He made it sound like a good idea.
Paolo Giandrea stared at the holo-image of Fleet Admiral Willard Tanaka. He was not used to interacting directly with that level of authority, his boss was a commodore (as Catherine Romanova had so bluntly reminded him) who ran New Orient and who sent ships out to this sector when there was call for it. Routine patrol was how this mess had begun. A side trip to Kesra to pick up Ambassador Fralick and his child, another side trip to Narsai to drop off that child there…Giandrea had chafed at both errands, the latter one in particular because it so clearly demonstrated personal “pull” operating at its most petty level; but now he was glad he had come here.
“The regulations for dealing with locals are clear, Captain,” Tanaka was saying, as he thoughtfully steepled his long-fingered hands before his chest. The holo was showing him from the waist up, so that gesture was plainly visible. “Is Daniel Archer an officer in the Star Service?”
“No, Admiral. He was discharged eighteen months ago.” Giandrea had made damned sure this conversation was being logged. He wanted no confusion later on about whose authority had backed him in the actions he suspected he would soon be taking.
“What’s the legal status of Rachel Kane?”
That was more difficult. “Sir, I logged her as killed while attempting to desert. Now she’s clearly alive, after all; and I suppose that since she’s alive, she’s still the property of HR Solutions.”
“Also correct. And they want her back, badly. They want to study her, they want to know whether it was in her genetic mapping or in her training that they went wrong. They can’t figure out why allowing her—hell, requiring her—to learn to think creatively and make independent judgments in her work, caused her to do the same thing in other areas.” Tanaka smiled a crooked, sardonic little smile. “Damn fools in their lab coats! They let one of their gens develop into a complete person, and then it surprised them when she had the gall to claim a sentient being’s right to live.”
“But she’s still property from a legal standpoint, sir.” Giandrea concurred fully with what Tanaka had just said, yet he was astounded that a superior officer had said it. And the objection he was raising was a genuine one, legally Rachel Kane had no more “personhood” than did the chair in which he was sitting.
“Yes. And if she were not property, she’d be a deserter. That makes it damned difficult to deal with Admiral Romanova today.”
“What?” Giandrea shut his mouth to cut off that undignified exclamation.
“I just got through talking with her, Captain. She had me on conference with the office of the Senior Councilor, or whatever in hell Narsai’s excuse for a government calls its chief executive. That just happens to be her father, isn’t that convenient for her right now? And she was claiming Daniel Archer, and Rachel Kane, and if you can believe this—because I damn near can’t believe it—their three unborn children, as civilian citizens of Narsai who are entitled to immunity from Terran law and from Star Service regulations. She made the same claim for her husband, the former Captain Casey; and with him it’s going to be easy enough. Unless the Defense Minister wants to countermand me and recall a ‘mindfucker’ from retirement to active duty, Romanova gets upheld where he’s concerned. With Archer, too, since he was discharged. If Narsai wants to claim him no one has the right to contest them, except the authorities on Sestus 4.” Tanaka allowed himself another grin at that, because it was a ridiculous notion.
“I’m glad, sir.” Giandrea sighed, and then spoke from his heart. “Dan Archer was a good officer, I hated to lose him when the scramblers were pushed out. And Captain Casey may be Morthan, but he gave the Service one hell of an impressive career.”
“Not to mention that Katy Romanova did the same, and she gave three sons too.” Tanaka was of Romanova’s own generation, Giandrea recalled. He wasn’t sure whether Tanaka had personally experienced Mistworld, a battle that took place back while Giandrea himself was still a cadet. But there wasn’t an officer in today’s service who didn’t know the story of the Matushka, the fleet captain who had lost all three of her adult children in a single blazing moment—and who instead of crumpling and having to be replaced, had pulled herself stoically together and had gone on to win what was technically considered to be a victory.
The “little mother.” Romanova was not tall, but neither was she “little.” She was a solidly built woman, almost plump now that she had retired and no longer trained regularly in military gyms. But mother she certainly was, and at Mistworld she’d also been visibly pregnant.
That women could command, that women could fight, that women could take physical and psychological punishment and dish it out, were all givens and had been for centuries now. But that anyone could do what Romanova had done at Mistworld and come out of it sane, was incredible. The nickname she’d been given there had not only stuck to her, it had become a proud symbol for those who served under her command through the rest of her career.
Just a few months ago that had been the entire Star Service. If Romanova wanted a favor from the Defense Ministry, she was probably still going to be able to get it. And even though Lincoln Casey was a Morthan hybrid, a despised “mindfucker” as the vernacular more and more often expressed it these days, the Service now included many officers who had been trained while he commanded the Academy. George Fralick had realized that, and had been canny enough to keep Casey out of sight as much as was possible while he’d been imprisoned aboard the Archangel—and Giandrea had been given special instructions in making up the landing party that had snatched Casey from his home on Narsai, that anyone who might feel personal loyalty to the man must be excluded from that chore.
“Sir, what am I supposed to do?” Giandrea realized he sounded like one of his own young children, but he felt exactly that bewildered. He knew what the right thing to do, the moral thing, was in this situation; and he was certain, now, that the commanding officer of his entire Service concurred. But how to do it legally? That was the question, and it mattered because he could not sacrifice his career over the fate of a gen and he did not expect Tanaka would do that either.
He thought about the other gens he had on board, and wondered if any of them had the potential to do what Rachel Kane had done; and he shuddered. It would almost serve his society right, if those modern-day slaves revolted just as their ancient counterparts had been known to do; but he could not help hoping it wouldn’t happen on his watch.
“The Defense Minister is disgusted with this whole business, Captain.” Tanaka was speaking again, and he was looking that way himself. “She’s instructed me to give the Narsatian government whoever and whatever it claims as its property, she doesn’t want to create an incident where Star Service personnel have to back up the Corporate Marshal Service to get ‘one lousy gen’—and I quote Ms. Fothingill exactly!—off Narsai. Those people are peaceable to a fault, but seeing that happen in their capital city would just beg them to shift their sympathies from us to the Rebs.”
“That makes a lot of sense, sir.” And it did. And it sounded like Romanova’s reasoning, not that of Minister Fothingill; but after all Fothingill had been in office during Romanova’s final months as Fleet Admiral, so no doubt the old working relationship had reasserted itself as soon as Tanaka had put the two women in touch.
Which he wasn’t admitting he had done, but Giandrea could read a viewscreen. And the writing on this one was plain for any literate being to see.
“So, then, Captain! Even if Marshal Vargas has already moved his prisoners inside the Terran Embassy, you have authority there and you’re instructed to use it. Archer is to be released immediately, as a free citizen of Narsai. The gen called Rachel Kane is to be turned over to Admiral Romanova or her designee, and since we can’t ignore the property rights involved her family has agreed to pay HR Solutions the gen’s fair value. Which is considered to be somewhat less than the value of the Romanov property that the Marshal Service had your people destroy, on that company’s behalf, in locating Kane and taking possession of her.”