by David Weber
“You’re welcome, Sir. It’s been my privilege,” she replied, and he nodded once and continued through the door.
The compartment beyond it was rather smaller than the day cabin of a Manticoran flag officer with a superdreadnought flagship would have been. It was also simply but comfortably furnished, although very few of those furnishings had the look of permanence which attached itself to a space-going officer’s possessions over the course of time. Terekhov was familiar with that sort of absence. He’d experienced exactly the same thing after HMS Defiant’s destruction.
His mouth tightened at that thought, but he continued across the decksole to the officer standing to await him, one hand extended. For a heartbeat, Terekhov felt an overwhelming temptation to ignore that hand.
He hadn’t truly realized how deep the wounds of Hyacinth still cut, even after all this time, until he’d reached Montana and learned who was now in command of the star system. He’d known then, though. Known when he felt the anger, the rage, boil in his blood.
The sheer passion of his emotions had astounded him. He’d known for T-months that the Republic of Haven had become the Star Empire of Manticore’s ally. He’d greeted that news with very mixed emotions. He’d known only too well how desperately Manticore needed allies, yet that wounded part of him had cried out in fiery protest at the very thought of Havenite allies. In the end, that awareness of need—and, hard though he’d fought to resist it—the matching awareness that Haven had voluntarily allied itself with the Star Empire, even in the face of the Solarian League’s vast power, had defeated the protest.
Or that was what he’d thought, anyway.
“Commodore Terekhov,” the man who awaited him said as their hands met.
“Admiral Tourville,” he replied.
The admiral’s handshake was strong, firm, and his eyes met Terekhov’s steadily. The treecat on Tourville’s shoulder studied Terekhov just as carefully, his head tilted to one side, his ears cocked and the very tip of his tail curling and un-curling slowly.
“Thank you for coming,” Tourville said, waving Terekhov towards one of the cabin’s armchairs. “I know you’ve only been back in Montana a short while, and I apologize for taking you away from your wife, but I felt it would be best for us to meet privately before we encountered one another in an official setting.”
“I see.” Terekhov sat in the indicated chair. “Should I take it, Sir, that there was a particular reason for that?”
“Of course you should.”
Tourville’s voice was level, and Terekhov felt his face heat ever so slightly. The Havenite’s even tone recognized the bite he hadn’t quite been able to keep out of his own voice. And that recognition, Tourville’s refusal to let any matching bite color his reply, was its own reprimand.
Not really from Tourville, he realized, but from himself as he recognized the enormous contrast between his own emotions and the admiral’s cool lack of discourtesy.
He inhaled deeply.
“I apologize, Sir,” he said. “That came out more…confrontationally than I intended for it to.”
“No apology’s necessary.”
Tourville sat in a facing chair. The treecat moved from his shoulder to the chair back, and the admiral stroked his mustache with a forefinger.
“I know about your experiences at Hyacinth…and afterward. I know what happened to your people.” He said in that same, even voice, and shook his head, his expression somber. “Under the circumstances, I can’t—and don’t—blame you for any anger or hostility, even hatred, you feel. I’ve lost men and women who were important to me, too, and I was fortunate enough to be fighting the Star Kingdom of Manticore, not the People’s Republic of Haven. I knew any of my people who became POWs would be treated compassionately and with respect. And my greatest regret, my deepest shame, was that I also knew any of your people who became POWs wouldn’t have that assurance. What your people suffered after Hyacinth was far worse than most. It was not, however, unique. And one of the reasons I wanted to meet with you was to personally apologize to you for it. I know how…inadequate that must sound, but it’s both the least I can do and the most I can offer.”
Terekhov sat gazing at the other man, then flicked a look at the treecat. Lurks in Branches looked back at him with eyes as level as Tourville’s own.
“It’s my turn to be ashamed, Sir,” he said. “Ashamed that I can’t master my own emotions. I know you personally had nothing at all to do with what StateSec did to my people. I know that almost certainly no one currently under your command did, either. But I’d be lying if I pretended there wasn’t still a lot of that anger, that hatred rolling around inside me. More than I even realized there was. God knows I’ve seen enough combat, killed enough other people, to know how it happens, that it’s a case of doing your duty and of killing or being killed. But it’s still there.” He shook his head, offering Tourville the same honesty the other man had just offered him. “It’s still there, and I don’t know if it’ll ever go away.”
“It shouldn’t,” Tourville said simply. “I hope the pain may ease someday, but the anger? No.” He shook his head. “That shouldn’t. You owe that anger to your people, Commodore. You owe it to yourself. And in a way, you owe it to the Republic of Haven, too.”
Terekhov’s surprise showed, and Tourville chuckled. It was a soft sound, one that held very little amusement, and he shook his head again.
“There are going to be some Havenites, for decades to come, who long for the glory days. People who had comfortable niches in the People’s Republic. Or who will never get over the fact that your Navy beat the ever loving crap out of ours again and again…and killed a lot of their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, along the way. People who look at the number of star systems that took advantage of President Pritchart’s guarantee of self-determination and left the Republic and feel that that’s…diminished us. Made us less than we were.
“Those people are dangerous, Commodore Terekhov. Perhaps not now, not while we’re engaged in active operations against the League. But eventually, when the pressure eases, some of them will crawl back out of the shadows. At the very least, they’ll deny the People’s Republic was as bad as people say it was, and they’ll have the guaranteed free speech to say it. They’ll whitewash the crimes, the atrocities, and when they do, they’ll do their damnedest to reject any lingering responsibility for them.
“The hell of it is that, in some ways, they’ll be justified. Not for themselves, not for the criminals who actually committed those atrocities, but for Haven. For my star nation and all the decent men and women who are trying to make Haven what it used to be before the Legislaturalists turned us into the People’s Republic. But that’s the rub, Commodore. If we let them get away with denying the truth, however painful it may be for us, then we can’t make Haven what it used to be. The rot, the canker, will still be there, and if we don’t face it, then we break faith not just with people like you who suffered from those atrocities, but with our own children…and ourselves.
“So hold onto that anger. I hope you’ll be able to direct it at the people who truly deserve it, but don’t ever fault yourself for feeling it.”
Terekhov’s eyes had widened while Tourville spoke, and he remembered what Sinead had told him. Tried to tell him, really, because the anger—the fury—had burned too hot for him to hear her. Just this once, he’d rejected what she’d tried so hard to tell him, and he felt a fresh and very different burn of shame as he admitted that to himself.
“Forgive me for asking this, Sir,” he said finally, “but is it true you sat on the Seaburg court-martials?”
Tourville hesitated visibly before he answered, but then his nostrils flared.
“Yes. Yes, I did. And as I told your wife, I deeply regret how long it took us to liberate that system and how many of the people who should have been tried escaped arrest before we got to it.”
“I believe you and Admiral Theisman had a few other minor problems to deal with.
Something to do with winning a civil war.” Terekhov was surprised by the genuine humor that edged his tone, and Tourville quirked a fleeting smile below his mustache. “Seaburg wasn’t exactly a strategically vital system, so I imagine it wasn’t unreasonable for you to worry about the survival of your star nation first. And at least when you did liberate the system, you didn’t let the cockroaches who were still there scurry out of the light.”
“We tried not to.” Tourville inhaled deeply. “At the same time, I have to admit we couldn’t carry the trials as far as Admiral Theisman or I—or President Pritchart—wished we could. There were too many people who could cover themselves by claiming ‘I was only following orders’ that were—damn them to hell—legal when they were given.” His expression had turned grim. “I know dozens—hundreds—of the bastards who used that defense should’ve gone to the wall, but we couldn’t send them there. If we started hanging or shooting people without absolute proof of wrongdoing—wrongdoing that wasn’t ‘legal’ when it was done—we were no better than Saint-Just’s State Security or Palmer-Levy’s Internal Security, and we had to be better than they were. And that means there are people in the Republic today who are just as guilty, just as culpable, as any of the bastards we executed in Seaburg.”
“Neat resolutions where goodness and light triumph and all the guilty are punished only happen in bad fiction, Admiral,” Terekhov said.
“That, unfortunately, is true. And when you’re trying to clean up a cesspool like the People’s Republic, there’s an awful lot of ‘guilty’ to go around. I guess it’s not too surprising some of them slither down the drain before they can be dealt with, but that doesn’t make it any better when it happens.”
Terekhov nodded and leaned back in his chair. It was odd. He’d come into this cabin aware only of his anger—and the grief and the pain that still fueled it. He’d come, he realized now, not because he truly expected to deal with it, but almost to…embrace it. To validate it and prove he was right to go on feeling it. And he did feel it. Not only that, he knew Tourville was right; that he should go on feeling it. Yet that anger had changed somehow. It was still there, still just as strong, but it had lost those white-hot fangs of vengeful hatred. And rather than the focused, burning rage he’d felt whenever he thought of serving under Lester Tourville, actually taking orders from someone who’d fought so well and so hard for the People’s Navy—the admiral who’d completely destroyed Home Fleet—what he felt now was almost a sense of…kinship.
It wasn’t friendship. Not yet, at any rate, and he didn’t know if it ever could be. Yet even that was a monumental shift in the bedrock of his anger, because fifteen minutes earlier he would have known—definitely, beyond any possibility of contradiction—that it couldn’t, which was very different. And yet…
He thought about the young lieutenant who’d escorted him to Tourville’s quarters, and about the other thing Sinead had told him. The thing he’d been flatly certain had to be a falsehood. The thing, he realized now, that the part of him that needed to go on hating had rejected even more fiercely than the knowledge that Tourville had sat on the Seaburg courts-martial.
“I have a question I want to ask you, Sir,” he heard himself say. “Before I do, I want you to understand that in asking, I’ll be violating a confidence. Secondhand, perhaps, but still violating it. I hope you’ll consider the reason I asked it when you deal with the possible repercussions of that violation.”
He paused, knowing Tourville would recognize what he was truly saying, and the Havenite sat very still, his gaze hooded. Then he drew a deep breath.
“Ask it, Commodore,” he said.
“Admiral, I want you to know I believe every word you’ve told me. I also want you to know that what you’ve said—and the way you’ve said it—has…unsettled a lot of things I thought I knew. So, what I want to ask you now is what really happened on Count Tilly’s flag bridge the day Tepes blew up in Cerberus orbit.”
Tourville stiffened and his expression turned to stone. He said nothing at all for several seconds, then he laid his forearms very carefully along the armrests of his chair, cocked his head, and said one word.
“Berjouhi.”
“Yes, Sir,” Terekhov confirmed levelly. “She’s obviously devoted to you. I couldn’t follow her all the way here from Boat Bay without realizing that. And”—he smiled ever so faintly—“I’ve had some experience of my own with loyal flag lieutenants. But, yes, she told Sinead, because Sinead’s Navy to her toenails…and because she loves me. She wasn’t about to forgive any Havenite ever born for what happened to my people. Not in Hyacinth itself, but afterward, in Seaburg. Lieutenant Lafontaine recognized that, and because she is devoted to you—and probably because she can’t serve you as closely as she does without recognizing the feelings and the thoughts you’ve just shared with me—she violated your confidence…exactly the same way, and for a lot of the same reasons, as I’m now violating hers.”
“I never actually told her not to tell anyone,” Tourville said very, very softly, looking away from Terekhov for the first time since the Manticoran had entered his cabin. “So I don’t suppose anyone could actually accuse her of violating any confidences. But I never meant for anyone to find out.”
“May I ask why not, Sir?”
“A lot of reasons, some of which I’m sure I don’t know myself.” Tourville looked back at him. “Because it would seem self-serving, I suppose. And because there’s…a history between Duchess Harrington and myself.” He shook his head. “We’ve each hurt the other more times than either of us likes. I don’t blame her for that, and I don’t think she blames me…now. But right after the Battle of Manticore, we both blamed each other a lot. I wasn’t about to tell her then, and if I tell her now, it’ll sound…I don’t know. Boastful? Like someone trying to prove his moral superiority? Besides, there’s no proof of what happened. If there had been, StateSec would’ve made sure I was dead by now!” He twitched another brief smile. “You have to be careful about making statements about your own alleged courage and magnificent morality when they’re going to not only seem self-serving but be impossible to prove one way or the other.”
“But you did erase that tac data, didn’t you?” Terekhov’s question was even softer than Tourville’s voice had been, and his blue eyes were strangely gentle.
“If I hadn’t, Shannon Foraker would have,” the Havenite said after a handful of seconds. “I couldn’t let her do that. It wasn’t her responsibility; it was mine. And don’t mistake me, Commodore Terekhov. I didn’t do it because I’m such a noble, heroic fellow. For that matter, I didn’t do it simply because it was the right thing to do. I did it because I was ashamed.” His strong, confident voice wavered at last, turned husky, and he shook his head sharply. “I was ashamed of my star nation, ashamed of my superiors, ashamed of what was about to happen—what I knew had already happened on the way to Cerberus—to an honorable, innocent woman, and ashamed of the way the Navy—my Navy—had been turned into Cordelia Ransom’s executioners. We were better than that. We had to be. And so, just that once, I was.”
The treecat on the back of Tourville’s chair moved at last. One long-fingered true-hand reached out and laid itself ever so gently against the admiral’s cheek and those grass-green eyes met Sir Aivars Terekhov’s. And then, slowly, Lurks in Branches nodded.
But Terekhov hadn’t needed that confirmation—not about that man—and he pushed up out of his chair and stood facing Tourville.
“No,” he said quietly. “Not ‘just that once,’ Admiral Tourville. You did it because you were always better than that. I doubt I’ll ever be free of that anger you think I should go on feeling, but if I’m going to be honest, a lot of that anger’s strength is probably guilt. Survivor’s guilt, because my people didn’t just die while I survived. They died fighting under my orders, fighting for me, and it’s a lot safer to focus on the people who killed them than it is on the man who commanded them when they died in Hyacinth and couldn’t even be wi
th them in Seaburg.
“But Sinead was right. No matter what the People’s Republic of Haven may have been like, and no matter what some of the people who served it may have been, some of them were truly extraordinary human beings, even then. And”—he extended his hand once more, his expression very different than the one he’d worn the first time—“I’m honored to have met one of them this afternoon.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
“Oh, shit,” Sensor Tech 2/c Paige Thuvaradran said very, very quietly. Thuvaradran had the duty on SLNS Harpist’s bridge, and as it happened, Lieutenant Commander Franz Stedman, the tactical officer and her direct boss, was the current officer of the watch. Now Stedman, who did not approve of…informality on the bridge, turned his command chair to face the tactical section, and his expression was not incredibly happy.
“I don’t believe I quite heard that, Thuvaradran,” he said frostily, and she looked up from her display quickly.
“Sorry, Sir,” she said.
“Perhaps you’d care to share whatever inspired that comment with the rest of us?” Stedman suggested.
“Yes, Sir.” Thuvaradran cleared her throat. “Sir, we’ve just picked up a thirteen-unit hyper footprint at twelve light-minutes, right on the limit.”
“Thirteen?” Stedman’s eyes widened, and he sounded very much like someone who hoped his normally efficient, highly competent sensor tech was wrong.
“Yes, Sir. Hard to tell anything at this range from just the footprints, but it looks like at least a couple of them are probably in the battlecruiser range.”
“I see,” Stedman said. “Put it up on the main plot.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The icons of the incoming starships appeared on the main display, not even crawling, on such an enormous scale, at their low initial velocity. Their hyper footprints had long since dissipated, but the signatures of their impeller wedges burned clear and sharp. Obviously, whoever they were they weren’t even trying to hide. That could be a good thing, since this was a Solarian-administered system…or it could be—and more probably was—a very bad thing, indeed.