“Genghis Khan’s emblem,” his father said. “I’ve got another one—here.” He touched above his heart. Then he looked at Ryan, almost a question. Almost afraid. “Only the protégés get marked on the heart. For blood. He didn’t just give me orders… I asked.”
The room was dim and the silence full of shadows.
Ryan sat down on the couch next to his father because he didn’t want to shout. He didn’t want to stand his ground anymore. Not in this. Up close, his father’s eyes were weary and—young. The past wasn’t so distant for him. Not out here and not in there, inside of him.
“I’m not as unforgiving as the Hub,” Ryan said, “or as bitter as your wife.” His father couldn’t speak and didn’t move. And that immobility captured Ryan deep inside, so he wanted to hold it somehow if only to help his father resist it. He said, “I’m your son, Dad. I’m your son.”
He cleaned up the mess from lunch, which was still in the sink, while his father disappeared into the bedroom and slid the screen shut. He welcomed the menial task. It allowed his mind to shut down and the knot in his chest to unravel. His father hadn’t touched him, had looked at him as if he’d wanted to, but opted out. And Ryan didn’t know what that was about. Why things were different now just because now he wouldn’t have—minded.
Maybe it was for the same reason Musey didn’t like to be touched. Maybe it all surfaced again for his father and it was too difficult to allow yourself to be touched.
Ryan washed the dishes manually just to hear the water run, to do something with his hands.
The comm buzzed on the couch’s sidetable comp. It kept buzzing; his father wasn’t picking up. Ryan wiped his hands on his pants and went to it, saw the familiar incoming tail marker—from Austro.
He sat on the couch and poked the icon, told himself to be neutral no matter what his mother said.
“Ryan,” she said. “Where is he?”
His newfound neutrality went out the airlock.
“Mom, I don’t think now’s a good time.”
“What has he said to you?”
Obviously more than he’d ever said to her. She was angry in the way you got when someone dropped a bomb on your preconceptions.
“Mom, let’s not do this now.”
“I want to speak with him.” She tapped her desk; she was in her office. Arthur Pompeo’s transcast had caught her at work and now it was going to be a frenzy for her to get home, if she was even going home this shift. The meedees would be beating down her door. “Get your father on comm.”
“He’s not a pirate, you know.”
“Is that what he said? Has he explained that Pompeo is completely lying?”
“He’ll ’cast when he’s ready. You know, sometimes the last thing you want to do is get up in front of people—”
“This isn’t about what he wants to do, Ryan. Dammit, for once, it’s about what he’s obligated to do and never does. He should’ve warned me. He could’ve told me this man had approached him.”
He could’ve told me, her eyes said.
“Pompeo talked to your mother, you should be yelling at her. You know she probably fed the story about his ‘rogue behavior.’ ”
“What did he say to you, Ryan? About Pompeo’s claims?”
It wasn’t his place. So he kept his mouth shut.
“Ryan.”
“Mom, you married him. You had me with him. Whatever some meedee says shouldn’t get in the way of that. He meant it when he married you, or else why am I here, now, on his ship? Whatever he doesn’t want to talk about shouldn’t make you think he’s bad or lazy or mean. Maybe he’s hurt, Mom. Can’t you think of that?”
She didn’t answer him. Because she was hurt too.
“Some things you just can’t talk about, Mom. With anybody.”
“I understand that,” she said, but she didn’t really.
She’d had a time limit on him after Earth.
Get up, get your girlfriend, go to school, and get over it.
Not that she didn’t love him.
But it was easier to love somebody when they did what you wanted.
His father still didn’t emerge, even a half hour after Ryan cut the comm with his mother and just sat on the couch letting it roll over him.
His thoughts were busy, too many of them clamoring for his attention, but he still jumped when the hatch buzzed. The captain wasn’t going to answer that either so he opened it himself.
Admiral Grandpa said, “Where is he?”
Ryan let him in. “Back there.” He pointed. “Grandpa, I don’t think he’s being a coward about it. I mean, about not wanting to go on the Send. I think he’s just afraid he’ll make it worse somehow.”
“Either way, he’s going to have to say something. This isn’t the type of thing you can ignore.”
It was true. “He was Falcone’s protégé—like that pirate they think shot at me. Did you know that?”
His grandfather had eyes on the bedroom screen but pulled them back to look at him. Looked at him for a long second as if seeing him after years of absence. “I knew where he came from and I know in general what it was like—on Falcone’s ship. But he’s never been willing to actually discuss it with me. What exactly happened to him.”
It was an odd comfort to know that he wasn’t the only one who met up with his father’s reticence. He knew his mother had, but she had been impatient about it.
He tucked his arms against himself. “What… what about his family? What happened to them, do you know?”
His grandfather rubbed the bridge of his nose. “They were killed at Meridia when Falcone raided it. I’ve looked into it and his parents’ bodies were found, and one brother, but the other brother’s body was never recovered. Which doesn’t mean he’s alive… it just means… he was never recovered.”
He’d had uncles. And grandparents. Who’d had no idea he would ever exist. “What were… how old were they? His brothers?”
Brothers.
“Bern was the eldest by two years. Paris was quite a bit younger than your father, by eight years. He’s the one we can’t confirm. Cairo was the middle child.”
Bern, Cairo, and Paris. Old cities on Earth. So his grandparents had either been from there, or had a sense of humor, or just liked the way the names sounded.
He felt the admiral’s hand on his arm.
“Ryan… ask him about it sometime. Later. He might tell you.”
“You can’t tell me?” There had been other people in the galaxy with the last name Azarcon, who were his direct relatives, and he wondered if they all had his father’s sense of humor, or his, or that loudmouthed almost-arrogance that his mother always pinned on him as an Azarcon trait.
“He needs to tell you,” the admiral said. “I’ve respected his silence and I think I should respect his decision to talk, if he talks to you.” His gaze shifted. “He will talk now, at any rate, at least to the Send.” The admiral went to the bedroom screen, knocked. “Cairo. I hope you’re writing your statement.”
The screen opened. The captain stepped out in his dress uniform. A black, ironed affair with small stripes of elemental color on his chest—gold, silver, bronze. Red and blue and deep earth green. A pin of golden wings on the opposite side, lest anyone forget he was a fighter pilot first.
Ryan knew the intention—it would be difficult to see a pirate in that getup. He wasn’t even armed.
He tugged at his collar and started for the hatch, barely glancing at the two of them. “If I have to wear this damn starch then the entire galaxy had better pay attention.”
The mess hall was packed. What crew could fit in there planted themselves on chairs, tables, and benches. Others holed up in quarters with their comps or commandeered spots in the lounges and wardrooms and library, anywhere with a vidscreen. That was what he and Sid saw on their way around the ship until he remembered to comm Evan.
Ryan didn’t want to be around the entire crew when his father made the statement, and Evan said Captain S’tl
ian and the Caste Master were out there with the captain, the admiral, their jet escort, and both Minister Taylor and First Minister Damiani. And Jos had gone as interpreter, Evan said. Jos had disappeared onto Turundrlar since Pompeo’s speech, talking to Nikolas about the captain. Reassuring him, maybe. If anyone was going to understand the captain’s past, it would be the Warboy who’d practically adopted Falcone’s second protégé.
Still, “pirate” was a sore word among Macedon’s crew, considering who they’d been persecuting for the past few months.
Given the choice, Evan said, he’d prefer to be in quarters by himself. So he invited Ryan in. Sid went perforce.
Evan lit a cig and held an open bottle of beer, the comp on an unclamped chair between the bunks. He made room so the three of them could lean back against the bulkhead and watch the transcast, albeit with their legs hanging off the side of the bunk.
Right now the cams showed a milling crowd of meedees and station officials and a blank podium just inside the military dockside doors. In a second box on the split screen, a single male meedee chuffed on about Arthur Pompeo and his claims, stirring the fire before the brimstone came down, filling the dead air.
They waited.
“Do you know what he’s going to say?” Sid asked, arms folded.
“No. I didn’t ask. He dressed and—went.”
Evan leaned over from Ryan’s right side and half smiled. “I have an idea what he’ll say.”
“What?” Sid said, looking at Evan sidelong.
Evan grinned and raised his middle finger.
Sid said, “Ha!”
Ryan shook his head. “No, that’d be my statement. My father’s far too diplomatic.”
Sid said, “It’s starting.”
Someone stepped up to the podium, a woman in a dark suit and a pin on her lapel—a black circle with a gold outline of the station overlaid.
“Chaos Stationmaster,” Evan said.
She gazed out at the crowd as if counting heads, while four jets, Dorr, Hartman, and Madison among them, filed in first and stood in front of the hastily erected backdrop. It had EarthHub’s sun-and-nine-planets displayed on a black circle, ringed by close-set silver stars. The seal represented all of the Hub, even the stations in the Dragons. Ryan figured it was also his father’s choice to have that and not Macedon’s banner in prominent frame.
He remembered to unclench his fingers.
Admiral Ashrafi was the next to stand on the dais, flanked by the Warboy and the Caste Master, wearing tiny earcomm pickups. Next to them stood Musey with a commbud on his lapel for interpretation into those pickups. At that point you could hear individual breaths from the meedees. For many of them it was probably their first time seeing a live alien. Ryan was sure the jets, who held rifles and stared out at the crowd in a constant roving of eyes, weren’t the only security on that dockside.
Sid confirmed it by pointing out the units he recognized merely by where they stood and what subtle equipment they had on their bodies, easily missed by an untrained eye.
Minister Taylor and First Minister Damiani, who still didn’t look pleased, walked up rather quickly and stood to the side almost out of frame—maybe they’d have a turn at the mike, though Ryan hoped not.
Finally the Chaos Stationmaster gestured for the lights to come up in advance of the transcast. They hit her with a vengeance. She squinted, raised a hand, and asked for them to be turned down. Then she said simply, “Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Azarcon,” and stepped out of the way.
In deep space, despite technical rank, it was his father who would be given an admiral’s treatment—out of respect for his years on the front line of the war. And because people wanted to hear from him first, since deep-space captains rarely made statements to the Send. They weren’t politicians and prided themselves on that fact.
But not this shift. Now he had to speak and he had EarthHub’s attention in a way Damiani could only dream about.
The captain stepped up to the podium with no visible hesitation, laid both hands on either side in a pose of relaxed authority, and gazed straight out at the cams and the lights without squinting. His eyes looked large in the pale angles of his face. They were dark, steady, and unreadable.
The meedees erupted as one.
“I’m going to say a few words and then open it up to questions.”
He had no slate, no prompter, and no earcomm. It went out live and free. The meedees fell silent, though someone coughed here and there.
“Quite a few months ago, perhaps even a year in Standard time, Mr. Arthur Pompeo approached me via comm to request my assistance in a project of his—my biography. He cited all sorts of reasons why this would be beneficial to a man in my position, as he said—‘a captain of galactic note.’ He said that as a decorated officer in the EarthHub Armed Forces it was my duty to present to the citizens of the Hub— and to history—an unequivocal picture of my heroic accomplishments. His words, not mine.”
Projected humility. It seemed he truly believed it too.
“I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I was not a hero and what things I had accomplished were between myself and those who wished to bestow upon me whatever recognition protocol devised. But I had never set out to achieve such recognition, nor did I feel I owed it to anyone to expand on it for the sake of notoriety. My duty is foremost to my crew, the military, and the citizens of the Hub. That is the order in which I prioritize my professional life and I don’t apologize for it. The lives of my comrades and those under my command depend upon it, and since for years we were the ones fighting the war on the citizens’ behalf, I think such an order should go undisputed. I told this to Mr. Pompeo.
“He responded that he was going ahead with the biography anyway, with or without my approval. He proceeded to contact my wife Songlian Lau, Admiral Omar Ashrafi and Dr. Hannah Ramcharan, my adoptive parents, and many other people with whom I’d served over the years. He even had one of his associates harass my son on Earth after the terrorist actions in Hong Kong, asking for rather personal details about our relationship. My son was recovering from trauma, but Mr. Pompeo had no compassion for that.”
Ryan hadn’t known the meedee Sid had decked in Britain had been one of Pompeo’s men. He was even less sorry about the abuse now, especially considering Pompeo’s false sincerity on Austro months later.
“Now many of you may believe that you have a right to know about my personal life because of my rank and career, but I want to make clear, right now and for the record, that I didn’t choose to be a captain in the EarthHub Armed Forces—I didn’t study, work, fight, and kill the enemy on your behalf—because I wanted to bare my soul to the galaxy. I don’t see why that ought to be a prerequisite for my position as a commanding officer.
“Many of you were, and are, affected by the war. Many of you were, and are, aware of my actions, as well as the actions of other men and women in my position, to put an end to the war. We have fought on many fronts and in many battles. You may consider these peace talks to be yet another front, another battle, hopefully a bloodless one and hopefully the final one. I do.
“Because like many of you, I grow tired. I was also affected by the war at a very young age. It is no secret that pirate activity increases when the conflict between the Hub and the striviirc-na increases. Pirates capitalize on our busy fleets—and merchants, stations, and colonies pay for it. Thirty-four years ago, my home was so affected. Like many of you, I lost my family.”
He shifted. His hands slid a bit down the sides of the podium and he bent a little toward the mike, visibly swallowing. Ryan wasn’t sure if it was a premeditated move, but it broke the stiffness, imbued some candid emotion.
“No, I rescind that. I didn’t lose them. It wasn’t a matter of voluntary or mutual abandonment. My family was killed. In short order I became an orphan. I know from the inside out what many children experience because of our dogged insistence on perpetuating this war. I know, from the inside out, the debilitating crush of grie
f. And I grow tired. I grow tired of pirates who use our lost children to their own ends. The striviirc-na were not our only enemies, and yet we became so involved, so bloodily single-minded, that the future of EarthHub fell by the wayside.
“Not long ago I woke up to that. I hope the rest of EarthHub will wake up to it. The striviirc-na are not our enemies. In the past few weeks I’ve come to realize that many of their concerns are the same as ours. How can we stop the bloodshed? How can we build back our hopes so they won’t be destroyed again? How can we insure a safe future for our children?
“Pirates can be more effectively fought if we work together. Merchants, stations, colonies that are preyed upon year after year by pirate ships… I grow tired, the same as you, of death reports. Many of my crew were orphaned as children and youths. They fell into crime to stay alive, or were manipulated by adults into the life. Yes, I take them aboard Macedon. I feed them, clothe them, and train them. Because others do not. I don’t look at the circumstances that brought them to my attention—their criminal files, their drug use and violence, whatever the case may be. I look at the circumstances that compelled them to those lives in the first place, events that were out of their control. I give them an opportunity to change the course of their lives—for the better.”
Ryan felt Evan shift beside him.
“Many of you are wondering about my past. You’ve heard Mr. Pompeo claim that I was a pirate in my youth before I was a student at the Navy Space Corps Academy. And I suppose if I came right out and laid claim to that allegation, all of my subsequent deeds—my ‘heroic accomplishments,’ my ‘captaincy of galactic note’—would amount to nothing in your eyes. My efforts to form a truce with our longtime enemies so that we may map a future in which our children need not fear to live… I suppose my efforts that way would suddenly be spurious, suspicious, and ill-meant?
“I hope not. I fervently hope that the citizens of EarthHub—who live on stations, colonies, and merchant ships that I have protected to the best of my ability across the star systems—would not be so narrow-minded or judgmental… or bloodthirsty.”
Burndive Page 31
