Change of Command

  What was it about Dominion? He should know that name . . . he scrolled to the flag's name. Lespescu. Bacarion had been on Lepescu's staff? In the engagement where Heris Serrano refused to follow Lespescu's orders, and by so doing won the battle but lost her command? Gelan clamped his jaw, hoping his expression had not changed. Thanks to Lepescu, Serrano's crew—including his oldest living sib Methlin—had been tried and imprisoned. Bacarion deserved a prison appointment, he thought sourly. She deserved to be a prisoner, really. He had not seen Methlin since her release, but he'd heard all about it. Lepescu was safely dead, but this Bacarion . . .

  He switched off the unit, smiled a careful smile at the clerk in charge, and went to lunch with a gnawing pain in his belly. Partway through the meal, he stopped eating abruptly, with his fork halfway to his mouth. What if this wasn't punishment for Bacarion? What if she had wanted this assignment? What if she, like Lepescu, wanted to play games with prisoners?

  He was going to have to be very careful indeed. When she noticed that she had a Meharry aboard, she was going to assume he knew . . . and knew she knew.

  * * *

  Gelan Meharry had not even been born when his oldest brother Gareth died in the wreck of Forge. He had been in school when his sister Methlin was sent to this very prison. His recruit training had been spent under the shadow of her disgrace, though his drill instructor had told him—after he passed—that he personally thought she'd been framed. He had acquired, from his family and their history, a keener awareness of social nuances than most young corporals, and the certainty that anyone keeping things from him had a bad reason for doing so.

  When nothing happened during the first few weeks of Bacarion's command, Gelan did not relax his vigilance. He asked no questions; he said nothing he had not said many times before; he continued to be, to all outward signs, the same quietly competent young NCO he had been all along.

  Inside, he felt himself caught in a storm. What Bacarion had done, so far, was call in each officer and NCO, in turn, from the most senior down. Each had returned from that interview looking thoughtful; a few had also looked puzzled or worried. None had had more comment than "She's one tough lady."

  That in itself was slightly bothering. On such a small post, gossip about each other was the main entertainment. From short encounters came small bits of information, painstakingly assembled into the common understanding of each individual. Gelan knew that their former commander, Iosep Tolin, had an aunt who bred flat-faced long-haired cats, a cousin in the wine business, and a daughter from whom he was estranged—Tolin blamed his former wife, who had left him for a historian.

  But about Bacarion, nothing. "A tough lady." His sister Methlin was tough . . . he had not known, while she was in prison, just what prison was, or how difficult, but now he did. At least from the other side of the doors. His throat closed whenever he had duty on the women's side, thinking of Meth in there, and he wondered if any of the women were like her, unfairly condemned.

  His turn with Bacarion would come soon. She had access to his service record, which included a list of all relatives formerly or presently in service. What would she say? What would she ask? What should he say, since the truth—I want you dead, like Lepescu!—would not do.

  Tolin had not been a slob, but Bacarion's offices already looked shinier, neater. Everything gleamed, smudgeless. Every paper on the clerk's desk aligned perfectly with every other.

  A martinet, like Lepescu. In the inner office, Bacarion waited, sitting motionless behind her desk like a carved figurine.

  "Corporal Meharry reporting as ordered, sir." It was hard not to react when her cold gaze met his.

  "You don't look much like your sister," was her first comment. Then she sighed, and gave a mock smile. "Why is it the men in a family so often get the looks, I wonder?"

  He felt his neck go hot, then the flush spreading up his face. Her smile warmed.

  "Sorry, Corporal. Didn't mean to embarrass you."

  Didn't she, indeed! Gelan hoped that looking like a silly boy was the best strategy now.

  "I met her only a few times, of course," Bacarion went on smoothly, as if reading from a script. Perhaps she was. "I was shocked and surprised when I heard she'd been sentenced to prison, and delighted when her name was cleared again." A wrinkle appeared in her forehead; Gelan was sure it was intentional, intended as a sign of sincerity. "It may be hard for you to believe, Corporal, but when I was serving on Admiral Lepescu's staff, I had no idea that he was capable of any dishonesty. He seemed so . . . so focussed on defeating the enemy."

  That was one way of putting it. If you ignored the way that Lepescu's allies paid the price of his focus, as well as the enemy, the fact that he liked seeing blood shed, in quantity, and didn't much care whose it was.

  "I hope we can work together," Bacarion was saying, now with a little frown, as if he'd failed to carry out some order.

  "Yes, sir." Gelan tried to inject some enthusiasm into the familiar phrase. Bacarion's face relaxed, but whether that was good or bad he could not tell.

  "Did you request assignment here because your sister had been here?" she asked.

  "No, sir." He had anticipated this question. "Personnel noticed I hadn't had a tour in my secondary specialty, and yanked me off Flashpoint right before deployment. I asked for Sector Three, so I'd at least be in the same sector as my—as the ship—but they sent me here."

  "Do you find it difficult?"

  "No, sir."

  "What do you think of the general loyalty of the officers and men on this station?"

  What kind of a question was that to ask a corporal? "Loyalty? I'm not sure I know what the commander is asking about."

  "Don't play innocent, Meharry! Any time you have prisoners and guards, you have the possibility of collusion, even a breakout. I'm asking you if you know anything about such a situation here."

  "No, sir," Gelan said. "Nothing like that."

  Another searching look. "Very well. Dismissed."

  The autumn evening was closing in, a fine cold mist blowing across the courtyard. Gelan shivered. It was a week yet until time to change to winter uniforms, but it wasn't the outward cold that chilled him. The ten kilometers to Stack Two and twelve to Stack One might as well have been the thousands of kilometers that stretched to the next continental mass, for all the good it did him. He could not pilot any of the aircars even if the aircars had not been kept under close guard. There were no surface watercraft; the Stacks had no beaches or harbors where such craft could land. Water met rock with brutal suddeness twenty meters below the lowest accessible path; in storms, the spray of that meeting shot upward thirty and forty meters. He could swim, but he could not swim ten kilometers in water that cold, even if the sea creatures didn't eat him.

  No escape. He was trapped as surely as any of the prisoners. He had no doubt that Bacarion would try to have him killed, and in such a way that it required the least investigation. Which meant probably not shooting or stabbing or even a fatal blow to the head—any of which would require sending his body for forensic examination. She might or might not have a collaborator in the medical facility on Stack One. Though such a murder could be blamed on a prisoner, far more useful for her purposes would be a disappearance, something that would leave the blame on him. If he went AWOL—as he had been thinking of doing, he realized with a start—Bacarion would be free to make up whatever story she liked about him.

  The most likely thing was a quick toss over the cliff, alive or dead. Alive, probably, because then Bacarion's agents could honestly claim not to have harmed him. She would not order an attack until she was sure it would succeed—until she was sure she had enough support. He had a little time to make his preparations, minimal though they could be.

  Three Stack had fifty Personal Protective Units, Planetary, in storage. In theory, a PPU would protect its wearer from the rigors of a planetary climate, as well as a variety of traumas. Abstracting a Personal Protective Unit from stores would definitely attract at
tention, but they were inventoried only once a month. Would the attack come in that time? Probably, he thought.

  But a PPU wouldn't be enough to keep him alive in the ocean. He needed something else.

  Aircraft carried survival gear; they did occasionally come down in the ocean, and the crew did occasionally survive to use the life rafts and other gear. There was a manual—he had seen a copy once—on surviving such wrecks, modified from one written by people who liked to sail around in boats. But he had read the manual out of boredom, while waiting for a shuttle flight, and with the casual contempt of someone who would never be stupid enough to get himself in a situation where the details presented would be important.

  Methlin had always said learn everything you can. Meth had survived worse.

  Why did big sisters have to be right so often?

  Spare survival gear for the aircraft based at Three Stack—the commander's personal aircar shuttle with a capacity of four besides the pilot, and the two mail/utility vehicles which would hold 20 in a pinch—was stored in a locked bay on the shore side of the hangar. In his first month onstation, when he was still learning where everything was, he had been part of the inventory team that preceded the annual IG inspection. He remembered clearly the fat bundles, like sausage lumps, that were stacked next to the outer wall. Heavy, awkward, and not something he could tuck under his arm.

  So . . . where could he stash something like that? Before he took it, he had to have a place to hide it, and he spent the next few off shifts looking. Everywhere on the limited surface of the Stack, someone else had reason to be. The two main lava tubes were in regular use; one had a small lift tube fitted into it. Personnel were up and down several times a day, though most didn't venture beyond the stacks of reserve supplies piled at the foot, and the little nest of discarded clothing just around the corner, where those who wanted to keep their encounters private bedded down in the warmer months.

  Still . . . it was the only place. The smaller of the tubes opened to the outside, above the high-tide level except in storms. Generations of guards had broken a connection between the two; he was not the only one who had stood in the sea opening watching the waves at closer range and even trying to catch one of the native sea creatures on a moly line. As long as no one saw him actually dragging a deflated life raft into the sea cave, his presence in the tubes would cause no notice. He hoped.

  He felt clever about figuring out a way to get the folded raft through the buildings and into the lift tube without detection. He didn't have to take it himself; he'd stenciled it with a supply code, and simply told a pivot to take it down with other supplies when the next load came in. Supply drops were chaotic enough that no one noticed—or seemed to, he cautioned himself—when an extra container went down. Later, he found it, and—having borrowed an AG dolly—floated it down the tube, through the gap, and to his chosen hiding place.

  He felt better after that, even though his chances were still, he felt sure, closer to zero than a hundred. At least he had a chance, if a small one.

  Once that was done, his mind turned to Bacarion's plans, not his own. What was she up to? He was as sure as if he'd crawled into her head that she had sought this assignment. But why? She would not have come here because of him—surely revenge on Methlin's little brother wasn't profit enough for three years on Stack Three—but what was her purpose? What could she do with a prisonful of convicts and guards, isolated in the midst of the ocean?

  When he put it that way, he had to wonder what she could have done with a prisonful of guards and convicts on the mainland, or in space . . . and the answer chilled him. Lepescu's protegees, he was sure, had not become exemplars of sweetness and light since Lepescu's death. Indeed, Methlin had warned the family against having anything to do with any of them. Next thing to traitors, she'd said. So involved with their own game that nothing else mattered.

  What he should do was find out what Bacarion was doing, and report it. But how? He was not in Bacarion's confidence and he had no access to the administrative offices anyway. That would just get him killed faster.

  As the days passed, Gelan found that acting normal stretched his nerves almost past bearing. Inspections, chores, guard duty . . . wondering which of the guards and which of the prisoners were in on the plan, and yet again what the plan was. It had to be more than just killing him. Bacarion might take pleasure in killing Methlin Meharry's little brother, but she would not have finagled an assignment here just for that. If only he knew what was going on . . . but although it became increasingly obvious that something was—that he was being left out of meetings and plans—he could not find anything out.

  He had not considered himself a trusting soul, but now, trying to trust no one, he realized that he had the normal human desire to be part of a group, not a complete outsider.

  Margiu Pardalt had accepted a position as junior instructor in the Schools, and discovered that she enjoyed teaching. As the weather eased, bringing the occasional cool breath from the far north, her spirits lifted. Xavier had never been quite as hot as Copper Mountain in summer, and she looked forward to winter here. Unlike some of the others, who never took to planetside life, she enjoyed learning more about the world she was on. The Regular Space Service had facilities scattered around the planet, from the frigid polar caps to the balmiest of tropical islands. Most were used for training of some kind, or testing equipment; it did not occur to Margiu to wonder why a space force would do so much training and testing on a planet. Instead, she hoped she would have a chance to see the steppes near Drylands, so much like her homeworld, and maybe climb a mountain when she had some leave coming.

  Her first chance to travel came in the break between class sessions, and she didn't even have to use leave time. Priority directives of very high classification had to be hand-carried from base to base. Ensign Pardalt was the obvious choice.

  So on a morning that was not quite crisp, but at least not stifling, she accepted a case full of the directives, locked it to her belt, and climbed aboard one of the regular supply aircars headed for Camp Engleton. She sat on a sack of something lumpy and uncomfortable for two hours—the supply aircars had no passenger slings—and watched the red-sand brush country give way to dirty-green coastal grasslands and then dark-green trees standing in brown water.

  She had only fifteen minutes to deliver the directives to the base commander, but fifteen minutes of the sticky heat and sulfur stench of the swamp forest was more than enough to quench her curiosity. She was glad to climb back into the aircar, now headed for Drylands. The lumpy sack she'd been sitting on had been unloaded, along with others, and the crew chief now had room to rig a seat of sorts.

  That flight took several hours; she fell asleep in the noisy cargo compartment, waking when the aircar came down through the late afternoon sun. This far north, a chill wind rattled the few fading leaves left on the trees planted around the base's central drill field, and the short prairie grass had turned various shades of russet and maroon. She handed the base commander his copy of the directives, and signed into the TOQ for the night. When she walked around outside, she could almost believe she was on Xavier—until dark, when the night sky looked very different. Were they really that close to the Scarf?

  Next day, she was scheduled for a long-distance flight to the west coast bases, Big Trees and Dark Harbor (she wondered again who had been allowed to name these places) and then she would embark on the more dangerous journey to the Stack Islands bases.

  The long distance flight was not by aircar, but in a pressurized aircraft flying much higher than the 'cars; beneath her the land faded into a dim patchwork of dun and wrinkled brown, with white tips on the tall mountains she hoped to see in person some day. Also on the flight were replacement officers and enlisted; she was crammed into her seat with only a brief glimpse through the window whenever the neuroenhanced marine beside her leaned back for some reason.

  Still, it was travel. She had come to learn, and this was learning. She memorized everythi
ng she could about the inside of the aircraft.

  They landed at Big Trees, the runway a long gash in the forest. She had grown up among trees, clumps and woodlots and scattered groves on the meadows, but those trees had been rounder, softer. She had seen more, and taller, trees during her years at the Academy. But the trees had always had space around and between them. Despite the pictures, she had not really imagined what this forest would be like—great spires many times the height of the buildings on base. After delivering her package to the base commandant, she found she could not get transport to Dark Harbor until the next day.

  "You should see our trees," she was told. "There's nothing like them anywhere else."

  So she wandered out into the afternoon light, and up to the margin of the forest. Behind her mowers buzzed, trimming the emerald grass in the quadrangle; she could hear the closer click of feet on the walkways. Looking away from all that, she faced a massive dark bole like a slightly curved wall. Ferns the height of her head grew near it, trimmed back in a straight line on the base side. Between the chinks of its bark—she thought it must be bark—other plants grew, mosses and ferns and something with bright yellow flowers like tiny fireworks.

  She edged around the tree, following a vague path. Under her feet, the ground felt spongy, and when she had cleared the curve of the great tree's bole, she realized she could not hear the base . . . the great tree lay between, soaking up the sound. Uneasy in the thick growth, she went back the way she'd come, and then back across the quadrangle to base housing.

  Her flight up the coast the next morning, again in an aircar, revealed how little of the land had been touched by humans—the great forest lay green and unbroken from the base to the foothills of the mountains, and almost all the way to Dark Harbor, where it eased gradually into smaller trees, and then into broken shrubland.