Rules of Engagement

  By the end of the twenty-one day voyage, she was remembering exactly why she normally lived in isolation: people told her things, they always had, and after just a few weeks of it, she felt stuffed with the innumerable details of their lives and feelings. Thera­pist had never been her favorite self-definition.

  Marta prepared herself for her first meeting with Bunny; she knew, from the tension all around her, that whether she liked it or not, she was everyone’s favorite candidate for therapist where Bunny was concerned. She swept into the room with her usual flair, hoping it would have its usual effect on him.

  This time it did not. Lord Thornbuckle looked up at her with the expression of a man very near the edge of sanity. Desperate, exhausted . . . not the expression one wanted to see on the chief executive of the Familias Regnant, someone on whose judgement the security of the entire empire depended.

  Marta moderated her instinctive verve, and instead walked quietly across the room to take the hand he held out to her.

  “Bunny, I’m so sorry.”

  He stared at her silently.

  “But I know Brun, and if she’s alive, we can and will help her.”

  “You don’t know”-he swallowed-“what they did to her. To my daughter-”

  She did know, but clearly he needed to tell her. “Tell me,” she said, and held his hand through the recitation of all the horrors he knew Brun had endured, and the ones that might have followed. She interrupted this latter list.

  “You can’t know that-you can’t know, and until we know for certain, you must not waste your strength worrying about it.”

  “Easy for you to say-”

  “It was my niece you sent off to rescue Ronnie and George,” Marta said crisply. “It is not easy to say, or to do, but people of our rank have respon­sibilities. Yours is heavy, but not beyond your strength, if you will quit adding to the load by imagining even more horrors.”

  “But Brun-”

  “What you are doing by tearing yourself up does not help her.”

  “I don’t know what to do . . .”

  “Where’s Miranda?” Bunny’s exquisitely beautiful wife was, under her beauty, a woman of spun-steel endurance, capable of enforcing sense on her husband-one of the few who could.

  “She’s . . . back on Castle Rock. I didn’t want her out here.”

  “Then, in her place, I will tell you what to do. Eat a hot meal. Sleep at least nine hours. Eat another hot meal. Don’t talk to anyone about anything impor­tant until you have done so. You will be even more miserable if your bad judgement, born of hunger and exhaustion, harms Brun’s chances.”

  “But I can’t just sleep-”

  “Then get medication.” Marta paused a moment for that to take effect, and went on. “Bunny, I’m terribly, terribly sorry that this has happened . . . but you simply must not go into this as you are.”

  “Who called you here?” he asked, at last reacting to her immediate presence.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m here; I belong here, because those people are only a jump point away from my home; and I’m taking charge of you, at this moment, because I’m older, meaner, and you daren’t hit me.”

  With that, she punched in a call to the infirmary and the kitchen, and stood over Bunny until he had downed a bowl of soup and a plate of chicken and rice. Then she insisted that he take the medi­cation provided, and nodded to his valet. “Don’t let him up until morning, or he’s slept ten hours, whichever comes latest. Then make him eat again.”

  From the startled, but relieved, expressions of those around her, Marta judged that no one else had been able to make the Speaker see reason. He was, after all, the Speaker of the Grand Council. She felt her lip curling. That was exactly why she let someone else vote her Seat most of the time, all this ridiculous social etiquette getting in the way of common sense.

  Her next stop was a brief call on Admiral Serrano, who was said to be in line to command the task force. On her way through the interminable layers of military bureaucracy between the outer and inner office, she heard a sleek blonde female officer murmur to another woman, “Well, it was Suiza, after all.” Both shook their heads.

  Marta decided she didn’t like the sleek blonde, on no more evidence than the unlikely perfection of her bone structure and perfect grooming. She said noth­ing, but filed the comment away.

  Vida Serrano looked almost as harried and exhausted as Thornbuckle had. Marta blinked; she had not ­expected this.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Lord Thornbuckle,” Vida said. “He’s furious with the Serrano family in general, and me in particular.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he thinks it was his daughter’s attachment to my niece Heris which led her into what he calls ‘dangerous interests.’ Of course, there was that regret­table incident at Xavier, but it certainly wasn’t Heris’s fault. Then I recommended that she go to the Fleet training facility at Copper Mountain to get some practical knowledge-and I had hoped, some discipline as well-but that blew up in our faces when she was shot at, then quarrelled with Lieutenant Suiza and stormed off on her own. Still, it was my recommendation, so it’s my fault.” She heaved a sigh and managed a weary smile. “I really had thought she was ready for something like Copper Mountain. Lord Thornbuckle himself introduced his daughter to Lieutenant Suiza, but appar­ently that young woman is not at all what she seemed.”

  “I’m confused,” Marta said, sitting down firmly. “I thought young Brun had managed to get herself captured by pirates and hauled off somewhere. I saw the vid of her mutilation, that’s all. But I’ve heard nasty comments about Lieutenant Suiza from more than one person, and this is the first I’ve heard of Brun taking any military training. And ‘shot at’-was that part of a course, or something else?”

  “One thing at a time,” Vida said, suddenly looking more like the admiral she was. “Brun was accepted as a civilian trainee-she signed up for courses in search and rescue, and similar adventurous things. I was hoping, frankly, that she’d realize how well her talents suited us and join Fleet formally.”

  “Brun?” Marta snorted. “You could no more make that girl into an officer than a mountain cat into a sheepdog.”

  “So it seems. Perhaps she was on her best behavior with me. At any rate, while she was there, she was the target of at least two assassination attempts-one nearly fatal, in part because she insisted on doing what everyone else did, and eluding her assigned security detail. Her father wanted her to leave, and she refused. He recog­nized Lieutenant Suiza from all the publicity, and tried to enlist her help in making his daughter cooperate with her security detail. Appar­ently his daughter did agree, and things went along fairly well for a few weeks. Witnesses say that she kept trying to make friends with Suiza, who wasn’t willing.”

  “Why?” Marta asked.

  Vida shrugged. “Who can know? She was taking extra courses herself, doubling up, but all we know for sure is that she and Brun quarrelled the night before the field exercise in escape and evasion. Lieutenant Suiza was extremely rude and abusive-I’ve heard the tapes myself-and according to some sources, she had been previously heard to make disparaging remarks about the senior Families and the Grand Council. Highly unprofessional.”

  “Why didn’t this come out at the time of the courts-martial?” Marta asked. “Surely if she’d had a bad reputation, it would have been a matter of some interest during the investigation of the mutiny.”

  Vida threw out her hands. “I don’t know. I wasn’t involved in that investigation, except in the most preliminary stages; all the background work was done at headquarters. Frankly, I had trouble believing that of her-I’d met her several times, you know-but the scan record is undeniable. Moreover, she admits she said those things to Sera Meager.”

  “Odd,” Marta said. She filed that away in the same mental cubbyhole as the sleek blonde’s remark. “So-what happened to Brun, then?”

  Vida related what was known. “We’re keeping it as quiet as we c
an, which isn’t very. The newsfeeds have agreed, for now, but who knows when they’ll change their mind? Clearly these people want it known: they keep leaking vid and other material-everything ­except location-to the newsfeeds. Worse, we still do not know where she was taken-and until we know that, we can hardly formulate a plan to get her out. The Guernesi are cooperating in every way, but so far we are still sifting through a very large sandpile looking for one very small diamond.”

  “Well.” Marta gazed past Vida at the wall screen-a pattern of slowly shifting bands of color-for a long moment. “I’ll tell you what I’ve accomplished. I put Bunny to bed with his stomach full of decent food, and I think I’ve terrorized the medical staff into keeping him down for at least ten hours.”

  “I am impressed.”

  “You should be. I presume you wanted me for my knowledge of the region?”

  “Your ships travel it regularly-we wondered if there was anything in any of the logs that might reveal a trace of the ship or ships that Brun was on.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “A Boros Consortium container ship-a heavy-called the Elias Madero, perhaps traveling in ­asso­ciation with one or more ships of about patrol-class.”

  “I presume you want this information extracted without informing my entire staff?”

  “If possible, yes.”

  “I’ll do the datasuck myself.” Marta stood up. “Now you, m’dear, need to take my advice to Bunny. A hot meal, a long sleep. For a woman your age, you look like hell.”

  Vida laughed. “Yes, Marta. Are we convening the aunt’s coven again?”

  “No . . . Cecelia would be no help on this, and her feelings for Brun would be almost as obstructive as Bunny’s. You and I should be able to handle it.”

  “If your esteemed friend will quit putting obstacles in my path,” Vida said, shaking her head. “He’s so convinced there’s a conspiracy of Serranos, I’m lucky to be still on the task force.”

  “Um. I’ll see what I can do, when he’s had some sleep. I should at least be able to insist on his eating and sleeping on a sane schedule. Now, what can you give me for doing the suck on my own database?”

  “Well . . . we’ve gathered the best we’ve got. Take your pick-here’s my private list.” Vida handed over a data cube. “You might want to work through Heris; she’s got the really good techs with her at the moment.”

  “Fine. Now what’s our conference schedule?”

  Between meetings and a long and abortive attempt to extract data about the Boros ship from her own databases (no one had reported anything like it), Marta pottered about, as she thought of it, listening and learning how Fleet fit together. Much like any large organization, including her own pharmaceutical firms, but subtly different. Yet it was made up of people, and people were people the universe over.

  Take this matter of Esmay Suiza. She had heard of Suiza-every­one with a newsfeed had heard of Suiza, first for the Battle of Xavier, and then for the Koskiusko affair. A rising young hero, a tactical ­genius, a charismatic leader. And she was here, executive officer of a ship in the task force . . . but she was not here . . . nowhere in the lists of officers tasked with this or that planning, was Esmay Suiza listed. Her captain sat in on some meetings . . . she never had, it seemed.

  It seemed stupid. Suiza was the obvious source of recent, detailed knowledge of Brun’s performance and attitudes. Surely Bunny’s irrational dislike wasn’t affecting everyone’s judgement. Was she on some secret assignment? When she turned out to be on leave, that seemed the most likely explanation. But according to gossip, she was in disgrace, and had been sent away.

  A cover story, of course. Marta wondered what kind of cover story they’d concocted. She knew what she would have done. She managed to be in one of the rec rooms one evening, looking by design as close to a potty old woman as she could manage, and kept her ears open.

  Of course, they all knew who she was, in a way. Ordinary old civilian women weren’t hanging out in the junior officers’ recreation room. But they all had grandmothers, and she had perfected an earthy chuckle in the years of having nieces and nephews and cousins visiting. Soon she had a circle around her, bringing her drinks and snacks, and chatting happily.

  She didn’t even have to drop the topic herself. A female ensign nudged another. “Look-there’s Barin now.”

  They both looked, and Marta looked too. A darkly handsome, compact young man with a worried expression made his way across the room to the drinks dispenser; that same sleek blonde followed him.

  “With Casea on his heels,” the other ensign said.

  “Lieutenant Ferradi to you, Merce-she is senior.” That was a male jig, whom Marta had already pegged as stuffy and overly precise.

  “She is what she is,” the ensign said. Her eyes slid to Marta, encountered the unexpected, and she blushed.

  That confirmed what Marta had already expected. These young people-so transparent.

  “It’s too bad,” the first ensign said. “I’d like to get to know him, but I can’t-”

  “Well,” said the jig, “she may be . . . whatever . . . but she’s better than Suiza, and that’s who he was supposed to like before.”

  Marta gave him a smile for doing her work for her, and cocked her head. “Suiza? That girl who’s the hero?”

  Nervous glances, eyes shifting from side to side. No one spoke for a moment, then the first ensign said quietly, “She’s-not such a hero right now, Sera.”

  “Why?” asked Marta, ignoring the signals that this was a ticklish subject. Directness often worked, and besides, it was more fun. But this produced more sidelong looks, more shifting about. Finally, the same ensign answered.

  “She-said bad things about the Speaker’s daughter. Said she didn’t deserve to be rescued.”

  Marta blinked. That was not the kind of cover story she would have invented, and it wasn’t some­thing Admiral Serrano had told her. She had mentioned a row at Copper Mountain, but nothing since. That kind of rumor could hang around and damage someone’s career years later. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  Nods, some reluctant. “It started before, is what I heard,” the jig said.

  “It’s all rot!” another jig said. “I don’t believe it-someone made it up-”

  “No, it’s true. They have a tape. I heard Major Crissan talking to Commander Dodd, and he said he heard it himself. She quarrelled with Sera Meager at Training Command, something about a course they were both in, and they nearly asked for her ­commission.”

  “I don’t see what you could say bad enough for that.”

  “Well . . . it had something to do with her loyalty, or something.”

  Something something something. A clear sign of uncontrolled rumor, Marta thought. She prodded a bit.

  “Well, but-she is a hero, isn’t she? I mean, she brought her ship back and saved Xavier . . .”

  “Yes, but why? That’s what they’re asking now. People I know who knew her in the Academy say she wasn’t that talented then. She wasn’t even command track. How could she get that good without anyone knowing, unless she had help? And not wanting to rescue Sera Meager-”

  “I’m sure she does,” said Suiza’s defender, getting red in the face. “But nobody listens-”

  “Just because you have a bad case of hero worship, you can’t ignore the facts. Sera Meager is a Chair­holder; we exist to protect Chairholders, and-”

  “What class was she in?” Marta said, before that turned ugly.

  That led to an explanation she did not want about the way the Academy named its classes, on a rota­tion having nothing to do with the standard calendar. “So anyway,” that informant finished up, when Marta felt her eyes about to glaze over, “she’s in Vaillant class, six years ago.” Marta converted that quickly to standard dates, but reminded herself that she’d probably have to ask for classmates by the Fleet’s peculiar reckoning. But her informant went on, clearly in earnest to be complete. “Her classmates will be jigs-that’s lieu
tenant, junior grade, sera-and lieutenants. Everyone who doesn’t mess up badly is promoted from ensign to jig at the same time, but there’s a selection board for lieutenant, with a 12-month range. Lieutenant Suiza was promoted in the first selection; some of her classmates will be promoted in the next few days.”

  So, to find Esmay’s classmates, she could confine herself to lieutenants, for the most part. And some of them promoted behind her might have reason to wish her ill. Casually, without apparent intent, Marta began trolling through the assortment of lieutenants. Most were, she found, either classmates or within one year of Esmay Suiza’s class. Some had hardly noticed her at the Academy; others claimed to have known her well. And a few had more immediate information to share.

  “I just can’t believe it,” said the redhaired lieu­tenant with the mustache. Vericour, his name was. “I mean-Esmay! Yes, she got angry, and yes, she said things she shouldn’t have-but she’d been working twice as hard as anyone else. They should have cut her some slack. You’d have thought she murdered the girl.”

  “You’re a friend of hers?”

  “Yes . . . at least, we were together at Training Command; we studied together sometimes. Brilliant tactician-and a nice person, too. I don’t think she ever said half of what people say-”

  “Perhaps not,” Marta said.

  “But Admiral Hornan says I should stay away from her-she’s poison. And Casea Ferradi claims she was saying all sorts of things in the Academy . . . but why they listen to Casea, I can’t figure out.”

  “Casea?”

  “Classmate of ours. She’s from a colonial world too-one of the Crescent Worlds group, can’t remem­ber which. Tell you the truth, before I met her, I had heard the women there are . . . well . . . shy. Casea was an education in that respect.”