Linc, are you there? Don’t let go of me!
A little girl’s thought, brave but frightened. In his moment of self-pity he had let his mind wander, and had almost failed in the one task he could perform right now.
And this he could do precisely because of who and what nature had made him. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad to be Lincoln Casey, after all, because although any Morthan hybrid could have touched Maddy telepathically there was no other who could have guided her through what she might soon have to do.
Healers didn’t know how to pilot, how to shoot, how to fight. He did know those things; they had been his life. And now that knowledge was going to be lent to young Maddy, and with any luck it would keep her alive at least—and hopefully, it would keep Dan Archer and Rachel Kane alive as well.
Paolo Giandrea stretched out on his office sofa, a luxury that went with command of anything the size of a heavy cruiser or above. Roomy compartments were one of the percs that went with being assigned at this exalted level.
In a few minutes things were going to come together down there on a northern plain of Narsai, and he had left instructions that he should be awakened when that was about to happen. Not that his exec, the fellow who had replaced Rachel Kane and who definitely wasn’t a gen, could not have managed very well on his own; but Giandrea would have felt that he was abandoning Admiral Romanova, and Dan Archer, and Rachel herself, if he had not made it his business to be on the bridge while what he suspected just might be the first-ever rescue of a piece of human “property” from the hands of a corporate marshal was being accomplished.
Besides, he didn’t trust Fralick. And Fralick was in the middle of this, too.
Apparently he himself had managed to get away with the role he had played in Kane’s escape from her owners. No one, Marshal Vargas included, seemed to suspect that the gen had had his assistance in her flight from the Archangel eighteen months earlier. Giandrea was vastly relieved about that, not only for the sake of his own hide (capital punishment for grand theft had been reinstituted on Terra a few centuries earlier); but also because being a thief’s children could bar his youngsters from higher education, and certainly would blackball their entrance into any of the major professions. He still wondered why he had taken that kind of a risk for Kane, but the fact was that he still had trouble forcing himself to believe that the finest executive officer he’d ever had was a gen and not just a rather poorly socialized young woman.
Dammit all, he couldn’t have let his friend—his friend!—be forced to submit to a medical procedure she didn’t want, be deprived of children she had never expected she’d be able to bear. Giandrea’s children meant more to him than he knew how to articulate, so he had had no trouble at all comprehending that Kane was willing to risk dying rather than give hers up.
That was a no-brainer. And therefore, helping her had also been a no-brainer.
He neither particularly liked nor disliked Morthans, but treating a retired officer the way Captain Casey had been treated was also a repulsive thing. And he hoped that as part of whatever was about to happen, Admiral Romanova would get her daughter back; he understood that Ambassador Fralick’s custody of the girl had been perfectly legal, and no doubt the man did love the child, but to keep her from her mother all these years was another thing that just wasn’t right.
A lot of things weren’t right, and like so many other officers Paolo Giandrea was proud that as a member of the Star Service he could sometimes fix a few of them. Not as many as he wished, but some; and that was more than most people were able to say.
His comm whistled. His exec’s voice said, “Captain, the Marshal’s shuttle has landed on Narsai. And our shuttle has picked up Admiral Romanova, and they’re going in.”
There was commotion on the bridge, where Commander Tarag should be waiting politely for Giandrea to acknowledge so he could sign off. Instead his voice carried sharply through the commlink even though he wasn’t speaking into its pickup. “What? How long, and how many ships?”
Giandrea knew. He swung himself off the sofa, glad he hadn’t given himself the indulgence of loosening his uniform or removing his boots while he rested, and he dashed out of his office.
He needed to be on the bridge now, all right, but what happened to a few people down on the winter plains of Narsai no longer seemed very important to him. When he got to the bridge his exec was staring at a viewscreen that showed fifteen incoming bogeys.
Impossible. The Rebs had ships, some of them bought at those damn fool surplus auctions when it would have made better sense to scrap any outmoded vessel or weapon for its components than to sell it to someone who might turn around and throw it back at the Commonwealth’s own forces someday; some of them refitted civilian vessels, some of them strange alien rigs that they’d acquired through alliances that no sane group of humans would ever have made. But what were they doing at Narsai, in force? Because fifteen ships was a fleet, in anyone’s language, and those had to be Rebs.
Damn. Tanaka had argued for placing just such a fleet of their own here at Narsai, and he had been told that the locals would not like it—which was true, but irrelevant—and that the resources were needed elsewhere.
Well, the verdamtig resources were needed here today for sure. And Paolo Giandrea had just his one ship, which even though it was probably more powerful than any four of those Rebs was nevertheless incapable of fighting using fleet tactics while it was by itself.
He was going to make his one ship count for all it could, though. Giandrea moved to his command chair, and said to Tarag in a calm voice that was meant to soothe his own apprehension fully as much as everyone else’s, “Report, if you please, Mr. Tarag.”
This was why they trained. No one could ever truly be ready for a moment like this one, but Paolo Giandrea and his people were as near to it as any band of warriors had been since humans first began escalating the quarrel of one man with another into organized battles of group against group.
The first concern was to get clear of Narsai, both so he could maneuver freely and so that the planet would be spared any inadvertent damage from the coming conflict. Taking out satellites and habitats on which civilians depended was a tactic for terrorists, not something he would do and he hoped not something the Rebs would do. After all, their whole problem was that they needed what Narsai and Sestus 4 and other such worlds produced, wasn’t it? So it would make no sense, aside from being completely immoral, for them to damage Narsai’s ability to go on growing and exporting crops or Sestus 4’s ability to mine and ship ores.
Someone needed to tell the Rebs that, though. They came in too fast, so that it was not possible for the Archangel to get completely clear of Narsatian space before the shooting started.
CHAPTER 21
“I won’t have to do anything to hurt my papa, will I?”
Maddy Fralick sounded like the child she still was. Linc focused his thoughts on her, with Katy there too but at a separate level—right now there was no need for him to cause mother’s and daughter’s minds to touch, and if he did so he suspected that both would be confused.
Neither of them needed that. Katy had to concentrate, and so did Maddy.
“I won’t ask you to,” he assured the little girl. “And remember, Maddy, I can’t make you do anything and I’m not going to try. All I’m going to do is guide you, and I won’t even do that if you’d rather I didn’t.”