“More trouble than him taking us over the border?” Meharry asked.
“Can we trust any of the bridge officers?” Petris asked.
“They’re not part of it,” Oblo said, with utter certainty. “Whatever it is, it’s not them. But they trust Livadhi. If he tells them some fairy tale, they’ll believe it.”
“So—we have to be ready to—what?” Meharry looked ready to pull out a knife and stab someone. She probably was.
“We have to get word to Heris,” Petris said. “She’ll be able to figure something out.” He certainly hadn’t been able to.
“We’re here and she’s there . . . wherever she is. We have to solve this here.”
“We can’t solve this here. Or not entirely.” Petris felt that his head was stuffed full of complications, nested into each other, each insoluble without dealing with a hundred others. “ ‘Steban, Oblo, can you get word out to Heris?”
“Without the admiral knowing? Not directly, no. Anything we spike to the ansible, the Station will know about. All we can contact, without causing possible comment, is one of the other convoy ships.”
“There’s Suiza,” Oblo said.
They were all silent a moment, thinking this over.
“If she believes us,” Petris said, “she might do it. Relay a message to Heris.”
“They’ll know she contacted the ansible—” Koutsoudas said.
“Maybe—but she’s farther out—she’s on outside picket duty.”
“It’s worth a try,” Petris said. “Do it.”
Oblo nodded and sauntered off, casual as always.
“How will she know where we’ve gone?” Meharry asked. “Sure as eggs is eggs, he’s going to jump us out of here.”
“With Oblo and Issi on nav, we could pass all the nav data to Suiza, and Suiza can follow our course. ’Steban will have to fox the scan data somehow.” He looked at Koutsoudas, who nodded.
“I can mask it out. Don’t worry.” A futile statement. Petris felt he was drowning in worry.
“He can’t stay on scan all the time—Livadhi will get suspicious.”
“Well . . . two of the junior scan techs are ours, and he trained them. He’s crosslinked the tightbeam to the scan desk, and he has two of the communications techs in on it.”
“That’s too many,” Meharry said, a furrow between her brows. “Livadhi’s not stupid and a secret quits being a secret after awhile.”
“Cover story?” asked Petris. Meharry was good at cover stories; he was too worried to think of anything but decking Livadhi.
“Yeah . . . let me think . . . look, what if there was a test of new stealth and scan gear. Captains aren’t told, because . . . I’ll think of a reason.” She had the half-sleepy look that meant she was concentrating.
“They want it to be a fair test of the equipment,” Petris said, suddenly inspired. “Not of a captain’s tactical skills. They know good captains could fox the test without meaning to. It’s to be reported to Sector HQ upon return only. They put it on small ships first—the stealth stuff—and the big ship’s supposed to see if it can see it, and the small ship’s supposed to shadow the big one. A few of the technical crew know. I could know, being in engineering. Scan. Comm. That makes sense, sort of.”
Esmay Suiza, aboard Rascal, would have gnawed her knuckles if that wouldn’t have been too obvious to the crew. First Livadhi chewed her out for something that wasn’t her fault, and then attempted a clumsy reparation. That didn’t seem like the suave, charming commander she’d last seen at Sector VII HQ, but anyone could have a bad day. Then that strange message from Heris Serrano’s old crew. She had no idea what was going on, but she had forwarded the message from Vigilance to Heris Serrano. Everyone had heard about Commander Serrano’s former crew; she didn’t know them well, but she had met them, most recently when Livadhi invited the captains of the convoy onto the cruiser for a final toast before departure. She’d wondered how Petris felt about serving under another captain, but that had made her think of Barin, so she pushed the thought aside.
Now she was faced with a command decision. Commodore Admiral Minor Livadhi had ordered her to hold station in this system while he went back for another convoy. Esteban Koutsoudas—himself a legend of technical expertise—had passed on Petris Kenvinnard’s request that she follow Livadhi instead, shadow him, and report all navigational information back to Serrano by encrypted ansible flashes.
An admiral’s order against a warrant officer’s request should have been no contest. Her gut churned. Why was she even considering this? If nothing was going on, if Serrano’s friends were just overreacting to some personality quirk of their new commander, she would have no excuse at all for what she was thinking of doing. If no one discovered—but of course it would be discovered, if only afterwards—and then, the court-martial, and the disgrace, and with things as they were at home—she tried to put that out of her mind, or at least on one side.
If she disobeyed orders and nothing was wrong with Livadhi, she’d be court-martialed—that was the worst that could happen. No—she corrected herself. If mutineers came into the system where she wasn’t keeping station, that would be another evil come from her decision.
But if Livadhi had lost it—if he’d gone crazy, or—worst case—if Livadhi was a traitor—then if she obeyed his orders, she’d be helping him. If she acted on her own initiative to follow him she might—if he didn’t realize she was there—be able to foil whatever plan he had. If he did realize it, Vigilance could blow Rascal into confetti. Perhaps not easily, but certainly.
Where was the greater danger? Surely, in Livadhi as traitor, loose with a cruiser full of weaponry. And crew, some of whom were definitely loyal. What would happen to them, if Livadhi went over to the mutineers or perhaps the Benignity?
If Heris Serrano had asked her help, she’d have given it without hesitation. Heris Serrano trusted Petris Kenvinnard, Methlin Meharry, Oblo Vissisuan. Esmay tugged mentally at that chain of trust, trying for herself if it was strong enough for the risk they asked. Could she trust what Heris Serrano trusted, just because Heris Serrano trusted it?
She liked Commodore Livadhi. He had been, to this point, a good commander insofar as she had the experience to judge. He had listened respectfully to Captain Timmons’ objections to the convoy arrangement, he phrased his orders clearly, they had delivered the convoy safely. Could he be a mutineer or a traitor or crazy?
She wasn’t on the ship with him, and had not been for weeks. Things changed. People changed. Had Heris Serrano’s friends changed?
Her stomach steadied. Not Oblo. She could imagine Petris, who loved Heris Serrano, making a mistake about Livadhi because he loved Heris, and Livadhi wasn’t Heris. Methlin Meharry, concerned about her brother, might overreact. But Oblo, battered and scarred and completely unawed by any circumstance, she could not imagine changing. He might be wrong, but he wouldn’t go crazy, and his instinct for trouble, for wrongness, was legendary.
Heris trusted Oblo; Esmay trusted Heris; she would also trust Oblo. She ignored the flaws of formal logic in that emotional syllogism.
Now to convince her own officers that she wasn’t crazy or traitorous. Would they believe the truth? Or had she better concoct a cover story? Suppose it was a secret exercise, in . . . say . . . stealth technology? She worried at the idea, tugging out its possible fibers, and trying to make a plausible reason why a patrol ship might shadow a cruiser against the orders of an admiral.
“Can you tell where he’s taking us?” Petris asked Lieutenant Focalt. They had finally begun talking to bridge officers, trying to prepare them for possible trouble.
“Ultimately, no. He’s jumping us in and out of systems with multiple routes . . . someone trying to trace us would quickly have more options than anyone could follow up. Yet we’re still in Familias Space; he says he’s got secret orders. If it weren’t for you, I’d believe him . . .”