The Serrano Connection (28 page)

Esmay shivered, and someone said "Are you all right . . . Esmay?" She looked over. A lieutenant . . . Kartin Doublos . . . so the use of her first name was not familiarity, but the normal usage between those of the same rank off duty.

"I'm fine," she said. "I just thought of my great-grandmother." He looked puzzled, but shrugged it off.

Over the next weeks, she noticed that the interest in her, the competition for her attention, did not slack off. It puzzled her. What could they hope to gain? What were they trying to prove?

Tickling at the edge of her mind were all the things Admiral Serrano had said . . . that legal counsel had said . . . and her father . . . and Major Pitak. She pushed them aside. She could not cope with a demand to break out of the comfortable safe niche she had created for herself. She would crawl back into it, pull it around her, an inviolable shield.

The nightmares came oftener, further proof that she was not, could not be, the person these others seemed determined to see. Not every night, but especially after those times when someone had talked her into a game, a show, some recreation which had—as far as she could tell—no connection with the content of either set of dreams. She started running a noise generator in her compartment, hoping it would cover any sound she made. No one had complained, but when she woke, heart pounding, at 0300, she was always afraid she had cried out in real life the way she had in the dream.

The dreams tangled, the helpless child caught in a war she did not understand merging abruptly into the terrified young officer belly-down on a bloody deck, firing into the haze.

She considered going to Medical. She would have to, if it affected her performance. So far it had not, that she could tell. Pitak seemed pleased with her progress; she got along fine with Master Chief Sivars, whose massive frame was so unlike Seb Coron's that she was startled only occasionally by the same kind of attitude.

"And how is Lieutenant Suiza shaping, Major?" Commander Seveche asked, at the quarterly review.

"Very well, of course." Pitak looked down at the record cube she held. "She's worked hard to get herself up to speed, though she has no background in heavy engineering and she'll never be the technical help that Bascock was."

"She shouldn't be technical track at all," Seveche said. "That presentation to the senior tactical came out of a command-track mind."

"She asked for technical," Admiral Dossignal said, but with the quirk in the corner of his mouth that his subordinates knew meant he was playing devil's advocate.

"I think it was the colonial background," Seveche said. "I looked up Altiplano's cultural index. Even though she's a general's daughter, they have no tradition of women commanders."

"Of women in the military, period," Dossignal said. "I saw the same report."

"Well, then. And the juniors are around her like bees around honey."

"Which she isn't comfortable with," Pitak said. "She's muttered to me about it, claims not to understand it. If that's honest, and I think it is, she's got no insight into her abilities . . ."

"Which you say aren't technical."

"Well . . ." Pitak considered. "I don't want to overstate it. She's got the brains, and she's applying herself. I can't speak for her qualifications in scan, but she's merely a studious amateur where H&A's concerned. And there's her habit of seeing everything in operational terms."

"Example?"

"Well . . . she's completed the second course in hull design, and I assigned her a report on the modifications necessary to support the new stealth hardware. I was looking for the usual, what I'd have gotten from Ensign Zintner: where to install it based on its need for power, its effect on the center of gravity, and so on. All technical. What she came up with was an analysis of the performance changes in terms of operational capability. I pointed this out, and she blinked twice and said 'Oh—but isn't that what really matters?' "

Seveche and Dossignal laughed. "Yes," said the admiral, "I see what you mean. To her, everything matters because of its use in battle—"

"Which is what's supposed to matter to us," Pitak said. "I know that . . . but I also know that I personally get sidetracked into neat engineering problems, technical bits for the sake of technical bits. She doesn't appear to, and I wonder if she ever did, even in scan."

"I doubt it," Dossignal said. "Because of her record on Xavier, they sent along the entire personnel file. Along with all those ordinary fitness reports, in which she came up bland and colorless and mediocre, there are her Academy ratings. Guess which courses she topped out in?"

"Not tactics and maneuver?"

"No . . . though she was in the top 5 percent there. Try military history. She wrote a paper analyzing the Braemar Campaign, and was invited to consider an appointment to postgraduate work as a scholar. She turned it down, and applied for technical track instead, where she'd never excelled."

"That's odd," Pitak said, frowning.

"It's more than odd," Dossignal said. "It makes no sense. I can't find anything in the file to show that she was counseled against command track, though I do find the usual comments about non-Fleet family backgrounds down in her prep school files. Yet they assigned her to technical track, purely on the basis of her request and her fairly mediocre scores."

"What were her personal evaluations?"

"What you'd expect for an outsider who wasn't pushing for command track . . . I don't know why we still use those things. If Personnel would ever go back and check officer performance against the predictions of the personal evaluations, they'd have to admit they're useless. She came out midrange in everything except initiative, where she was low-average."

"On which I'd rate her quite high," Pitak said. "She doesn't wait to be told, if she knows what she's doing."

"The question is, what do we do about her?" Dossignal asked. "We've got her for a couple of years, and we can teach her a lot about maintenance . . . but is that the best use of her talents?"

Seveche looked at Atarin and Pitak. "I'd have to say no, sir, it's not. She's a good speaker, a good tactical analyst—she might make a good instructor. Or . . ." His voice trailed away.

"Or the kind of ship commander she was in the Xavier action," Dossignal said. Silence held the group for a moment.

"That's a risky prediction," Atarin muttered.

"True. But—compare her even to officers several ranks ahead of her, in their first combat command. I think we'd agree that she has abilities she has shown only rarely—abilities Fleet needs, if she's really got them and can unlock them. I see that as our task: getting this potentially outstanding young officer to show her stuff."

"But how, sir?" asked Pitak. "I like the girl, truly. But—she's so reserved, even with me, even after this much time. How do we get the lid off?"

"I don't know," Dossignal admitted. "Engineering is my strength, not combat. I know we can't ask Captain Hakin, because he's half-convinced she's a mutineer. But if we all agree that the best use of Lieutenant Suiza is elsewhere, then at least we'll be looking for opportunities to nudge her that way."

Atarin chuckled suddenly. "When I think of all the youngsters who fantasize being heroic ship captains . . . all the untalented children of famous families . . . and here's a shy, inhibited genius who just needs a good kick in the pants—"

"I just hope we can administer that kick in the pants before life does," Pitak said. "However hard we kick her, reality can do worse."

"Amen to that," Dossignal said. He picked up another file. "Now—let's get to the ensigns. Zintner, for instance—"

Esmay had not run into the Serrano ensign for some time; she had seen him occasionally playing wallball or working out with someone on the mats, but he had never approached her. Now, the rotation in table assignments put him at hers. She nodded at him as the others introduced themselves.

"You're in remote sensing, aren't you, Ensign?"

"Yes, sir."

"Your first choice?"

"Actually no." He made a face. "But I had a short-term assignment right out of the Academy, and then I was off-schedule for normal ship rotations."

"It's a wonder," a jig to his right said. "I thought Serranos got whatever they wanted."

The Serrano ensign stiffened for an instant, but then shrugged. "It's a reputation perhaps not quite deserved," he said, in a colorless voice.

"And what's your specialty?" Esmay asked the jig. What was his name? Plecht, or something like that.

"I'm taking an advanced course," the jig said, as if that should impress her. "I'm doing research in low-temperature material fabrication," he said. "But probably nobody would understand it unless they were working in the field."

Esmay considered her options, and decided on blandness. He was making enough of an idiot of himself already. "I'm sure you're very good at what you do," she said, with as little expression as she could manage. It was still too much; two of the ensigns, but not Barin Serrano, snorted and choked on their soup.

On the way out, she got two invitations to come watch the junior officers' parpaun semifinals match.

"No, thank you," she said to each. "I really should spend some time in the gym myself." It was not an excuse; she was still having trouble with nightmares anytime she did not work out to exhaustion. She was sure she would outlast them in time, but for now she was spending a couple of hours a day in the gym.

The parpaun matches had thinned out the gym; Esmay saw only three others, each engrossed in his or her own program. She turned on her favorite machine. Someone had left the display wall on its mirrored setting; she faced her reflection and automatically looked away from the face. Her legs, she saw, looked hard and fit. She should probably do more with her upper-body. But what? She didn't feel like swimming, or using the machines designed for upper-body-building. What she wanted was a scramble up some rocks, nothing really hard but movements less regular than a machine would demand.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant . . ."

Esmay jumped, then was furious with herself for reacting that way. She looked; it was Ensign Serrano, with what she privately considered
that look
on his face.

"Yes?" she said.

"I just wondered . . . if the lieutenant . . . would like a sparring partner."

She stared at him in sheer surprise. It was the last invitation she'd expected from a Serrano . . . from him. "Not you!" got out before she could censor it; he flushed but looked stubborn.

"Not me? Why?"

"I thought you were different," she said.

This time he understood; the flush deepened, and then he went as pale as a bronze-skinned Serrano could and pulled himself up angrily. "I don't have to suck up to you. I have more influence in my family—" He stopped, but Esmay knew what he would have said—could have said. With the Serrano Admiralty behind him, he didn't need her. "I liked you," he said, still angry. "Yes, my cousin mentioned you, and yes, of course I saw the media coverage. But that's not why—"

Esmay felt guilty for misjudging him, and perversely annoyed with him for being the occasion of her misjudgment. "I'm sorry," she said, wishing she felt more gracious about it. "It was very rude of me."

He stared at her. "You're
apologizing
?"

"Of course." That got out before Esmay could filter it, the tone as surprised as his and making it clear that in her world all decent people apologized. "I misinterpreted your actions—"

"But you're—" He stopped short again, clearly rethinking what he had started to say. "It's just—I don't think it needed an apology. Not from a lieutenant to an ensign, even if you did misunderstand my motives."

"But it was an insult," Esmay said, her own temper subsiding. "You had a right to be angry."

"Yes . . . but you making a mistake and me being angry isn't enough for an apology like that."

"Why not?"

"Because—" He looked around; Esmay became aware of unnatural silence, and when she looked saw the other exercisers turning quickly away. "Not here, sir. If you really want to know—"

"I do." While she had a captive informer willing to explain, she wanted to know why, because it had bothered her for years that Fleet officers routinely shrugged off their discourtesies without apology.

"Then—no offense intended—we should go somewhere else."

"For once I wish this was home," Esmay said. "You'd think on a ship this size there'd be someplace quiet to talk that didn't imply things . . ."

"If the lieutenant would consider a suggestion?"

"Go ahead."

"There's always the Wall," he said. "Up in the gardens."

"Gardens don't imply things?" Esmay said, brows rising. They certainly did on Altiplano, where
They're in the garden
meant knowing smirks and raised brows.