Aboard the starship Archangel, Lincoln Casey found himself staring out of his cell in the brig at a person he hadn’t seen since the aftermath of Mistworld.
George Fralick had come into Casey’s life on the same day he had entered Catherine Romanova’s, when the two green ensigns had been assigned to the small ship that was Fralick’s first command. He had been a good captain, Casey remembered. A trifle colorless, it had seemed to the romantic young Morthan hybrid; Fralick was a calm man, who gave orders in a matter-of-fact tone and who left the everyday operations of the ship mostly in his exec’s hands. That was of course just what a skipper was supposed to do, but how many commanders were able to resist the temptation to continually make themselves seen and heard?
Fralick had not found it hard to do that at all, apparently. Yet when the proverbial chips were down, when things were going wrong all around them and when his ship needed its captain in full control, suddenly he would be there. Something about him would change, his tone and his facial expression—everything about him—would be altered, and from that moment until the crisis was over Lincoln Casey and every other officer on board the little Raven would gladly have followed George Fralick into the heart of a supernova.
That had to be the George Fralick with whom Katy Romanova had fallen in love. Linc had suspected it early on in his best friend’s romance with their young captain, and in later years as he became more skilled at reading her thoughts in addition to sharing her feelings he came to realize that he’d been right. The Fralick whom Katy knew in the bedroom was the same one who was seen and heard on the Raven’s bridge when the situation became tense, when the stakes became higher and when the odds got longer.
Yet Linc still wondered, even today as he looked out through another forcefield and saw Fralick standing in front of him in civilian clothing of understated, expensive elegance, whether that romantic and charismatic leader was the real George Fralick revealed—or just another role that Fralick played to near-perfection.
“Comfortable, I hope, Mr. Casey?” That calm voice, courteous and perfectly correct. Except that Linc Casey had once heard it, not aloud but through a telepathic channel to Katy that he had been only half trying to shut down, berating her unmercifully because three young men named Fralick had lost their lives while she was their fleet captain.
Never mind that on the ship carrying the twins, twenty-six other young people had died also. Never mind that Ewan Fralick had been a captain—as old as his father had been in the days of Raven, as responsible for his own fate as it was possible for a Service member to be—and that he had gone to that attempted rescue of his brothers against their mother and commanding officer’s direct orders. Ewan had done just what Katy herself would have done in the same situation, he’d shut off his comm and pretended he did not hear.
The only grief Katy had been spared was that of having to discipline her firstborn child for his act of insubordination. George Fralick certainly had spared her nothing, when the battle was over and the initial peace negotiations were concluded and the professional diplomats finally arrived. Even though she was heavily pregnant with his only surviving child, once he had her alone he’d given her no mercy at all emotionally—and Fralick had the kind of temper that once it was unleashed could make its victim wish he would substitute physical punishment for the wounds his words inflicted.
The marriage had been shaky before, but then it had died. And Linc still wondered how he had managed not to burst into the captain’s quarters aboard the old Firestorm, and take that unnaturally calm-voiced monster apart to stop him from tormenting the woman Fralick was supposed to love. The woman Casey did love, then nearly as much as now.
“I’d be a lot more comfortable if you’d left me where I was a couple of hours ago,” Casey said now, and met Fralick’s gray eyes with his golden ones. “But I don’t suppose reminding you that I’m a citizen of Terra through my father is going to do me any good. Any more than my being an honorably retired Service officer stopped you from doing this to me.”
“I’m afraid not.” Fralick had a way of watching another person, whether supposed friend or declared enemy, that reminded Casey of a scientist watching the subject of an experiment. That was the nature of his calm demeanor, although it had taken the Morthan man more years than he liked to think about to finally figure that out. “Katy made it easy for me, I’d planned a diversion to get you away from her but I didn’t have to bother using it. Do you have any idea why you’re here, Mr. Casey?”
For twenty years Fralick had called his wife’s friend “Linc,” and he hadn’t stopped doing so until the day he learned that Casey and Romanova had become more than friends. The fact that nothing of that kind had happened between them until after his own marriage to Katy was over, had not changed Fralick’s reaction in the least. He always addressed Linc this way now, coldly and correctly and with complete formality.
Fralick was at his most dangerous when he was at his most correct. But Casey did not have to dissemble in order to answer that question with a firm, “No idea at all, George. None.”
He had no reason to go back to calling Fralick by a title, or even by his surname alone. If there was a quarrel between them, it wasn’t of Linc’s making.
“I believe you.” Fralick blinked. “Well. It’s very simple, actually. War with the rest of the Commonwealth is something we in the Outworlds can’t afford. If we allow ourselves to be maneuvered into that situation we’re going to lose the independent and co-equal status that we’ve worked so hard to attain. Following me so far, Casey?”
At least he’d dropped the “mister.” Since he certainly did not mean it as a title of respect, that was fine. Linc nodded. He also stayed seated, on the bunk inside his cell, and let Fralick stand outside.
Damn the man for doing it with such perfect comfort. Fralick continued, “So how do you keep rebel forces from rising, when you have people with combat training and experience on the loose and when they’re able to lay hands on at least some of the hardware that could make them dangerous enough to start the war we mustn’t have? One thing you do is remove their obvious leaders.”
“Huh?” Casey was startled enough so that he reacted to that statement. He had commanded the Star Service Academy for several years, it was true; there was a block of junior officers now starting to work its way up that no doubt had respect for him, maybe even some affection. And during his far longer career as first Katy’s executive officer and then her adjutant after she reached flag rank, he had developed his full share of professional relationships and even of genuine friendships with his brother and sister officers; far more friends than he had ever expected he would have, during the difficult years of his childhood and adolescence.
But to picture himself as a possible leader in a war of rebellion (or of revolution, if you were taking the so-called Rebs’ viewpoint)? That thought had quite honestly never crossed his mind, and he was amazed that it could have crossed anyone else’s.
He said now, “George, that’s crazy. If the Rebs were going to look for a leader, it wouldn’t be me. It would be….”
His eyes widened, became a more liquid shade of gold. And instead of experiencing a stung ego at what he suddenly knew was the truth, he felt his insides turn over with horror.
“That’s right, Casey.” Fralick smiled thinly. “It wouldn’t be you. Not that you couldn’t be a competent flag officer; you never held that kind of rank in your own right, but you’re qualified and you could perform well enough to be damned dangerous. But you always stayed in Katy’s shadow, because that was where you wanted to be. You’re a born No. 2 man, the ‘beta wolf’ in the pack is how some sociologists used to put it when pack theory was popular among military psychologists. Katy’s the alpha, and even though there are still a few older Narsatians who spit at the mention of her name because they remember she refused to follow through with her marriage-promise to the primary Romanov heir—if she was tapped to lead the Rebs, you can bet they’d follow her.”