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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The tension on TFNS Ishtar’s flag bridge could have been sawed up and used for armor plate.

A ship traveling supralight couldn’t see into normal space, but it pushed a “bow wave” of distortion ahead of it along the boundary between its private pocket of wormhole space and the rest of the universe. That boundary distortion could be detected from normal space at a range of several light-months. Although, given that a Fasset-drive ship, especially one with a mil-spec drive fan, could travel at up to nine hundred and fifty times the speed of light, that wasn’t a lot of warning.

This particular Fasset signature had been picked up at twenty-six light-weeks, and Murphy’s defense plans had sprung into action. Two hundred and ninety-one minutes later, the drive signatures had vanished as the ships they belonged to went sublight, approximately six light-hours from Crann Bethadh.

It was one of the most frustrating things about system defense, Murphy thought, glowering at the plot. As long as an intruder was in wormhole space, he could be seen at a range of light-months in real time. Once he dropped sublight, however, the defender was reliant upon light-speed sensors, which meant he knew approximately where his visitors had arrived, as well as their initial sublight vector, but that was all he knew for literally hours.

“It’s not big enough to be the Leaguies,” a voice said behind him. Commander Mirwani and Commander Ortiz had been rehashing the same argument ever since the incoming Fasset signatures disappeared. “It can’t be more than two or three FTLCs!”

“Maybe not,” Ortiz replied stubbornly. “That doesn’t mean it’s not a scouting expedition. They could stooge around out there and send drones into the inner system for weeks—get a lot better read on our dispositions than we want them to have! So if they’re smart, that’s exactly what this is.”

“They probably already think they know pretty much what we have,” Mirwani shot back. As Murphy’s operations officer, he’d been integral in evolving the plan for New Dublin’s defense. “New Dublin’s normally a task group station. It doesn’t have a full task force assigned to it, and the only one of our FTLCs they’ve actually seen is Ishtar. So they’re probably going to avoid tipping us off with recon missions and come in fast and dirty and count on overwhelming firepower, not finesse.”

“I’ll grant you, if someone like this Xing is in command, ‘finesse’ is probably not going to be prominently displayed. But if they have somebody on the other side with half a brain, then—”

“Incoming Fasset drives,” the tactical section announced. “Two signatures at six light-hours. Consistent with FTLCs.”

“So it’s either Ortiz’s scouts, or else Mirwani’s right and it’s not the League at all,” O’Hanraghty murmured, and Murphy nodded.

The sensor data Tactical was seeing was actually six hours old, but that was something naval officers learned to factor into their thinking. At such an extreme range, they could see little more than the Fasset drives themselves, but more data would be available soon, and—

“Excuse me, Admiral.”

Murphy wheeled toward the master holo display as Lieutenant Mastroianni appeared on it.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Murphy’s tone sounded calm and courteous—preposterously so, to his own ears, given the rock-hard lump of tension in his gut.

“We’ve just received a burst transmission addressed to you.”

“Indeed?” Murphy arched an eyebrow. “Put it up, please.”

“Aye, Sir.”

Mastroianni’s face disappeared, replaced by that of a dark-skinned man with intense brown eyes. He wore the Terran Federation Navy’s uniform with a commodore’s single star on each side of his collar.

“Admiral Murphy,” he said, “I’m Commodore Esteban Tremblay, Task Group One-Seventy-Five. I anticipate entering Crann Bethadh orbit in approximately ten hours. I have dispatches relayed from Sol on board. I look forward to seeing you. Tremblay, clear.”

“Oh, shit.”

O’Hanraghty’s voice was low enough only Murphy could hear it, and the chief of staff had his best poker face on, but the disgust in his tone was profound.

“A problem, Harry?”

“I thought this was supposed to be Admiral Fitzgerald’s command, Sir.”

“That’s what the movement alert said.” Murphy nodded, not trying to hide his own vast relief that the newcomers weren’t a League attack force. “But things change. You know that.”

O’Hanraghty nodded. Snaillike interstellar communications were a fact of life, and it wasn’t at all unusual to learn about command structure changes only long after the fact.

“Should I take it that you aren’t exactly enthralled to see the good commodore?” Murphy asked dryly.

“Let’s just say that Stevie Tremblay and I…don’t see eye-to-eye. He’s a Heart World son of a bitch with a broom handle up his ass and no use for uppity Fringers, especially those in uniform.”

“I see.” Murphy turned to face him fully and his lip twitched. “But aside from those sterling qualities, how do you really feel about him?”

“How about ‘not my favorite person’? More to the point just now, he was junior to me some time ago when he pulled a tour with Intelligence.”

“One of the Rish-denier crowd?”

“The way he’d put it—in fact, he did—is that anybody who buys into that ‘lunatic conspiracy theory’ should be retired before they hurt themselves or somebody else.”

“Charming.”

Murphy puffed his lips for a moment, then shrugged.

“Well, maybe this time we’ve got the evidence to change his mind.”

O’Hanraghty’s expression said volumes about his opinion where that possibility was concerned, and Murphy grinned. But then his expression sobered.

“And, even if we don’t change his mind,” he said in a much more serious tone, “it adds two more FTLCs and their parasites to our order of battle. Another task group is a godsend under the circumstances, Harry.”

“If we can hang onto it, Sir,” O’Hanraghty said grimly, and Murphy’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh, I feel confident we can,” he said softly.

* * *

Callum Murphy lay on his back in the engineering crawlway with the control slate on his chest. The imagery coming back from the multi-legged remote as it crawled nimbly along the cable runs on the other side of the inspection panel was less than perfect, but it was enough for a visual exam of the junction box. The box’s cover slid back as the remote physically accessed the override button, and Callum sighed.

“I’m in, Sir,” he said.

“And?” Lieutenant Dadyar Pêşrew’s voice said in his earbud.

“And every one of them is back in standby mode. Resetting now.”

The remote shinnied down into the box and began resetting the open switches. Red LEDs blinked to green, one by one, around the rim of Callum’s slate as the circuits came back online, and he waited as patiently as possible—which wasn’t very—until all of them had been reset. Then he ordered the remote to close the box and waited until it had made its way back to him and crawled back into the waiting recharge niche in his kit.

“All green here, Sir,” he said. “Your end?”

“Green…for now.” Pêşrew’s disgust was obvious. “I guess you’d better come on back out. Although we’re going to have to send somebody else in sometime in the next three hours, mark my words!”

“Headed back,” Callum said with a tiny smile. He’d decided he liked Pêşrew, but the thin, shaven-headed lieutenant wasn’t what anyone would have called excessively optimistic. In fact, he was decidedly on the lugubrious side.

Callum moved rapidly along the crawlway. His height and shoulders made it more cramped than it would have been for others, and he would have preferred to send the remote from the air-conditioned comfort of Reactor Two. But reception sucked this deep into Kolyma’s gizzards, and at least, unlike some people—his brother Vyom came to mind—claustrophobia had never bothered him.

He arrived at the final bend, reached up for the handhold in the crawlway overhead, and curled around to come feet-first out into the reactor room. Eira was waiting for him, arms crossed, her expression as un-delighted as it usually was when he wandered out of her sight, but she knew better than to say anything. He gave her a crooked grin and turned to Pêşrew.

“Everything tested out fine locally, Sir,” he said. “As long as I had—well, the remote had—access to the physical switches, no problem.”

“I know,” Pêşrew grunted, scowling at a diagnostic panel. “This is the seventh…no, the eighth time it’s happened, and I don’t have a clue what’s causing it.” He shook his head. “It’s driving Chief Pallares crazy!”

Chief Petty Officer Moreno Pallares was the senior noncom of Kolyma’s engineering department, and he took anything remotely like a malfunction as a personal affront. Although from Pêşrew’s tone, Callum suspected Pallares wasn’t the only member of Kolyma’s engineering personnel the maddening, intermittent fault was driving crazy.

“It’s just the one box, Sir?” Callum mused, right arm folded across his chest while he rubbed his chin with his left index finger.

“No,” Pêşrew said, turning to lift an eyebrow at him. “The Gamma-Three box is doing the same thing. That’s one reason it worries me as much as it does. We can get along fine without either one of them, but if they both go down, we’re cut off from almost a third of our damage control remotes. And given what’s likely to be happening around here Sometime Real Soon Now…”

He shrugged, and Callum nodded, frowning intently. Then he stepped up beside Pêşrew.

“May I, Sir?” he asked, waving at the diagnostics, and Pêşrew snorted.

“Be my guest.”

Callum started tapping in commands, and the diagnostic flickered and changed. Blocks of alphanumeric data crawled up its right side as he scrolled rapidly through it. Clearly, he was looking for something, and Pêşrew cocked his head. He’d just opened his mouth when Callum stabbed the screen and the display froze.

“What do we have here?” he murmured. He read carefully for a moment, then entered another query. Then another.

“Are you looking for something in particular, Lieutenant?” Pêşrew asked just a bit testily.

“Um?” Callum blinked, then gave himself a shake. “Sorry, Sir. I was checking the maintenance history.”

“Why?” Pêşrew shrugged. “The Chief and I have torn the Beta box completely down and rebuilt it twice now. Somehow, I don’t think it’s a maintenance issue.”

“Oh, I think it is, Sir,” Callum told him. Pêşrew gave him a less than happy look, and Callum shook his head quickly. “Not at our end, Sir. Or not directly, at least.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It says here—” Callum waved at the maintenance history “—that Kolyma spent three weeks in the yards here in New Dublin.”

“Yeah.” Pêşrew frowned at him. “The power surge that sent Lieutenant Simmons to the hospital fried half a dozen connections before we got it shut down. The yardies jumped right on it—guess they didn’t want us deadlined any longer than they could help after what happened to Inverness.”

Like most of Kolyma’s ship’s company, Pêşrew’s mouth tightened ever so briefly at his own mention of Inverness, but he continued steadily.

“Didn’t try to fob us off with rewiring or rebuilding, either. We weren’t sure what caused the surge, so they tore out that entire portion of the net and replaced it from scratch. All new components.”

“Yep.” Callum nodded. “And it just so happens that they took Beta-Three and Gamma-Three out of the same lot of stores. Which is where our problem comes from.”

“How are brand-new, base-certified relay nodes a ‘problem’?” Pêşrew asked skeptically.

“Because what we’re looking at here isn’t a hardware fault, it’s in the software,” Callum told him. The engineer looked even more skeptical.

“There’s some reason you think the Chief and I didn’t go through that code line-by-line?” he said.

“Oh, I’m sure you did, Sir. And I’m sure it all checked out. But the problem’s not in the control software, it’s in the boxes’ internal processors.”

“Oh?” One of Pêşrew’s eyebrows rose, and Callum nodded.

“It just happens that these boxes were manufactured by Venus Futures, Sir. And there was a controller problem with them when they first came into service ten, fifteen years ago. So Venus introduced an internal software patch as a temporary fix while we tracked down the gremlins. Turned out it was a problem with the nanoprinters. This is one of the first components we turned out with genuine mollycircs, and there were still a few…bugs in the process. Only about two percent of the units were affected, but that was enough to create the problems the Fleet was reporting. We fixed it in the manufacturing process, and there haven’t been any problems with it since.”

“That’s all very fascinating, Lieutenant, but what does it have to do with our problem?”

“The New Dublin yardies wanted you back online as quickly as possible, Sir. So they hauled these boxes—certified boxes, as you pointed out—out of stores. The yards here are licensed to fabricate new ones, but these aren’t local build. According to the manifest, they’ve been in stores for twelve years.”

“Twelve—?”

“Not like they’ve got a use-by date, Sir. And they were certified, and they passed all the circuit tests after they were installed. But—” he held up his right hand, index finger extended “—I will bet you that when we take a look, we’ll find out that they have the ‘temporary’ patch tucked away in their processors. And if they do, what’s happening is that every few days, maybe every couple of weeks, the boxes are getting an input that the patch’s code flags as a potential fault. Then the patch is sending a query to the Damage Control computers to be sure it isn’t a fault. If everything were working properly, the computers would tell them to shut the hell up and just do what they were told. But the computers don’t know about the patch, so they don’t respond, and—”

“And the damned patch shuts the boxes down until somebody resets them physically!”

“And sends another code the computers don’t know to look for telling them what they’ve done.” Callum nodded. “If I’m right, that’s exactly what’s happening. And it shouldn’t be too hard to find out.”

Callum thought for a moment, then tapped in an authorization code from memory. Nothing happened for a second or two, but then a crimson code began to flash on the diagnostics panel.

“There it is.” He stood back with a headshake and folded his arms. “I guess maybe Grandpa wasn’t as unreasonable with that whole ‘hands-on’ stuff as I thought he was.”

“What do you mean?” Pêşrew asked.

“He insisted that I serve a regular apprenticeship in power systems back home. And a lot of the classroom work included ‘real-life’ problems from the archives.” Callum chuckled. “Man, talk about boring! I’d’ve cheerfully slept through at least two-thirds of it, if I hadn’t known old Rantala would rat me out to Grandpa in a heartbeat. That would’ve been…bad. A short way with slackers when it comes to yardwork, my grandpa. His father put him through exactly the same program back in the Dark Ages, and I think he figures it’s his karmic duty to inflict it on every generation that comes after him!”

Pêşrew’s eyes had widened as he realized—really realized, for the first time—that “Grandpa” was Kanada Thakore, CEO, chairman of the board, and majority stockholder in Venus Futures.

“Anyway,” Callum went on, still looking at the diagnostic panel and not his superior’s expression, “one of the study problems from the archives was about this. Not this box, in particular, but the problems from faulty fabrication and the various fixes for it, which included the patch in our rebellious relays here. And it just so happens that I have a sort of mental glitch. I remember codes and commands way better than anybody should. That’s why I remembered this one.”

He jutted his chin at the flashing code.

“And what do we do about it now that you’ve found it?” Pêşrew asked slowly, his eyes intent, and Callum shrugged.

“Well, we could just scrub the processors, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s unlikely our boxes are faulty, but it’s not impossible, and I’d rather not find out they are only after we start taking damage. So I’d suggest that I get into Damage Control and tell the computers what they need to be looking for to tell the boxes that everything’s okay, so please don’t reset to factory default standby!”

“I think that sounds like an excellent idea,” Pêşrew said. “As a matter of fact, I think we should probably go take care of that immediately. Assuming you know how to tell them what to look for, that is?”

“Oh, no problem there, Sir.” Callum unfolded his right arm to wave an airy hand. “Easy peasy.”

“Well, take the Chief with you. I think he deserves to be in on the kill where this little problem is concerned.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” Callum said with a smile, and Pêşrew shook his head.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Lieutenant Murphy, but from looking at your service jacket, I had my doubts about how useful you’d be. It would appear I was wrong about that. So in case I forgot to say this earlier—” he held out his hand “—welcome aboard.”

* * *

“Welcome to Crann Bethadh, Commodore,” Murphy said, rising behind his governor’s desk to extend his right hand. “I admit, you aren’t who we were expecting, but we’re still glad to see you.”

“Thank you, Governor.”

Tremblay gave Murphy’s hand a somewhat perfunctory squeeze and looked past the governor’s right shoulder to Harrison O’Hanraghty. His eyes were cold, and the nod he gave the chief of staff was curt.

“Please, have a seat,” Murphy invited, waving at the comfortable chair in front of his desk, and Tremblay settled into it.

“Can I offer you a hot drink?” Murphy asked, and chuckled. “Crann Bethadh’s winters take some getting used to!”

“Thank you, Sir. Perhaps later.”

“Fine.”

Murphy sat back down in his own chair, propped his elbows on the arms, and steepled his fingers under his chin.

“May I ask what became of Admiral Fitzgerald?” he asked.

“The Admiral’s father died unexpectedly back in Olympia, Sir. He was granted compassionate leave to deal with the situation.”

“And they gave you his task group?”

“They did. And since I was bound for New Dublin to collect CruRon Four-Sixty-Nine, they tasked me to deliver dispatches from the Oval as I passed through.” He reached into a tunic pocket and extracted a data rod. “I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a hurry to reach my station, so I’d like to drop this off and have it receipted so I can be on my way. No offense, Sir, but—” his eyes strayed to O’Hanraghty again “—it’s important that I get to Acanthus as promptly as possible. I’m already going to be several days late.”

“I see.”

Murphy un-steepled his fingers and extended one hand to take the data rod. Then he tipped back in his chair, turning it in both hands, and crossed his legs.

“I understand the importance of your orders, Commodore,” he said, “but I’m afraid there have been a few developments since they were written that may require a modification.”

“With all due respect, Sir, no one out here has the authority to ‘modify’ my orders,” Tremblay said.

“That isn’t quite true, Esteban,” O’Hanraghty said with what might have been described as a smile. “Section Four.”

“‘Section Four’?” Tremblay repeated.

“Section Four of the Governor’s commission. The section that enumerates his Emergency Powers. Specifically, paragraph three: ‘Shall have authority to take control and command of all military and naval forces of the Federation in the system of his jurisdiction for the duration of the declared emergency.’”

“That’s preposterous!” Tremblay said. “I’m not stationed in this system; I’m only in transit!”

“It doesn’t say ‘all military and naval forces of the Federation stationed in the system,’ Esteban. It says ‘in the system,’ and unless I’m mistaken, you’re sitting in a chair right smack in the middle of Tara City.”

Tremblay glared at him, jaw muscles tight, then whipped his eyes to Murphy.

“Governor, I think you’d better read those dispatches before you go any further with this,” he said.

“Oh?” Murphy held the data rod up between his thumb and index finger. “You know what’s in them, Commodore?”

“I—” Tremblay began, then stopped short. “I was given some idea of their content when they were delivered to me in Jalal,” he said carefully.

“I would hate to think you’d been improperly made privy to any of the confidential sections of my official dispatches,” Murphy said.

“I’m sure that any confidentiality issues were respected when they were handed to me for delivery, Sir.”

“But you haven’t viewed them yourself?”

“Of course not, Sir!”

“Ah.” Murphy leaned forward, opened his desk drawer, and dropped the data rod into it. “Well, I assure you that I’ll peruse them very carefully at my earliest opportunity. In the meantime, however, I’m formally informing you that, pursuant to Section Four of my commission, I’m placing you and your task group under my command.”

“With all due respect, Sir,” Tremblay said through gritted teeth, “I do not recognize your authority to do anything of the sort.”

“I advise you not to make any rash pronouncements in that respect until you’ve had time to consult with your JAG,” Murphy said gently. “I assure you, Captain O’Hanraghty’s citation was accurate, and in the case of the Dubrovnik System in 2378, his interpretation of it was upheld by the court of inquiry…and the subsequent court-martial.”

His voice was no longer remotely gentle, and his eyes bored into Tremblay’s.

“And if I refuse to acknowledge your authority?” Tremblay asked.

“Why, in that case, Commodore, I would have no alternative but to place you under arrest and confine you to quarters here on the planet. I would hate to do that, for several reasons, including—whether you believe this or not—the consequences for your career and this system’s loss of a fine commanding officer.”

Tremblay looked at him incredulously, and Murphy let his chair come back upright.

“I’m now speaking completely off-the-record, Commodore,” he said. “Having said that, it may be that the dispatches you’ve delivered to me contain instructions requiring me to do something other than what I fully intend to do. Legally, I have the authority to amend—or ignore—instructions that have been outdated by information I possess that the drafter of those instructions did not. I am in possession of precisely that sort of information. I anticipate an attack on New Dublin in force within the next two to three weeks, maximum. I’m prepared to share with you the evidence which leads me to that conclusion. You may not draw the same conclusion from it that Captain O’Hanraghty and I have drawn. If, however, there’s the smallest possibility that we’re correct, there won’t be a hole deep enough for the Oval to bury you in if you don’t cooperate with me now.”

Tremblay’s eyes had widened, and Murphy tapped his desktop with an index finger as he continued.

“We’re both Heart Worlders, Commodore. For that matter, we’re both part of the Five Hundred. You know how it works. The Heart may be prepared to write off any number of Fringe systems rather than ‘risk critical strategic assets,’ but both the Oval and the Government have been very careful to never officially tell their Heart World citizens anything of the sort. If I’m correct—if we’re correct—in our suspicions, this system will shortly be attacked by a force which might very well contain as many as eight or nine FTLCs—possibly even more. I realize that that sounds preposterous, especially here in Concordia, but it’s going to happen. And when it does, I’m going to defend the system.”

The admiral’s eyes were gray, hammered iron.

“There are a hundred million citizens of the Federation in New Dublin. I will not place the value of my ships and their personnel above the lives of those civilians, no matter what the Oval’s standing orders may say. So whether you choose to cooperate with me or not, there will be a Battle of New Dublin, and we’ll either win it or find ourselves with a dead planet and the shredded remnants of its defenses…and defenders. That’s the story that will hit the newsfeeds, and it will hit them before the Oval can spin it, before the Five Hundred can clean up the messy details. And if that happens, and there’s an officer who refused to assist in New Dublin’s defense, someone whose refusal can possibly be construed as the reason that defense failed, they will nail that officer to the cross to cover the Oval’s ass and keep anyone from looking closely at the policy which has abandoned one Fringe System after another. I’ll be dead, so it won’t matter to me, but if you’re not, I guarantee you they’ll make you wish you were.”

Silence hovered tautly for a long, still moment. Then O’Hanraghty cleared his throat.

“Esteban, you don’t like me much, and I don’t like you much. You think I’m a lunatic conspiracy theorist, and I think you’ve willfully refused to look at the evidence. I think the evidence the Governor is talking about now might actually change your mind—a bit, at least—if you’re willing to consider it at all openly. But whether you agree with us or not, he’s absolutely right about what your friends in the Heart Worlds will do to you if they need a living scapegoat for the sort of unmitigated disaster this could turn into. You know that as well as I do.”

Tremblay glared at him, and the chief of staff smiled crookedly.

“All that’s true, but much as I’ve disliked you over the years, I never once thought you were a coward. And I don’t think you’ll be able to live with yourself, whatever anyone else says or does, if the Governor and I are right about what’s headed toward New Dublin and you’re not here to try to stop it with us. I can think of a lot of people I’d rather die with, and I’m sure you could to, but—” the smile vanished “—I’d rather do that than let what happened to Inverness happen here on Crann Bethadh, where there are a hundred times as many civilians in the line of fire.”

Tremblay frowned. Then he looked back at Murphy.

“Two to three weeks, you said, Governor?”

“That’s our projected window.” Murphy nodded. “Obviously, we may be a little off on either end. So let’s say I’m pretty sure the hammer’s coming down within the next month. I’ve already sent a dispatch directly to Earth, by the way, with that same information.”

“So you’d be talking about holding my task group here in New Dublin for no more than a month?”

“No,” Murphy said. “Honesty requires me to say that I’ll be holding your task group here until the anticipated attack comes in or I hear back from the Oval. I sent my dispatch off five weeks ago, so it will reach Sol in another six weeks. Then we have at least eleven more weeks before any response can reach us here.”

Tremblay scowled, and Murphy shrugged.

“Everything I told you the Five Hundred and the Oval would do to you will most certainly happen to me if I’m wrong about this, Commodore. You, on the other hand, will be covered by my orders as Governor in a declared state of emergency.” He smiled suddenly. “Trust me, they’ll be so busy turning me into dog meat, they won’t have any time or attention left for you!”

“And think about the upside, Esteban,” O’Hanraghty said. “If we’re wrong, you’ll get to be a star witness at the inquiry that finally nails me as the paranoiac I’ve always been. There has to be a certain satisfaction in that thought!”

Tremblay glared at him, but, manifestly despite himself, his lips twitched.

“Commodore,” Murphy said, “I don’t believe you could be as privy to our operational stance as I know you are and not realize what’s been happening to the Fringe for far too long. It has to stop. Even if that weren’t true simply on the basis of common decency—and the moral responsibility we bear—the Fringe is near the end of its endurance. The last thing the Federation needs is to have the Fringe go up in flames, and if we let Crann Bethadh be destroyed the same way Inverness was—especially when we had a substantial force here to defend it—that’s precisely what will happen. Don’t think for a moment it won’t. And when we’re already pressed to the limit on the Beta Cygni front, and the League is opening another offensive here in Concordia, do we really need to be fighting a civil war at the same time?”

“You honestly think that could happen, Sir?”

“I don’t think it could happen; I think it will happen, if we abandon New Dublin,” Murphy said flatly. “And I think it would be totally justified from the Fringe’s viewpoint. And I think it would be the most disastrous thing that could happen, not simply to the Federation but to the human race.”

“I have to believe you’re wrong about that,” Tremblay said after a moment. “But I’m aware that it’s what I have to believe, because if the situation’s really that far gone, then…”

His voice trailed off, and Murphy nodded.

“I’m afraid it is. But I don’t think it’s gone so far we can’t still do something about it, and that’s why I’m here. That’s why this system has to be defended.”

He held Tremblay’s eyes for several seconds, then leaned back in his chair again.

“So, Commodore. Do I call in Sergeant Major Logan and have him march you off to durance vile, or would you like me to brief you in on what we’ve discovered and show you our ops plan, first?”

* * *

Commander Whitten held up the empty bottle.

The human bartender glanced his way, then picked up a fresh bottle of Craigmore Nua. He peeled the foil, drew the cork, and crossed the pub to Whitten’s table. Then he refilled the commander’s glass and set the bottle on the table, and Whitten nodded his thanks.

Tá fáilte romhat,” the bartender replied with a broad smile, and headed back to his post.

“Bit different from when we arrived,” Elaina Iglesias observed, reaching for the single malt to refill her own glass. They had four more hours before they had to report aboard ship, and there’d be no more shore time until whatever was going to happen had happened.

“It is that,” Commander Gao agreed. “Different, I mean.” He looked across the table at Commander Stanley. “You still pissed at Murphy for pulling us out of Jalal early, Joe?”

“I still say the crews had a right to bitch about it,” Stanley said stubbornly. Then shrugged. “On the other hand, Inverness was…more of a wake-up than I really wanted. And maybe—maybe—I was a tad…hasty in my initial evaluation of the Admiral.”

Hasty?” Iglesias repeated with a hoot of laughter.

“Tell me you would’ve expected something like this out of a Heart from the damned Five Hundred,” Stanley challenged. “Go on—tell me!”

“Okay, you’ve got me,” she acknowledged. “I’m willing to admit I was wrong—that we were all wrong—about Murphy. About whether or not he was just another ticket-puncher. Or O’Hanraghty’s sock puppet, for that matter! It’s sort of refreshing to find out just how wrong we were, actually.”

“You mean it’s scary as shit,” Whitten said with a crooked smile. “If the intelligence briefings’re anywhere near right, we’re most likely about to get reamed, you know. The kind of reaming that gets a whole bunch of ‘regret to inform you’ letters texted to next of kin.”

“Yeah, I know,” Gao said. He raised his own glass, looking through its honey-smooth amber depths at the overhead light, then lowered his eyes to his fellow cruiser commanders. “But, you know, that doesn’t bother me as much as it should. Wonder why?”

“Maybe because it’s the first time in years we aren’t just being ticket-punchers ourselves,” Adriana Lawson said quietly.

She and Iglesias were CruRon 1102’s only female skippers, and despite very different backgrounds, they were close friends. Physically, they were a study in contrasts. Iglesias was red-haired, muscular, green-eyed, and 173 centimeters tall. Lawson was slightly built, almost bird-boned, with dark hair and brown eyes, and stood barely 160 centimeters. Her lack of body mass didn’t noticeably impair her ability to handle alcohol, however, and she took a sip of the whiskey, savoring its liquid heat and hint of peat. Then she looked at the others.

“Admit it,” she told them. “I certainly will. What was the point in getting our asses killed? The frigging war’s lasted almost sixty damned years—sixty—and six billion dead. A hundred million a year. And what’ve we got to show for it? Huh?” Those dark eyes challenged the other officers around the table. “Fuck-all,” she told them. “That’s what we’ve got to show for it. Abso-fucking-lutley nothing. The front hasn’t really moved in Beta Cygni for almost ten damned years, and it’s not going to. So what was the point? Take our commissions, serve our time, and try to get the hell out alive. Tell me that wasn’t exactly what you were thinking, too.”

The pub’s background voice-murmur and clinking glass seemed louder, somehow, in the silence that enveloped the table.

“I’m a Heart,” she said after a moment. “You and me, Vinnie—we’re both Hearts. And, sure, we’ve got ‘friends’ who’re Fringers, like the rest of you guys. Well, maybe not you, Joe. You’re such a dick I’ve always thought of you more as an ‘associate.’”

Stanley raised his right hand, middle finger extended.

“But my point,” Lawson went on more seriously, “is that aside from the Fringers I came into direct contact with, I didn’t think much of them. Bunch of ignorant rubes, who keep whining about how the Navy isn’t doing its job back home. How much they resent being sent to Beta Cygni, where the important fighting is, because nobody’s looking after their mommies and daddies back in the Fringe. That’s how I thought of them.”

Her voice was low as she made the admission, and she inhaled deeply.

“But you know what? The reason I thought of them that way? It’s because I knew they were right. I knew the Fringe always gets the shit-end of the stick. Any stick. They’re taxed to death, we take their kids off to get killed, the Five Hundred stomps all over any industrial investment out here that could challenge its bottom line, and those assholes—those unmitigated assholes—in Olympia and the Oval, they just write off their star systems, because they’re not ‘important enough’ for us to defend. And I’ve known it, just like you guys have known it, for my entire career. So every time one of those whiny Fringers started going on and on, bending my ear about how the Fringe always gets shafted, I told myself they were idiot yokels who didn’t understand what really had to be done. Because if I didn’t, then I had to face all the things we haven’t done.”

The others looked at one another, then back at her, and Sergey Tsimmerman, La Cateau’s skipper and the flag captain of CruRon 1102, a bearded bear of a man, nodded.

“Cuts both ways, Addie,” he rumbled. “Me, I understood exactly why Crann Bethadh wasn’t all that fond of us when we got here. Like you say, I’m Fringe, and I’ve always thought most Hearts are assholes. After all, it’s clear as hell they don’t give a rat’s ass about the Fringe, except for what they can squeeze out of us for places like Beta Cygni, or to fill the frigging Five Hundred’s pockets! So if they aren’t going to risk their precious asses for my people, why should we risk ours for them? Why should I? So, yeah, I’m a ticket-puncher, too. Do my service, go home with my hide in one piece, and let the damned Federation burn.”

They looked at one another again, their eyes dark, wondering how much of this conversation had come out of the bottle of Craigmore Nua. Wondering how the Terran Federation Navy had come to this. To this cynicism—almost apathy—where the oaths they’d sworn, the responsibility they’d pledged to discharge, were concerned, and derision for anyone who thought they’d actually meant those oaths, that pledge.

To the point of being ashamed of how they and their fellows had failed the uniform they wore.

Until Terrence Murphy rubbed their noses in it. Until Inverness. Until Alramal, and the discoveries there. And until he’d stretched every regulation to the breaking point and beyond to defend New Dublin. All of them had a shrewd suspicion what the Heart World elite were going to do to him when this was all over, assuming he survived, and he didn’t care. He didn’t care at all.

“Look,” Stanley said after a moment, “don’t think you and Addie are gonna get me to stand up and start singing the Navy Hymn, Seryozha! I mean, I still plan to get my ass home alive and intact, thank you very much. But…” He pursed his lips, then shrugged. “But maybe you’re not all completely full of shit. And maybe Murphy’s right. I don’t know about that, and the truth is, I’d really rather not be in a position to find out.”

His companions chuckled, and Stanley picked up the bottle and topped off their glasses. Then he raised his own.

“But I’ll say this. Here’s to us—damn few like us, and most of ’em already dead! I expect some of us to be along shortly, but I will follow that Heart World bastard wherever the hell he takes us.” His eyes swept the others’ faces. “Stout ships, hot drives, and fuck the Leaguies!”

Six glasses clinked as one.


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Framed