And could I kill them all? Her thoughts turned ever inward. Could I wipe them out-because that's what it comes down to; this Desai will no more surrender if I reject her offer than I would. Even after all that's passed, even if I have the capability to treat them like Arthur Ruyard, could I do it? After Ian Trevayne didn't do that to me?
And almost before she realized she was speaking, the quiet words came.
"Very well, Admiral Desai. I agree."
Vice Admiral Li Han stood in a strange cabin, hands by her sides. Her eyes were dry, but her face was strained and drawn. She sank into a chair, her lips trembling briefly in a tired smile. She'd lost three sets of quarters now. She was once more down to a single battle-stained vac suit . . . her painfully reassembled possessions drifting atoms.
Her face crumpled as realization hit. Arrarat was gone. All those people. Twenty-five hundred friends. Chang.
She buried her face in her hands, feeling her nails press into her temples as she fought the tears. She wouldn't weep. She wouldn't! Chang had chosen the way he died. . . .
But he had died, she told herself sadly. Died under her command-with thousands of others aboard the ships she'd commanded. And she hadn't even won! She'd renounced victory, held her hand in the name of 'humanity.' But what of her debt to those who had died, trusting in her to win the battle?
She straightened her spine and stared into a mirror, her cheeks dry, and scarcely recognized the wan face that looked back at her from those brilliant black eyes. No tears, she told herself. No tears for Chang, for the dead, for the lost victory. The past was past, and the future pressed upon her.
She reached for the com panel and began to punch Magda's code, then stopped. Her hand fell into her lap, and she leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes.
Not yet. She must speak to Magda, must plan and confer. But not yet. Please, God, not just yet. . . .
An odd numbness gripped the officers in Togo's briefing room. It went beyond the inevitable aftershock of battle-even of one such as this.
Sonja Desai looked at the faces of the people who had come so far and given so much for the victory which had been denied them. It wasn't defeat. Not really. But it wasn't victory, either, and the price they'd paid was terrible enough to demand victory.
Sean Remko sat staring dully at the deck, his face working with emotion. He'd learned what had happened to Trevayne, and no assurance that he'd done far more than his "duty" could reach him in the darkened chamber to which he had withdrawn and which held but one thought: he had failed the admiral.
Yoshinaka and Kirilenko sat side by side. They'd come from Nelson (along with Sanders, who was even now preparing for his departure) and had arrived a few minutes late, after receiving assurances that Sandoval's condition was stable. Mujabi was present in his new capacity as CO of BG 1-what remained of it. So were the other ranking survivors, including Khalid Khan, who was the first to react.
"What you're saying, Admiral, is that we're simply to keep station here in Zapata until we get orders to the contrary?"
"Correct," Desai nodded. "So are the rebels. This is the precondition to the cease-fire. All major Fleet units must remain in place. Of course, noncombatant supply vessels aren't included, nor are light combatants . . . like the rebel destroyer which will take Mister Sanders to the Innerworlds."
They all stared at her as if she had, inexplicably, left out the most obvious point. It was Kirilenko who blurted it out.
"But, sir, what about the admiral . . . er, Admiral Trevayne?"
Desai's face was at its most flinty. "Nelson is, of course, covered by the cease-fire terms and must remain here. But I am advised by Doctor Yuan that Admiral Trevayne can be maintained aboard Nelson indefinitely in his present condition. So there's really no problem. Any other questions?"
The stares changed subtly, as if these people were looking at a thing they couldn't comprehend, and were fairly sure they did not want to.
Kirilenko stiffened, and his mouth began to open. Under the edge of the table, Yoshinaka gripped his forearm, very tightly. Kirilenko's mouth closed again, and he subsided.
Desai stood. "If there are no further questions, ladies and gentlemen, please carry on."
She walked to the door, then paused and looked back. Everyone was still seated.
Desai looked straight into the eyes of Sean Remko, the senior man in the room. For a bare instant, he stared back with an unreadable expression. Then he lumbered to his feet and said, in a voice like a rockslide, "Attention on deck."
They rose slowly to attention. Desai nodded very slightly and stalked through the door.
Her expression and posture remained equally stiff in the intraship car and through the passageway to her quarters. The sentry snapped to attention, and she nodded crisply to him as she pressed the door stud and entered.
The door closed silently behind her. She stood a moment, her face wearing a vague look which slowly turned into one of pained bewilderment. Something happened inside her, something whose possibility would have been flatly denied by those who knew her. Her features collapsed into a mask of inconsolable grief, and a harsh, low cry welled out of her like the plaintive wail of a maimed animal unable to understand its pain. She hurled herself onto her bunk, burying her face in the pillow as she wept convulsively, and the sound of her empty, tearing sorrow filled her cabin.
A moment later, the door slid open with its usual soundlessness to admit Remko and Yoshinaka. They stopped, frozen with amazement, at the sight of the sobbing woman on the bunk. The woman neither of them had ever thought of as a woman at all. Remko turned to Yoshinaka and opened his mouth, but the commodore put a finger to his lips and slowly shook his head.
They departed as silently as they'd come, leaving Sonja Desai alone with her grief for the man she had loved silently and hopelessly for years.
CONFERENCE
"Thank God I have done my duty."
Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, Orlop Deck,
HMS Victory , Battle of Trafalgar
Oskar Dieter studied the strained faces of his Cabinet, remembering the day the first mutiny had been reported, and shuddered. This was almost worse. There'd been no treason this time, yet Fourth Fleet had lost more tonnage in two hours of close action than had been taken from Admiral Forsythe, and the shock cut deep. Even Amanda Sydon was gray-faced and stunned.
He sighed and tapped the crystal table with his knuckles.
"Ladies and gentlemen, for the record-" he looked at Sky Marshal Witcinski "-I should like to say that I concur entirely with Admiral Desai's actions." A rustling sigh ran around the table. "Even if she'd continued the action and won, it would have cost more than we can stand. Admiral Trevayne's-" his voice faltered briefly on the name "-ships are both our most powerful single striking force and our sole technical advantage. Had Admiral Desai won at the expense of crippling damage to Fourth Fleet, we would have been unable to follow up her 'victory.' Had she lost, the Terran Republic must inevitably have captured sufficient examples of the Rim's weaponry to duplicate it."
He felt his listeners' stab of surprise as he deliberately used the term "Terran Republic" instead of "rebels"-and their horror as they considered the consequences of the Republic's acquiring weapons in advance of anything they could produce.