“Link open, mum.”
“Admiral Perez. Go ahead for Ansari Actual.”
“This is Perez. Am I speaking to Captain Kamala?”
“I’m CO of the Ansari, Admiral, so yes.”
“Sorry, Captain. But your video feed seems to be missing and I only know you from your file. Your voice isn’t familiar to me.”
“Actually, mum, we’ve met twice, not that I would expect you to remember. I served with you on the Rothchild briefly back when you were a commander and I was just an enlisted rank. We met again at a cocktail party a few months ago while Ansari was in for refit.”
“Yes, well, I couldn’t help but notice your ship is about thirty-thousand klicks away from where we expected to find you.”
“We had a high-g drill scheduled. Slipped my mind, and by the time I remembered, it was too late to get a message to you. So I went ahead with it anyway, you know how important drills are for maintaining crew competency. Speaking of competency, I couldn’t help but notice your ship bubbled in so close to where you thought we would be that if we had been there, we’d be putting out fires and bleeding atmosphere right now. Those of us who weren’t puking and or shitting their guts out.”
Behind her, Nesbit audibly sucked air through his teeth at the breach of professional etiquette and protocol, but Susan ignored him.
“How colorful,” Perez resumed. “Yes, my navigation officer does seem to have let some calibrations slip in his gravimetric modeling for this system. He will be disciplined for the near miss, I assure you.”
“What a happy coincidence our mutual oversights canceled each out, then,” Susan said acidly.
“Quite. But now I’m afraid I have much less happy news to share.”
“And that would be?”
Everyone in the CIC leaned forward a fraction, as if getting closer to the speakers would drag the admiral’s words out of them faster.
“It is my sad duty to report that you and your entire command have been recalled to the Admiralty House, where you will await court-martial under the CCDF Charter.”
Susan let the blow land invisibly. Now was not the time to lose her nerve in front of the officers and enlisted under her care.
“May I ask under what charge is this court-martial being convened, Admiral?” she asked matter-of-factly.
“Dereliction of duty.”
“That’s a very serious charge, Admiral.”
“I’m a very serious officer, Captain.
“Mum, Paul Allen’s CiWS just went hot,” Mattu whispered as loudly as she could. “Support ships’, too.”
Susan nodded acknowledgement. “CiWS, Perez? I thought we were having a conversation.”
“Don’t think I didn’t notice your defensive systems are active.”
“Lots of rocks get tossed around this far out in the system,” Susan said vaguely. “What evidence do you have to support your accusation of dereliction?”
“Your own confession, Captain Kamala. Did you not record and submit a report via skip drone detailing how you not only failed to destroy an enemy vessel that had violated the treaty line against explicit orders that have been in force for seventy years, but rendered it aid? That’s treason, Captain. I’m frankly shocked that you made me spell it out for you.”
Susan’s jaw flexed. With effort, she kept her tone even. “The vessel in question had been disabled in an onboard accident that nearly proved catastrophic. Under the circumstances, I decided that—”
Admiral Perez’s voice jumped in and angrily cut her off. “I wasn’t sent out here to litigate this with you, Kamala. I came to take you in. You and your crew are hereby placed under arrest under Article II, Section XI of the CCDF Charter. You will surrender your command and order your crew to assemble in the small craft bay where you will all be processed and transferred to a holding area we have set up for you on the Allen’s hangar deck under marine guard.”
“And the Ansari?” Susan asked.
“We have a skeleton crew aboard waiting to take control to bring her back to port. Your crew will wipe all of your biometrics and passcodes and reset everything to factory default.”
Susan sighed and leaned to one side of her chair. “That’s no good for me.”
“I beg your pardon?” Perez said incredulously.
“If you’ll keep reading the Charter, you’ll come to Article II, Section XXVI, which specifically forbids collective punishment of crew members following the orders of their superiors in good faith.”
“That does not apply to times of war.”
“With due respect, Admiral, we prevented a time of war.”
“You destroyed one of their fleet tenders in open space! That’s an act of war.”
Susan laughed. “Aren’t you being a duplicitous little minx. Yeah, we totally did that. But we did it smart so the Xre couldn’t pin it on us, not officially. So, we’re right back to where we were. You want my ass in a sling over this? Fine, I surrender, officially as of this moment and turn command over to my XO. He will take Ansari wherever you order him to. But only with her crew intact. You want to quote The Book at me? Great, then we do things by The Book, or not at all.”
The line went silent for a long, long, very uncomfortably long time.
“Is it still open?” Susan whispered to Mattu, who nodded.
“I want you on a shuttle in no more than ten minutes, Captain,” Perez’s voice broke back in at last. “And you will transmit, with video, confirmation that you are aboard once it’s reached safe maneuvering distance. No tricks or stupid horseplay, or my task group will have to force the issue. Do we perfectly understand each other, Captain?”
“I’m certain we do. Ten minutes. Kamala out.” She made a slashing gesture and Mattu cut the link. Susan stood from her chair for the last time. “Miguel, you’re in command. Follow Admiral Perez’s orders to the letter, no matter how humiliating or punitive they may seem. Just get my … your ship and our people safely back to port. Worry about the rest later.”
“Mum. You’re not actually going over there?” he asked with a haunted face, like
