The Serrano Connection

by Elizabeth Moon

  "Prep school, sir." Esmay thought of the years she'd been in a Fleet environment. Two in prep school, four in the Academy, a tour as ensign, and two assignments as jig. If she hadn't caught on by now, would she ever? She'd thought she had—her fitness reports always commented on her quiet, mannerly demeanor. What was she doing wrong, besides getting involved in mutinies?

  "Hmm. Technical track, most of the way." Pitak gave her a long look. "You know, Suiza, we technical types have a reputation for being a little dense in some things. Wouldn't surprise me if you are too. That doesn't bother me, and won't cause you as much trouble here as it would on a warship. But since you are not from a Fleet family, you might want to think about opening your sensors to a little wider band. Just a suggestion—not an order."

  "Yes, sir," Esmay said. She felt a little dizzy. What was she doing wrong? What was so obvious? She knew she didn't have an accent any more; she had tried so hard . . . but Major Pitak had moved to her process chart.

  "To get you up to speed in H&A, you're going to have to take a couple of quick courses. Right now all we have is a minor little plate repair job for an escort—it'll be done before you're through with the tapes, and you'll be more use to us then. How are you with tools? Ever done metal fabrication? Ceramics or plastics molding?"

  "No, sir."

  "Mmm. All right, then. Take these tapes down to Training, and run through them as many times as it takes. Then come back here, and I'll set you up with some instructors. You've got to know how a process is supposed to be done before you can supervise it."

  That made perfect sense, and Esmay had never minded learning new things. "Yes, sir," she said, accepting a thick stack of tapes for the machines.

  "We'll probably be out on deployment before you're through with the tapes," Pitak said. "Take what time you need." Then she shook her head. "Sorry—you're naturally thorough—I don't have to warn you against rushing through them."

  "Sir." Esmay backed out, with very mixed feelings. One side of her mind felt ruffled and itchy; another part felt soothed and confident.

  * * *

  Scheduling sessions in Training took longer than she had expected. The techs in charge of the banks of machines explained. "A DSR needs more specialties than any other kind of ship. And we have to know everything—all the old stuff, and all the new stuff, and anything someone's come up with to make repair easier. Our people are always retraining. The rest of Fleet just thinks it retrains, with its predictable little drills every so many days. But we'll get you in, Lieutenant, don't worry. And Major Pitak knows what the situation is—she's not going to blame you."

  Nonetheless, it would be three standard days before Esmay could get a machine, and then only on third shift.

  "Do you have anything similar that I could go over on my cube reader?" she asked. The tech ran the tape titles through his scanner.

  "Yes, but this is really technical stuff, Lieutenant—what I have on cube is much more basic. The intermediate stuff's all been checked out—in fact, it's overdue."

  "I'll take the basic," Esmay said. "A good review for me." She took the cubes, and gave the tech her tapes, to be held for her session. Back in her quarters, she inserted the first cube. An hour later, she was very glad she hadn't been able to get time on the machines right away. The basic level cube was already past her. She sat back, blinking, and realized she'd have to take it in short doses.

  Almost lunchtime. She wasn't really hungry, but she did feel stiff and stale. What she wanted was exercise. She changed to shorts and padded shoes, and followed the directions (in this case identical) given by the ship's schematics and Major Pitak's cube to the junior officers' workout area.

  Aside from being bigger, it was much like the exercise compartments she'd seen on other ships. Rows of machines for exercising this or that group of muscles, enclosed spaces for pair games played on a small court, a large open space with mats for tumbling and unarmed combat practice. Half a dozen or so junior officers occupied various machines, and two were sparring on the mats. She checked the charts. At this time of the cycle, only a few machines were reserved; she could use almost anything. Esmay avoided the riding simulators, and climbed onto something said to simulate cross-country walking on snow. She had no desire to walk on real snow—she had done that—but it was better than pretending to ride horses by sitting on an arrangement of pistons and levers.

  She had just begun to work up her heart rate when someone called her name. She looked around. It was one of the ensigns from her table . . . Custis? No, Dettin, the blond with the scrape, now healed.

  "I just wondered if you'd talk to our tactics study group about the Xavier affair," he asked. "Not necessarily your own role, though of course we'd like to hear it, but just how you saw the battle as a whole."

  "I didn't see the battle as a whole," Esmay said. "We got there late, as you may have heard."

  "Late?" His brow furrowed. Could he really be this ignorant.

  "The ship I was on was captained by a—" it was extraordinarily hard to say "traitor" right out loud to a youngster like this. "Captain Hearne left the Xavier system before the battle," she said. She didn't know why she said it that way; she had not cared that much for Captain Hearne. "It was only after the—" mutiny was another hard word to say, but this time she got it out. "Only after the mutiny, when all the officers senior had died, that I took the ship back."

  She did not expect the look on his face, the expression of someone who has just seen impossible dreams fulfilled. "You—that's like something out of Silver Stars."

  "Silver stars?"

  "You know—the adventure game series."

  Shock knocked out her control. "It was nothing like an adventure game!"

  He was oblivious. "No, but in the eighth series, when that young lord had to overcome the wicked prince and then lead the ships in battle . . ."

  "It's not a game," Esmay said firmly, but with less heat. "People get killed for real."

  "I know that," he said, looking annoyed. "But in the game—"

  "I'm sorry," Esmay said, "I don't play adventure games." I only fight wars, she wanted to say, but didn't.

  "But will you talk to our tactics group?"

  She thought it over. Perhaps she could make clear the difference between game and reality. "Yes," she said. "But I'll have to check my schedule. When do you meet?"

  "Every ten days, but we could move the meeting time if you wanted."

  "I'll check," Esmay said. "Now—I've got to finish my set." He went away, and she worked until she felt she'd worked off not only the stiffness of study, but the unreasonable anger she'd felt at being compared to a gaming hero. By the time she'd cooled down again, she began to think whether she should have been quite so quick to agree . . . even if she hadn't agreed to a specific time. Should she talk to a pack of ensigns about the Xavier affair? If she kept her own part to a minimum, and discussed the way Heris Serrano had held off a superior force, surely that could do no harm.

  Chapter Nine

  She was trying to think whom to consult, when she remembered that she needed to make an appointment to meet Admiral Dossignal. Now, while she was working her way through the basic level training cubes, would be an ideal time. She contacted Commander Atarin's clerk, and an hour or so later the message came back that the admiral would see her at 1330. So at 1315, she presented herself at the admiral's office suite, where Commander Atarin happened to be delivering a pile of cubes.

  "How's Hull and Architecture, Lieutenant?"

  "Very interesting, sir. Major Pitak has me taking some courses, since I had no background."

  "Good; she's very thorough. Has she given you the ship test yet?"

  "That came first, sir."

  "Ah." His eyebrows rose and fell. "Well, you must have passed, or I'd have heard about it. Good for you. How are you getting along in the junior mess? Settling in all right?"

  "Fine, sir," Esmay said.

  "This ship's so big, none of us can get to know everyone. Somet
imes people coming in from smaller craft find that very unsettling. If you have any special interests, you might take a look at the recreational group roster. We encourage people to have acquaintances outside their own work sections—even commands."

  "Well, sir, the juniors' tactics discussion group did ask me to speak on the Xavier action."

  "Oh? Well, that's not exactly what I had in mind, but it's a start. And they showed some initiative in asking . . . who was it?"

  "Ensign Dettin, sir."

  "Mmm . . . I don't know Dettin. But I'm sure they've all heard something about Xavier, and are curious to know more. I might drop in . . ." Was that a threat, or a warning, or mere interest? "Ah—the admiral's ready."

  Admiral Dossignal was a tall man with craggy features and big-knuckled hands that fiddled with things on his desk. Despite this, he seemed more relaxed than Captain Hakin, and considerably more welcoming.

  "I've read the notations your Board made in your file, Lieutenant Suiza . . . and though I can understand their concern about your decisions, I do not share them. I have complete confidence in your loyalty to the Familias Regnant."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "No thanks necessary, Lieutenant. Although we need to smoke out the other traitors we surely have—Garrivay and his cohorts cannot be all of them—we must have trust, or we have no cohesion." He paused, but Esmay found nothing to say. When he resumed, it was in a different tone, less somber. "I understand you and Major Pitak are getting on well . . . and Commander Seveche?"

  "I've only met him, sir," Esmay said. The head of Hull and Architecture had spoken to her only briefly; he had seemed even busier than Major Pitak when she saw him.

  "I'm sure you've heard this before, but I must say it's unusual to have a lieutenant assigned here without having gone through one of the advanced technical schools first. You may find it necessary to take some courses . . ."

  "I'm already signed up for one, sir."

  "Good. By your record, you're a quick learner, but heavy maintenance is a lifetime's study." He glanced back at his desk display. "I see you've had recent home planet leave. How did your family react to all the publicity?"

  Esmay tried to think of a tactful way to phrase it. "They . . . went overboard, sir."

  "Ah? Oh, I suppose you mean the medal?"

  Of course it was already in her file; she knew that. "Yes, sir."

  "But that was the government, not your family . . . You have . . . a father, stepmother, half-brothers?"

  "Yes, sir. Also aunts, uncles, cousins . . . it's a large clan, sir."

  "Did they approve of your joining us?" The warm brown eyes sharpened.

  "Not . . . entirely, sir. Not at first. Now they do."

  "We have no other officers from your planet, you see. The last was some thirty years ago."

  "Meluch Zalosi, yes, sir." A Zalosi of the Coarchy, which no longer existed, but had been, at one time, a political force. The Zalosi, though, were servants of the Coarchs. Meluch, the gossip went, had been the illegitimate child of the Tributine Coarch and a Zalosi guard, farmed out to a distant Zalosi relative. He had proven to carry the distinctive feathery brows of the Coarch's line—a dominant trait—and when he qualified for the Fleet entrance exams it had seemed the best solution to everyone. Meluch himself had not been asked; he was a Zalosi, to go where the Coarchy directed.

  "I wondered," Admiral Dossignal went on, breaking into her musings, "why so few? Altiplano is, I understand, an agricultural world. We usually get quite a few recruits from ag worlds."

  "It's not the usual sort of ag world, sir." Esmay paused, wondering how much to explain. The admiral would have ample data available if he really wanted it.

  "And why is that?" he asked. Perhaps he simply wanted her analysis, rather than the raw data.

  "No free-birthers," Esmay said succinctly. All the other reasons came back to that: with population growth under control, there were no idle hands to ship offplanet. Immigrants had to agree before they were accepted; if they already had reproduced, they had to agree to pre-emptive sterilization.

  "But your family—how many sibs do you have?"

  "Two, sir. But they're my father's second wife's, on her permits." She did not mention what he could probably guess, that the birth limits were enforced more strictly on other families. Her father could have sired more children, but he had transferred his remaining permits to Sanni, who wanted them.

  "I . . . see. And their attitude towards rejuvenation?"

  She hesitated. "I . . . know only my father's view, and my uncle's. They expressed concern about the effect on population stability, although the competitive value of ever-increasing experience would have a positive effect."

  "Mmm. So the senior military personnel on Altiplano have not been rejuved?"

  "No, sir."

  "Did you sense any resentment of the Familias on that basis?"

  Esmay felt uncomfortable, but answered with the truth as she saw it. "No, sir, none. Altiplano's an independent; the admiral is no doubt aware that we have no sponsor with a Seat in Council, and Council policy affects us only inasmuch as it affects commercial law."

  "There's been some unrest, especially since the revelation about that mess on Patchcock," the admiral said. "There's now a strong political faction opposed to rejuvenation on the grounds that the rich old will exploit the poor unable to afford rejuvenation."

  "I don't think anyone on Altiplano feels exploited by the Familias," Esmay said. "Occasionally by each other . . ." More than occasionally, but she didn't see how her limited knowledge of Altiplanan local politics would make the situation clear. She didn't say the first thought that popped into her head, which was that any force trying to exploit Altiplano would have its work cut out for it.

  "I'm glad to hear it," the admiral said. "I'll be seeing you from time to time—officers of the 14th get together regularly . . . Commander Atarin will let you know the next event."

  "Yes, sir; thank you."

  The first thing Esmay did after coming back from her interview with the admiral was pull a diagram of the various commands aboard the DSR. She had thought she understood how the chains of command ran, and who reported to whom about what . . . but several things the admiral had said left her confused.

  A few hours later, she was only slightly less confused, but considerably entertained. With very few exceptions—and DSRs were the primary exception—Fleet vessels had a simple command structure, with the captain at the top, and authority descending rank by rank through the officers to the enlisted personnel. An admiral aboard a flagship had no direct authority over the ship's crew: all orders had to flow through the regular captain.

  But the size of the newer DSRs had tempted Fleet to treat them as mobile bases. Rather than maintain separate technical schools and laboratory facilities at Sector HQ, staff had decided to put them aboard the Koskiusko, which needed most of the equipment anyway. Thus the Koskiusko had multiple commands, each headed by an admiral, which were expected to use the same facilities—and even the same experts—for different purposes. If Fleet had wanted to create a venue for massive turf battles, it could have invented no better arrangement.

  Esmay found the debris of such battles in the files. The Special Materials Fabrication Facility, for instance: it was supposed to serve the 14th Heavy Maintenance Yard by making all the materials needed to maintain an inventory of structural members. But it also served the Senior Technical Schools, where students learned to make such materials, and the Special Materials Research Lab, where the most inventive materials scientists struggled to develop new materials with exotic properties.

  On the first deployment a massive fight developed between the 14th Heavy Maintenance, which wanted a larger inventory of the crystal-bonded structural members for repair, and the other two commands, which insisted that they needed a guaranteed minimum access to the facility to fulfill their missions.

  That argument had risen through the various chains of command until the admirals involved were
, as Pitak put it, "locked in a room to fight it out until only one emerged victorious." The solution—a compromise reached with all admirals still alive and kicking vigorously—satisfied no one, but its inconvenience suggested that complaint would only make things worse.

  Even the traditional division between the ship's crew and its passengers had eroded. Though in theory Captain Hakin had the ultimate authority for the ship's security and functioning, his crew was outnumbered many times by the personnel of the 14th Heavy Maintenance Yard. When a previous Yard commander wanted to run an "outrigger tube" between T-3 and T-4, between the lateral docking bays, he'd done so. Esmay found the furious correspondence launched by the then captain to the admiral then commanding the 14th Heavy Maintenance, and the directive from Sector HQ that the offending tube would be allowed to remain. The captain had been reassigned.

  No wonder the ship's architecture didn't match the computer specs, and everyone needed update cubes to keep track of the changes!

  Above the ship level, the chain of command looked more like a tree diagram. Captain Hakin's superior was Admiral Gourache, commander of this wave, whose superior was the Sector 14 commandant, Admiral Foxworth. Admiral Dossignal, however, reported directly to the sector commandant; he was responsible for all maintenance functions in the sector. Admiral Livadhi was Training Command's representative in this sector, and not under the sector commander at all: Fleet Headquarters had taken over all training functions sixty years before. Similarly, the medical command had its own separate chain, this time running back to Admiral Surgeon General Boussy, back at Rockhouse.

  Her father would never have put up with this mess. On Altiplano, the military medical service was firmly and formally subordinate to the operational command. Yes, and that's how he was able to conceal your trauma, her memory prompted. No one was going to argue with the hero of the war . . . .