Alessandra’s eyes widened. Several officers muttered under their breaths.
“All of you know how important this mission against the Deng is,” Colonel Tischler said, “but that saganium is critical. I can spare only two of you. I’d like to ask for volunteers.”
Alessandra didn’t even hesitate. “I’ll go, sir.”
Tischler met her gaze levelly—and the understanding in his eyes cut at her. “Thank you, DiMario. I was hoping you would volunteer. SPQ/R may not look like much, but he’s as solid as they come and, frankly, we need your people skills on Thule. He’ll be a big help to you, that way. He likes people.”
She flushed. He didn’t like her, that much was certain even if nothing else was. Before Danny’s destruction, she had been good with people. Since waking up on the hospital ship . . . she wasn’t so sure, any longer. But it was good to hear her commander’s faith in her. Whatever else happened before they dropped out of hyper-L, she swore a solemn oath to look up SPQ/R-561’s military record.
She’d better go over those technical specs again, too, since they were about as decipherable as hieroglyphics. God help them both if she had to jury-rig anything herself, due to battle damage. Still and all, it was far better than fighting spodders. Anything was better than facing the Deng again. Even apologizing to her Bolo.
The second volunteer was a young captain she hadn’t met yet, a red-haired officer by the name of Roth. They exchanged glances and nods across the wardroom table, then Colonel Tischler reshuffled the remaining officers to cover the revised mission parameters before dismissing the rest of his command. When the others had gone, Tischler looked from Roth to Alessandra and back again.
“I would suggest you prep yourselves and your Bolos for immediate departure. I’ll leave orders and mission debriefings with you. I have every confidence in your ability to carry out your new missions successfully. You’ll debark at portside lock seventeen. Good luck.”
They exchanged salutes and Alessandra headed for her temporary quarters, holding onto the hope that without the Deng to face, she might yet survive this crisis of nerves and come out whole and sane on the other side. Don’t blow it, DiMario, for God’s sake, just don’t blow it, okay?
She reached her quarters, downloaded the mission-briefing files, checked to be sure they had come through without corruption, then queried the ship’s computers for the full mission history of her Bolo, loaded into the records filed with Colonel Tischler upon the Bolo’s assignment to his command. She found it without difficulty and took a precious eight minutes to scan through it. And felt the sting of shame as she skimmed through a battle record dotted with high praise from Central Command, as well as Sector.
Unit SPQ/R-561 had earned no fewer than seven major battle honors and a whole host of starclusters, all carefully welded to his turret by a former commander’s loving hand. In good, bright sunlight, those honors would shine like glitter against the blue-black iodine hue of his ancient flintsteel war hull. In the gloom of the cargo hold, she hadn’t seen them at all. She’d noticed only the old battle scars gouged across his aging war hull. Even if there had been enough light to see, Alessandra had been far too wrapped up in her own troubles to notice them.
I have really screwed this up, she realized bleakly.
And wondered if it was possible to start over with a machine that literally could not forget an insult.
Chapter Six
A series of loud clangs and thumps marks the completion of my heavy lift platform’s lockdown against the cargo deck of the CSS Darknight. I dislike naval transport ships, although I would be hard pressed for answers if asked why. Perhaps I simply prefer open sky and the feel of wind across my war hull. Even combat drops are better than confinement in a naval transport. I signal my all-clear to the cargo officer, who relays it to the Darknight’s command deck. The Darknight breaks orbit from Sherman’s World and moves ponderously toward this star system’s optimal hyper-L jump point, escorted by the destroyer CSS Vengeance. My commander sends his respects to the captain.
“Lieutenant Colonel John Weyman, reporting in, ma’am.”
“Welcome aboard, Colonel,” Captain Harrelson responds. “We’ll be under way in a moment. Once we’ve made hyper-L, I’ll meet you and the other Bolo commanders in the wardroom.”
“Very good, Captain. Weyman, out.”
The Darknight’s ops officer downloads to my Action/Command Center the complete mission briefing files for our new assignment. The fact that we have been pulled away from Sherman’s World, along with four of my brothers and sisters of the Third Dinochrome Brigade, reveals how urgently we are needed on Thule. John whistles tunelessly under his breath as he reviews the files from his customary place in my command chair.
I find the entry seventeen seconds before he does.
Even as dismay races through my psychotronic neural nets, John punches pause, halting the scan of Thule’s personnel rosters. His face runs dreadfully pale, with a deep emotion I have seen there only twice before. Both times, the woman whose name glows like a beacon on the Eisenbrucke Station roster has been at the eye of a disastrous emotional storm. One which has shaken my commander a third time, now.
I am appalled—and have not the slightest idea what to say, to break the dreadful silence. I want desperately to help him, to offer some bit of verbal support, and find myself unable to think of anything, other than a helpless, “John—?”
My commander slaps the releases on his harness without a word. I watch in growing agitation as he leaves my command compartment, climbs down my war hull, and vanishes from the cargo hold, still without speaking. There is literally nothing I can do, other than watch him go. Whatever he intends, he will tell me once he has done it. Or not, as the case may be. When it comes to Bessany Weyman, the pattern to date has been a stiff and unbroken silence. Deeply disturbed, I turn my attention with reluctance back to the mission briefing files.
It is not, perhaps, so strange that Bessany Weyman has joined the Thule Research Expedition. Thule is doubtless one of the few places in human space where she is able to work in peace, beyond the reach of reporters and news cameras. Given what I know of human psychology—admittedly limited, since I am not human and will never fully understand my creators—she has probably needed to bury herself in work. My commander’s exact feelings towards his sister-in-law have never been clear, for this is one area of his life he has never revealed to me.
My commander is not given to chatty conversation, in any case, but anything to do with his older brother’s marriage and death sends him into stony silence. Over the five years, three months, and twenty-nine days since Alexander Weyman’s shattering suicide, I have come to believe that John Weyman does not, in fact, blame his sister-in-law, regardless of the stories fielded by the press.
But even now, I cannot be sure. John has shared only one conversation with me concerning Bessany Weyman. The invitation to attend his politically prominent brother’s wedding induced a pale, shaken look of horror. John immediately requested leave, which his commanding officer granted readily. Shortly after his return, John sought the privacy of my command compartment for the uncharacteristic action of emptying an entire bottle of whiskey. There, in the alcohol-filled silence, he whispered out the thing which was preying upon him.
“She wouldn’t listen to me, Rapier. Dammed innocent fool of a girl blew up in my face, when I tried to warn her. God, what Alex is capable to doing to that sweet child . . . I should never have gone back for the wedding. Big mistake. One unholy hell of a mistake. And he knew. Alex knew exactly why I came and he laughed the whole time I was there. All the way to the altar and probably all the way through the honeymoon. But I had to try, Rapier. God knows, I couldn’t just let her marry him, blind, not knowing anything.”
That painful, post-wedding conversation, brief as it was, is the only revelation John Weyman has ever made, regarding his feelings for his brother’s wife. The sick, shaken look returned for the second time when the news media descended, demanding his “reaction” to his brother’s self-inflicted death.
He refused to answer any of their questions, earning my deep respect, but he said nothing to me, either, triggering a deep worry which has been with me ever since. He has not spoken Alexander Weyman’s name even once in the ensuing five years, three months, and twenty-nine days. I do know that my commander sent three separate SWIFT messages to the shocked widow, but if she replied to them, he did not share her answers with me.