Chapter 3

Thirteen uneventful days after leaving Faegol, Adana’s fleet shaped orbit well outside the hyperjump limit around the Medina system.

She sent a drone into contact with the cruiser Captain Chandler had sent ahead. Ten hours later, Okumura’s commander reported in person on the status of preliminary arrangements with the Faithful.

“They’re being a little cautious, ma’am,” Captain Edwards said as she settled in a chair in Weizman’s briefing room. “We’re welcome, but they don’t want us orbiting directly over their heads.”

“Not that I blame them, but did you hear any particular reason?” Admiral Korina suspected the reason, but she wanted to hear it directly.

“The Ambassador thinks it is because of Tatiana Silversmith,” Captain Edwards replied.

Admiral Korina frowned. Shortly after the Imperial bombardment and invasion of Setosha, Scout commander Silversmith had attacked the Medina system with a handful of unguided antimatter missiles. Utilizing surprise, deception, and sheer audacity to approach so close that aiming was almost irrelevant, Silversmith had destroyed the Station over Medina and vaporized two Imperial warships docked there. She had then immediately returned to Home and informed Families Navy High Command of what she had done.

Volyn Carter had had the unenviable task of presenting Silversmith and her report to the Executive Council. Eldest Marie had been furious. Perhaps furious was too mild a word. Eschewing a formal court-martial, the Eldest had put Silversmith before the entire Council to explain her actions in person. Rumor had it that the resolution to send her back to Medina in chains had failed by only a handful of votes.

Adana Korina had been stunned by news of the attack. Medina was a neutral. Not very neutral, true, but that was decidedly not the point. Hundreds of innocent Medinans had died, ultimately, because Vikki had died. Admiral Korina had been explicit in her blunt rejection of Silversmith’s attack. She had stated that position very clearly in public and also through proper Navy channels. Adana Korina had been troubled by ugly nightmares ever since. So many innocents had been consumed by the Emperor’s war. Someone had to end the idiocy.

She sighed. “I’d be just a little nervous, too. If Silversmith could do to them what she did with only a Scout, imagine what one of our Cruisers must represent to them, or a whole fleet complete with two carriers.”

Captain Edwards nodded. “Aye, ma’am. At least we asked permission before entering their system. The people I talked to were a little surprised at that. Apparently, the Imperial Navy wasn’t in the habit of asking. They just showed up and took over, like at Setosha, but without the shooting. I reminded the Medinans we aren’t the Empire.”

Admiral Korina smiled. “Good idea. Remind them of that again, frequently. Right. Let Flag Astrogation know where they want us, and I’ll have Renae take us in-system starting in about 10 hours.”

Admiral Korina considered her other duties and called her Flag Captain. “We’ll have to make an official visit to meet the Medinans, probably at our Embassy. Alert Sue, Sanura, and Kelly that we’ll be going down. Speaking of that, Renae?”

“Ma’am?”

“Have all Exec officers work up leave rosters. Don’t promise too much right away. It can’t be quick. At the very least, we’ll be working with our Embassy staff to arrange lodging, and they will be working with the Medinans to establish protocols, procedures, and medical clearances before we land any large numbers. Two days ought to be long enough to make all of that happen. We don’t want to spread anything nasty or receive it either. After that, make certain nobody gets left out. Blue skies will be good for everyone.”

“Aye, Ma’am. I’ll get right on that.”

Eighteen hours later, the fleet joined Okumura in an orbit trailing the planet next outward from The Faithfuls’ home world.

“Problems?” Captain Abakumova was quietly concerned when she found her commander nervously pacing the Bridge. Admiral Korina was wearing her full dress uniform and gripped her beret firmly in her tense right hand. At Renae’s question, she stopped and stared into space, her expression distant and ill at ease.

“Problems? Aye,” the Admiral replied. She stared at the vidscreen for a moment longer. “I know they are our allies, Renae,” she said finally. She tapped her forehead with one finger. “I know it here, in my head. But one of them shot Vikki dead and nearly killed Della as well. They tried to kill Corey Andersen and her sibs. Who knows how many of us they’ve killed or caused to be killed or captured with all their spying over the years?” She looked at her short, stocky Flag Captain and shook her head. “I can’t forget that.”

“The woman who shot you and your sibs was a brainwashed tool,” Captain Abakumova said softly. “So were the others. It was Imperial Intelligence that pulled the trigger, not Medina. You saw the interrogation reports of the other assassins.”

“Actually, no, I didn’t.” The Admiral looked away. “I was with Della afterwards, until she ... until she was better. Until both of us were better.”

“Captain Andersen captured one of the assassins they sent after her. Don’t ask me how she did that.”

“Very little that Corey does surprises me anymore,” the Admiral said. “We’ll send her off to attack the Imperial Capitol, and somehow she’ll figure out a way to capture the Emperor and make it seem like a minor thing in her report.”

“Aye, Ma’am.” Captain Abakumova grinned. “Anyway, after the Marines rescued her, Intelligence peeled that woman like an onion. They stripped her mind all the way down to the core. Somehow they isolated the brainwashing and neutralized it. I’ve heard the Medinans themselves had something to do with that. However it was done, they broke through that Imperial conditioning. Once the assassin could see past that, she was horrified at what she’d done.”

The Admiral frowned thoughtfully. “Do you think that could have been an act?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t. I saw the recording of the interrogation. I followed up on that and researched what happened after our Intelligence girls were done with her. When they turned her back over to the Medinans, the first thing she did was go to one of their priests and heap blame on herself for everything that had happened.”

“Probably seeking absolution for her crimes,” the Admiral murmured, nodding.

“I don’t think so, ma’am.” Captain Abakumova shook her head firmly. “The penance she was asking to be laid on her was severe by their standards, or our standards, for that matter. The Faithful value their families and their children just as much as we do, and that assassin and the others with her came close to killing Captain Andersen’s baby nieces along with their mother. They did kill Sonia Andersen’s unborn babies. That’s ... well, the Faithful consider that an awful sin. She asked them to execute her, ma’am. They told her no. By their law, they can’t. They won’t even let her kill herself. She has to do pretty much the same thing the Eldest did with Tatiana Silversmith: get up in public, confess her sins, and describe herself as a warning, a bad example to everyone else. Then she has to tell them how to do better.”

Admiral Korina stopped her pacing and looked at her Flag Captain. “In public?”

“Yes, ma’am. She has to travel to a different town every few days and make a presentation. They call it witnessing. You can probably see it if you wish, Ma’am. I’m sure the Medinans would oblige you. Especially you, of all people.”

“Perhaps,” the Admiral answered faintly, after a prolonged and thoughtful pause.

“Give them a chance, ma’am.”

“My head says you’re right,” the Admiral replied, her voice falling. “And then I feel Vikki’s blood pouring over my hands, I see it spreading over that sidewalk ... so much blood.”

Now it was Captain Abakumova’s turn to pause. She watched her commander with more than professional concern. Admiral Carter had warned her there might come a moment on this mission when anger, frustration, and steely resolve were not enough to keep Admiral Korina focused on the Navy’s military objectives. Eldest Abakumova’s goal at that moment was to help her friend deal with the loss of her sib-sister.

“If you had your choice, Adana,” Renae asked at last, her voice quiet, “what would you do? If there were no consequences to you and you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?”

“I would...” Admiral Korina stopped, feeling once again the black, mind-numbing fury that had consumed her while Della recovered from her wounds. Her eyes feasted on something Renae Abakumova could not see.

“I would take my hands,” Adana Korina answered, raising them clenched and trembling before her, “my hands, and I would slowly--slowly mind you--very slowly destroy the person who brought this whole despicable war upon us. You are right, Renae. The Medinans were only his tools. I know that. They allowed themselves to be tools, mind you, and I can’t hate tools, no more than I can hate the commanders I’ve beaten in this cruise.

“What would I do? I would slowly and deliberately crush the life out of the one responsible for making the tools, the one responsible for all of this damned war. I would take my time so he could see death coming. I would make it last. I would make him linger. I would make him beg for death, and then I would deny it to him. I would keep doing this until his body could not suffer any more, till his spirit was broken, till he saw the monster he had become.” She stood still a moment, savoring that image, then sighed and shook her head.

“It would not be enough, not for me, not for him. And Vikki would still be gone.” She fell silent, the lines in her pale face more stark and poignant than ever.

“I’m sick of the killing, Renae.” She spoke softly, very softly. “I’m sick of killing his tools. I’m sick of writing Dear Sib letters. I’m sick of seeing ships blown to plasma and stations wrecked. I’m sick of looking into the empty eyes of those Imperial Intelligence officers we take from each of their systems. I hate it. I hate each and every death. I hate being the agent of it and I hate that I am so good at inflicting it. I hate that I chose this, and I hate that I still can’t think of some other, better choice. Everything I do I know will help to end this war. And everything I do will mean more killing, until it stops. Until it all stops.

“We’ve cut our way clear through his Empire. We’ve ruined, what, 14 systems, out of the 40 or 45 the girls in Intelligence say belong to him? That’s nearly a third of his Empire, and we have dismembered the rest. We have cut it off. We have ambushed or destroyed more than 90 of his warships. From the evidence we’ve put together, and from questioning the survivors, his Imperial fleet numbers little more than a third of what it did before Setosha. And still they fight us. Still they send their children up to die in front of our weapons.”

She shook her head. “I wish that I could retire right now, today. I wish that I didn’t have to go into combat again, and yet I know that I will. I know that I will see the enemy’s deployment, pick holes in it and use his own momentum and deployment against him. I will convince him to move one way when he needs to move another. I will tempt him to commit where he shouldn’t, to be weak where he must be strong, and then hit him where he has weakened himself. I will keep on smashing the tools their Emperor sends against me until he has no more.

“The families need me to do this. They need me to make an end to it. Della needs me too, back home to help her, to care for her, but the families need me out here, doing this. Every Della and every Vikki and every other sib and aunt and mother and cousin who should be back home needs me to be out here doing this, helping end this awful war for them, no matter how sick it makes me.”

The look in her commander’s eyes reminded Captain Abakumova of a leopard she had once seen on Home. “You need this rest as much as the crews do, Ma’am.”

Admiral Korina sprawled in her command chair. “I probably do, Renae, I probably do.” She ran trembling fingers through her gray-streaked hair. “I thought in the time between attacks there would be enough rest, but it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. If anything, I may have made things worse. The nightmares--I keep seeing Vikki’s blood, and that assassin’s, too. I hope we don’t ever capture a picture of their damned Emperor. I know I’ll see him in the nightmares, then, and it will be my hands with the blood on them, his blood.”

She shook her head, gazing into the Bridge Main Scan. “You can’t maintain a hate like that forever. Hate is an extreme passion. Hate kept me going the first month after Vikki, but soon the hate was burned out. All that was left was the certainty that this war must end and the butchery I must do to make that happen. When they cannot win, and still they keep fighting, that’s what it is, butchery.” Her eyes followed some track across the Scan, but her thoughts were clearly focused on a far different image.

“You know, Renae, it made him sick, too, that Old Earth general I read about who marched across his enemy’s homeland to end his war. It made him sick, but he finished it. His campaign isolated his enemy’s field armies from their home populations, from their industries, and from other resources they needed to continue fighting. He ended his war, and then he went home.” She looked away from the scan. “I want to go home, Renae, but I can’t, not until this war is over.”

She looked down and spoke more softly still. “I wish they’d stop making me kill them.”

Captain Abakumova groped for words, but there were none. The silence drew out between them. “Do you want to stay here, Ma’am?” she finally asked, her voice quiet. “Let me go down to the planet to meet with the Ambassador and the Medinans.”

Admiral Korina sighed and pushed herself up out of the command chair. “Thank you, Renae, but no, it has to be me. I have to be there. Courtesy says I must call on our Eldest at the Embassy. Duty compels me to see that our crews receive the best leave I can arrange. They have earned it. There’s a load of responsibility that comes with being Eldest in Fleet. Remember that when somebody tries to stick a bar on your collar. Why don’t we pick up the others now and we’ll all ride down together.” She smiled tiredly. “Maybe there’s safety in numbers.”

Their trip to the planet was uneventful. Admiral Korina watched the world revolve slowly below her, greens and browns of continents contrasting brightly with the deeper blues of oceans and seas. Although the maps told her Medina had nearly a dozen mid-sized continents with broad temperate zones, she had pictured the place as a stark wasteland, a dusty place inhabited by dour people all dressed in black, their faces masked against a harsh sun, a world of barren deserts, grim mountains, and perhaps a few scattered tiny green oases. It was ignorance, really, foolish images based on rumor and the relatively little she knew of Medinans as a people. They were an enigma, they and that all-encompassing religion that dominated every aspect of their lives.