“You do know if a stray laser beam cuts through here, those books will probably be the kindling for your funeral pyre, right?”
“What a magnificent way to go,” Nesbit answered defiantly.
“Right. Look, the crisis is over. The Chusexx is burning for the Red Line as we speak.”
“Why aren’t they bubbling out?”
“Can’t yet. They traced the accident back to an antimatter containment breach in one of their transfer lines.”
“Isn’t an antimatter explosion usually a little more … energetic?”
“Usually, but this only involved a few stray milligrams caught up in a magnetic eddy current before the safeties slammed shut and stopped the flow. Xre attendants were still running integrity checks on the replacement coils when our last techs pulled out. They still have some work to do, so they’re limited to fusion rockets until they can go to full power. No bubble,” Susan replied. “So now that it’s done, I came down to ask whether you’re ready to resume your CL duties.”
“I never stopped doing my duty as CL. I was barred from doing it.”
“Yes, yes. I’m the big meanie who didn’t let you incite a mutiny in her own CIC in front of her senior staff at a critical moment. Get over it.”
“You went against standing orders.”
“Which I interpreted as conflicting with another set of standing orders. I made a call to resolve that conflict. Captain’s prerogative. I’m not going to litigate this with you, Javier. It’s done. Are you ready to move on or not? If you are, you can get back to work. If you can’t, you can sit out the rest of this tour staring at these four walls. Your call.”
“I used my time in here to prepare a report for my superiors. I assume I won’t be permitted to submit it?”
“Not at all. We’re getting all our ducks in a row to send a burst with all our findings, recordings, and sensor data to the skip drone in Grendel orbit by 1700. Your report will be included in that dispatch, unaltered. I won’t even read it.”
“You seem awfully damned confident you’re coming out of this smelling like fresh jasmine.”
“You haven’t seen the intel haul we pulled out of that ship. It’s the biggest SigInt and HumInt coup since we grabbed that Xre frigate intact during the first war. The spooks will be pouring over it for months, maybe years.”
“As will theirs, Susan. Or did you really think the data collection only went one way?” Nesbit ran a hand through his thinning hair. Susan hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but now that she’d noticed, she was surprised he hadn’t gone through gene therapy to correct his male pattern baldness. Looking at the extravagant trappings around his room, it obviously wasn’t a question of money.
“They got a look at our peashooters and a stealth shuttle. We walked around inside the guts of a cruiser class we didn’t even know existed until a few weeks ago. I’d call that a better than fair exchange rate. Not to mention we avoided triggering a shooting war. That has to count for something.”
“Thought you military types were always spoiling for a good fight.”
“Yes. A good fight. A necessary fight. This … didn’t feel like that. I spent a lot of time with their captain, or derstu, I don’t really understand what his role is exactly, but he seemed just as relieved not to be throwing missiles as I was.”
“Because he knew we had him dead to rights. He was defenseless. Do you really think he would have shown us mercy if we’d found ourselves drifting past the treaty line in one of their systems? Be honest.”
Susan found herself leaning against the oak table, running her hands along the grain of the wood. Real wood, probably harvested from Earth herself who knew how long ago. The varnish was gently worn along the lip, but otherwise unblemished. It wasn’t a table for eating off of, not without a tablecloth, which she was sure must be hiding in one of Nesbit’s closets. Susan had been twenty-two years old when she’d seen her first oak tree, and that was inside an atrium on Bezos Station as she reported for CCDF Indoc. But here one was, light-years away from where it had any business being and posing a subtle but real danger to everyone who came near it.
Susan found herself feeling an unexpected kinship with the table.
“I honestly don’t know what Thuk would’ve done if our roles had been reversed. But, just as honestly, I’m sure he’ll be more inclined to return the favor in the future. They’re a collective, a ‘harmony,’ they call it. Their trust bonds are the connective tissue of their society, and we just grew some with the Xre on that ship. If that was wrong of me, I’ll accept that judgment when the time comes.”
Nesbit lingered next to the bookshelf, inspecting the volumes, and ran a finger down the spine of one out-of-place paperback in particular: Red November. Susan didn’t recognize it, but made a note in her AR interface to have a look just the same.
“We’re dancing on the edge of a knife out here, you know,” he said at last. “And the immediate tactical situation, or even strategic environment, isn’t my purview. I know that’s what you need to see for the safety of your ship and crew, but my job has a broader mandate. I’m this ship’s liaison for thirteen transtellars and all their millions of employees, shareholders, and dependents. I take that responsibility seriously, despite what you may think.”
“I believe you. We serve the same people.”
“I volunteered for this billet. Did you know that?” Nesbit asked, almost pleadingly, as if he clamored for something. Legitimacy, maybe. Recognition that he belonged here as much as anyone. It wasn’t something any square-dog-sucking bubble-popper was in a hurry to give a suit, but …
“I didn’t know that,” Susan said softly. “I guess I assumed CLs were assigned.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t
