by L D Inman
With an effort, he dragged his attention back to the meeting. Inslee dismissed them shortly after; gathering up his things, Douglas watched covertly as Inslee came with Amis round the table to greet the weather department head and be introduced to Speir. They continued toward the door at the table’s end; Douglas, converging, prepared himself to nod briefly to Speir on his way out the door—but Amis checked him. “A moment, Douglas. I want to get your brief on Viegne’s plan for next month’s tactics course.”
“Yes, sir,” Douglas said, “certainly.”
“You’ve met our new weather officer, I presume? She also just finished a course of study at Ryswyck Academy.” He gestured vaguely at Speir, who offered Douglas a grave nod.
“Yes, of course,” Douglas said, with a neutral voice and an equally neutral bow. “Welcome to Cardumel, Field-Commander.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said Speir. A hint of a frown crossed her brows, but she said nothing else, and seemed to accept his distance; still, Douglas felt churlish.
“I was sorry to hear of your father’s passing,” he said, after a hesitation. He’d come across it in the veterans’ obits section of the general dispatch, a few weeks ago, and had briefly wished he was adept at prayer so he could dedicate one on Speir’s family’s behalf. In the end he had simply closed his eyes for a moment and gone on. “My condolences to you and your family.”
He knew Speir; knew to expect the slight restive movement and the purse of her lips when anyone spoke of her own suffering. One of these days she would not ward away attention to what grieved her: but that day was obviously not today. “I am much obliged,” she said. Her courtesy was as sincere and firmly rooted as ever: even here, Speir could make a room feel unshakable just by being in it.
“The obligation is mine,” he answered, meaning it; saw a tiny flicker of wry comment in her face before she turned to Amis.
“I must get to the weather tower now, sir; I’m on duty.” Amis acknowledged this with a small wave, and she slid neatly past them. “Thank you, sir; Captain.”
“Field-Commander,” Douglas murmured.
“She comes highly recommended,” Amis remarked, as Speir cleared the door and disappeared. And not before time, was the unspoken corollary; Douglas glanced briefly at the weather-corps major, who was bending Inslee’s patient ear about mis-coordinated data dumps, for which the major had probably actually been responsible himself.
“And with good reason,” was all Douglas said; Amis gave a satisfied grunt, and turned to Douglas’s briefing.
~*~
“I must congratulate you again, Ahrens,” Barklay said. “Though I’ll be sorry to lose you for the time being.”
“Thank you, General Barklay, sir,” Ahrens said. Four days ago he had stood in the same spot before Barklay’s desk, rocking on his feet with gratified eagerness at being called to the capital to interview for a prime post in weapons-systems tech coordination. Now, having gained the post and received his first briefing, his gratification had sharply sobered. Very likely Ahrens now knew more about what Central Command was planning than Barklay himself did.
“And I’m grateful,” Barklay went on, “for the service you continue to give to Ryswyck.” Ahrens had immediately put his name on the rotation list for teaching; all things being equal, he could be back here in six months, teaching weapons systems to the cadet cadre as he had so faithfully done all year as a junior officer.
“It’s the least I can do, sir,” Ahrens said firmly. Then added: “And also, unfortunately, the most.”
Barklay greeted this with a mordant laugh. Captain Ahrens had probably got a new and illuminating sense of Central Command’s disposition toward Ryswyck to go with his new rank. But Ahrens, stolid and stubborn when he wanted to be, had plowed onward with his plans to teach, and it seemed not to have hurt him in their eyes. Good.
“When do you report in?” Barklay asked.
“Next week, sir.”
“Well. We’ll have to hold you a proper feast before you go. Whose rota is on the kitchens?...ah. Cameron. I’m sure it will be extra special, then.”
Ahrens grinned wryly. He and Cameron were good friends now, squabbling often, but never breaking courtesy; in fact, Barklay suspected Ahrens was anxious, as soon as this interview was over, to seek her out and confide in her whatever he could. Cameron too would be leaving soon; she had a commission waiting for her at Amity. Barklay often missed his departing students and welcomed his new student leaders in equal measure, but there had been something special about this year’s rota leadership; there had been no one single moment to define it, but the day Cameron and Ahrens had faced one another in the arena to break their batons and claim mutual fault had definitely been one of them.
Barklay’s com buzzed. “Be off with you then, Captain,” he said; released, Ahrens saluted him swiftly and strode out through the open door.
Barklay pressed the com pad to answer the tower. “There’s a recorded message come for you, sir,” said Lieutenant Rose.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Copy it down here.”
It was another message from John, Barklay saw at once when it came up on his com-deck. He hadn’t even put it under code this time. Wisdom only knew who else had seen it. It loaded on the projection; Barklay stopped it before it could play back, looking with despair at the pinched, resentful face on the recording. “More threats, John?” he said wearily to the frozen image. Abruptly he closed it down and erased it unplayed. He sank back in his chair, rubbing at his brow.
Barklay had to hope this disaster had the germ of its own healing in it. If it didn’t, he had already lost.
~*~
It was a good thing Speir hadn’t formed any anticipation of working closely with Douglas while they served at Cardumel. If Lieutenant Douglas had been quiet at Ryswyck, at Cardumel Captain Douglas was downright elusive. He made no attempt to seek Speir out, and the mere fact of it warned her not to press him. When they met he spoke to her with formal courtesy, tinged with…not dismissal, exactly. He still met her eye directly. If they had been at Ryswyck, she would have said he was angry.
But they definitely were not at Ryswyck. Lieutenant Darnel had been right: the differences came in ways she didn’t expect, and that tripped her up despite all her years among military folk. Speir did her best to absorb any awkwardnesses and do her job thoroughly and well, but somehow she gained a reputation, curried by Lieutenant Mulhall of the naval weather crew since their meeting on the shuttle, for feistiness—a reputation Speir thought pretty hollow. But she knew by instinct she must not lose her temper.
Her resolve was put to the test one day a few weeks in. A staff meeting had been called ahead of schedule, at which General Inslee reported that fresh intelligence had come in. The intel was tenuous at best, but it suggested that Bernhelm had restructured its military budget for a big push, though no new volume of ordnance was detected in the known building sites. Regular infrastructure repairs had been delayed; two tax holidays had been cancelled; those items, plus more details that Inslee would not disclose, had led Central Command to press all Boundary-protected bases to firm up their defenses. Training at Cardumel would increase; there would be additional watchstanders at each com post; Inslee had requested additional supplies and ordnance, both for himself and for Colonel Marshall at Colmhaven outpost.
The mood was grim as the meeting broke up, and everywhere Speir went she heard the news discussed. It was being discussed when she arrived in the post room of the weather tower to take over the downstairs com. The room was unusually full: as she emptied her postbox, she noticed that not only were Mulhall and Darnel present for the handover, two sergeants and a handful of Mulhall’s fellow crew-members were there—and the major was half-turned toward the door, still talking to Douglas, who was reviewing fresh data on a clipboard, his tablet and stylus pinched underneath it. When the major was gone, the discussion broke out afresh. Douglas, Speir noticed, ignored them in favor of his data. She decided to ignore him in turn and listen
to the talk.
“Well, if they’re not spending the money on missiles or ships,” said one of the ground crew, “then they must be planning something else. You can’t tell me there’s not some nasty surprise coming out of that purse.”
“Probably splitting atoms, they are,” Mulhall said.
“No one’s doing that!” Speir said, alarmed.
He looked round at her. “Ach, you Ryswyckians! You think the Berenians have too much honor to break the accords, if it’d give them a chance at us?”
“It’s not their honor I was thinking of,” Speir retorted, glaring at Mulhall. “It’s their intelligence. If any of the southern nations thought Berenia was splitting atoms, they’d have an occupying force up here to ‘protect’ us before you could blink.”
“If they hadn’t got their own sources of water,” Darnel said grimly, “they’d have been ‘protecting’ us long since.”
No one could argue with that.
“They’re willing to trade with us, but you notice no one’s stuck their neck out to give us a convoy for ten years,” he went on. “No; they think Berenia can take us without raising a nuclear threat. It’s just a matter of time. And no matter who wins, it just leaves one standing while the hawks circle.”
“They can circle all they like,” Speir said. “We’ve been fending off invaders for generations.”
Mulhall smirked. “Aye, and if the Boundary doesn’t hold, Speir can challenge ‘em all to single combat one by one.”
There was a general chuckle. Speir glanced sharply at Douglas, but he didn’t look up from his clipboard. She could tell he was listening, though: his stylus twitched in his hand as if in pretense of writing.
“Give me a gate narrow enough to fight in,” she said, “and I’ll stand up. Whether there’s anyone behind me or not.” She stared serenely at Mulhall; he took the point, and bristled. In her peripheral vision, Douglas went briefly still: but he did not speak.
“Let’s keep the talk to likely scenarios,” Darnel said dryly, by way of making peace. “Hand-to-hand fighting with combat knives is not one of them.”
The klaxon for watch-change cut the air; Mulhall abandoned the argument and stood up. “Well then, that’s my cue to leave this company of heroes and hit the mess. The com’s all yours, Field-Commander.” He snapped Speir a sharp ironic salute and stalked out.
“I’m off too,” said Darnel, slinging his equipment over his shoulder. “I’m going to pick up the readings from the post-points. My service to the Hero of Cardumel.” He swept her a bow, which amused her as much as it irritated her. “Including steady practice in refusing the bait.”
“I’m not exactly lacking for that,” Speir said.
“I shouldn’t think. But when you do snap and throw down a challenge, make sure it’s with someone who can actually fight, aye.”
“Should I tell Mulhall you said that?”
“He already knows—hence the baiting.” Then his eyes went briefly serious. “But it’s not hand-to-hand fighting and pretty talk we need here. Be advised.”
He left, taking his two sergeants with him; doors began opening and slamming as men exchanged duties. Douglas hung up his clipboard and followed the last of them past her to the outer door.
“You could have backed me up, Douglas,” Speir said.
He paused in the doorway. “Looked like you could take care of yourself.”
“It’s not me that needed defending. What about Ryswyck?”
“Ryswyck can take care of itself too,” Douglas said, and turned away.
“Even when its alumni don’t answer for it?” He didn’t reply, and she added, “I’m sorry to see you so embittered.”
She had never said such a thing to him before, and she fully expected him to let her words fall dead in the wake of his departure. But he stopped, and turned to fix her with an expressionless stare that she recognized for anger.
“I’m keeping my head down,” he said quietly. “As you should, too. You have the same cause.”
The words Solham Fray had never passed Douglas’s lips, but she never needed to wonder when he was thinking them.
“Time was,” she said, “you would never have let someone get away with casual ignorance. Even if you liked a quiet life.”
“Time was, I thought casual ignorance not too widespread to tackle. Including my own. But by all means, report me embittered.”
“Report you—what?” She stared at him. “What report? To whom?”
“Well, for a start—who else besides you would be sorry to see me embittered?”
His meaning—and his silence and air of faint resentment since she arrived—suddenly became appallingly clear. “Is that what you think I’m—you think I was sent with a secret commission to, what, spy on you? That’s—that’s—”
“Well, what was I to think? You showing up here without any warning. For a post in the back of beyond. What was I to think?”
“I don’t know, maybe that I took a commission where I could find one? There’s embittered,” she said, “and then there’s arrogant and paranoid.”
His lips thinned to a grim line. “You can’t tell me it’s not plausible.”
“What, that I’d agree to follow you to an inhospitable island for the express purpose of filing reports on you without your knowledge or consent? As I’d do to an enemy?”
“No, Speir, damn it. You could have been manipulated into it—”
“Ah. I see.” If she hadn’t been grief-numbed, she would have been in tears by now. “So I’m either malicious and underhanded, or a fool and a dupe. Well done, Douglas. You’ve just insulted me more thoroughly than anyone here. Right. So which is it?”
His voice sank to an angry hiss. “It doesn’t have to be either one! You could have the best of good will and the clearest of sight, and still get presented with an impossible set of choices, and nothing to do that doesn’t serve someone else’s intent. You know that’s true.”
He wasn’t just talking about her, Speir realized: she wasn’t the only one walking around with a splinter up under the quick. Her flash of compassion must have been visible in her face, because he snatched his gaze away abruptly. She stared at his stony profile for a moment and then said: “Yes. I know it’s true. But it’s been true for a long time. The bitterness is what’s new.”
He didn’t answer. “Whose intent would you rather foil, Douglas?” she pressed softly. “Barklay’s, or Jarrow’s?”
“Aye, well,” Douglas said, “you know what happened to Jarrow.”
“Well, he certainly lost that round,” she shrugged.
Douglas stared at her. “You don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?”
“About his accident.”
“What?”
“How could you not know? I would’ve thought it’d have got to Stevens by two months a—” He stopped as the arithmetic kicked in. It was his turn to mask compassion: Speir had had other things to think about two months ago.
“What happened?” she said, calmly.
“He was flying a shuttle. Between Killness and the supply base on the coast. He didn’t have anyone with him that day, so he was alone when it crashed. They thought the burns would kill him, but last I heard he was still being treated at Vet Central.”
Speir absorbed this; in the silence, a last group of laughing men clattered up to the ground floor below them, and the door banged shut on their banter.
“Who told you?”
“Blackett used to work with the dispatch for the naval shuttles. I just listened to what he was telling the others, haven’t asked him any questions myself.”
Such as, if the accident were sabotage, why Jarrow hadn’t been surreptitiously finished off in hospital by now. Perhaps Jarrow had recoiled at the shame of being demoted to shuttle duty and done it himself. Or he’d been reduced to despair at losing his revenge. Or he’d been ordered to remove himself in lieu of a scandalous court-martial. Douglas knew more than she did about that. Enough to sour his
options? His commission had even less scope than hers did.
She looked up from her frowning thought to meet Douglas’s eye.
“Keep your head down, Speir,” he said. “It’s not over.”
2
“And don’t forget to update the contour maps for both post-lines at the fourth hour,” said Major Ghislain.
“Yes, sir,” Speir said.
They saluted one another and the major went down, leaving Speir at the top of the tower for the first shift of the night. The weather-corps didn’t have enough officers to double each shift, so Speir had a sergeant working the com while she ran queries on the database and reconciled the local calculations with the weather stations’ dispatches from the main. At the fourth hour she would signal the posts for data and load them into the master contour map—though she had learned to check discreetly for confirmation whenever the major gave an order, in this case he was entirely correct.
The calculations were clean. Bored, Speir got up from her station and took up exploring the nooks of the tower, as she had begun to do whenever she had a quiet shift. Tonight she opened a closet and began rooting through shelves of equipment. “Most of that’s obsolete,” the sergeant volunteered helpfully. It was; there was little point in reorganizing it, so Speir simply moved the dusty, broken gear to one side to make more space for the gear they were still using. At the back of one shelf was a scuffed box; she pulled it to the front and lifted the lid.
Maps, it looked like. Curious, she hauled the box out and into the room where the light was better. Four rolls of layered maps of Colmhaven’s district coastline, each layer covering a different aspect of the geographical terrain, with the top layer charting granular changes in precipitation and wind velocity for—yes, this was an annual map—nine years ago. Speir looked at the other maps: ten years ago, eight, eleven. She got up from the floor to check the database, but she already knew that the data in it didn’t go back that far.