CHAPTER TWENTY
“Commodore Granger, Sir,” Callum said, and Murphy stood as a small, trim woman stepped into his office.
Harriet Granger reminded him a bit of Simron. She had much the same coloring and was only a centimeter or two taller. She was considerably older, however, with a look of hard-won competence. He reminded himself not to leap to any conclusions, but her record did seem to back up that first impression.
“Commodore,” he said, extending his hand across the desk.
“Admiral,” she replied.
There was a certain reserve in her tone, Murphy observed. It might have something to do with the fact that she was fourteen years older than he was and she’d been a Battle Fleet commodore when he’d still been a Survey captain. Yet here he was, a shiny new rear admiral with an entire task force under his command, while she had a single understrength task group.
“I understand Tiamat’s harmonic is giving the local yard a hard time,” he said out loud, gesturing for her to seat herself, then looked over her shoulder at his son.
“Could you organize coffee, Callum? Unless,” he glanced back at Granger, “you’ve decided you like the local teas as much as I do, Commodore?”
“If you’re referring to General Dewar’s confiscated tea, I probably do,” Granger replied with just a hint of a smile.
“Make it tea, then,” Murphy said, and Callum nodded and withdrew.
“About Tiamat?” Murphy said then, parking himself on the corner of his desk and crossing his arms rather than resuming his comfortable chair.
“We might’ve been able to make it back to the Heart,” Granger said, “but Engineering projected a fifteen percent chance of fan failure and we’d have had to hold the entire task group down to no more than three hundred lights.” She shrugged. “Under the circumstances, with New Dublin right off our shortest route home, it made sense to stop off here for repairs.”
“And their current status?”
“Apparently, they just hit another glitch.” Granger grimaced. “They’ve been fabricating replacements for the defective nodes, but when they began replacement they carried out a routine test of the Zadroga generators. We hadn’t asked them to; they were just being thorough, and it looks like it’s a good thing they were.”
“Ah?”
“Yes, Sir. They turned up a possible catastrophic fault in the beta conduit generator. Didn’t show up on our internal sensors, but the yard tells me the damned thing looks like the primary inhibitor must have arced across. With only the secondary, there’s a twenty percent chance of complete failure. Which I guess most people would consider a bad thing.”
Murphy snorted at her understatement. If the beta Zadroga conduit failed, there was nothing to stop a starship short of a disastrous encounter with its own black hole. It was one of those failures that never got reported…because, if it ever happened, no one could possibly survive it.
“I think we could agree to consider it that,” he said dryly after a moment. “So what does that do to your schedule?”
“I’m not sure yet, Sir,” she admitted. “When it was just the Fasset nodes, we were looking at another three weeks. Now, though, they’ll have to tear a third of the fan down just to get the bad initiator out. The yard tells me they don’t have a mil-spec replacement for a Marduk-class Zadroga inhibitor in stock, so they either have to adapt one from a Horus-class, which would be…suboptimal, or else they have to fabricate a new one, and that could take up to a couple of months.”
“Ouch.” Murphy grimaced sympathetically. “On the other hand, it sounds to me like it’s a damn good thing you did stop off here at New Dublin. Fasset resonance and a skitzy Zadroga conduit?” He shook his head. “It’s been a while since we’ve lost an FTLC to ‘hazards of navigation.’ Just between you and me, I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I agree entirely,” Granger said. “It is a pain in the ass, though. The Oval already told us they can’t spare a carrier to replace Tiamat, so we’re stuck here until we complete repairs.”
“I see.” Murphy rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a second.
“I see,” he repeated again, more forcefully, “and I’m sure it is a pain in the ass for you, but there’s that old saying about an ill wind.”
“In what way, Sir?” She looked at him narrowly.
“You’ve read my report on Scotia and Inverness?”
“I have.” Her mouth tightened. “An ugly, ugly business. If you’ll pardon me saying it, the people on Inverness are damned lucky you were willing to divert. A lot luckier than they were in their ‘Governor.’” She shook her head, eyes dark. “I’ve known Yance Drebin for a long time. I can’t say anything in your report surprised me where he was concerned!”
“Really?” Murphy cocked his head. That was a response he hadn’t hoped for.
“Not a bit. It’s not the first time he’s cut and run on a responsibility. Just like it’s not the first time—” she met Murphy’s eyes levelly “—the Navy’s cut and run. Leaves a bad taste, Sir. Thank you for at least picking up the survivors.”
“‘Least’ is probably a good word for it,” he said quietly. “It was the least I could do…and it didn’t matter a lot to too many people.”
“Do what we can, Sir.”
Granger looked up as Callum returned with the tea service. Callum poured for both his father and his guest, then withdrew again, and Murphy sipped from his cup.
“Well, I know you need to get back to the Heart as quickly as you can, Commodore,” he said then, “but in the meantime, as the governor and senior officer here in-system, I’d like to combine your task group with my task force units and the elements of BatRon Seven-Oh-Two for maneuvers. I’m sure the yards will get that conduit repaired as quickly as they can, but I’d be lying if I said your task group wouldn’t be a reinforcement godsend if the League decides to follow up on its success at Scotia.”
“And Drebin’s piss-poor performance is likely to encourage them to do just that, isn’t it?” Granger murmured.
“I wasn’t going to put it that way, but since you obviously share my own high regard for Captain Drebin, I’ll just say that it seems…possible,” Murphy said, and the commodore snorted in bitter amusement.
“Makes sense to me, Sir,” she said after a moment. “I’ll have my chief of staff get in touch with yours—Captain O’Hanraghty, isn’t it?”
“It is. You know him?”
“Not well. I know him by reputation, and our paths have crossed. That was a long time ago, but my husband was from New York, too.”
“I didn’t realize that,” Murphy said, and it was true. That information hadn’t been in his available records on her.
“Marrying a Fringer’s not exactly a career-enhancer, Sir.” The reserve was back in her tone, and Murphy realized that in that moment she was seeing a member of the Five Hundred, not the flag officer who’d diverted to Scotia. “He was a civilian, of course, so it wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been. But—”
She broke off with a shrug, and Murphy nodded.
“I understand exactly what you’re saying,” he told her. “Not from firsthand experience, but Captain O’Hanraghty’s one of the finest officers I know.”
“But he’s not just a Fringer; he’s a Rish-conspiracy nut, too,” Granger said with a crooked smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t hold it against him.”
“I’m glad to hear it!”
Murphy smiled again, then stood, signaling the end of the interview. Granger finished her tea and rose as well.
“I’m having dinner tonight with General Dewar,” Murphy said, extending his hand once more. “Captain O’Hanraghty and Captain Lowe, my flag captain, will be there as well. Would you care to join us? Nineteen hundred hours at the governor’s mansion.”
“I’ll be there, Sir,” she said, reaching out to take the proffered hand. She gripped it firmly. “You know, it’s probably a good thing they checked that conduit in a couple of ways, if you think about it. Having it fail would have been a really unpleasant experience for Tiamat, but it’s handy how it seems to have provided an unanticipated reinforcement for New Dublin, isn’t it? Especially so close after Inverness, I mean.”
“Fate works in mysterious ways sometimes, Commodore,” Murphy said with a serene smile. “Obviously, it would have been better if you hadn’t had serviceability issues, but I’m not about to look any gift horses in the teeth.”
“No, I don’t imagine you are, Sir.” She smiled and released his hand. “I’ll look forward to dinner tonight, Admiral.”