“If she were no longer Landbride?”
“If she yielded the job to this cousin, you mean? Then there’d be no bar for her marrying Barin, though if the marriage has been annulled, they’d have to do it again. As for rejoining Fleet . . . I’m not sure.” Vida held up her hand, as if Heris had started to speak. “No, don’t blame me. At the moment I’m not inclined to put any barriers in her path, but you have to see that others would.”
“We need her. We need her now . . . can’t you find out who kicked her out?”
“While I’m in transit? If you’ll kindly wait until I reach my own office with my own staff, then yes, I can find out. But not here.”
“It’s not fair,” Heris said, subsiding only slightly. “Barin’s going to worry; he could get careless—”
“He won’t,” said his grandmother. “And I don’t expect Suiza to do anything stupid, either. Nor you. I don’t suppose they sent you back to your own ship—?”
“No. Indefatigable. In refitting, and the crew will probably be whatever they could scrape off the docks.”
“Then it’s a good thing they’ll have you for a captain.”
That was dismissal, and Heris knew it; she left her aunt admiral alone and went to see if she could get a message to Esmay or Barin, either one, to let them know Vida hadn’t done it. But a mere commander in transit had no clout with communications.
Barin Serrano called up the Fleet personnel-locator database and looked up Esmay. He’d done this at every station, and kept track of her progress after they parted. He wondered if she’d done the same for him. He still didn’t know why she’d been given new orders and sent all the way over to Sector Three. Luckily, Suiza was such an unusual surname that she was easy to find—
Entry not found. No personnel surnamed SUIZA located. Check spelling and repeat search?
That made no sense. She’d been in the system only two weeks before. He ran through the available options on the system, but the searches all came up the same until he tried “Separated or Retired.”
SUIZA, Esmay, most recent rank 0-3, most recent assignment, separated by order of Admiral Serrano, separation effected Trinidad—
Barin stared at the date. Nine days ago. Halfway across Familias space.
Rage blinded him to the rest of the screen. Admiral Serrano, his own grandmother, had taken revenge on Esmay, had kicked her out of the service she loved, and at a time when they needed every good officer. His grandmother—! She had double-crossed them, backstabbed them, and he would—would—
His thoughts steadied. He was a jig, and his grandmother was an admiral major. He could be angry; he could hate her all he wanted, but he was a Fleet officer, with a war on, and trying to quarrel with her would help none of them.
Where was Esmay? He had no idea. What was she doing? He could imagine her coming, trying to find him and let him know . . . or going somewhere—where?—to do something—what?—that he couldn’t quite imagine. Rockhouse Major to protest to Fleet Headquarters? To Altiplano to settle down as Landbride? No, surely not that. Perhaps to find evidence that his grandmother’s accusation about Suiza treachery was false.
In the meantime, he had his duty, and even if his grandmother could so far forget hers as to inject personal vengeance into a real emergency, he wouldn’t. As a jig aboard a ship headed for combat, he had plenty of duties, more than enough to keep him busy.
In the junior officers’ mess, the ensigns and other jigs looked up as he entered. They would not have heard about Esmay; that expression must mean something else.
“Have you heard anything, Barin?” That was Cossy Forlin, who had been about halfway down his class at the Academy.
“About the mutiny?” Barin said, finding his place. “No.”
“I just thought—with all your relatives—”
“I wonder—” Luca Tavernos glanced at the entrance, and lowered his voice. “I wondered about the others—it’s scary, nobody knowing whom to trust.”
“Like Despite,” Cossy said. “How do we know—” He stopped abruptly as three lieutenants came in, and Lt. Marcion took the head of the table.
Marcion glanced at the juniors, his expression unreadable. Then he pointed his fork at Cossy. “At least we know you aren’t part of any conspiracy, Jig Forlin—conspirators know better than to say things with the doors open. Be glad your specialty isn’t intelligence.”
Cossy reddened, but applied himself to his dinner.
“So, Barin, does your family network give you anything useful?”
“No, sir,” Barin said. “You know the communications aren’t exactly open.”
“And do you have any doubts about the loyalty of any personnel on this ship?”
“No, sir, but if I did I would report it to the proper authorities.”
Marcion laughed. “I’m sure you would—you Serranos are a thorough bunch. What’s your assessment of the mutineers’ tactics?”
“From the little I know, sir, I suspect they concentrated on the ships they stole, to make that strike on Copper Mountain. I’d be surprised if there were many left scattered on other ships.”
“You’re assuming fairly small numbers to start with.”
“Smaller than the loyal contingent, yes, sir.”
“Interesting. I know a lot of people who were really upset with the changes Conselline imposed, starting with the new Minister of Defense.”
“Yes, sir, but not mutinous,” Barin said. He quoted his grandmother. “ ‘Politicians come and go, but the Fleet remains.’”
“That was my reading, also—but I wanted the legendary Serrano opinion.”
Barin ignored this jibe. “What do you think the mutineers really want?” he asked. “Do you think it was Conselline’s leadership that drove them to it, or what?”
“I don’t know,” Marcion said. “I’m not one of them, after all, and imputing motives to enemies is a risky business. I’d be more inclined to think they took advantage of the absence of senior officers who were put on inactive status because of the rejuvenation issue. Your grandmother was caught in that, wasn’t she, Barin?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My guess is that in the command confusion that followed chopping off at least half the flag rank, they were able to make moves that might have taken a lot longer otherwise. Personnel was going crazy, trying to find people to fill billets suddenly open; promotion boards were meeting round—the-clock.”
“How’d you know that?” asked Cossy.
“I was on a staff rotation at Headquarters. Admiral Stearns, to start with, then when she was made inactive, it was her replacement, Admiral Rollinby. I’d be there yet, except that the mutiny shuffled assignments yet again. Did you ever know Admiral Stearns, Barin? She said she knew your grandmother.”
“No sir,” Barin said. “The . . . admiral had a lot of friends at Headquarters—”
“So I gathered. Apparently she’d also been poking around the rejuvenation problem on her own—she and Admiral Stearns were on a study group of some kind.”
“Did you ever hear what happened with that, Lieutenant?” asked an ensign down the table.
“Conselline killed the study. It reflected badly on his sept, of course, since it’s very likely it was their drugs that caused the problem. But without funding for research or treatment, a lot of our people were in a pretty hopeless situation.” Marcion paused. “There are times I find it difficult to stay as apolitical as regulations demand.”
That effectively ended the topic at dinner, and Barin finished his meal with nothing more than a polite request to pass the rolls. Others talked softly of sports scores or upcoming exams.