by David Weber
Li Han looked even smaller than usual between her two guards. They towered above her, and their combined body weight outmassed her by a factor of over five. Her cheeks were slightly sunken (the food at the prison compound was adequate, but not always appetizing), emphasizing her clean facial structure, and she moved with her habitual grace, thanks to a rigidly self-imposed exercise schedule, but she looked like a child in an adult's pajamas in her standard-sized gray prison garb. The major eyed the unprepossessing little figure with a measure of curiosity mingled with contempt-anything less like a Navy flag officer was hard to imagine.
Until she opened her mouth.
"Good evening, Major," she said crisply. "You may escort me to the Governor-General."
The major's hand was halfway into a salute before he caught himself. He managed to maintain his military bearing, but there was a brief pause before he mumbled, "This way, ma'am." He turned on his heel and led the small, ramrod-straight figure to the elevator, glaring at any of his subordinates who looked like they might even be thinking of smiling.
* * *
Prisoners were rare in warfare against alien species-the only sort of war the TFN had ever fought. Not only did ship-to-ship combat generally result in the annihilation of the loser's crew, but what prisoners were taken were usually turned over to the xenologists (or their alien equivalents) rather than becoming a charge of the military authorities. Hence, the Federation's Navy's codes, both for treatment of prisoners and conduct when captured, were badly underdeveloped. As senior prisoner, Han had been forced virtually to reinvent the whole concept of a POW doctrine.
She'd been offered parole and freedom of the planet, as befitted her rank, but she'd refused, electing to stay with her fellow prisoners. The shock of defeat and-far worse-the desertion of their fellows had come hard for them. Morale had deteriorated as their sense of betrayal became resentment, directed almost as much at their own officers for surrendering as at those others who had deserted them. For Han, even less accustomed than her crews to the notion of defeat and supremely incapable of dishonoring herself by abandoning her comrades, surrender had held a particularly painful poignancy. And the situation was made still worse because her battlegroup's late transfer to Kellerman's command had left her a virtual unknown to most of her fellow POWs-an unknown who'd surrendered them all to the Rim. But she'd attacked her problems and theirs with all the compassion and ruthlessness which made her what she was. Now, nine months later, the captured Republican personnel were warriors once more.
But once the immediate personnel problems were resolved, Han found herself with nothing to do. The camp was like a well-run ship or squadron, fully capable of humming smoothly along under the direction of her exec as long as she stood aloofly behind him as the distant yet instantly available balance wheel. She'd found that being a "commander-in-chief," even of a prison camp, was even more lonely than battlegroup command.
As fall gave way to the short, mild winter of Xanadu's temperate zones, Han realized the irony of her success. She'd given her subordinates purpose and unity while she herself fretted like a captive bird against the maddening inertia and monotony of her captivity. Only once had there been any excitement to vary the soul-crushing boredom of her life.
Han's experience with governments in general, and particularly with those serving the purposes of the Corporate Worlds, had not been happy. So when she was summoned to meet a Ms. Miriam Ortega, Provisional Grand Councilor for Internal Security of the Rim Systems, she was prepared to confront yet another bored, insensitive bureaucrat.
But Ms. Ortega had begun by gracefully dismissing the camp commandant, effectively placing the entire interview off the record, which was not typical of the red tape-worshipping automatons Han associated with "government" outside the Terran Republic.
It was both a shrewd and a generous gesture, Han had thought, and felt herself warm towards the other woman. She thawed further as they discussed camp conditions and the needs of the prisoners, and it was heaven to talk to someone new after months of the same faces! Especially to someone like this irreverently intelligent woman with her earthy sense of humor. Han had worked hard for the serene devotion to duty which was hers, yet she'd paid a price of loneliness along the way. Now, as she talked with Miriam Ortega, she felt the attraction that opposites often exert, and it was hard to remember they were enemies.
When it was time for her to go, she'd risen with regret. Yet before she left, she'd fumbled to frame an awkward question, despite her fear that it might shatter the precarious rapport she'd found with her "enemy."
"Ms. Ortega, I couldn't help wondering . . . with your last name . . ."
Miriam Ortega, had stopped her, answering the question before she could complete it.
"Admiral Ortega was my father," she'd said simply.
Han had regretted the painful question, under the circumstances, but the woman with the marvelously expressive face had continued.
"He was a man of strong principles and he died acting on them-a pretty good way to go, I think." Then, with another smile, "I hear you've very nearly done so several times!" and the thawing process was complete, the rapport no longer forced.
Han was stunned, later, to learn through the carefully cultivated guards' grapevine that Miriam Ortega was Ian Trevayne's lover. To be sure, he had been out of contact with his wife for over three standard years. But . . .
Han had never met Natalya Nikolayevna Trevayne, but the woman's flawless beauty had been the subject of frequent comment by envious male officers and ostentatiously indifferent female ones, and there had never been a whisper of a hint of infidelity in all the Fleet gossip. Surely Miriam Ortega, however striking in her own dark, very individual way, couldn't possibly be Trevayne's type! And yet . . . was it her imagination, or had a certain humorous warmth crept into the other's voice whenever she spoke of "the Governor-General"?
Then, with the onset of spring, came the summons which had taken her from the compound for the first time in half a year. Now, walking under guard through the corridors of Government House, she concentrated on looking unconcerned as she wondered why Trevayne had sent for her.
They came to the suite of offices from which Ian Trevayne ruled the Rim Systems. Han and her intelligence officers had spent considerable effort piecing together a schematic of the Provisional Government, and she sometimes thought it might have been designed by the legendary pre-space engineer Goldberg. Most of the day-to-day administration devolved on the departments headed by the members of the Grand Council, who were members of the Rim Legislative Assembly and so responsible to it. But they worked for and in the name of Governor-General Trevayne, who, even though he was the sole member of the executive branch, wasn't even a member of the Assembly, much less responsible to it. He was responsible directly to the Federation Legislative Assembly on Old Terra-with which he was only infrequently and circuitously in touch by some means Han had yet to uncover. It was one of those legal tangles which homo sapiens secretly and guiltily loves, she'd decided, but it worked . . . as her present captivity demonstrated all too well.
The major ushered her through the bustling outer offices and knocked at the Governor-General's private office doors. A voice from within called admittance, and the major pushed the old-fashioned doors open and stepped back, coming to a sort of half-attention as she passed him. He closed the doors quietly behind her, not without a sigh of regret. Normally he had no strong interest in the meetings of his superiors, but this time he couldn't quite suppress his curiosity. Somehow, he felt, any discussion between those personalities was bound to produce some very interesting by-products.
Trevayne sat behind his desk, wearing the carefully tailored civilian dress he permitted his Governor-General persona. A broad window behind him overlooked Prescott City, and a cabinet below it held two holo cubes. One showed three women-no, Han decided, a woman and two teen-aged girls. In the other, a dark young man in the black-and-silver of a TFN ensign tried not to look too pleased with himself. She
looked away and came to attention before the desk, and a brief silence ensued as she and Trevayne regarded one another and both recalled another meeting in another office.
Trevayne spoke first. "Please be seated," he invited.
"I prefer to stand, sir."
"Just as you like," he nodded, sounding unsurprised. "But please stand easy, Admiral Li."
What he'd said registered as she went into a stiff "at ease," and Trevayne smiled briefly at the minute widening of her eyes-her equivalent, he suspected, of openmouthed astonishment.
"Yes," he continued, "we've received one of our infrequent messages from the Innerworlds. It seems the government, for legalistic reasons with which I'll not bore you, has chosen to accord limited belligerent status to those worlds styling themselves 'the Terran Republic.' " He sounded as if he'd bitten into something sour. "This entails, among other things, recognition of all commissions bestowed by that . . . entity. I have, of course, no alternative but to conform to this policy." He allowed himself a wry smile. "I console myself with the thought that its purpose is 'not to confer a compliment but to secure a convenience,' in the words of Winston Churchill, with whom you may not be familiar-"
"On the contrary, Admiral," Han interrupted. "Winston Churchill was a politician on Old Terra during the Age of Mao Tse-Tung-a very eloquent spokesman for an imperial system which was already doomed."
Trevayne was momentarily speechless, but he recovered quickly and resumed. "We're also in receipt of one other bit of news which I think you'll find pertinent. The Federation has agreed to a general prisoner exchange to reclaim the loyalist personnel incarcerated by the various Fringe Worlds. As you may know better than I, that agreement was apparently stymied for quite some time by the dispute over the custody of alleged 'war criminals.' That dispute has now been resolved-or at least deferred until the end of the actual fighting. 'War criminals' will remain in custody where they are now being held until hostilities come to a close; all other prisoners are to be exchanged forthwtih. You'll be leaving Xanadu within the week."
It was Han's turn to find herself completely at a loss. Trevayne awaited her response with curiosity.
"Admiral," she said finally, "I believe I will sit down."
He motioned her to a chair. "You will, I trust, be able to inform your superiors that you've been well treated?"
"Yes," she admitted, still grappling with the stunning news. Then she shook herself. "In particular, I'd like to commend the compound medical staff for their skill and, even more, for their humanity." She thought of Daffyd Llewellyn on another planet, and smiled. "That quality seems to transcend political alignments-at least in the best doctors." Trevayne nodded, declining to mention the considerable care he and Doctor Yuan had given to selecting the prison camp medical staff. "And," she continued, "please convey my respects and gratitude to Grand Councilor Ortega for the interest she has taken in our welfare." She watched curiously for his reaction, but he only nodded again.
"I will. And in return, I'll ask you to convey a message for me." He gazed at her over steepled fingers. "Certain medical personnel from Zephrain, whom we'd thought lost to Tangri corsairs, were repatriated by your government before the negotiations for the present exchange had been formally begun. From them, we've learned that they were in fact captured by humans, of a sort-former TFN personnel indulging in a bit of free-lance piracy." His words could have been light. They weren't.
"Historically-" his eyes grew very hard "-brigandage by renegades purporting to represent one side or another is one of the inevitable consequences of civil wars-one of the many nasty consequences which the initiators of the breakups always seem to overlook, and for which they never accept the slightest responsibility. But I digress." His expression softened a trifle. "Please express to your superiors my thanks for repatriating our people. And," he added, leaning forward and smiling very slightly, "please accept my personal thanks for ridding the Galaxy of a particularly loathsome excrescence on the human race."
Han nodded, taken slightly aback, for she hadn't even known the doctors and nurses had been returned, though she'd urged the Admiralty to do so. On the other hand, her recommendations might have had more weight if a certain portion of the Republican Navy hadn't disapproved of her handling of the situation. If Ruyard's surrender had been accepted, they'd pointed out, the Fleet would have gained five cruisers, plus his destroyers.
She and Tomanaga had argued that her actions had been good and prudent tactics, precluding any possibility of further treachery on Ruyard's part and so terrifying the pirates still on the planet as to prevent any last minute atrocities. Nevertheless, Han had been officially censured, though the First Space Lord had told her privately that he approved her handling of the battle.
Personally, Han had never considered the episode a "battle" at all, though it was now officially called the Battle of Siegfried. From her perspective, it had been a case of vermin extermination.
Silence stretched out across the desk as Trevayne toyed with a stylus, and Han sensed an unaccustomed hesitance, even an awkwardness, on his part.
"Admiral," she asked tentatively at last, "may I go?"
"Eh?" He looked up quickly, as if caught off balance while trying to formulate a statement or question. "You may," he said gruffly.
Han stood and walked toward the doors. Then she stopped and turned back to face him.
"Admiral, if I may ask . . . why did you bring me here to tell me this, instead of simply sending word through Commandant Chanet?"
Trevayne glanced back down at his desk for a moment, seeming to gather himself. Then he looked back up at her.
"Admiral Li," he almost blurted, "were you, by any chance, involved in the raid on Galloway's World?"
Han eyed him sharply. Now why, she wondered, did he want to know that? There'd been some ugly repercussions over the strike, she recalled, despite the fact that every strategist had always known the Jamieson Archipelago was a primary strategic target. Still, both sides had been horrified by the heavy civilian casualties, and the raid had led to the de facto agreement banning nuclear strikes on inhabited planets. But why . . . ?
Understanding struck. Her glance switched quickly to the holos as she remembered a conversation in Admiral Rutgers' office, and her eyes widened in horrified understanding.
And then her gaze met Trevayne's. His eyes were almost beseeching, and he read the shocked compassion in hers. For an instant, there was an intangible bond between them.
Han needed to say something-she knew not what-to reach out to this man who'd lost so much. She opened her mouth to speak . . .
. . . and remembered the Second Battle of Zephrain, when Fourth Fleet hung beyond weapon range and the deadly HBMs kept coming in spite of her desperately repeated surrender signals. As the missiles which had already been fired looped impossibly back, closing through the storm of counter missiles and point defense lasers, joined by fresh salvos from the enemy fleet, Han had sat in her command chair, giving her orders calmly, holding her people together even as she waited to die with them.
And now she looked at the dark, menacingly bearded face across the desk and saw not a man whose family had died but the callous, murderous commander who had been willing to butcher her helpless crews.
"No, Admiral." Her voice rang in the still room. "I had no part in that heroic action!"
She watched Ian Trevayne rise, his dark face expressionless despite the terrible fire that blazed suddenly in his eyes. She watched him walk around his desk, and the furious anger of his anguish came with him. She sensed the murder in his heart, but she held herself stiffly, her own eyes hard and hating as they burned into his, refusing to flinch.
He stopped, fisted hands clenched at his sides, and muscles trembled in his arms as he fought to keep them there-fought to control the furious need to smash them into her suddenly hateful face.
And then he straightened, expelled a long breath, and was no longer a mere vessel of fury. He jabbed the button which summoned the Marine g
uards.
"Remove the prisoner," he told them, looking over her head. They did. And as they hustled her out of the door, she looked back, and in his face she seemed to see a reflection of herself, like a mirror of the soul. She couldn't explain the sudden surge of empathic understanding, for she herself had never felt what she saw in that face . . . except, possibly . . .
Comprehension came wrenchingly as she remembered Argosy Polaris and those child-bodies. And at that moment, she knew exactly how Ian Trevayne saw those to whom he'd almost done what she had done to Arthur Ruyard.
Their eyes met one more time, and for the barest instant the bond was back. But now their tenuous, shared understanding encompassed the unforgivable wrongs they'd done one another, the wrongs that were somehow a microcosm of the whole, colossal tragedy in which they were caught up. The understanding flared up between them, hideous with the deadly, conflicting tides of duty and desperation and hatred which could bring good and decent human beings to such a pass, but for only an instant . . . then it was cut off by the closing office doors.
Trevayne stared at the closed doors for a moment. Then he walked to his office's private washroom and stared into the mirror for a long, long time, as if prolonging the hideous glimpse he'd gotten into his soul.
