They’d done it at Mariner, they’d done it at Pell, and he had no doubt, now, that it was his mandate to secure that area here, as quietly and peacefully as possible. It was only now sinking in mat a transfer of command had happened, but how it had happened, he had no idea. The thought even occurred to him mat it might be a lie—a final, extravagant lie—that maybe things had gone critical—on Earth or at the front, and they were pulling what they had, while they had it. That was what the whisper had been, always, that mere might not be the time they needed to build the riderships or the full number of carriers; and then they could take their choice—let the Fleet the, let Earth fall, and lose themselves hi space or in the motherwell, anonymous and helpless; or run with what they had, and gather the marines and the trainees they knew would be targets…
And run and spend their lives running—
Danger-sense had cut in, for whatever reason: his brain was suddenly doing what it did when hyperfocus was coming up, no reason, except Saito’s evasion yesterday, and the colonel’s being caught completely by surprise. If negotiations had been underway—it was a shock to Tanzer, or Tanzer acted in a way mat didn’t make sense.
So he took a quiet leave, out through the anxious secretary’s office—he stopped to say, “Andrews, for your own sake, don’t spread anything you may have heard,”—and saw nervousness pass to estimation and fear.
Into the corridors, then—feeling the air currents, sampling the ambient. No panic in the clericals, nothing evident. The carrier had left Sol, presumably with notice to insystem defenses—then word had flashed via FleetCom, and presumably a UDC message from some quarter had chased that transmission to the colonel. Maybe Saito and Demas hadn’t known what was about to happen.
Or maybe they had. Maybe they always had.
He walked quietly to his office, he checked in on FleetCom and asked Saito again: “Snowball, this is 7-A11, status.”
“7-Att, that’s LongJohn, we’ve got a Code Six.”
Stand down but stand by. And LongJohn wasn’t any of their crew. LongJohn was Jean-Baptiste Baudree, Carina. Mazian’s Com Two. “That’s a copy,” he said; thinking: Damn. What’s he doing here? It’s not the captain, then. What aren’t they saying? “Status,” he insisted; and got the information he next most wanted:
“7-All, that’s Jack.”
Edmund Porey?
Lieutenant Edmund Porey?
He hung up and, with a pang of real regret, stopped trusting Saito and Demas.
Chapter 9
Lt. J-G Jurgen Albrecht Graff SB/Admin 2152h JUN24/23; FGO-5-9 Command of Sol B has been transferred to FleetOps. You ore hereby ordered to render all appropriate assistance, including securing of files and records, under direction of Comdr. Edmund Porey….
Commander. The hell!
And Jean-Baptiste? Mazian’s second-senior?
Thoughts ran down very scattered tracks since that message. Thoughts needed to, on an operational level: Tanzer was only marginally cooperative, communicating through his secretary, BaseCom was a steady stream of query and scant reply from the UDC at Sol One—one assumed: a great deal of it was going in code one assumed FleetCom couldn’t breach.
Tanzer had been blindsided, that seemed evident. And maybe FleetOps had had to keep the junior officer in the far dark to carry it off, but it was evident, at least as best he could put matters together, that the business with the committee and the general had been a flanking action—try to stir up some chaff, maybe throw a rock into the Sol One hearings. Who knew?
Certainly not the junior lieutenant. Possibly the Number Ones had. Certainly the captain had—and kept silent in spite of his repeated queries, which Saito of course had sent, the way he’d ordered Saito to do…
Damn and damn.
The deception shook him. You relied on a crew, you dumped all your personal chaff and trusted, that was what it came down to. You assumed, in throwing open everything you had, that you had some kind of reciprocity. Never mind the gray hair he didn’t have. The Fleet could decide he was expendable. The Fleet could use him any way it had to. But they put you in charge, you made what you thought were rational decisions and if the people who were supposed to be carrying out your orders weren’t doing that, you trusted they’d at least trust you enough to tell you—before you assumed you had a power you didn’t, and put yourself and them into a no-win.