Knowing he was not alone made a difference.
Friday, May 25, 2401, UD
Warfare Division, Space Fleet headquarters
Foundation, Terranova
“Helfort?”
Michael glanced up from his work. It was his immediate boss. Of all the people in the Warfare Division, she was without doubt the most hostile; the woman was a festering mass of ill-concealed resentment.
“Yes, sir?
“The board of inquiry is about to release the unclassified summary of its report into Operation Opera. The director wants you to be there. Conference-5 at 10:00.”
Without waiting for a response, the woman turned and left. “Thank you, sir,” Michael said to her back. “Thank you so much.”
The woman spun around. “Don’t push your luck,” she hissed, her voice dripping with venom. “It’s time you got what’s coming to you, Helfort. Conference-5 at 10:00 and don’t be late.” She started to turn away but stopped, her mouth slashed into a malicious sneer. “Oh, yes. One more thing. You might be interested to know that the provost marshal has been told to be there, too. So I wouldn’t make any plans for tonight if I were you.”
“Fucking cow,” Michael mouthed at her retreating back, stifling an urge to rip his legbot off and hurl it at her head.
He sat unmoving, acid burning a path from his stomach up into his chest. Shit, he said to himself, finally.
The president of the board of inquiry waited patiently until the conference room, every seat taken, fell silent. Michael waited until the last minute before slipping in unseen, sitting as always at the back, well clear of the large contingent of Fleet brass that filled the front rows of the conference room, lines of black and gold flanked on both sides by holocam-wielding members of the press.
“Good morning, everyone,” Captain Shavetz said, “and thank you all for coming. I am about to release our report on Operation Opera, the successful operation to destroy the Hammers’ antimatter plant at Devastation Reef. The report is extremely detailed, so in deference to our friends in the press”-a subdued laugh greeted this remark; Fleet had few friends in the press, and everybody knew it-“we will present our finding of facts, a summary of what happened during Operation Opera, followed by the conclusions the board has drawn from the evidence presented to us. Our recommendations will follow this afternoon. To answer a question which I know will be asked, yes, every board member has agreed on the statement of facts, conclusions, and recommendations of this board. There is no dissenting minority report. However, one thing must be understood. We are still at war with the Hammer Worlds, so for reasons of operational security, we cannot release our report in its entirety. Some findings of fact and some of our conclusions and recommendations are classified. I’m-”
“Pantini, World News,” a voice barked from the media pack. Michael shook his head. Who else but Giorgio Pantini? Why did the man bother asking questions? His often stated commitment to factually based reporting was, as one commentator so memorably put it, “a shoddy cover over a stinking pot of lies.” After all Pantini had said about him, Michael had no problem endorsing that judgment.
“Yes?” Shavetz said, looking warily at Pantini.
“So, Captain Shavetz,” Pantini said, “you’re saying we can expect another Fleet cover-up.”
“Come, come, come, Mister Pantini,” Shavetz said with exaggerated deference, “that’s hardly a question. That’s a statement, and you know it. If you have a worthwhile question, please ask it, though I fail to see how you can have considering we haven’t actually said anything yet. Otherwise, please resume your seat. We have a lot to get through.”
Pantini’s response died stillborn, his protests drowned out by a chorus of less than friendly encouragement to sit down and shut up, which Pantini did with petulant bad grace.
“As I was saying,” Shavetz said, “for reasons of operational security, we cannot release our report in its entirety, and I hope you will bear with us on that. But I can assure you we have released all we can. More important, we have held back nothing that compromises the overall thrust of that report in any way. I would like to start with a summary of the key events drawn from the board’s findings of fact. Lieutenant Commander Grivaz?”
“Thank you, sir. If you would turn your attention to the holovid behind me, I will start at the point where Opera was in its initial planning stages. In late January, the chief of the defense force, Admiral Kefu, hosted a planning conference. The objectives of this meeting were several, but the most important of them was …”
His voice calm and dispassionate throughout, Grivaz took more than two hours to map out the tortuous, tangled paths leading to the destruction of the Hammer’s antimatter plant. Utterly absorbed, Michael followed his every word, scrutinizing everything the man said for some clue, some hint to the board’s thinking. But Grivaz was either a consummate professional or well rehearsed-probably both, Michael decided on reflection-so by the time he finished, Michael knew a lot more about Opera and nothing more about his prospects. He did not enjoy Grivaz’s dispassionate reconstruction of his clash with Perkins. As presented, it sounded utterly damning. Michael was not surprised. Grivaz could talk until the cows came home, and nothing he ever said would convey to the people in the room the raw terror of that awful moment when he realized he had to defy Perkins’s order, that he risked the entire Federated Worlds. Even those who knew what it was like to be in combat, to be one bad decision-or one bad break-away from death, would never understand what he had gone through.
“Thank you, Commander,” Shavetz said when Grivaz finished. “We’ll pause for lunch now. We will start again at 13:00 sharp, so please be back here promptly. I will not wait for anyone. Not even you, Mister Pantini.”
Pantini scowled when the room erupted in laughter.
Michael had no intention of joining the crowd heading for lunch: too many people asking too many questions he did not want to answer. He waited, content to hang back before slipping out to get something to eat.
He did not get the chance. To his dismay, Giorgio Pantini cut his way through the throng toward him, holocam operator close behind. For a moment, Michael toyed with the idea of making a quick break for it before common sense told him that would just make him look guilty. Stitching a look of polite interest onto his face, he waited for Pantini, sending out an urgent com for one of Fleet’s PR hacks to come save him.
“Mister Pantini. Good afternoon. Can I help you?” he said, his voice loaded with confidence he did not feel, the apprehension busy turning his stomach over well concealed.
“Yes, you can,” Pantini said, his tone openly belligerent. “Tell me this, Lieutenant Helfort. This morning, we saw clear evidence, unarguable evidence, that you disobeyed the direct order of a flag officer during combat. Do you agree you disobeyed Rear Admiral Perkins’s order?”
“Yes, Mister Pantini,” Michael said, “of course I agree. How could I not? It is a matter of record.”
“So how can you live with yourself knowing that that one act of willful insubordination condemned hundreds, maybe even thousands, of good spacers and marines to death?”
In a flash, anger replaced Michael’s anxiety; he struggled to keep control. The problem was that Pantini was not all wrong. By ignoring Perkins, by leaving Assault Group to take its chances, by focusing on the antimatter plant, he had condemned good spacers and marines. But if he admitted that to a scum sucker like Pantini, he would be forever damned in the eyes of the Fed public. Clinging to the last shreds of his self-control, he stared confidently right into the holocam’s lens. “Well, Mister Pantini,” he said, “I don’t see it that way. Operation Opera had a single objective, the destruction of the Hammer antimatter plant. I did what any Fleet officer-”