It wasn’t a cover story if that was the only option. But apparently it hadn’t been. Crowe remembered that Newark had mentioned leaving the ship in her meeting with them.
So what are you going to do? Leave me on a starbase somewhere? she had asked after being told she was losing her position.
And Preemas had let out a sound that Crowe had thought was a grunt of surprise. But maybe it had been something else. Maybe it had been the sound of a man whose plan had been discovered.
He had recovered quickly, then told Crowe that they needed to schedule a stop at Sector Base Z. Crowe had told him that it wasn’t possible with the foldspace plan that the vice admirals had given them, and Preemas had told him to revamp the plan.
Setting up one final stop at Sector Base Z, ostensibly for supplies.
Preemas was the most manipulative person Crowe had ever met. And he had scheduled the entire crew reorganization for the ten days before the sector base stop. Ten days was long enough for each person to try their new position and decide if they liked it or hated it.
Ten days was long enough for the other people on the ship to force someone out, if they had the option of leaving.
“You did this on purpose,” Crowe said.
“Of course I did,” Preemas said. “We had this discussion. The ship’s crew is more efficient now that it was when we came on board.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Crowe said.
“Oh?” Preemas asked. He sounded innocent, but a glimpse of his eyes told a different story. They smiled. He was proud of himself.
“You’re stopping at the base, not for supplies, but to let people leave. And they’ll do it because they don’t like how you’re running the ship.” Crowe shook his head. “What if you lose good people? Competent people?”
“Like you?” Preemas asked.
“You want me to leave?” Crowe asked. To his surprise, his stomach twisted at the thought. He had settled into the Renegat. He actually liked the dual role he was playing, even though it had forced him to deal with upset people for the past several days.
“Not at all,” Preemas said. “But I’ll take the risk of losing some good people to get rid of a whole bunch of…shall we say…baggage?”
“And replace them with what?” Crowe asked. “This ship can run with a couple hundred people, but not efficiently and well. I thought you wanted to complete the mission and show Vice Admiral Gāo that you are captain material for a DV-Class ship.”
“Or maybe I just like a challenge,” Preemas said.
“That too,” Crowe said. “But you want to crush this mission. You want to succeed even though they want you to fail.”
Preemas’s expression changed rapidly just like it had those other times. He had looked joyful a moment before, and now he was extremely serious.
“They don’t want me to fail,” Preemas said. “They believe I will fail. They think it’s dangerous to travel backwards at all. And to travel that far backwards? They think it’s impossible. They know intellectually that we’re heading into populated sectors, but they believe that those sectors are filled with warmongers and other dangers we can’t foresee. So they didn’t give us the right tools to go back there. We’re a sop to some admiral. I’m guessing Admiral Hallock. She wants to get rid of the Scrapheap program.”
Crowe frowned. “What does that have to do with us?”
“If we fail at this mission, then the Fleet will believe that it can’t defend its Scrapheaps, so there’s no point in littering the entire universe with disabled ships that we’re no longer paying attention to. The Fleet will have to come up with some other way of dealing with them.” Preemas sipped his coffee this time.
“Like blowing them up,” Crowe said.
Preemas nodded.
“Our failure benefits Admiral Hallock,” he said. “Our success might actually change the Fleet. It might change the way that the entire Fleet operates. It might actually look at the way it discards good people, like you, First Officer Crowe.”
Crowe tensed. “I haven’t been discarded.”
“No? They sent you on this mission, didn’t they?”
The words hung between them. Crowe liked to think he’d been sent on this mission because he had seen what happened when something went wrong in a Scrapheap.
But he couldn’t lie to himself the way Kabac did. Crowe had also been sent along because he had no family, and very few friends outside of the engineering departments. No one would mourn him if he died.
“We change out a good third of the crew, and we have a shot of completing this mission, First Officer Crowe.” Preemas emphasized First Officer Crowe as he spoke, the emphasis adding just the right amount of sarcasm. “Especially when another third of the crew has been moved into the correct jobs for their skill sets.”
“I still don’t know what you plan to do with an understaffed ship,” Crowe said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to travel the distance the Fleet expected them to travel without the full crew on board the Renegat.
“I’ve been researching the potential crew members at Sector Base Z,” Preemas said. “I’m going to make offers to quite a few people. My wish list is long. Would you like to see it?”
Was that why Crowe had been brought here? To see the personnel that Preemas wanted to bring on board?
“You can’t approach them right away.” Crowe didn’t answer the question. “And I’ll be honest. I think the Fleet got one thing right. I don’t think anyone with close family ties should be on this mission.”
“I don’t either,” Preemas said. “That’s why my list only contains young people who want to leave Z-City. They’re ambitious, and they want to see the universe. Trust me on that one. Land-based people working for the Fleet often want to see the stars.”
Crowe knew that. He’d grown up planet-bound. He’d applied to the best schools hoping they would send him to a school ship. The openings in those ships were limited, especially for the planet-bound. He had been both lucky enough and talented enough to get a berth.
But he had known other kids who had also had skills who hadn’t had the same kind of luck.
“You have to be honest with them about the nature of this mission,” Crowe said.
“Why?” Preemas said. “The Fleet wasn’t honest with us.”
Crowe hated it when Preemas exaggerated. “The Fleet was honest with you.”
Preemas grinned. “I figured it out for myself. Gāo prides herself on her honesty. So when I challenged her, she admitted what kind of mission it was. Didn’t change my mind any.”
“It might change some of theirs,” Crowe said.
“There are a million ways to let the possible recruits know that this mission is dangerous,” Preemas said. “One way is to tell them they might not see their home and family again, because of foldspace travel. Another way is to tell them that they might not see the Fleet again for years and years. That’ll make some people balk.”
He sounded as if he were speaking from experience. Maybe he was. Crowe had no idea.
All Crowe knew was that as a young man—before the incident at the Scrapheap—he would have ignored every one of those warnings.
He might have ignored those warnings after the incident as well.
“You’re taking quite a gamble,” he said to Preemas.
“No more than the gamble that we’re already taking,” Preemas said. “I suspect I’m improving our odds of survival greatly, depending of course on who leaves and who stays.”
Preemas had a point. Better to have a few hand-picked people on the ship to go with the good ones they managed to keep than it was to have the disgruntled and the truly awful make this mission even more difficult.
“There’s no way to guarantee that the worst of the worst leave?” Crowe was thinking of Kabac.
“No,” Preemas said. “I can’t force them to leave. Gāo would know. She told me that she will judge this mission not just on its success, but how we achieved the success. She believes that the way any mis
sion operates is as important as achieving the goal of the mission.”
Preemas shook his head as if the very thought of discounting a successful mission because of the way it was achieved was a stupid way to work.
Crowe felt his stomach tighten. He agreed with Vice Admiral Gāo. How success was achieved mattered as much as the success itself.
And yet he was here, with Preemas, on the Renegat, talking about manipulating the system.
Preemas picked up his mug of coffee and cradled it against his chest. “If Gāo thinks I deliberately countermanded her orders, she’ll probably be pissy.”
Crowe would be. Part of him already was. This entire situation made him uncomfortable.
“So,” he said slowly, “it’s better that you manipulate your way around her orders.”
He wasn’t really asking a question, but Preemas nodded as if Crowe had asked him one.
“Yes, it’s better.” Preemas spoke with great confidence.
Crowe’s eyes narrowed. He was walking a fine line here, between listening to his captain and trying to be the best officer possible. He could step up now and stop all of this. He could contact Vice Admiral Gāo and tell her that Preemas was circumventing her orders.
Crowe could also tell her that he changed the staff assignments.
But he didn’t really want to. There was a large part of him that found this entire mission to be a great challenge. He hadn’t felt this excited about the technical part of a mission since—well, since he had been a boy and had the bright idea to see a Scrapheap up close.
And that precedent did not bode well.
Still, he couldn’t quite let Preemas’s strange way of manipulating the crew go. “What if I tell Vice Admiral Gāo all the ways you circumvented her orders?”
Preemas’s expression changed. He suddenly seemed wary. “You won’t stay on the ship.”
Crowe was not surprised by Preemas’s answer. Apparently Preemas didn’t like being crossed.
“And what if I tell her when we get back?” Crowe asked.
Preemas raised his eyebrows, then broke into laughter. “After a successful mission, with the right crew? Go ahead, First Officer Crowe. Tell her. The order of events will make it your word against mine. And I will have the added benefit of completing an impossible mission to bolster my side. Yours might simply be sour grapes.”
Preemas had a point. If Crowe was going to tell Vice Admiral Gāo anything, he had to do so before the mission. If the Renegat did not complete the mission, then what Preemas did wouldn’t matter, except maybe to the usual completists who always wanted to find out why a particular mission succeeded or failed.
If the Renegat did complete the mission, the success would mean a great deal for everyone. For the members of the crew whose careers had been on a downward slide, the success might make them promotable, might give them another chance to move forward in the Fleet. For the rest, who had been moved to different assignments, it might open up an entirely new career path.
And there was even more that could come out of a successful mission here. The Fleet itself might review how it handled people who didn’t always fit into the neat organizational plans—people like Preemas himself. People like Crowe. People whose brains didn’t work in a linear fashion, but managed to come up with something better by working problems from three dimensions instead of two.
Maybe all of that was what was exciting Crowe. Maybe he wanted to stay on this ship because, for the first time in a long time, he felt challenged. Not just because he was doing a new job as well as his old one, but also because he couldn’t predict what would happen next.
“Nothing to say?” Preemas asked.
This was the moment. This was the only remaining chance Crowe had to stand up for the values the Fleet claimed were the most important ones for its mission.
But, if the Fleet really had wanted this mission to succeed, it would have sent a DV-Class vessel. Maybe more than one.
Preemas was right: this wasn’t just a suicide mission. This was a mission designed to fail on every single level.
“First Officer Crowe?” Preemas said, leaning forward. “You look like you have something to add. I’m giving you permission to do so.”
Crowe spun his mug, watching the coffee inside swirl. “You believe Admiral Hallock will use a failure for her own purposes. But wouldn’t it be wiser—and less costly—to say that it’s impossible to deal with a Scrapheap so far away, and then use the so-called emergency to change policy? Why, exactly, are they sending us on this mission?”
Preemas reached out and stopped Crowe from twirling the mug. Finally, Crowe had irritated Preemas, and hadn’t even meant to.
“I wondered about that,” Preemas said. “I gave it a lot of thought, in fact. And then I realized one thing.”
He paused dramatically, like he often did. Which irritated Crowe to no end.
“You’re assuming,” Preemas said, “that the loss of us would be costly to the Fleet. But we’re not valued. If anything, we’re costly when we remain in the Fleet. Getting rid of us—all of us on this ship—one by one isn’t easy. It requires evaluations and procedures and panels and agreements. At what point does each person on this ship cost more in management time than we generate doing our jobs?”
Crowe sat very still. He hadn’t thought of that at all. And yet, here he was, talking with Preemas about managing difficult people on the Renegat. In fact, almost everything Crowe and Preemas had done since Crowe became first officer was make staffing decisions.
“For the cost of one ship,” Preemas said, “five hundred problems leave the Fleet, maybe never to return. If we do return, we will bring success with us. In theory, we will cease to be problems. If we return and have solved the Scrapheap issue, we’ve become valuable. Do you see the calculation?”
Crowe wanted to say that such a calculation wasn’t possible, that they were dealing with human beings, after all, and no one would think that way.
But he knew better. He had seem the same calculation in action when he had stolen that ship and cost eleven of his friends their lives—not to mention all those lives on the Brazza Two.
Even though he had been the mastermind, even though he had directly caused an incident that resulted in serious damage and major loss of life, the Fleet decided he was worth saving. Some of the other kids on his ship, kids who had just been following his orders and who had survived, hadn’t been as lucky. They weren’t allowed to move forward with their education. They were kicked off the school ships and sent elsewhere.
“You’re being awfully quiet, First Officer Crowe,” Preemas said. “Is my argument making sense or am I just filling the air with sound?”
Crowe slid his mug closer. The coffee was separating from the cream. It no longer looked appetizing.
“You’re making sense,” Crowe said. He set the mug aside. “But there’s one flaw in your reasoning.”
Preemas leaned back in his chair as if he wanted to move away from Crowe’s argument—whatever it was going to be.
“What’s that?” Preemas asked.
“When we pick up people on Sector Base Z,” Crowe said, “we will be taking people who have value to the Fleet. We will suddenly change their calculations.”
Preemas nodded. He apparently had already thought of that. “And then, First Officer Crowe, we leave Sector Base Z, and immediately take our first foldspace leg. If the Fleet wants to, they can send someone after us.”
“You’re gambling that they won’t,” Crowe said.
“I know that they won’t,” Preemas said. “Land-based people aren’t worth much to the Fleet either. Think how many land-based families we leave behind every single year. Whenever a sector base closes, everyone gets to choose whether to stay or to move to the next sector base. They don’t get to choose whether or not they want to serve on a ship.”
Crowe sat very still. He hadn’t thought of that, but it was true.
“The Fleet values its ships, First Officer Crowe,” Preemas
said. “That’s why we have trouble destroying them. But we close bases all the time. There’s a contempt for the land-based folks. You should know that. You were raised on land.”
Crowe met Preemas’s gaze. It was unreadable. Crowe couldn’t tell if Preemas was baiting him, letting him know that he wasn’t worth much to Preemas and to the Fleet, or if Preemas was just stating a fact.
“We’re going to be fine,” Preemas said. “If they want to send someone after us, great. If they want to verbally reprimand us when we come out of foldspace, fine. It won’t matter because we won’t be turning around, and they won’t order us to.”
Crowe had a hunch Preemas was right about that.
“You watch,” Preemas said. “They won’t say a word. Because our contact is Gāo, and she knows the limitations. She’s under orders to get us to that Scrapheap. She’ll discipline us when we get back, if we get back. Otherwise, she’s going to let me make all the mistakes I can possibly make. If anything, us taking on crew that she hasn’t approved gives her a strong argument that I’ve gone rogue. She’ll make that argument if we fail. I’d say watch for that, but if we fail, then we won’t be around to see the argument she makes, so it won’t matter to us.”
Crowe sat very still. Preemas seemed rational. But sometimes, when he made arguments like this, he made Crowe as uncomfortable as Kabac did. Were the two men equally delusional? And how could Crowe tell?
“You’re hard to read, First Officer Crowe,” Preemas said. “Do you approve? Disapprove?”
Crowe decided he wasn’t going to let Preemas know, exactly. If Crowe remained hard to read, then he had an advantage. For what, he didn’t know. But he might need that advantage going forward.
“Does it matter whether I approve or disapprove?” Crowe asked. “You’re moving ahead with this plan.”
“I want to know if I should continue to consult with you,” Preemas said.
“We’ve already had that discussion,” Crowe said. “I’m your first officer.”
“For good or ill,” Preemas said with a grin. “Like a marriage, apparently.”
The Renegat Page 23