“Something like that. When you got Lepescu, she felt she’d proved her point. I didn’t.” Her mother grimaced. “I thought that should be the end of it; you’d earned it. But your Aunt Vida—”
Heris felt tired. “I wish—” She couldn’t finish; she didn’t know what she wished, except that none of this had happened.
“I’m sorry,” her mother said again. “But I hope you’ll forgive us, in time. If not now.”
If not now, when? A family saying intended to spur reluctant youngsters to try the difficult, to achieve the impossible. Forgiveness was impossible, looked at one way—the pain was still pain, the loss was still loss. In another way . . . it had been too long already. She could tell that they had suffered too; she was not alone in that.
“I missed you,” Heris said, and reached out for them. “I missed you so much—”
Vida Serrano, in uniform, behind her own desk, was back to being the admiral, full of advice for younger officers.
“If you get your mind straightened out—if you learn to ask the right questions—you’ll be an admiral yourself, in a few years. As for now—you did well enough with Vigilance and Paradox. We’ll see what you can do with a real battle group. I’ll expect you to be ready to ship out as soon as you get Vigilance back out of the yards.”
A battle group. Vigilance? A real—? She looked at her aunt, and Vida grinned, a wicked grin of delight at her niece’s surprise. “You’ve earned that much; I can’t get you a star yet, but if you handle the group the way I expect, it’ll come. You’ll be going straight into trouble, of course—”
“What about personnel?”
“Your lover?”
“All of them,” Heris said, persisting.
“I thought I’d give you Arash Livadhi as second in command,” her aunt said, ignoring her question. “That should make an interesting combination, you and Arash.”
“He’s senior.” Heris had her doubts about Arash, even now.
“He was. You’re getting a promotion, remember?”
What was the right question? Did you trust me? Did you care? Heris fumbled around in her memories of the past few years, trying to untangle what she burned to know from what her aunt would consider strategic thinking.
“How did I get that first job, with Lady Cecelia?”
“Good girl.” Vida’s grin widened, pure approval this time. “That took a bit of pressure on the employment agency. I wanted you to have flexibility, a ship with decent legs, a wealthy employer with an irregular schedule. Lady Cecelia was the first one to meet those qualifications.”
“Did you know her?”
“Not really. We’d met years back at a function she probably doesn’t remember. That didn’t matter. The other things did. And, since you’re now on the right track, I won’t make you drag the rest out piecemeal. Yes, it was more than blind good luck or your talented scavenger’s native ability that put certain items in his way when you needed them—those military grade scans, that weapons-control upgrade. You’d earned that when you got Lepescu. I made sure Livadhi got the assignment to carry the prince, rather than Sorkangh’s grandson. And yes, Koutsoudas was planted on you—and a good thing, too. Not that we didn’t need to get him away from the trouble he’d brewed before it cost us his life and Livadhi’s ship. You don’t know yet how ticklish things were in Fleet after the abdication. Or how many holes I had to try to plug with too few resources.”
“You’re going to explain?” Heris said, doing her best not to let sarcasm edge her voice.
Vida smiled, and ignored the question. “As for the yacht, you can tell Lady Cecelia that the Fleet would be delighted to purchase it from her at a good price—we can always use ships like that on covert ops, and I really admire the beacon switch your technicians put in her.”
“Uh . . . yes, sir.” Admiral Vida Serrano was back to being entirely admiral.
“Welcome home,” the admiral said, with just enough softening. “Welcome home and good hunting.”
“No, I’m not ‘trying to copy that Thornbuckle girl’ as you put it.” Raffa stared her mother down. “I don’t have her flair. I don’t even want her flair. But I do want my own life, and that life is with Ronnie Carruthers.”
“I suppose you’ll do it whatever I say,” her mother said.
“Yes.” Raffa waited while her mother worked it all out.
“Where are you going?”
“We’re going to migrate over to the Polandre Group and take up an investor’s claim.”
“But Raffa—dear—you don’t have to do that. It’s all right about Ronnie; now that his parents and his aunt aren’t feuding—”
“We want to do that. It’s nothing to do with his parents or his aunt—we want our own lives, and we can have it out on the new lands.” She hoped she didn’t sound bitter; she wasn’t bitter. Not really. But she wanted her children to have a chance to advance, without a layer of Rejuvenants over their heads, smothering them. She thought of the specs she’d seen, and found herself grinning. “It’s not like it used to be,” she said to her mother. “Pioneers these days have it much easier.” Never mind that she and Ronnie had already decided to spend most of their money on a bigger grant, and fewer amenities. By the time her parents found out—if they ever did—she and Ronnie would have it all straightened out.
Her mother gave her a long, straight look. “You must have more of your Aunt Marta in you than I thought. Well, just be sure to keep a little back for escape if things go haywire. Your father and I didn’t stay on Buriel—”
“You pioneered?”
“Not exactly. We tried to go out and run a subsidiary by ourselves—”
“And you think I take after Aunt Marta!” Raffa laughed. “Mother, you’re a fraud.”
“I don’t want you to make our mistakes,” her mother said, primly.
“We’ll make our own,” Raffa said.
“Keep a little back,” her mother said. “But—I hope you never need it.” She sounded almost wistful. “You will let us give you a good wedding, won’t you?”
“As long as it’s in the sculpture garden,” Raffa said. “And I get to choose my own dress.”
George stared moodily at the ceiling. It wasn’t fair. Ronnie and Raffa running off to play pioneer over in the Polandres. Brun being mysterious and busy and having no time for old friends. Captain Serrano suddenly restored to her former rank and commanding a battle group, with no interest in helping a former Royal Aerospace Service officer transfer his commission to the regs. The clones off wherever they were. Nobody to play with.
“Moping?” George jumped; he hadn’t heard his father come in.
“I feel left out,” he said, and wished he hadn’t. His father had that knack of extracting what you least wanted to say, fatal for many a witness.
His father came around and looked at him; he realized that his father looked older and more worn than he had seen him before. “Time to grow up, George. They have.”
“It was fun,” George said. He didn’t like the petulance in his own voice.
“Yes. But it’s over. If you want to enjoy the rest of your life, you’ll have to find another way.” That famous voice, which could sting like acid in a cut, or croon like a lover, spoke to him without sarcasm or contempt or anything but plain reason. He could have defended himself better against the sting or the croon.
“I don’t know what to do,” George said. “I’m not like Ronnie—I don’t have Raffa, and Brun isn’t the girl I grew up with anymore.”
“You’re not that boy, either, though you don’t seem to know it yet. George, tell me—why didn’t the clones kill you?”
George snorted. “I think I talked them to death, nearly, and it confused their circuits.”
“And back on Sirialis—you influenced the men who captured you—”