Again, Admiral Romanova nodded. Right now she didn't look at all to Trabe Kourdakov like Katy, his daughter. She looked like—well—a Star Service flag officer.
Like someone who didn't belong at all to peaceful Narsai. Not for the first time, Kourdakov wondered how he and Cabbie had managed to engender such an unlikely offspring.
She stayed beside him, so that the visual pickup would show them both to whoever answered from that oncoming flagship. So that if she said anything, her words would go out through space just as his would.
They waited. They waited until, with the battle group's image still filling the screen before them, Shannandore Neilsen's voice said, “I'm sorry, Trabe. No matter what frequency we use to hail them, they just aren't responding. We know they're hearing us, but for some reason I can't imagine they just don't want to answer."
* * * *
I'm sorry, Katy. Not one of those ships has a Morthan on board. So we can't find out what they're up to by that means, either. I guess we'll just have to wait until they're ready to tell us! Lincoln Casey's thoughts touched his wife's, gently and with real regret.
Well, we did hear that the Commonwealth's been enforcing its edicts against letting Morthan medics practice off the home-world. So I don't suppose I should be surprised that the Service has managed to get rid of its Morthans, too Already. Catherine Romanova answered her lover and life partner as she studied the images on her father's terminal. I recognize the flagship, Linc. She's Aragon, which the last I knew carried Lita Benedon's flag.
Uh, oh. They both remembered Benedon, because she'd been another member of Captain George Fralick's contingent aboard the Raven. So long ago that Linc and Katy had both been ensigns reporting to the patrol ship for their first duty assignments; while Lita was a slightly more experienced junior officer, who soon made the small but infinitely important jump from ensign to lieutenant, junior grade. She'd finally advanced from command to flag rank during Romanova's last month as Fleet Admiral. Katy wondered, and opened her mind to Linc so that he could wonder with her, what the Defense Ministry meant by choosing this particular officer to lead what looked far too much like an occupation force to rebellious Narsai.
Looking at the situation, just for a moment, from a purely Terran or Inner World perspective, of course. Since from Narsai's viewpoint, a sovereign world could hardly be considered “rebellious” for redefining the conditions of its membership in a voluntary organization like the Commonwealth.
One thing about it, Katy. Linc resumed their silent conversation with a wry chuckle. Benedon must be glad she doesn't have a “mindfucker” running her sickbay!
True. Romanova shared her husband's brittle mirth. Lita certainly wasn't fond of Morthans! But I'll bet the quality of medical care on board Commonwealth ships has gone straight to hell, compared to what it was before. With Morthan hybrid physicians who could reach into their patients’ minds and perceive their emotions practicing in starship sickbays, and in hospitals and clinics all over the Commonwealth (although rarely on Narsai or Kesra), diagnosis of Human ills had been transformed. While Human suspicion of Morthan mental abilities grew stronger with each new generation, instead of abating as the otherwise uncannily homo sapiens-like aliens repeatedly proved their utter lack of interest in using those abilities to do harm ... Katy tried, now, to remember the first time that she'd heard a Morthan hybrid called “mindfucker” by one of her fellow pure Humans. When had that ugly term come into common use, anyway?
My mother could remember hearing it when she was a girl, Katy. Even on Mortha, before she married my Human father and left to live with him on Sestus 3. Linc's thoughts lost their previous trace of ironic humor. I wish we'd had ships come in from Mortha during the past six months. I'd like to know whether or not there are enough “new Morthans” like me to give my mother's world a chance at defending itself, if what's happening to Narsai right now means there's going to be war after all.
* * * *
Well, that's probably exactly why the Commonwealth never sent us that replacement comm booster! Katy answered, with irony enough for two. And with a wave of fierce, protective love sent in her husband's direction, one that carried with it memories of all the times during the past 40 years when she'd been glad he wasn't like the Morthan hybrids born before him. Glad that he, unlike his mother's species and (as far as anyone knew) all of its Human-sired descendants before him, was as capable as any “pure Human” of aggressive behavior. That he'd been able to serve at her side, through all those years in the Star Service—and that he was with her now, in this new life, as her full and permanent partner. No longer as best friend (although he remained that still), and the most valued and trusted of her subordinates.
Yes. They didn't want us talking to Mortha, or any other Outworld. “Divide and conquer” is still a valid strategy, after all. Something distracted Linc's attention then. Something innocuous, though; a child being placed in his arms. One of Dan and Rachel's triplets.
“Talking to Linc?” Katy's father asked, as she refocused her attention outward. When she turned her eyes toward the old man's face, she found it creased into a reassuring smile.
That was one thing for which she had to give her parents nothing but credit. They'd drawn back from her in disapproval after she broke off her betrothal to Johnnie Romanov, and hadn't relented until she and her first husband came to Narsai with three little boys—Ewan a toddler, the twins still infants—and bribed them with their grandchildren. Later, accepting her off-world marriage at last, they'd applied Narsatian family values to her divorcing George Fralick and leaving newborn Maddy with him to grow up in the Fralick home on Kesra. So their daughter was already “outside the pale” as far as Trabe Kourdakov and Cabanne Romanova were concerned, long before Katy took her immorality one step further and remarried. Joining herself to the Morthan hybrid who'd served as her first officer, through all the years she'd been a Star Service captain—and, in her parents’ eyes, committing formalized adultery.
Which was no longer the case, with George dead for the past six months. Something she hadn't desired, but when it happened—and not by her hand, thankfully!—she accepted it with vast relief. Now her parents could welcome Linc into their family without reservation, without having to fight their way past their still sincerely held beliefs; and now she had to give them the credit they were due for never holding his heritage against him. They'd liked him and made him welcome, in the days when he was “only” her friend and colleague, and an occasional visitor on Narsai. They showed no disgust now, or fear, or even simple distaste, whenever they detected the couple's telepathic and empathic bond operating in their presence.
Her parents were members of Narsai's elite, with the superb off-world educations and (except where Narsatian mores dictated otherwise) egalitarian values their status implied. More than ever, on this afternoon when her home-world's destiny must soon change forever, Catherine Romanova knew that she was proud to be their daughter.
“Yes,” she said, answering Trabe's question. “I'm having the Mistworld ship break orbit and stand by in open space, Dad. Close enough so they can monitor what's going on down here, but in the clear. I don't want them to be sitting ducks for Commonwealth fire, if that's what Admiral Benedon's got in mind."
“You know that flagship's commander?” Kourdakov asked his daughter. And then added, without letting her reply, “Will they still be within, well, telepath range? Able to lend us a hand if we need it?"
“They'll try to stay that close. But Dad, they're only one ship. I've ordered them to keep themselves alive, if they have to choose. And I'm not sure why they're taking my orders—no one ever put me in command of Mistworld's star fleet!—but they've accepted that one. They'll pull out and run, if necessary.” Romanova stared into her father's eyes now. Hating what she'd just told him, and hoping he could see that in her gaze.
“With your boys on board, I hope?” Narsai's senior chair councilor stared back at his only child, accepting brutal truth and complimented t
hat she was offering it to him. “This isn't their fight, Katy. And it especially isn't their hosts’ fight. Even though it's been easy for me to forget that those bodies they're walking around in belong to three entirely different young men, each of whom has his own right to go on living."
“They're already on board, Dad.” Katy reached briefly for Linc again, and verified that it was so. “They wanted to take us on board with them—our whole family. But I said no. This is our world, and we have to stay with it and do whatever we can to keep it free. Free and sovereign. If we can."
The terminal before them showed a face again. Two faces, actually; those of Narsai's Commissioners of Aquaculture and Public Safety. The “Harbormaster” demanded in his abrupt, bluff way, “Trabe! There you are! Why the hell haven't you called my militia to alert yet? I mean, our militia.” He glanced at his companion as he spoke that last sentence; but Mara Ling (who happened to be his wife, anyway) looked far too distressed to notice his choice of possessive pronoun, or to take offense at it if she had.
Because my daughter didn't tell me I should! was probably the honest answer, Katy realized as she glanced at her father's chagrined face. He knew so little about providing the kind of leadership Narsai was going to need, during the hours and days soon to come ... she waited for his slight nod, not willing to undercut his authority with the pair of commissioners, before she stepped in. “If that battle group's coming to knock us back into line as good members of the Commonwealth,” she said, in a firm yet hopefully soothing tone that she'd often used to calm trigger-happy junior officers, “calling out the militia isn't going to stop them, Harbie. It won't even slow them down! But it will give them a chance to eliminate it as a threat, because they'll be able to identify every person you and Mara have started to train. So Dad's not going to be calling them out. He's going to hold them in reserve, in case we find ourselves under Commonwealth occupation. To form the core of a resistance movement, which is how they can be most useful. If and when we find we need to use them that way."
“Oh.” On Mara Ling's face all along, and behind Harbie's bluster of pretended belligerence, there'd been stark terror of doing what was so foreign to most Narsatians—of standing against an enemy, prepared to do battle. Both commissioners’ shoulders slumped, now, in relief. “So you'll let us know when we're needed, Trabe? Katy?"
“Absolutely,” Romanova said, and smiled at them. The taut, grim smile of a trained and seasoned star-warrior, who if she hadn't been worried sick about noncombatants in harm's way (noncombatants who happened to be her parents, children, and grandchildren!) might well have been enjoying this moment's familiar adrenaline rush. This moment when the images of Harbie and Mara disappeared from the terminal, and that of the Commonwealth battle group replaced them. A battle group that was now dropping out of hyperdrive, and proceeding in-system at maximum sub-light speed.
* * *
Chapter 4
“Hail that ship.” Rear Admiral Lita Benedon stared at her flagship's main viewscreen, and wondered at the vessel's strange lines. She got out of her flag bridge's command chair, because she'd never liked to negotiate from sitting position.
She'd never liked to negotiate, period. But she had her orders, and they wouldn't permit her to blow that thing out of her sky until it did something overtly hostile. She wondered, not for the first time, if her superiors had chosen her for this task because they knew how easy it would be for her to interpret just about anything Misties did in that manner ... a voice was responding to the Aragon's hail. A Human voice, from the sound of it; although one couldn't tell that easily, of course, whether it was a real Human or one of those hybridized mindfuckers.
Benedon thanked the cosmos that Kesrans, Sestus 4's native species, and every other sapient alien race that Humans had run across so far in their explorations, either were incapable of crossbreeding with her kind or found the idea just as disgusting as she did. And she damned the first Human visitors to Mortha, roundly, for failing to keep their pants on. She stared hard at the image on her screen, a face that substituted itself for the alien ship's outline, and stifled her relieved sigh as she saw that the young man's eyes were dark brown. Human eyes, not golden Morthan ones!
The man was too young, actually, to be what he said he was. “Admiral Benedon? I'm Ishi Sanibello, captain of Mistworld's (unintelligible sound-jumble that had to be his ship's name). May I ask what you've come here to do? That looks like an awfully big convoy, if you're just responding to Narsai's requisition for a new comm booster relay to replace the one they lost. When our fleet had a misunderstanding with one of your Commonwealth ships, six months ago."
Nowhere but from Terra could one get replacements for interplanetary communications technology. Nowhere farther out that New Orient, the last-settled of the “Inner Worlds,” were such devices and their components stockpiled. And that, of course, reflected Commonwealth policy; it had nothing to do with the laws of supply and demand.
Benedon answered, after drawing herself up to her full height and bracing her shoulders, “We've brought Narsai a great deal more than the new relay, Captain Sanibello. We've brought all the help the authorities there will need, to remove the anti-Commonwealth forces from power and restore their planet to normal. And I should tell you that there are other warships arriving, exactly now, at Mortha and at the Sestus star system. To take similar action, since it appears that you Mistworlders—whether or not you meant to do it—have managed to start a goddamn interstellar revolt."
Had she rattled him? He didn't look as if she had, but with some people it was hard to tell. He simply stood there, on what had to be his own bridge (although she couldn't see much of the compartment around him, and what she could see looked impossibly alien), and waited for a moment that felt like a couple of centuries. Then his image went away, and that of a much older man replaced it.
“Hello, Admiral Benedon. I'm Trabe Kourdakov, Narsai's current senior chair councilor. Captain Sanibello's being kind enough to relay this transmission, since for some reason I can't fathom your communications officer has been refusing to put me through to you. What's your business in our space? And perhaps you can explain to me how it's possible for Narsai to ‘revolt’ against an off-world government that never had authority over us in the first place, except what we voluntarily allowed the Commonwealth to exercise. For which we've withdrawn our consent, and notified your superiors of that withdrawal months ago, for fear of just such a display of force against us as this one."
* * * *
“Really, Councilor?” Benedon drew a breath, and used the moment that doing so took to compose herself. To master her fury, at having been outmaneuvered by this white-haired namby-pamby Narsatian pacifist ... oh, yes, she'd done her homework. Kourdakov, she knew, was MinTar University's Philosophy Department Chairman. Not to mention the father of the treasonous, mindfucker-loving superior officer whom Lita Benedon had orders to deal with; of Admiral Catherine Romanova, recently recalled from retirement to active service. “I wasn't quite ready to speak with you about that yet, and that's why my comm officer had orders to ask you to wait.” Orders, actually, to ignore your hails and let you get madder and madder—and hopefully, further and further off balance—until I was damned good and ready to pick my own time and place, to call you and let you know what Narsai's future's going to be! “One thing I can tell you already, though, is that the ship relaying your signal must return to Mistworld. As soon as possible. Another is that your daughter, if you don't want to send her to Star Service Headquarters on Luna for court martial and probable execution, had better be on board it when it leaves."
* * * *
“What?” Trabe Kourdakov bit the monosyllable even shorter. The old man squared his shoulders; and for the first time Katy Romanova realized that although she'd inherited her rather gravelly voice from her mother, her ability to use it to gain instant attention and prompt obedience had come from her father. “Admiral, I can't have heard you presuming to order me to send guests away from my
world. Nor can you imagine that Narsai will release one of its citizens to you for judicial proceedings on Terra. Not, at least, without asking the citizen in question whether or not she's willing to go."
“It's all right, Dad.” Romanova touched her father's arm. She was watching Lita Benedon narrowly; and through her eyes, Linc was doing the same. After handing little Paula Kane (namesake of Paolo Giandrea, the captain and friend to whom Rachel and her babies unquestionably owed their lives) off to someone else, so that he wouldn't distress the child with his roiling emotions ... Linc, unlike other Morthans, lacked the ability to share thoughts with anyone else except Katy and her daughter Maddy. But an adult holding a baby didn't need to be a telepath for distress to come through loud and clear, and the last thing the situation in that tense and crowded conference room needed was for one of the now sleeping triplets to wake unhappy.
“I have orders,” Benedon said, with an imperious lift of her chin and with familiar and malicious pleasure in her voice. She'd grown older and more restrained since their days aboard George Fralick's Raven, but she clearly hadn't lost her hatred for Morthan hybrids and for people like Katy Romanova who made friends with them. “Orders from Minister Fothingill herself, and from Fleet Admiral Tanaka. As soon as we enter orbit, Admiral Romanova, I'll be glad to let you and your father view them.” She flicked her gaze at Trabe Kourdakov, briefly, as she said “father.” As if, old man that he was, he really didn't merit a great deal of notice. “And after that, I assure you that I plan to carry them out. With whatever force may be required."
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