“Lieutenant, I believe you have a hand-to-hand for me?”
“Yes, sir.” Esmay’s voice expressed no more than her face as she handed him the databag.
“Very well. Dismissed.” He turned to Barin. “Come along in, Ensign.” Barin tried to catch Esmay’s eye, but she looked past him. He followed Savanche into the conference, his heart sinking rapidly past the deck toward the gravitational center of the universe.
“The tissue typing confirms that the unidentified bodies found at the site of the Elias Madero hijacking were those of five members of the ten from Lord Thornbuckle’s personal militia: Savoy Ardenil, Basil Verenci, Klara Pronoth, Seren Verenci, and Kaspar Pronoth. This very strongly suggests that Sera Meager’s ship was there at the time, and may have attempted to intervene.”
Which meant that they knew, at last, where Brun’s yacht had been when she was attacked. At last they could narrow the search to something other than all space everywhere. Shrike’s subsequent search for traces of the Elias Madero narrowed it further. Barin tried to fix his mind on the evidence and its logical consequences, but Esmay’s set face kept intruding. She had been wrong, yes—but Lord Thornbuckle’s outburst, his refusal to see her, was profoundly unjust. Brun’s situation was not Esmay’s fault.
“The Guernesi are working on data cubes recovered from the Elias Madero; they have already identified the organization—apparently it really is the New Texas Godfearing Militia, and they are attempting to find out which branch captured Sera Meager.” The briefing officer, a commander Barin did not know, paused for questions. One only came, from Lord Thornbuckle.
“How long . . . ?”
When the conference was dismissed, Barin fully intended to go looking for Esmay. He wanted her to know that he, at least, was no longer angry with her. But the ubiquitous Lieutenant Ferradi caught him first. By the time he’d finished running the errands she assigned, he was due back aboard Gyrfalcon for his watch.
Captain Solis met Esmay at the docking hatch for Shrike. “We need to talk,” he said. He looked more tired than angry. “So far no one aboard knows about this—and I would prefer to keep it as quiet as possible.”
“Sir.” She hadn’t done anything at all, but follow orders and take the data where she’d been told.
He sighed. “Near as I can tell—and I should be able to tell, or what am I doing with my rank?—your outburst back at Copper Mountain was just that, an outburst. You’ve done a good job for me; you’re an effective leader. You fit your history, is what I’m saying. But acts have consequences, including mistakes, however rare.”
Esmay thought about saying something, but decided there was no point.
“Lord Thornbuckle needs a villain,” Solis said. “And since he can’t get his hands on the real villains, he’s picked you. He refuses to have you involved in planning the rescue; he doesn’t even want you on the base. There’s a very limited amount that we can do, given his position and his state of mind. However, I consider your knowledge of Sera Meager—and the investigation of the Elias Madero hijacking site—to be important resources. I’ve gone on record as saying so, and had my tail chewed by Admiral Hornan.”
“Yes, sir,” Esmay said, since the long pause suggested the need for some comment.
“You’re going to have to stay out of everyone’s way—I won’t say I’m restricting you to Shrike, because that would be unfair, but until I can get you some kind of assignment that uses your talents, I strongly recommend that you consider spending most of your time there—and make sure you don’t run afoul of Lord Thornbuckle or Admiral Hornan. The latter won’t be easy—he’s taking his position as Sector Commandant very seriously, and he would like to lead the task force when it acts. Since the Serranos are in Thornbuckle’s bad graces, he may well get that assignment.”
“Yes, sir.” Why were the Serranos in trouble? That made no sense to Esmay, but clearly she should stay away from Barin until she got that figured out. The last thing she wanted was to get a Serrano in worse trouble.
“And if you do mingle, watch what you say—because someone else will be.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll do my best to keep you informed of the progress of the investigation and planning—now, get in there and keep my ship the way it should be.”
“Yes, sir.” Esmay saluted and went aboard, very little cheered by the knowledge that her captain no longer thought of her as a monster. Clearly, enough other people did.
In the next few days, Barin did his best to search the station, but he did not see Esmay in any of the places where off-duty officers congregated. Her name was never down for a machine or swim lane at the gym; he could find no logon records at the library; she had no assigned quarters. Could she still be living aboard Shrike? He called up the ship’s entry and found her listed as the XO—at least that was right—but no personal comcode number. He didn’t want to call the ship’s general number and have her paged; in the present climate, that might get them both in more trouble.
The next briefing began with a presentation by one of the Guernesi.
“Thanks to the data cubes recovered by Shrike, and skillfully enhanced by your technicians, we’re able to identify the raiders as members of a religious-military organization which controls some six Earth-type planets in this area—” He pointed to a chart on display. “You’ll notice that these are in the angle, as it were, between Guernesi and Familias space.
“Let me give you a little necessary background on the group that calls itself the New Texas Godfearing Milita, or the Nutex Militia, for short. Our historians have done extensive research on the fringe religions that formed colonies in the early days of expansion from Old Earth, because we’ve had unpleasant contact with many of them. This one claims to descend from founders in Texas—one of the United States, which was in North America, for those of you with an interest in Old Earth geography.”
“I don’t see the relevance,” Lord Thornbuckle said. “We can learn the history later—”
“I believe you will, sir. Their present beliefs are relevant to your daughter’s situation, and to any hope of intervention on her behalf. Their present beliefs grow out of their mythologized view of Texas history.” He took a breath and went on. “Now, this state had at one time been—very briefly—an independent nation. As with other nations swallowed up by larger political units, a portion of its population clung to that memory and caused trouble. In the late twentieth, their reckoning, one of many militias and terrorist religious groups active in the United States was something called the Republic of Texas. At that time, it was not affiliated with a particular religious position, and did not have as rigid a view of gender roles as some others. But it existed in the same soup, as it were, and the flavors melded.”
“Was it involved in terrorist acts at that time?” asked Admiral Serrano.
“We think originally not, except in collecting arms, evading taxes, and causing the local government as much administrative trouble as possible. However, in one recorded standoff with the authorities, its members did take hostages, and did announce an intent to form a separate government and bring down the existing one. It failed. But that failure led to an affiliation with the survivors of a failed religious fringe group. They explained the Republic of Texas failure as resulting from lack of faith, and explained their own as resulting from lack of military experience. That group bore the rather cumbersome name of the Republic of Godfearing Texans Against World Government. It quickly splintered, as such groups often do, into several, each of which had similar, but doctrinally distinct, beliefs. One of these called itself the New Texas Godfearing Militia. This particular branch believed that the decay of society which led to acceptance of tyranny was due to the influence of women, and that women had been allowed beyond the bounds set by God in Holy Scripture. Many other such groups existed at the time—universal education for women in North America was then fairly recent, and their entry into employment was blamed for male unemployment and discontent. Historians have found many texts advocating the return of women to ‘traditional’ roles, defined very narrowly.