CHAPTER ONE
Five months earlier,
Outworld Coalition Naval Headquarters Complex,
the planet K’tok,
12 February 2134 (seven days before Incident Seventeen)
What went wrong?
Everything seemed so right with Cassandra from the first night they made love—which was also the first time they’d actually met face-to-face. After a dozen holoconferences and a shared nightmare of fire and death that sometimes seemed a lifetime long, it was easy to forget how briefly they’d known each other. Maybe that didn’t matter. People waste so much of every day, every week, every month, what difference does it make how many boxes are marked off the calendar? Those hours that seem like a year’s worth of life . . . well, they are, aren’t they? Worth a year.
So what went wrong?
Sam noticed it first in bed: exclamations of pleasure which seemed for his benefit rather than hers. It’s not that she didn’t enjoy their lovemaking. She was passionate and responsive, and he loved how afterwards she would lie beside him shuddering slightly, irregularly, as if her nervous system needed time to reset. So why spread a layer of pretense over the authentic pleasure underneath? She hadn’t done it at first—or maybe he hadn’t noticed, but he didn’t think that was it. Something changed, but what? And why?
Then she’d stopped disagreeing with him. They’d had wonderful arguments, filled with mock outrage and laughter . . . and then they just didn’t anymore. She listened thoughtfully, agreed, but seldom prolonged a conversation with her own thoughts, which he began to think were elsewhere.
Sam considered confronting her with his concern, but what was there to say? “I think something’s wrong between us because you seem to enjoy sex and agree with me too much?” Sam knew bringing it up would make things worse, make them both self-conscious, and he didn’t want that. But more importantly it would feel like as intrusion. Sam remembered Rosemary, his former fiancé from what seemed a lifetime ago but had actually been less than two years. She would always ask him if she’d done something wrong when work or his complicated relationship with his family left him more quiet than usual. No, it isn’t about you, he would say, but she never quite believed him. Sam wouldn’t subject Cassandra to that. So he gave her space to work it out herself.
And she had.
Would things have been different if he’d made the first move, brought everything out into the open? A stupid question. Would things have been different if he was a different guy who thought differently and acted differently? Sure. So what? He wasn’t a different guy, he was this one.
So what was so wrong with this one that Cassandra had to walk away from him, and do it so gently, so carefully, as if he were delicate as a paper-thin antique vase that would crumble if you raised your voice or made a sudden move or just touched it wrong? That was the only part of it that left him angry: she had no right to treat him as if he were fragile.
“Admiral Stevens will see you now, Captain Bitka.”
The yeoman’s voice recalled Sam from his reverie and back to the admiral’s anteroom. Moments later, hat tucked under his arm, he stood before the desk of the commanding admiral, First Combined Fleet.
“Lieutenant Commander Samuel Bitka, reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Just what the hell am I supposed to do with this fitness report on Lieutenant Goldjune?” the admiral began without preamble, tapping an open document file on the smart surface of his desk. “Remain at attention, Bitka.”
Sam looked over the admiral’s head as military courtesy demanded, in this case at the view of the K’tok Needle out the broad window of the fleet commander’s office. He could hardly see the needle today for the low clouds and fast-moving rain squalls that swept over and past the downstation complex.
Should he tell Vice Admiral Stevens what he thought the admiral could do with the fitness report?
No. It would take a miracle to save him from a second charge of insubordination, and lately he had the feeling he’d run through all his miracles. Besides, there was no civilian job to go back to and the fragile ceasefire with the uBakai might collapse at any time. He was where he needed to be. He sure couldn’t do anything useful from inside a Navy brig.
“Admiral, I don’t know that there’s anything to do with it but forward it to BuPers. It is my honest evaluation of Lieutenant Goldjune.”
“Not recommended for promotion? At all? Are you serious, Bitka?”
“Yes, sir, I cannot recommend the lieutenant for promotion.”
“Bottom ten percent of the officers you have worked with?”
“Yes, sir, that is my assessment.”
Admiral Stevens leaned back in his chair and looked Sam over. Stevens was in his late fifties but looked ten years younger, trim and athletic with a dusting of grey in his thick curly brown hair. He wore a short-sleeved white uniform shirt and his bare forearms were hairy and tattooed. The left arm had a coiled serpent with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me.” The right arm had a large anchor superimposed over a stylized starship. Sam gathered from these that the admiral was a traditionalist.
“You know, this will reflect badly on you as well,” the admiral said. “A captain’s supposed to train his executive officer, bring him along. This is your failure as much as his.”
“I am aware some will view it that way, sir.”
Stevens shook his head and looked back at his desk. “You have quite a history with this family, don’t you? A lot of people would look at this and say it was personally motivated. What do you think Lieutenant Goldjune’s chances are at his next promotion board with a fitness report like this in his folder?”
Sam considered that for a moment, looking out the window. The rain had eased up and he saw a cargo capsule slide down the needle and disappear into the downstation complex.
“Sir, with any other lieutenant I’d say it virtually ruled promotion out, but with Larry Goldjune I honestly don’t know.”
Stevens raised his head quickly.
“Are you suggesting a promotion board can be influenced?”
“No, sir, I’m saying I honestly don’t know. I hope it can’t. I guess we’ll find out.”
Stevens glared up at him for several long seconds and then shook his head again.
“Oh, sit down. I’m getting a crick in my neck looking up at you. This is the second time you’ve burned my ass. You know that, don’t you?”
“Sir?” Sam asked as he sat. He’d never met the admiral until a week earlier and as far as he knew they had no previous conflicts.
“You and that good-looking Limey you been banging—yeah, I know about that—what’s her name? Jones, right? You two broke the story on that Varoki jump drive manufacturer having cheat codes that could turn a starship inside out and kill its crew with one radio broadcast. If one manufacturer could have them, they all could, and all of a sudden, all their stocks dropped like meteors. Never seen anything like it. Then all the companies that insure starships took a dive until they pulled their insurance policies, and then every interstellar shipping company tanked. I lost half the value in my retirement account is less than three days! Now my wife’s threatening to walk, and she tells me she’s taking all that’s left in the account. Can you believe it? Her lawyer says I was managing it so what I lost was my half, not hers.”
Sam had heard a lot of stories about long angry rants from admirals behind closed doors, but until now he’d never experienced anything quite like it. After the last three months, though, nothing much surprised him.
Admiral Stevens shook his head and then seemed to remember Sam’s presence.
“So, you’re not exactly on my happy-happy list to start with. Now Admiral Goldjune, the CNO, is on my ass to make this go away.” He tapped the fitness report. “Come on, Bitka, give me a break. You already fucked me over once. Help me out here.”
Sam was surprised to find he felt sorry for Admiral Stevens. He couldn’t say that he found much to like or admire in him, and he doubted his marriage was in trouble solely because of a financial setback, but Stevens had served the Navy for most of his adult life and probably looked forward to a comfortable retirement. Losing a dream you’d worked hard for didn’t always bring out the best in people. Sam knew that from his own experience, and he was in no position to judge anyone, but after a moment he shook his head.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t help you. I hope you’ll understand this is not a personal vendetta between myself and Lieutenant Goldjune, at least not on my part. This is about the good of the service. Larry Goldjune is a terrible officer.”
“If he’s so terrible, why hasn’t anyone else noticed?” the admiral shot back. “Hell, he finished near the top of his class at Annapolis, got early promotion from ensign and from junior grade, and had great fitness reports up until now. Even you admit in your report that he’s competent and smart. Jesus H. Christ, Bitka, what do you want from the guy?”
“Character,” Sam answered. “Goldjune doesn’t care about his subordinate officers or his crew. He doesn’t care about anyone else’s vessel and he doesn’t care about the service. He cares about himself, period. He’s not just an embarrassment waiting to happen; he’s dangerous.”
Admiral Stevens opened his mouth to respond but then looked at Sam and closed it. He tapped his desk lightly with his fingers, looked down at the open documents, shook his head. Then he turned his swivel chair and looked at the rain lashing the clear composite windowpanes.
“I spent my whole career getting ready for the uBakai War, or something like it, and then I missed it. They pulled you out of the reserves, stuck you in a destroyer, and you were in the middle of everything: four battles, twice as many as any other surviving captain, ship or boat. And I missed it.
“You know, if they’d sent me and the fleet out here just two weeks sooner, like they should have—like I practically begged them to—I’d have pulled your chestnuts out of the fire and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Then we’d both be heroes and we could tell the whole Goldjune clan to go fuck themselves. Just two damned weeks! But I got here too late and you got all the glory.”
“Admiral,” Sam said, “if it was up to me, you could have my whole share, and welcome to it.”
“What I ought to do is ship you back to Earth,” Stevens said, sounding almost as if he were talking to himself, thinking out loud. “First thing they’d do is pull that temporary lieutenant commander field promotion you got, and then probably park you somewhere behind a desk. Maybe they’d put you to work teaching tactics at Annapolis to a bunch of earnest snot-nosed plebes. Sure as hell wouldn’t have you teaching military courtesy, not unless they got a sense of humor that runs to the ironic.”
The admiral’s leather-upholstered swivel chair squeaked as he turned to face Sam again, and he smiled ruefully.
“The gods of war must love their jokes. Good one on me. Well, who am I to argue with the gods of war? I just made up my mind. I got a new command for you, Bitka. How do you feel about alligators?”
“Sir?”
“Alligators, as in the Alligator Navy, assault transports. Just this morning, seven days before one of those fast, new armed transports is due to jump out-system, its captain slips on a wet floor and breaks his hip. The Bay—USS Cam Ranh Bay—has a pretty good XO, almost ready for early promotion to lieutenant commander, and she could probably take over. It’s just a milk run to Eeee’ktaa to deliver half a cohort of Marines. But if I put you in command I get you out of my hair, and Larry Goldjune moves up to command USS Puebla. If I can’t get you to withdraw this fitness report, I can at least let him log some command time before his next promotion review board, get something on paper to counteract this. Maybe his uncle Cedric will accept that as the best of some less-than-perfect options.”
“Jesus, I don’t want my boat under his command,” Sam said.
“Noted,” Stevens said drily, US Navy-speak for Who cares what you want? “Bitka, you either take Cam Ranh Bay or you hop the next transport back to Earth. Either way, Goldjune’s going to get Puebla.”
Stevens chuckled.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll love ferrying jarheads around.”