Then the Paganini blew, a burst of debris and radiation that completely blanked their screens. “Ouch,” said Koutsoudas. Heris said nothing. She didn’t quite believe it. She would have pinched herself if a dozen people hadn’t been staring at her, their faces full of her own disbelief.
When the scans cleared at last, Despite hung steady, a light-second away, with a very nervous-looking young Jig on a tightbeam link to Vigilance.
The extra signals Koutsoudas had noted when Despite first blew into the system belonged to Regular Space Service ships: cruisers, patrols, escorts, battle platforms, and the supply and service ships needed to keep them going—tankers, minelayers, minesweepers, troop carriers.
“The question is,” Heris said, “whether they’re with us or against us.” She felt drained; what she saw in the faces of her crew was the same exhaustion. “Considering the last multiple arrivals—”
“More likely they’re answering your signals.” Koutsoudas fiddled with his scans, and grunted as if surprised. “Well, Captain—it’s family, whether that pleases you or not. That’s the Harrier, Admiral Vida Serrano’s flagship. Signalling admiral aboard, too.”
“At us, or in general?”
“In general. They won’t have us on scan yet.” Even after so long, even with exhaustion dragging the flesh below his eyes into dark pockets, he still had that smug tone about his scans. And deserved to.
“Fine,” Heris said. “Then continue our present broadcast, and I want this shift bridge crew to go down for six hours.”
“We’re as rested as the others,” Ginese protested.
“Which is not rested at all. I want my mainshift crew rested first, then the others in rotation. Tabs for all. Oh—and add a timetag to that broadcast, with the end-of-battle-all-secured code. That way they won’t have conniptions if they come roaring in and find out I’m asleep.” They would anyway, but she would tell the next shift to wake her, once she’d gotten this gaggle off to their racks.
The second shift, called back, looked no worse than the ones they relieved. Heris waited to be sure the young major understood what to do, then headed for her quarters. She had to be awake and alert for the coming confrontation with her aunt. She remembered to put in a call to Despite, telling them to get some rest, then fell into dreamless sleep.
She woke feeling entirely too rested, and a glance at the chronometer told her why. Nine solid hours? She would rip the hide off someone, just as soon as she quit yawning. A shower woke her the rest of the way and she came back into the compartment wishing she had a clean uniform. The one she had worn for days looked almost as bad as it smelled.
In that brief interval, someone had made her bunk. Someone had also laid out a clean uniform. She could see where other insignia had been hastily removed, and the right number of rings sewn on. She tried it on; although it was a bit loose and slightly longer than she preferred, it would do. As she fastened the collar, the com chimed. She grinned. Of course they knew.
“Yes?”
“Captain, if that uniform fits, we can have a complete set ready in a few hours.” She didn’t recognize the voice; it wasn’t any of her former crew.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s fine. Whom may I thank for the loan of it?”
“Lieutenant Harrell is pleased to be of service, sir.”
“I’m most grateful,” Heris said. She noted the name on her personal pad, and headed for the bridge. The familiar uniform felt so comforting—it was going to be hard to take strips off a crew that took such good care of her.
The bridge officer, Milcini again, looked guilty when she glared at him. “He said to let you sleep,” he said. “I thought it was your orders, sir.”
“He who?” Heris asked.
“Me, sir.” Major Svatek, bleary-eyed and haggard. “I know what you said, but we haven’t had any urgent messages, and the incoming group hasn’t changed course. It’s continuing to decelerate. The senior surgeon recommended that all shifts take a full eight hours—”
“You haven’t,” Heris pointed out. “Does this mean second shift’s just going off?”
“No, sir. If the captain recalls, second and third had been on a four-hour rollover standby, while first was on that last long watch. First went out, and after four hours I sent second down, and brought in third. First had eight hours off, six in full assisted sleep; second’s been down for five hours, and third’s just gone down. In another three hours, second will have had its eight hours, and by the time they’re off—”
“Makes sense,” Heris said. It wasn’t what she’d ordered, but it was what she would have ordered if she’d been thinking clearly. “Good decision. Now—why are you still on the bridge?”
He grinned. “Because, Captain, I’m the one whose neck you could wring if you wanted to.”
“Better decision.” She had to admire that. “Now—take yourself off to bed and don’t come back until you’ve slept it out. At least eight hours. And this time, obey orders.” She put no sting in that last.
“Yes, sir.” A pause, then, “If I could make a suggestion, Captain?”
“Of course.”
“The galleys are back in operation. I’m sure they’d be glad to send something up.”
Heris felt her mouth curling into a grin. “What are you, my medical advisor? No—never mind—you’re right. I presume first shift ate on the way up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Go on now—don’t hover.” He smiled and left the bridge. Heris looked around, checking each position. Everything seemed normal, as normal as it could be with a hole in the side of the ship and a civilian very illegally in command of it. She checked the status of the casualties in sickbay, the progress of repairs, and realized that Svatek was right. She needed food.
“I’m going to my office,” she said to Milcini. “You have the bridge.”
Chapter Eighteen
In her office, she looked around a moment. She had hardly seen it since it had been Garrivay’s, since she had killed him. Nothing showed in its surfaces, no stains on the rug, no scrapes on the furniture. She sent for a meal—anything hot—and began working through the message stack. Despite reported some garbled transmissions from the planet’s surface. They had also carried out the orbital damage survey. The Benignity commander, intending to put down his own troops, had used less toxic weapons than he might have. Although the two small cities had been flattened, and wildfires burned across the grasslands and forests near them, the rest of the planet wasn’t damaged. It would remain liveable. Heris thought of the pretty little city she had ridden through, with its white stone buildings now blasted to rubble, its colorful gardens blackened . . . it could have been worse, but that didn’t make it good.
She ate the food when it came without noticing what it was. One group of miners wanted to know if it was safe to go back to their domed colony. Another claimed salvage rights on the destroyed killer-escort and asked permission to start cutting it up. She suspected it had already started doing so. Those in the ore-carrier, without any explanation of what they’d been doing, announced that they were going back.
Heris called the bridge, and asked for tightbeams to both Despite and Sweet Delight. The young captain of Despite wanted to explain the mutiny, but Heris cut her off. “That’s for a Board of Inquiry,” she said. “Right now I need to know what you’ve picked up from the planet.”
“We have no estimate of the number of survivors,” Suiza said. “We’ve picked up two transmitters, but one may be an automatic distress beacon. It’s repeating the same message over and over. The other seems to be trying to contact the first, not us.”