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  Esmay heard nothing from behind her, but she felt the reaction of her fellow officers; though they had known it must happen, the formal words delivered by an admiral of the Fleet struck with awesome force. Court-martial. Some officers served from commissioning to retirement without being threatened with an investigation, let alone a hearing before some Board . . . and certainly without standing a court-martial. A court-martial was the ultimate disgrace, if you were convicted; it was a blemish on your career even if you were acquitted.

  "Because of the complexity of this case," the admiral went on, "the Judge Advocate General has chosen to handle it with utmost circumspection but also utmost gravity. The precise charges have not been determined for each of you, but in general, the junior lieutenants can expect to see charges of both treason and mutiny, which the JAG is not considering mutually exclusive defenses, one for the other. That is, if you were a party to treason, this does not defend against a later charge of mutiny, and vice versa." The admiral's bright black eyes seemed to bore into Esmay's. Did she mean something particular about that? Esmay wanted to blurt out that she was not and had never been a traitor, but discipline kept her jaw locked.

  The admiral coughed delicately, clearly a social cough, a punctuation in what she said. "I am authorized to tell you that the reason for this is the high level of concern about Benignity influence in the officer corps. It would not have been feasible to ignore that possibility in this case; your defense counsels will explain it to you. The ensigns are being charged with mutiny only, except in one case where investigation is still in progress."

  "But we haven't even seen a defense lawyer!" complained Arphan from the back. Esmay could have swatted him; the idiot had no right to speak.

  "Ensign . . . Arphan, isn't it? Did anyone give you leave to interrupt, Ensign?" The admiral needed no help from a jig to squash a feckless junior.

  "No, sir, but—"

  "Then be silent." The admiral looked back at Esmay, who felt guilty that she had not somehow gagged Arphan, but the admiral's look conveyed no rebuke. "Junior Lieutenant Suiza, as the senior surviving officer, and former captain of a mutinied ship in combat, your trial will necessarily be severed from that of the officers junior to you, although you will be called to testify in their trials, and they in yours. Additionally, you will face a Captain's Board of Inquiry to investigate your handling of Despite in battle."

  Esmay had expected this, in one way, and in another had hoped that one investigation and judicial ordeal might subsume the other.

  "Because of the unusual circumstances of the Xavier situation, including the actions taken by Commander Serrano, it has been determined that you should all be transported to Fleet Headquarters for these courts-martial on another vessel."

  Esmay blinked. They didn't trust Admiral Serrano because of her niece? Then she remembered all the rumors—now demonstrably untrue—about Heris Serrano and her departure from Fleet.

  "Commander Serrano will of course be facing a Board of Inquiry herself, and three of you will be called to testify to that Board." Esmay could not imagine who might be thought to have useful information there. "You will be allowed communications access to notify your families, and if possible speak with them directly, but you are not to communicate with anyone other than your families. Specifically, you are ordered, under penalty, to avoid discussion of this case with anyone in or out of Fleet except your defense counsel and each other. I strongly recommend that you not discuss this among yourselves any more than you already have. You will be closely observed, not always by those who have your interests at heart. You will be met at Fleet Headquarters by your assigned defense counsel, and you will have the usual resources then to prepare yourself for court." The admiral's gaze raked the lines for a moment; Esmay hoped no one would ask stupid questions, and no one did.

  "You're dismissed," the admiral said. "Except for Junior Lieutenant Suiza." Esmay's heart sank through her bootsoles and the deck she stood on. She stood while the others shuffled out, watching the admiral's face for any clue. When they had all gone, the admiral sighed.

  "Sit down, Lieutenant Suiza." Esmay sat. "This is going to be a difficult time for you, and I want to be sure you understand that. Yet I don't want to panic you. Unfortunately, I really don't know you well enough to know how much warning it takes to scare you too much. Your record, as an officer, doesn't help me along. Can you?"

  Esmay kept her jaw from dropping with an effort. She had no idea what to say; for once Yes, sir wasn't enough. The admiral continued, more slowly, giving her time to think.

  "You did very well at the Academy prep school; you were rated high, not brilliantly, in the Academy itself. I would guess you're not the sort to look up your own fitness reports—is that right?"

  "Yes, sir," Esmay said.

  "Mmm. So you may not know that you've been described as `hard worker, willing, not a leader' or `steady, competent, always completes assignments, shows initiative with jobs but not people, leadership potential average.' " The admiral paused, but Esmay couldn't think of anything. That's about what she'd thought of herself. "Some of them say you're shy, and others just say quiet and nondemanding . . . but in a lifetime in the Fleet, Lieutenant Suiza, I've never seen this sort of fitness report—one after another, from the prep school all the way through—coupled with the kind of decisive leadership you showed with Despite. I've known some quiet, unassuming officers who were good in combat—but there was always, somewhere in the background, at least one little glint from that undiscovered diamond."

  "It was an accident," Esmay said, without thinking. "And besides, it was the crew who did it, really."

  "Accidents," the admiral said, "do not just happen. Accidents are caused. What kind of accident do you think would have resulted if Junior Lieutenant Livadhi had been senior?"

  Esmay had wondered that; in the aftermath of battle, Liam and Peli both had been sure they would have chosen a different insertion velocity and vector, but she remembered the look on their faces when she'd announced they were going back.

  "You don't have to answer," the admiral said. "I know from his interviews. He would have sent the same message you did, then hopped back to Sector HQ, hoping to find someone handy. He would not have taken Despite back, and although he can justly critique your tactics on system entry, he himself would have been far too late to save the situation."

  "I . . . I'm not sure. He's brave—"

  "Courage isn't the whole issue here, and you know it. Prudence and courage make good teammates; cowardice can be as rash as storycube courage." The admiral smiled, and Esmay felt cold. "Lieutenant, if you can puzzle me, I assure you that you are puzzling the rest of Fleet even more. It's not that they don't want you to have done what you did—but they don't understand it. If you can hide that level of ability, all these years, under a bland exterior, what else are you hiding? Some have even suggested that you are a Benignity deep agent, that you somehow set up Commander Hearne and engineered a mutiny, just to get yourself known as a hero."

  "I didn't!" Esmay said without thinking.

  "I don't think so myself. But right now there's a crisis of confidence all over the Familias Regnant, and it has not spared the Regular Space Service. It was bad enough to discover that Lepescu was making sport of killing Fleet personnel, but to find that three traitorous captains could be dispatched to something like Xavier—that has shaken the confidence of Fleet Intelligence, as well it should. By all rights, you should be whisked through the obligatory court as quickly as possible, and then hailed as the hero you are—and don't bother to deny it. You are. Unfortunately for you, circumstances are against you, and I expect you and your defense counsel will have a rugged few weeks. Nor is there anything I can do about it; right now my influence could only harm you."

  "That's all right," Esmay said. It wasn't all right, not if she understood Admiral Serrano's implications, but she could certainly see why the admiral couldn't change reality. Growing up a senior officer's daughter had taught her that, if no
thing else. Power always had limits, and banging your head on them only hurt your head.

  The admiral was still looking at her with that intense dark gaze. "I wish I knew you and your background better. I can't even tell if you're sitting there complacent, reasonably wary, or terrified . . . would you mind enlightening me?"

  "Numb," said Esmay honestly. "I'm certainly not complacent; I wasn't complacent even before your warning. I know that young officers who get involved with mutinies, for whatever reason, always have a stained record. But whether I'm reasonably wary or terrified—that I don't know myself."

  "Where did you develop that kind of control, then, if you don't mind my asking? Usually our intakes from colonial planets are all too easy to read."

  It sounded like genuine interest; Esmay wondered if it was, and if she dared explain. "The admiral knows about my father . . . ?" she began.

  "One of four sector commanders on Altiplano; I presume that means you grew up in some kind of military household. But most planetary militia are less . . . formal . . . than we are."

  "It began with Papa Stefan," Esmay said. She was not entirely sure it had really begun there, because how had Papa Stefan accumulated the experience he passed on? "It's not like Fleet, but there's a hereditary military . . . at least, the leading families are."

  "But your file says you were raised on a farm of some sort?"

  "Estancia," Esmay said. "It's—more than a farm. And fairly big." Fairly big hardly described it; Esmay didn't even know how many hectares were in the main holding. "But Papa Stefan insisted that all the children have some military training as they grew."

  "Not all military traditions value the absolute control of facial expression and emotion," the admiral commented. "I gather yours does."

  "Mostly," Esmay said. She couldn't explain her own aversion to unnecessary display of emotion, without going into the whole family mess, Berthol and Sanni and the rest. Certainly Papa Stefan and her own father valued self-control, but not to the degree she practiced it.

  "Well . . . I wanted you to know that you have my best wishes in this matter," the admiral said. She was smiling, a smile that seemed warm and genuine. "After all, you saved my favorite niece—excuse me, Commander Serrano—and I won't forget that, no matter what. I'll be keeping an eye on your career, Lieutenant; I think you have more potential than even you suspect."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Esmay had time to meditate on those words as the long arm of the Fleet's judicial branch separated her from the other junior officers, put her aboard a courier-escort, and whisked her to Fleet Headquarters a full eight days before the others arrived. She met her defense counsel, a balding middle-aged major who looked more like a bureaucrat than an officer; he had the incipient paunch of someone who avoided the gym except in the last few weeks before the annual physical fitness test.

  "It would've made sense for them to link the cases," Major Chapin grumbled, poring over Esmay's file. "Starting at the back end, you are the hero of Xavier; you saved the planet, the system, and an admiral's niece's ass. Unfortunately—"

  "It was explained to me," Esmay said.

  "Good. At least none of the records are missing. We'll need to prepare separately for the Captain's Board of Inquiry and for each of the main threats of the court martial. I hope you have an organized mind—"

  "I think so," Esmay said.

  "Good. For the time being, forget military protocol, if you can; I'm going to call you Esmay, and you're going to call me Fred, because we have too much work to let formalities slow us down. Clear?"

  "Yes, sir—Fred."

  "Good. Now—tell me everything you told the investigators, and then everything you didn't tell them. The whole story of your life isn't too long. I won't get bored, and I don't know what's useful until I hear it."

  In the next days, Esmay found that Major Chapin meant what he'd said. She also found herself increasingly comfortable talking to him, which made her nervous. She reminded herself that she was a grownup, not a child who could throw herself at any friendly adult when she needed comfort. She even mentioned the nightmares, the ones connected to Xavier.

  "You might want to consider a psych session," he said. "If it's bothering you that much."

  "It's not now," she said. "It was those first days after . . ."

  "Sounds normal to me. If you're sleeping well enough to stay alert . . . there's an advantage in not going for a psych evaluation now, you see, because it might look as if we're going to plead mental incompetence."

  "Oh."

  "But by all means, if you need it—"

  "I don't," Esmay said firmly.

  "Good . . . now about this petty thievery you said was plaguing the enlisted lockers . . ."

  Circumstances conspired to shift the date of the court martial so that the Captain's Board met first. Major Chapin grumbled about this, too.

  "You don't take counsel to a Board of Inquiry, so you'll have to remember everything we've talked about by yourself. You can always ask for a short recess and come ask me, but it leaves a bad impression. Damn it—I wanted you to have experience before you went in alone."

  "Can't be helped," Esmay said. He looked mildly surprised, which almost annoyed her. Had he expected her to complain when it could do no good? To make a useless fuss, and to him?

  "I'm glad you're taking it that way. Now—if they don't bring up the matter of the damage to the nav computer, you have two choices—" That session went on for hours, until Esmay felt she understood the point of Chapin's advice, as well as the advice itself.

  The morning the Board hearing began, Chapin walked her into the building and all the way to the anteroom where he would wait in case she asked for a recess and his guidance. "Chin up, Lieutenant," he said as the door opened. "Keep in mind that you won the battle and didn't lose your ship."

  The Board of Inquiry made no allowances for the irregular way in which Esmay had arrived in command of Despite, or so it seemed from the questions. If a Jig commanded in battle, that jig had better know what she was doing, and every error Esmay made came up.

  Even before the next senior officer died of wounds, why had she not prepared for command—surely that mess on the bridge could have been cleaned up faster? Esmay, remembering the near-panic, the need to secure every single compartment, check every single crew member, still thought there were more important things than cleaning blood off the command chair. She didn't say that, but she did list the other emergencies that had seemed more pressing. The Board chair, a hard-faced one-star admiral Esmay had never heard anything about, good or bad, listened to this with compressed lips and no expression she could read.

  Well then, when she took command, why had she chosen to creep into one system—the right move, all agreed, given what she found—and then go blazing back into Xavier, where she had every reason to believe an enemy force lay in wait? Didn't she realize that more competent mining of the jump point entry corridor would have made that suicidal? Esmay wasn't about to argue that her decision made sense; she had followed an instinct, not anything rational, and instincts killed more often than they saved.

  And why hadn't she thought of using a microjump to kill momentum earlier, when she might have saved two ships and not just one? Esmay explained about the nav computer, the need to patch a replacement chip from one of the missile-control units. And on and on, hour after hour. They seemed far less interested—in fact, not interested at all—in how the Despite had blown the enemy flagship, than in her mistakes. The Board replayed surveillance material, pointed out discrepancies, lectured, and when it was over at last Esmay went out feeling as if she'd been boiled until all her bones dissolved in the soup.

  Major Chapin, waiting in the anteroom where he'd watched on a video link, handed her a glass of water. "You probably don't believe this, but you did as well as you could, given the circumstances."

  "I don't think so." She sipped the water. Major Chapin sat watching her until she had finished that glass.

  "Lieutenant,
I know you're tired and probably feel that you've been pulled sideways through a wire gauge, but you need to hear this. Boards of Inquiry are supposed to be grueling. That's part of their purpose. You stood up there and told the truth; you didn't get flustered; you didn't waffle; you didn't make excuses. Your handling of the nav computer failure was perfect—you gave them the facts and then dropped it. You let Timmy Warndstadt chew you up one side and down the other, and at the end you were still on your feet answering stupid questions in a civil tone of voice. I've worked with senior commanders who did worse."

  "Really?" She wasn't sure if it was hope she felt, or simply astonishment that someone—anyone—could approve of something she did.

  "Really. Not only that, remember what I told you at the beginning: you didn't lose your ship and you made a decisive move in the battle. They can't ignore that, even if they think it was blind accident. And after your testimony, they're much less likely to think it was accidental. I wish they'd asked more about the details; you were right not to volunteer it, since it would've sounded like making excuses, but . . . it annoys me when they ignore briefs. I put it all in; the least they could do is read it and ask the right questions. Of course there will be negative comments; there always are, if something gets as far as a Board. But they know—whether they're willing to admit it or not—that you did well for a junior in combat for the first time."

  The door opened, and Esmay had to go back. She returned to her place, facing the long table with the five officers.

  "This is a complicated case," Admiral Warndstadt said. "And the Board has arrived at a complicated resolution. Lieutenant Suiza, this Board finds that your handling of the Despite from the time you assumed effective command after Dovir's wounds rendered him incapable of taking the bridge, to your . . . precipitous . . . return to Xavier, was within the standards expected of a Fleet captain." Esmay felt the first quiver of hope that she was not going to be tossed out on her ear, just before being imprisoned as the result of the court-martial.