. So then we had a fire, and a hydraulic leak, and since the hydraulic fluid was vaporized by coming out at such a pressure, what do you think happened?”

“It blew up,” Barin said.

“That’s right, it did. Old Harkness that was, who’d survived two full-scale engagements with Benignity battle groups, and because of one stupid idiot, she was scrap. Explosion in shuttle maintenance. But that was only the beginning. In those cruisers—and Harkness is one reason they’re built different now—all the maintenance functions were clustered for efficiency. That included a warren of shops and parts storage lockers and so on, and—again for efficiency, as they saw it—the main nexi for electrical. We didn’t just have one fire, or one explosion—captain finally had us cut away the weapons storage—thinkin’ every minute the fire would reach us and we’d go up same as others already had—and jettison the whole thing. We fought it for over twenty-eight hours, and at the end we had barely life-support for the remaining live crew. Over three hundred dead, ship completely disabled—they had to take us off in p-suits, transfer us to another ship . . .”

“Hydraulic fluid,” Barin said. “I didn’t know it would burn.”

“They’ve tried and tried to get something that will work better and be less flammable, but so far—if you vaporize it, and light it, it will go up. And don’t forget, it’ll slice you like a laser scalpel.” The master chief sucked his cheeks for a moment. “Now the other,” he said. “That wasn’t so bad. Hull breach, but a cold one—heavy missile got through, but it misfired. A bit ticklish getting it out, and the poor fellows in there had died, but not nearly as bad. The only real problem was a youngster who wanted a souvenir, and was workin’ away at the fusing access, so’s he could get it off and hide it in his locker before we got there. Old Master Chief Meharry just about took his head off then and there. Could have blown us all up, he could.”

Barin wondered if that Meharry was related to his aunt’s crewmember, Methlin Meharry.

“Here—this is the best data-cube course we have,” the master chief said, handing it to Barin. “You learn most from the trouble you live through, but that cube’ll take you a bit farther than the others.”

“Thanks,” Barin said, and resolved to spend every spare moment with it. He would know everything about Troop Deck, from the hull to the plumbing.

What had actually happened in the battle wasn’t clear until well into the next day, when the captain made an announcement to the crew. “We came out of jump to find a couple of mutineers—the admiral expected that, so we had everything hot. They were mining the jump point, but we blew through the first cordon with no damage, and all enemy ships are destroyed. We’re credited with half a kill.”

Barin wondered how they knew the other ships were mutineers—if they had stopped to ask questions, the battle might have been more even, and far more dangerous for him.

The battle group would stay insystem long enough to pick up the loose mines, then mine the jump point with its own, programmed to accept the changed Fleet IDs which the mutineers shouldn’t have.