On the way to mess, he stopped by the base data center, and called up the Officers’ List. At least he could find out about his new commander’s official biography. Her image on the screen showed her with the insignia of a lieutenant commander—she hadn’t had her image updated since her last promotion. He scanned the notes below. Top quartile in the Academy, so she wasn’t stupid. Command Track with her junior duty on a series of front-line craft. As a major she’d done the usual rotation in staff, this time on a flagship, the Dominion. There she’d seen combat, though from the staff viewpoint.
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.