by David Weber
"All right," FitzGerald muttered, just a bit rebelliously. "I'll admit it—Mesa and its multistellars have always been outlaws, and they've always been perfectly comfortable working with the most murderous scum out there. But I still think recruiting State-Sec units and rogue People's Navy ships is a new departure for them. And, give the Devil his due, Skip—I always thought the Peeps were as serious as we were about enforcing the Cherwell Convention, at least."
"I suppose it is a new departure for Manpower, in some ways," Terekhov conceded. "If nothing else, they're recruiting ships whose weapons, electronics, and crew quality come a hell of a lot closer to matching that of contemporary navies. It's not up to our weight, maybe. Or the Andies'. But it comes a lot closer, and these units probably are a match for the older ones we're using for routine commerce protection away from the front-line systems. And it also guarantees deniability. After all, these ships are already outlaws against their own star nation—or hard-core patriots, fighting to restore the legitimate government of their star nation, depending on your perspective. They've got their own reasons for doing anything they do, and Manpower can stand back and fling its hands piously into the air in horror right along with the best of them if any of their rogues get themselves caught.
"By the same token, though, these people are all orphans. They're not even privateers working with a viable—or semi-viable—planetary or system liberation organization, like some of the folks we've dealt with in Silesia for so long. As you just pointed out, opposition to the genetic slave trade's always been a core policy of Haven, whether it was the People's Republic or just the Republic. The fact that these people are willing to sign on with slavers cuts the last real link with where they came from or who they used to claim to be.
"So they don't have anywhere else to go, whatever lies they may tell themselves, and there's no countervailing loyalty to draw them away from their new associates. The best kind of mercenaries, Ansten—people no one can hire away from you, because they aren't officially your employees, and even if they were, they don't have anywhere to go! And, as pirates, they pay their own way with the loot they're taking from the people you want hurt in the first place. Talk about making war pay for itself!"
"Skipper," FitzGerald said in pained tones, "please don't sound like you actually admire these bastards!"
"Admiration doesn't come into it. Understanding what they're trying to do, now—that's another matter. And I don't. Understand, I mean."
"Excuse me?" FitzGerald looked at him quizzically. "Weren't you the one who was just explaining about how all of this is such a great advantage for them?"
"That was all in the tactical sense—or, at most, the operational sense. I'm talking about figuring out the strategic sense in what they're doing. Aside from taking a certain vengeful pleasure in blacking our eyes after all we've done to them over the centuries, and maybe using people who used to be Peeps to do it with, I don't see what they're trying to accomplish. Anhur and 'Citizen Commodore Clignet' would obviously have added to the pressure on us here in the Cluster, if they hadn't gotten their chops busted so quickly. But his log entries pretty clearly imply that Manpower has acquired an entire little fleet of ex-Peep rogue units. And, apparently, even more ship commanders they can help acquire vessels and suitable crews from other sources. So where are they? Are they planning to try to swamp us out here in the Cluster? If they are, where's the rest of them? And are they really stupid enough to think discovering hordes of ex-Peeps flailing about in the Cluster wouldn't make Queen Elizabeth even more determined to drive the annexation through? Ansten, by now the entire galaxy knows the Queen wants to occupy the Haven System, depopulate Nouveau Paris, plow the entire planet with salt, and then nuke it into a billiard ball to make sure she didn't miss any microbes. Show her a batch of 'Citizen Commodore Clignets,' and she'll find the reinforcements she needs to hold the Cluster even if she has to buy them from the Sollies out of the Privy Purse!"
"That might be . . . just a . . . bit of an overstatement, Skipper." FitzGerald's voice quivered, and his lips twitched. He paused and inhaled deeply. "On the other hand, I will concede Her Majesty is just a little irked with Peeps in general, and the old regime in particular. Something about that assassination attempt in Grayson, I think."
"Exactly. Oh, she's going to be pissed off wherever and whenever they turn up. And I don't expect Manpower to hold off using them just because they don't want to hurt Her Majesty's feelings. But I don't think they're clumsy enough to make heavy use of them here, if their object in the long run is to encourage us to stay out of the Cluster. I could be wrong about that. And it's possible any of their tame Peeps they chose to use here would be just one of several strings to their bow. But they started recruiting these people, according to Clignet, long before we ever discovered the Lynx Terminus. So they obviously had something in mind to do with them before the Cluster became an issue. And I'd very much like to know what that 'something' was."
"Put that way, I have to agree," FitzGerald said thoughtfully.
"Well, I'm sure we'll both keep turning it over in the backs of our brains for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, I think we can give ourselves at least a modest pat on the back for dealing with Clignet and his butchers. And then get back to the boring, day-to-day duties we expected when we first arrived in Nuncio."
"Yes, Sir," FitzGerald sighed. "I've already got Tobias running preliminary updates on our charts, and I promised him he can have the snotties when he needs them. I guess we can settle down for the real survey activity tomorrow, or the next day."
"Time estimate to completion?"
"With all of the remote arrays we deployed against Clignet, we've already got a pretty damned good 'eye in the sky.' We're going to have to use the pinnaces to pick some of them up if we want to recover them—which," he added dryly, "I'm assuming, given their price tags, we do?"
"You assume correctly," Terekhov said even more dryly.
"Well, about a quarter of them've exhausted their endurance, so we're going to have to go out and get them. That's the bad news. The good news is that they've given us enough reach that we can probably complete the survey within another nine to ten T-days."
"That is good news. At that rate, we'll be able to pull out for Celebrant almost exactly on schedule, despite playing around with Clignet. Outstanding, Mr. Exec!"
"We strive to please, Skip. Of course," the XO smiled nastily, "doing it's going to require certain snotties to work their butts off. Which may not be such a bad thing, given some of the experiences they have to work their way past," he added more seriously.
"No, not a bad thing at all," Terekhov said. "Of course, I don't see any reason to explain to our long-suffering snotties that we're doing this for their own good. Think of all the generations of oppressed midshipmen who'd feel cheated if this one figured out their heartless, hard-driving, taskmaster superiors actually care what happens to them!"
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Helen opened the hatch and started to step through it, then stopped abruptly.
She'd discovered the small observation dome early in her second week aboard Hexapuma. It was never used. The optical heads spotted along the cruiser's hull, and especially here between the boat bays, gave multiply overlapping coverage. They allowed the boat bay flight control officer far better visibility from the displays in his command station than any human eye could have provided, even from this marvelously placed perch. But the dome was still here, and, in some emergency, with the normal command station knocked out, someone stationed here might actually do some good. Personally, Helen doubted it, but she didn't really care, either. Whatever the logic of its construction, it gave her a place to sit alone with God's handiwork and think.
It was very quiet in the dome. The hand-thick armorplast blister on the bottom of Hexapuma's central spindle was tougher than thirty or forty centimeters of the best prespace armor imaginable, and the dome boasted its own armored hatch. There were only two comfortable chairs, a commu
nications panel, and the controls required to configure and maneuver the small grav-lens telescope. The quiet whisper of air through the ventilating ducts was the only sound, and the silent presence of the stars was her only companionship whenever she came here to be alone. To think. To work her way through things . . . like the carnage and butchery she'd seen aboard Anhur.
And that made it a very precious treasure aboard a warship, where privacy was always all but impossible.
Which was why she felt a sudden, burning sense of resentment when she discovered that someone else had discovered her refuge. And not just any someone.
Paulo d'Arezzo looked up as the hatch opened, then popped upright as he saw Helen. An odd expression flashed over his too-handsome face—a flicker of emotions too fast and complex for her to read. Surprise, obviously. And disappointment—probably the mirror image of her own resentment, if he'd believed, as she had, that no one else had discovered this refuge. But something else, too. Something darker, colder. Black and clinging and bitter as poison, that danced just beyond grasp or recognition.
Whatever it was, it vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by the familiar, masklike expression she detested so thoroughly.
"I'm sorry if I startled you," she said stiffly. "I hadn't realized the compartment was occupied."
"That's all right." He, too, sounded stiff, a bit stilted. "I was just about finished here today, anyway." He turned half-away from her to pick something up. His movements seemed hurried, a bit too quick, and, almost despite herself, Helen stepped farther into the small, compartment and looked over his shoulder.
It was a sketch pad. Not an electronic pad: an old-fashioned paper pad, with a rough-toothed surface for equally old-fashioned pencils or pastels or charcoal sticks. Cathy Montaigne sometimes used a similar pad, although she'd always insisted she was nothing but a dabbler. Helen wasn't so sure about that. Cathy was certainly untrained, and her work wasn't up to professional standards, perhaps, but there was something to it. A feel. A sense of . . . interpretation. Something. Helen didn't have the training to describe what that "something" was, but she recognized it when she saw it.
Just as she recognized it when she saw Paulo's pad. Except that Paulo obviously had both the raw talent and training Cathy lacked.
She inhaled sharply as she recognized the sketch. Saw the shattered, broken hammerhead looming against Nuncio-B, surrounded by wreckage and splintered ruin. It was a stark composition, graphite on paper, blackest shadow and pitiless, blazing light, jagged edges, and the cruel beauty of sunlight on sheared battle steel. And somehow the images conveyed not just broken plating and pieces of hull. They conveyed the violence which had created them, the artist's awareness of the pain, death, and blood waiting within that truncated hull. And the promise that the loss of some precious innocence, almost like virginity, waited with those horrors.
Paulo looked back over his shoulder at the sound of her indrawn breath, and his face blanked. He reached out, his hand moving faster, and slapped the cover over the pad, almost as if he was ashamed she'd seen it. He looked away from her again, his head partly bent, and jammed the pad up into the satchel she'd often seen him carrying without wondering what might be inside it.
"'Scuse me," he muttered, and started to brush past her towards the hatch.
"Wait." Her hand closed on his elbow before she even realized she was going to speak. He stopped instantly, looking down at her hand for perhaps a second, then looked up at her face.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because—" Helen paused, suddenly aware she didn't know the answer to that question. She started to release her grip, ready to apologize and let him go. But then she looked into those gray, aloof eyes, and they weren't aloof. There was a darkness in them, the same darkness, Helen knew, which had brought her here to think and be alone. But there was an edge of something else, as well.
Loneliness, she thought wonderingly. Perhaps even . . . fear?
"Because I'd like to talk to you," she said, and was astonished by the fact that it was the truth.
"About what?" His deep, resonant voice carried the familiar standoffishness. Not rude, or dismissive, but with that unmistakable sense of distance. She felt an equally familiar flicker of irritation, but this time she'd seen his eyes, and his sketch. There was more to Paulo d'Arezzo, she realized, than she'd ever bothered to notice before, and that sent a dull throb of shame through her.
"About the reason you're here." She waved her free hand at the quiet, dimly illuminated dome. "About the reason I'm here."
For an instant, he looked as if he meant to pull free and continue on his way. Then he shrugged.
"I come here to think."
"So do I." She smiled crookedly. "It's hard to find someplace to do that, isn't it?"
"If you want to be left alone to do it," he agreed. It could have been a pointed comment on her intrusion into his solitude, but it wasn't. He looked back out at the pinprick stars, and his expression softened. "I think this has to be the most peaceful spot in the entire ship," he said quietly.
"It's the most peaceful one I've been able to find, anyway," she agreed. She pointed at the chair he'd been sitting in when she arrived. He looked at it, then shrugged and sat back down. She settled herself into the other chair, and pivoted it to face him.
"It bothers you, doesn't it?" She twitched one hand at the closed sketch pad in his satchel. "What we saw aboard Anhur—that bothers you as much as it bothers me, doesn't it?"
"Yes." He looked away, out into the peaceful blackness. "Yes, it does."
"Want to talk about it?"
He looked back at her quickly, his expression surprised, and she wondered if he, too, was remembering their conversation with Aikawa in Snotty Row.
"I don't know," he said, after a moment. "I haven't really been able to put it into words for myself, much less anyone else."
"Me, either," she admitted, and it was her turn to look off into the stars. "It was . . . awful. Horrible. And yet . . ." Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head slowly.
"And yet, there was that awful sense of triumph, wasn't there?" His soft question pulled her eyes back to him as if he were a magnet. "That sense of winning. Of having proven we were faster, tougher—smarter. Of being better than they were."
"Yes." She nodded slowly. "I guess there was. And maybe there should have been. We were faster and tougher—this time, at least. And they were exactly what we joined the Navy to stop. Shouldn't there be some sense of triumph, of victory, when we stop murderers and rapists and torturers from hurting anyone else, ever again?"
"Maybe." His nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath, then shook his head. "No, not 'maybe.' You're right. And it's not as if you or I gave the orders, or fired the weapons. Not this time. But the truth is, when you come right down to it, however evil they might've been—and I grant you, they were evil, any way you want to define the term—they were still human beings. I saw what happened to them, and my imagination's good enough to picture at least some of what it must've been like when it happened. And no one should feel triumphant over having done that to someone else, however much they may have deserved to have it done to them. Nobody should . . . and I do. So what does that say about me?"
"Feeling qualms about wearing the uniform?" she asked almost gently.
"No." He shook his head again, firmly. "Like I said when we were talking with the others. This is why I joined, and I don't have any qualms about doing the job. About stopping people like this. Not even about firing on—killing—people in other navies who're just like you and me, just doing what duty requires of them. I don't think it's the actual killing. I think it's the fact that I can see how horrible it was and feel responsible for it without feeling guilty. Shouldn't there be some guilt? I hate the fact that I helped do that to other humans, and I regret that it had to happen to anyone, but I don't feel guilty, Helen. Sick at heart. Revolted. Horrified. All those things. But not guilty. What does that say about me? That I can kill people and not f
eel guilty?"
He looked at her, the gray eyes bottomless, and she folded her arms across her breasts.
"It says you're human. And don't be too sure you don't feel guilty. Or that you won't, in time. My father says most people do, that it's a societal survival mechanism. But some people don't. And he says that doesn't necessarily make them evil, or sociopathic monsters. Sometimes it just means they see more clearly. That they don't lie to themselves. There are choices we have to make. Sometimes they're easy, and sometimes they're hard. And sometimes our responsibility to the people we care about, or the things we believe in, or people who can't defend themselves, doesn't leave us any choice at all."
"I don't know." He shook his head. "That seems too . . . -simplistic. It's like giving myself some kind of moral get out of jail free card."
"No, it isn't," she said quietly. "Believe me. Guilt and horror can be independent of each other. You can feel one whether you feel the other or not."
"What are you talking about?" He sat back, his forearms on the chair armrests, and looked at her intently, as if he'd heard something she hadn't quite said. "You're not talking about Anhur at all, are you?"
Once again, his perceptiveness surprised her. She considered him for a few seconds, then shook her head.
"No. I'm talking about something that happened years ago, back on Old Earth."