Perduro’s answering grin was crooked. “Glad you’ve liked the accommodations.”
“I’ve always been partial to the narrow bunks and dull steel fixtures, but it’s the weather and the scenery I like best. Poisonous atmosphere, lethally low atmospheric pressure, hard rads due to the lack of a magnetosphere, and not a living cell except for the ones we brought with us into this gray-walled rat warren.”
Perduro leaned back. “Okay, but smile when you say all that, Captain.”
“I was smiling, ma’am—wasn’t I?” Trevor glanced at a chair.
“Sit, sit already.” Perduro waved at it. Then, not looking at him: “How’s the leg?”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”
“Captain Corcoran, do you really think I don’t get training updates on command grade personnel? Or that I don’t read them?”
Trevor felt a little less jocular, now. “My leg is fine, ma’am. Never better.”
“Hmph. Not what the base CMO said a few days ago. Fractured left tibia, if I recall.”
“Hairline stress fracture,” emended Trevor. “A small one.”
“Yes, but enough to warrant them going in and poking around, evidently.”
Trevor shrugged. “Which is, I suspect, the source of my discomfort, ma’am. I don’t know why the CMO felt the need to get busy with a knife. I talked to the medtech who took the scans. Hardly anything to see.”
“Hm. Is it the leg that’s dented—or that SEAL ego, Captain?”
“Technically, I’m no longer in the Teams, ma’am.” It annoyed Trevor that a chief petty officer had tagged him that hard during hand-to-hand drill.
Perduro was smiling at him with one raised eyebrow. “I’ll be sad to see you go, Trev. Your visit brought a bit of color to the navy-gray of Barney Deucy.”
Trevor stared at the files on her desk, at the screens that surrounded her. Caine Riordan’s name or image was on at least half of them. “Well, Admiral, to be frank, it wasn’t really me who brought the color, was it?”
Perduro’s smile was small but genuine. “Don’t sell yourself short, Trev. Besides, being with you is a bit like old times for me. Your father—God rest him—was the BELTCINC when I was a shave-tail HQ staffer during the Belt Wars.”
Trevor nodded, did the math, was surprised that Perduro was that old, considered her very well preserved indeed. “But still, ma’am, I’m not the novelty around here.” Trevor pointed at Caine’s face on one of the screens. “He is. Understandably.”
“You both met five species of exosapients at the Accord’s Convocation last month. That makes both of you celebrities in my eyes.”
“You’re very kind, ma’am. But I just went along to carry the figurative shotgun. Caine was the liaison, the communicator. And the guy who found the first exos on Dee Pee Three.”
“Yes, and who I’ve now had to make a naval officer to boot. As per Richard Downing’s orders.” She frowned. “About Downing: what intelligence agency is he with? And how the hell did he get the clearance and command-equivalency rating that he waved in front of my nose when he dropped you two off here a month ago?”
“Admiral Perduro,” Trevor sat up very straight and cleared his throat. “I regret to say I have no information pertinent to the assignment or disposition of Mr. Richard Downing, nor would I be officially disposed to share it if I did. Ma’am.”
Perduro’s other eyebrow rose to join the first. “Ah. The Holy Creed of Plausible Deniability.”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“I’m sure you are.” She fiddled with a palmcomp stylus for a moment. “Downing is your godfather, isn’t he?”
“That is correct, ma’am.” And he’s the new chief of IRIS. And a direct advisor to President Liu. And the sonofabitch who turned my father’s body over to the same aliens who sneaked some kind of organism into his chest. Yes, that’s my friend-buggering, skull-duggering Uncle Richard.
Perduro nodded, might have detected the overly crisp tone in Trevor’s reply since she changed topics. “And what’s your take on our thirty-day wonder, Mr. Riordan? Will he cut it as an officer?”
“Ma’am, I’m sure you must have all of Caine’s scores.” I can see them right there, in front of you. “His lowest performance index is still a three-sigma shift above the center of the bell curve. Can’t ask for better than that.”
“Trevor, don’t be obtuse. You know what I’m asking. He looks fine on paper. I need a human perspective from someone who knows him but can be objective.”
Trevor frowned as if he was mulling over his response while his brain raced in a different direction. You think I can be objective about Caine Riordan? Gee, that might be a little hard, seeing as how he’s the guy who fell in love with my sister Elena fourteen years ago, the guy my dad then mind-wiped, who is the father of my fatherless nephew, and who is now romantically involved—well, entangled—with one hell of a wonderful coldsleeper from the past, Opal Patrone. Who my late father all but stuck in Caine’s bed. Yeah, sure, I can be impartial about Caine Riordan, aka “Odysseus.” Not a problem.
“Captain Corcoran, are you uncomfortable giving your assessment of Riordan?” Perduro’s tone had grown slightly more formal. “Is there some failing not indicated on his OCS results?”
“Oh, no, ma’am, just trying to find the right words.”
“The right words for what? Either he’s going to be a good officer or he isn’t.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t think it’s that simple in his case.”
Perduro steepled her fingers, breathed out a slow sigh. “I’m probably going to regret asking this, but I am duty-bound to do so: please explain why the assessment of Riordan is not ‘simple.’ ”
“Ma’am, to start with, he was an impressed civilian. A draftee in an all-volunteer force. So he’s not wearing the blue because it’s the fulfillment of lifelong dream.”
“So he resents it?”
“No. In fact, he was preparing to volunteer. But only because he thinks it’s necessary.” Trevor wondered, despite Perduro having been briefed on the disastrous outcome of the Convocation, just how much he should reveal. “Riordan thinks that we could be at war pretty soon, and he wants to ‘do his part,’ as he put it.”
Perduro’s eyes grew harder behind the now-rigid pinnacle of her fingers. “So Riordan and Downing are on the same page about the disputes at the Convocation, that they could be precursors to war?”
“Ma’am, I think that’s how all of us who were at the Convocation felt. The superficial purpose for that all-species meet-and-greet was to talk, but some of the members came to pick a fight. And I’m pretty sure they’re going to get what they came for.”
Perduro folded her hands. “A sobering assessment, Captain. But back to Riordan: will he freeze in a fight?”
“No, ma’am. He’s already handled some pretty tough situations since being pulled out of cryosleep. You’ve probably seen the reports of the assassination attempts he foiled on board the Tyne, then at Alexandria, then at Sounion, and then on Mars.”
“Hmmm. Yes. Although it looks like he had considerable help at Sounion. His fellow sleeper, Major Opal Patrone, seemed to be quite the one-woman reaping machine, there.”
Trevor made sure that neither his voice or his eyes changed. “Major Patrone was assigned as Caine’s close security, although he didn’t know it at the time. She’s a top-notch soldier. She has also been teaching him karate. Shotokan tradition.” But Martina Perduro had no need to know that poor, future-stranded Opal Patrone had also been assigned to become Caine’s paramour. Which will make for an interesting reunion, if Elena and Opal are both in the room when Caine reveals that he has remembered the one-hundred-hour romance he and Sis had on Luna. And that Connor is his child. I’m not quite sure how Opal will take that—