“Might as well,” Chagas said morosely. “This system’s a total bust.”
* * *
“Oh, damn,” Ginger Lewis muttered as the com signal pinged at her.
She thought about ignoring it—Captain Mathis had been right; she had a lot of reading to catch up on, she was due to go aboard Charles Ward in less than an hour, and her baggage hadn’t caught up with her—but for all she knew sanity had broken out at the Admiralty and one of Mathis’ superiors was screening her to tell her it had all been a mistake.
Part of her hoped that was exactly what it was.
The signal pinged again and she hit the acceptance key, opening a window in the corner of her display. Then she twitched upright in her shuttle seat.
“Ms. Terekhov!”
“I’ve told you before, Ginger. Ms. Terekhov is Aivars’ mother. My name is Sinead.”
“Well—” Ginger began, then stopped, closed her mouth, and smiled. “Sorry. I’ll try to remember, but it’s hard. I still think of you as ‘the Skipper’s wife,’ I’m afraid.”
“I understand, but I hope you’ll find it a little easier to think of me by my first name now that you’re a CO yourself.”
“You heard about that?” Ginger shook her head. “I think somebody’s made a serious mistake, to be honest.”
“Nonsense!” Sinead Terekhov said sternly. “That’s not a thought you’re allowed to entertain, young lady! When they pull out the captain’s chair for you, you sit, and whatever else you may do, you never let anyone think your posterior isn’t completely comfortable in it. I trust that’s clear?”
“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” Ginger acknowledged wryly, and Sinead snorted.
“Better. Honestly, Ginger, you’ll do just fine. I know you didn’t see it coming, but there are a lot of things we haven’t seen coming lately.”
“That’s for damned sure,” Ginger agreed. They gazed at each other for a handful of seconds, each of them thinking of all the people she’d never see again. Then Ginger cleared her throat.
“May I ask why you’ve screened me…Sinead?”
“Well, partly to congratulate you on your new command. My spies reported it to me about ten minutes ago.”
“Thank you.” Ginger’s smile was a bit lopsided. “They told me about it about twenty minutes before they told you about it!”
“The Navy can be like that even under normal circumstances. Under these, you’re lucky you got that much warning!”
“I know. But you said that was part of the reason you’d screened,” Ginger pressed and cocked one eyebrow. Sinead Terekhov had become one of her favorite people, but she did have all that reading to do.
“Well, the other reason was to ask you for a small favor,” Sinead said. “You see…”
* * *
The shuttle braked, then shivered as the boat bay tractors reached out and locked. Ginger put away her reader and gazed out the port, watching the bulkhead markings slide by as the shuttle moved vertically up the cavernous, brilliantly lit well of the bay. That bay was larger than most warships, even superdreadnoughts, boasted because of the outsized parasite work boats it was designed to host at need. Then the shuttle shivered again, harder, as the docking arms locked, the umbilicals engaged, and the boarding tube ran out.
Less than three hours had passed since the moment she walked into Captain Mathis’ office in Landing.
“Good seal, Ma’am,” the flight engineer announced.
“Thank you, Chief.” Ginger made herself sound calm, as if things like this happened to her every day, even as a little voice screamed that BuPers had made a dreadful mistake. But then she remembered her conversation with Sinead Terekhov, and smiled ever so slightly.
She waited until the petty officer unsealed the hatch, then reached for the grab bar and swung herself from the shuttle’s artificial gravity into freefall for the brief passage down the boarding tube to the boat bay gallery. She floated to the matching grab bar at the gallery end of the tube, caught it, and twisted, moving feet-first from the tube’s zero-grav into the gallery’s standard one gee. She landed with the graceful, spinal-reflex proficiency of thirteen T-years spent almost continuously on shipboard and saluted the absurdly young-looking midshipwoman wearing the brassard of the boat bay officer of the deck.
“Permission to come aboard, Ma’am?” she requested formally.
“Permission granted, Ma’am.” The youngster returning Ginger’s salute looked more than a little nervous, even uncertain, and Ginger suppressed an urge to pat her on the head and tell her everything would be all right.
Instead, she glanced at the midshipwoman’s nameplate and nodded as her brain pulled the information out of storage. Paula Rafferty, twenty-one T-years old, assigned to Charles Ward for her snotty cruise. She’d only come aboard the ship five days before the Yawata Strike, poor kid. And the only reason she was still alive was that, as the most recently arrived of the ship’s four midshipmen, she’d still been aboard when the others all drew leave aboard Hephaestus.
Snotty Row must feel like a mausoleum, Ginger thought compassionately. I wonder if the others’ effects have been cleared out yet? I guess that’s one of the things the new captain’s going to have to find out about.
“Thank you, Ms. Rafferty,” she said out loud and looked around the spotless gallery. The “new air car” smell of a ship fresh from the builders enveloped her, but aside from Rafferty and one maintenance tech, it was empty, with no sign of a proper side party or anyone senior to the midshipwoman.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Rafferty said quickly. “We didn’t have notification you were aboard the shuttle until it was already docking. Commander Nakhimov is on his way, but—”
She broke off with visible relief as the nearest lift slid open. A lieutenant commander jogged out of it, and Ginger’s memory offered up another name. Dimitri Nakhimov—Dimitri Aleksandrovitch Nakhimov, actually—Charles Ward’s astrogator. He was about ten T-years younger than Ginger, with fair hair and gray eyes. He was also fifteen centimeters taller than she was, but very slightly built. He didn’t look fragile, precisely, but no one was ever going to mistake him for a native of Sphinx, she thought.
“Captain Lewis,” he said as he came to a halt. “I apologize for not meeting you, Ma’am! We didn’t know—”
“That’s all right, Mr. Nakhimov,” Ginger interrupted. “Ms. Rafferty already explained about that.” She smiled crookedly. “I imagine it’s going to be a while yet before we get all the confusion cleared away.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Nakhimov acknowledged.
“I take it you’re the senior officer aboard?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Nakhimov’s nostrils flared. “Actually, I’m the most senior officer period, I’m afraid.”
“I know.” Ginger nodded sympathetically, but her voice was cool and professional. “I only asked because I understand from BuPers that Commander Hairston is en route to us now. No one seemed to have an official ETA for him, though, and I wondered if he’d beaten me here. Obviously,” she smiled thinly, “he hasn’t. But I realize the ship’s casualties have been heavy, and I know that’s dropped a lot of responsibility on you—and on you, Ms. Rafferty,” she added, glancing at the midshipwoman. “According to BuPers, they’ve found most of the replacements we’re going to need.” Something flickered in Nakhimov’s eyes, and she faced him squarely. “I know it’s going to hurt to see so many strangers’ faces. Trust me, I’ve been there a time or two myself. But what matters right now is that the ship needs us…and she’s going to need them, too.”
“Yes, Ma’am! I didn’t mean to imply—”
“And you didn’t, Commander,” she interrupted again, and shook her head. “You’d be more than human if you weren’t reeling a little, and I’m sure seeing me in Captain Whitby’s command chair’s going to be hard, too. But what we have is what we have. We’re all just going to have to dig in and make it work.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“All right.” She inhaled shar
ply. “In that case, Commander, I think you and I should probably move to the bridge.”
“Yes, Ma’am. This way, please.”
Ginger followed him to the lift car, then preceded him into it as he stepped respectfully to one side. She allowed him to punch their destination into the panel—after all, at the moment she was still a guest aboard his ship—and stood with her hands clasped behind her, watching the location display flicker and change.
The trip took longer than she’d expected. There’d been no time to absorb much about her new command’s physical layout—she’d been too busy soaking up all she could about the state of its crew—and Charles Ward was the biggest ship she’d actually served in since Wayfarer’s cruise to Silesia. Her bridge was a long way from the boat bay, and no doubt Ginger’s own trepidation made the trip seem even lengthier than it was. But, eventually, the lift car eased to a stop, the doors slid open, and she stepped out onto the support ship’s command deck.
That bridge was bigger than she’d really expected, too, and it didn’t look like any repair ship’s bridge she’d ever seen. Mostly that was because none of those other repair ships had boasted stations for a tactical officer, her assistants, and an electronic warfare officer. At the moment, however, that huge, brightly lit bridge seemed oddly underpopulated thanks to the holes the Yawata Strike had torn in the ship’s senior ranks.
Only two other officers were waiting for them: an extremely youthful junior-grade lieutenant with engineering insignia and, beside her, one of the most striking women Ginger Lewis had ever seen, with vividly green hair, amber eyes, and the caduceus of a surgeon lieutenant. Both of them came to attention as she stepped onto the bridge, and the enlisted personnel manning the bridge stations rose and came to attention, as well.
“Stand easy,” she said, and crossed to the command chair which was about to become hers. She stopped beside it, touched a key on the chair arm, and listened to the musical tone sounding throughout the ship. She waited a moment, knowing that everywhere throughout the mammoth hull men and women were stopping, turning to face bulkhead displays in response to the all-hands signal. Then she reached into her tunic, and the archaic paper crackled as she broke the seals, unfolded her orders, and looked into the command chair’s com pickup.
“From Admiral Sir Lucien Cortez, Fifth Space Lord, Royal Manticoran Navy,” she read, as five T-centuries of commanding officers had read before her, “to Captain (Junior Grade) Ginger Lewis, Royal Manticoran Navy, Fifth Day, Tenth Month, Year Two Hundred and Ninety-Four After Landing. Madame: You are hereby directed and required to proceed aboard Her Majesty’s Starship, Charles Ward, FSV-Three-Niner, there to take upon yourself the duties and responsibilities of commanding officer in the service of the Crown. Fail not in this charge at your peril. By order of Admiral Hamish Alexander-Harrington, Earl White Haven and First Lord of Admiralty, Royal Manticoran Navy, for Her Majesty the Empress.”
She fell silent and refolded her orders, then turned to Nakhimov.
“Mr. Nakhimov,” she said formally, “I assume command.”
“Captain,” he replied, equally formally, and there was more than a hint of relief in his eyes, “you have command.”
“Thank you.” She looked up. It took her a moment to find the duty quartermaster, and she made a mental note to familiarize herself—thoroughly—with the bridge layout at the earliest possible moment. Then she located him.
“Make a note in the log, please, Chief Houseman,” she said, reading his nameplate.
“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” the chief replied, and a shiver went through Ginger’s nerves as, in that moment, she truly became HMS Charles Ward’s mistress after God. She inhaled deeply and turned back to the command chair’s pickup and all the waiting men and women who had just become her crew.
“I know none of you expected to see me in this chair,” she said quietly, resting one hand on the chair back. “I didn’t expect to be here, either. But the Service is bigger than you and bigger than me. When someone falls, someone else steps into her place and finishes the job. That’s the way it’s always been; that’s the way it is today, when a lot of people are stepping into other people’s places.
“What happened here in Manticore, in our own home star system, represents the worst defeat in the Royal Manticoran Navy’s entire history. Proportionately, we lost fewer ships in the Yawata Strike than we did in Axelrod’s attack four hundred years ago, but our personnel losses were enormous, our industrial capacity’s been savaged, and the loss of civilian life—the lives we’re supposed to protect, people—was intolerable. Here, in this ship, you’ve experienced your own part of that catastrophe. You’ve lost officers, shipmates, friends, and at this moment, you have to be still reeling from that. Believe me, I know. I was at Monica. I served with Duchess Harrington aboard Wayfarer on my very first deployment. I know what it is to turn around and see the holes where men and women you knew, worked with, respected, even loved are just…gone, and it may be even worse when the ship’s undamaged. When everything seems just like it was yesterday…except that so many people are dead, blotted away when we weren’t even looking. There’s no easy way to deal with that, and the people we’ve lost in the Yawata Strike will be with us all for a long, long time.
“But so is our duty. There’s an ancient ballad—one that goes far back beyond the first day a human being ever left the Sol System. Despite that antiquity, though, I think three lines of it are relevant to us, here, today, twenty-five hundred T-years later.
“I am hurt, but I am not slain;
I’ll lay me down and bleed a while,
And then I’ll rise and fight again.”
She looked directly into the pickup.
“We’re hurt, people. We’re bleeding. But whoever did this to us made a bad mistake, because we aren’t slain. And as God is our witness, we will rise and fight again.”
She stood there, looking out of the displays all over the ship—all over her ship—for another ten seconds. Then she squared her shoulders.
“Carry on,” she said quietly, and cut the connection.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The com signal pinged.
Helen Zilwicki frowned as the sound pulled her out of the memo on her display. She’d discovered, rather to her surprise, that she actually liked some of the paperwork coming across her terminal as Sir Aivars Terekhov’s flag lieutenant. Some of it, frankly, was boring as hell, yet there was something…satisfying about managing the Commodore’s agenda and calendar.
And given the most recent news from home, anything she could find to keep her mind occupied was a welcome diversion from simply sitting around and worrying.
The com pinged again and she sighed, then called her expression to order, and opened a window.
“Ensign Zilwicki,” she announced formally, then allowed herself a small smile as Gervais Archer’s face appeared. “How can I be of assistance, Sir?” she inquired formally, since the com request had come in over Quentin Saint-James’ official net, not on her personal combination.
“Good afternoon, Helen,” he replied. “I’m afraid I’m not screening because of anything I need from you.” He seemed to inhale. “The Admiral just received a follow-up on the flash dispatches from home.”
Something icy seemed to congeal in the pit of Helen’s stomach. Something about Archer’s normally cheerful eyes…
“It’s worse—a lot worse—than the original dispatch estimated,” he continued. “We already knew Hephaestus and Vulcan were both gone. Now we have confirmation the bastards took out Weyland, as well.”
Helen winced. She knew Terekhov, Gold Peak, and Khumalo had all assumed Weyland must have been targeted as well—that anyone who could get through Manticore-A’s defenses to take out Hephaestus and Vulcan would have done their damnedest to kill all of the Star Empire’s major industrial nodes. That made the confirmation no less devastating, and she locked down hard on her purely personal reaction to the news.
“Best estimate is over seven milli
on civilian dead and probably close to one-point-six million military personnel,” Archer continued grimly. Then his eyes met hers directly over the com. “And the real reason I’m screening you is to inform you that Hexapuma was still docked at Hephaestus.” Helen felt her face freeze, and Archer shook his head with sad sympathy. “I’m sure not all of her people were aboard, but nobody who was made it out,” he continued softly. “I’m sorry, Helen, but the Admiral wanted to you and Sir Aivars to hear about it before the official briefing.”
“I…understand,” she said after a seeming eternity spent fighting for control of her voice. “And I’ll inform him immediately, of course.” She paused and cleared her throat. “I…don’t suppose you have any sort of breakdown on Weyland’s casualties?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.” He seemed a bit surprised by the question. “We’ve got confirmation of the station’s destruction, though, and if she got hit the same way Hephaestus and Vulcan did, there can’t have been very many survivors.”
He didn’t ask why she’d asked, and she bit her lip—hard—in gratitude for a moment. Then her nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply.
“Thank you, Gwen,” she said. “I know you didn’t enjoy telling me that. And please thank Lady Gold Peak for me, too. I’m sure the Commodore will feel the same.”
* * *
“Enter!” Sir Aivars Terekhov called as the admittance chime on the flag bridge briefing room’s door sounded. He looked up from his conference with Commander Pope and Lieutenant Commander Lewis and smiled as the door opened. “Helen!” he greeted the newcomer. “Already finished beating the schedule into submission?”
“I’m afraid not, Sir,” she replied, and his smile vanished instantly as her tone registered. The adjective which came most readily to mind where Helen Zilwicki was concerned was “sturdy,” and in far more than merely physical terms. Yet today she seemed…brittle, and her eyes were suspiciously bright.