But someone had to do this, and it was Helen's job.
Her hands shook as she gently lifted the lid, and she blinked hard, trying to clear her eyes of the sudden tears. She couldn't. They came too hard, too fast, and she covered her mouth with her hands, rocking on her knees as she wept silently. She couldn't do this. She couldn't. But she had to. It was the last thing she would ever be able to do for her friend… and she couldn't.
She didn't hear the hatch open behind her. She was too lost in her grief. But she felt the hand on her shoulder, and she looked up quickly.
Paulo d'Arezzo looked down at her, his handsome face tight with grief of its own. She stared up into his gray eyes through tear-spangled vision, and he went down into a crouch beside her.
"I can't," she whispered almost inaudibly. "I can't do this, Paulo."
"I'm sorry," he said softly, and her sobs broke free at last. He went fully to his knees, and before she knew what was happening, his arms were around her, holding her. She started to pull away-not from the embrace, but from the humiliation of her weakness. But she couldn't do that, either. The arms around her tightened, holding her with gently implacable strength, and a hand touched the back of her head.
"She was your friend," Paulo said softly into her ear. "You loved her. Go ahead. Cry for her… and then I'll help you do this."
It was too much. It broke her control, and with it her resistance, and she pressed her face into his shoulder and wept for her dead.
Aivars Terekhov walked into the bridge briefing room with a face of battle steel. His blue eyes were hard and cold, and grief-fired rage slept only uneasily behind that azure ice.
Captain Tadislaw Kaczmarczyk followed him into the compartment. The Marine peeled off to take a seat beside Guthrie Bagwell, but Terekhov crossed to the head of the table and took his place, then let his eyes range over the officers gathered around it.
Abigail Hearns looked as if she'd wept, yet there was a calmness, almost a serenity, about her at odds with everyone else in the compartment. There was steel under the serenity, the unyielding and inflexible steel of Grayson, but there was acceptance, too. Not forgiveness for the people who'd murdered her midshipwoman, but the acceptance that to care-to love-was to surrender one's self to the pain of loss… and that to refuse to love was to refuse to live.
Naomi Kaplan showed no acceptance. Not yet. The fury still smoked in her dark brown eyes, hot from hatred's forge. There wasn't enough vengeance in the universe to slake Kaplan's ferocious rage, but enough time hadn't yet passed for her to realize that.
Ansten FitzGerald, Guthrie Bagwell, Ginger Lewis, Tadislaw Kaczmarczyk, and Amal Nagchaudhuri were all, to greater or lesser extent, mirrors of Kaplan.
It was the suddenness of it, Terekhov thought. The stupidity. These people-all of them, even, or especially, Abigail-had seen combat. Had seen people killed. Lost friends. But the incredible, casual speed with which a young midshipwoman, the crew of Hawk-Papa-One, and fifteen Marines had been wiped away before their eyes… That was something else. And all of it had been for absolutely nothing. The man who'd apparently killed them out of panic and terror-induced vengefulness was dead. So were the vast majority of his crew mates.
All for nothing, he thought, remembering Ragnhild's face, all the times she'd piloted his pinnace. Remembering how she'd tried to hide her frustration at the youthfulness of her appearance, her joy when the pinnace gave her wings. Remembering all the incredible promise of the life which had been wiped away as if it had never existed.
No, he told himself, angry with his own thoughts. No, not as if she'd never existed. She did exist. That's why this hurts so much.
"Before I say anything else," he said quietly, "there will be no self-recrimination. If anyone in this ship is to blame for what happened to our people on that pinnace, that person is me. I sent them across, knowing that ship was armed."
People stirred around the table. Most of them looked away. But Abigail Hearns looked straight into his eyes, and shook her head. She said nothing, yet she didn't need to, and somehow Terekhov found himself looking back into her eyes. And then, to his own surprise, he nodded once, accepting her gentle correction.
"Skipper," FitzGerald began, "you couldn't have-"
"I didn't say I made the wrong decision, based on the information we had, Ansten," Terekhov interrupted. "We're Queen's officers. Queen's officers die in the line of duty. And Queen's officers send other people places where they die. Someone had to take that pinnace across, and as I said at the time, only a lunatic would've tried to stop it. One did." He inhaled deeply. "But it was still their job to go, and my job to send them. I did. No one else in this ship did. I will not have any officer-or midshipman-under my command blaming himself for not possessing the godlike power of clairvoyance to predict what was going to happen."
He let his eyes circle the table one more time, and this time all of them looked back at him. He nodded in satisfaction, then flipped his right hand and turned his attention to Kaczmarczyk.
"Tadislaw, suppose you brief everyone on what we've learned so far."
"Yes, Sir." Kaczmarczyk drew his memo pad from the case at his belt and keyed the display alive.
"This vessel belonged to the Jessyk Combine," he began. "Given its construction and outfitting, it clearly falls under the equipment clause of the Cherwell Convention. As such, all members of its crew are legally liable to the death sentence, even without reference to what happened to Hawk-Papa-One. They realize this, and the surviving personnel are falling all over themselves trying to provide sufficient information to buy their lives.
"What we've learned so far-"
Stephen Westman watched the air car settle beside the tent once again.
Maybe I should just leave it permanently set up here, he thought wryly. It'd be a lot less work than constantly putting it up and taking it down again.
The hatches opened and the familiar "guests" climbed out once more. But this time, the midshipwoman wasn't present, and he felt a flicker of surprise.
Greetings were exchanged, and then he, Terekhov, Van Dort, and Trevor Bannister were once again seated around the camp table.
"I have to say this is a surprise," he said. "I sort of figured you'd leave me to stew a mite longer."
"We planned to," Van Dort said. "But something's come up. Something you should know about before you make any decisions."
"Like what?" Westman recognized the hardness that crept into his voice whenever he addressed Bernardus Van Dort. He did his best to restrain it, but a lifetime of hostility couldn't be that readily overcome even by someone who was positive he wanted to overcome it. And Westman remained far from certain he did.
"You may have noticed Ms. Zilwicki isn't with us," Terekhov said, pulling the Montanan's eyes to him. "I've relieved her of all other duties to allow her to deal with the effects of Midshipwoman Pavletic."
Westman stiffened in his chair. He remembered the other midshipwoman. He hadn't met her, the way he had Zilwicki, but some of his… friends in Brewster had managed to get pictures of her when they photographed Terekhov's planeted pinnace, and he remembered the way they'd joked about how young she looked.
"Effects?" he repeated.
"Yes. Ms. Pavletic, the flight crew of her pinnace, and fifteen of my Marines were killed five hours before the Chief Marshal contacted you. Their pinnace was destroyed by an armed merchantship in orbit around Montana."
The Manticoran's voice was crisper than ever, Westman noticed. The words came quickly and sharply, with the honed steel edges of a bowie knife. And then he saw the same steel in the blue eyes regarding him across the table.