The Serrano Connection (54 page)

But alive. He had not died because she'd done nothing. With the knowledge that he was still alive—and surely if he was alive, he would be fine when he got out of the regen tanks—her heart lifted to impossible heights. She turned back to the crowd, hunting for those she knew.

"You did it!" she yelled at Arramanche. "You did it!" to Lucien. "We DID it!" with all the others, to all the others.

Admiral Dossignal leaned over to speak to Pitak through the din. "I think we can quit worrying, Major. I do believe life has given her that kick in the pants."

By the time Esmay finally got some sleep, while others headed
Koskiusko
back toward Familias space, her initial euphoria had worn away. She woke several times, her heart pounding from dreams she couldn't quite recall. She felt angry, but couldn't find a target for her anger. The Bloodhorde intruders were dead; no use to be angry with them. Nothing seemed right . . . but of course schedules and ship's services were still upset. Those who had been aboard
Antberd's Axe
with her came around for more congratulations; it was hard to give them the responses they deserved. She wanted to, but she felt empty of anything but unfocused irritation. When Lieutenant Bowry sought her out and told her he'd be glad to give her a strong recommendation for a switch to command track, she felt a prickle of fear.

Another sleep cycle helped, but in the next, one of the nightmares caught her again, this time vivid enough that she woke hearing herself cry out. She turned on the light, and lay staring at the overhead, trying to slow her breathing. Why couldn't she get over this? She was not that child any more; she had proven it. She had commanded a ship—
Despite
didn't count, but she allowed herself credit for
Antberd's Axe
—and destroyed an enemy vessel.

Only because it had suspected nothing; only because its captain had been stupid. Her mind led her through the many ways every decision she'd made could have gone wrong. She had been hasty, impulsive, just like that child who had run away. She could have gotten everyone killed.

Others thought she had done well . . . but she knew things about herself they didn't. If they knew everything, they'd understand that she could not really be qualified. Like a novice rider who might stay on over a few fences, she had been lucky. And she'd been supported by skilled crew.

It would be safer for everyone if she went back into obscurity, where she belonged. She could have a decent life if she just kept out of trouble.

Admiral Serrano's face seemed to form before her.
You cannot go back to what you were.
Esmay's throat tightened. She saw the faces of her crew; for a moment she could feel the surge of confidence that had freed her to make those critical decisions. That was the person she wanted to be, the person who felt at home, undivided, the person who had earned the respect the others gave her.

They would not respect her if they knew about the nightmares. She grimaced, picturing herself as a cruiser captain who followed each battle with a round of nightmares . . . she could see the crew tiptoeing around listening to the thrashing and moaning. For a moment it seemed almost funny, then her eyes filled. No. She had to find a way to change this. She pushed herself up, and headed for the showers.

The next shift, word came down that Barin was out of regen and could have visitors. Esmay didn't really want to know what horrors he'd endured, but she had to visit him.

Barin's eyes had no light in them; he looked less like a Serrano than Esmay had ever seen him. She told herself he was probably sedated.

"Want some company?"

He flinched, then stiffened, looking past her ear. "Lieutenant Suiza . . . I hear you did good things."

Esmay shrugged, embarrassed again. "I did what I could."

"More than I did." That with neither humor nor bitterness, in a flat tone that sent prickles down her spine. She could just remember that flatness in her own voice, in that time she didn't want to think about.

She opened her mouth to say what he had, no doubt, already been told, and shut it again. She knew what others would have said—it had been said to her—and it didn't help. What would help? She had no idea.

"I don't belong," Barin said, in that same flat voice. "A Serrano . . . a
real
Serrano, like my grandmother or Heris . . . they'd have done something."

In the split second before she spoke, awareness of what she was going to say almost clamped her jaw shut. Against the ache of that, Esmay got out the first phrase. "When I was caught . . ."

"You were captured? They didn't tell me that. I'll bet you gave 'em a rough time."

Anger and fear together roughened her own voice until she hardly recognized it. "I was a child. I didn't give anyone a hard time . . ." She could not look at him; she could not look at anything but the moving shadows in her mind as they came clear out of the fog. "I was . . . looking for my father. My mother had died—a fever we have on Altiplano—and my father was off with his army, fighting a civil war." A quick glance at his face; now his eyes had life in them again. She had accomplished that much. She told the story as quickly, as baldly, as she could, trying not to think as she told it. The runaway . . . the fat woman on the train . . . the explosions . . . the village with dead bodies she had first thought were sleeping. Then the uniformed men, the hard hands, the pain, the helplessness that was worse than pain.

Another quick glance. Barin's face had paled almost to the color of her own. "Esmay . . . Lieutenant . . . I didn't know . . ."

"No. It's not something I talk about. My family . . . had insisted it was a dream, a fever dream. I was sick a long time, the same fever my mother had had. They said I'd run away, gotten near the front, been hurt . . . but the rest of it was just a dream, they said."

"The rest of it?"

It felt like knives in her throat; it felt worse. "The man . . . he was . . . someone I knew. Had known. In my father's command. That uniform . . ."

"And they
lied
to you?" Now Serrano anger flashed in his eyes. "They lied to you about that?"

Esmay waved her hand, a gesture her family would have understood. "They thought it was best—they thought they were protecting me."

"It wasn't . . . it wasn't someone in your own family—?"

"No." She said it firmly, though she still wasn't sure. Had there been only that one assailant? She had been so young—she had had uncles and older cousins in that army, and some of them had died. In the family book of remembrance, the notations said "died in combat" but she was well aware now that notations and reality were not the same thing.

"But you . . . went on." Barin looked at her directly now. "You were strong; you didn't . . ."

"I cried." She got that out with difficulty. "I cried, night after night. The dreams . . . they put me in a room at the top of the house, at the end of the hall, because I woke them up, thrashing around so. I was afraid of everything, and afraid of being afraid. If they knew how scared I was, they would despise me . . . they were all heroes, you see. My father, my uncles, my cousins, even my Aunt Sanni. Papa Stefan had no use for crybabies—I couldn't cry in front of him. Put it behind you, they said. What's past is past, they said."

"But surely they knew—even I know, from my foster family—that children don't just forget things like that."

"On Altiplano you forget. Or you leave." Esmay took a deep breath, trying to steady her voice. "I left. Which relieved them, because I was always trouble for them."

"I can't believe you were trouble—"

"Oh yes. A Suiza woman who did not ride? Who would not involve herself with stock breeding? Who did not flirt and attract the right sort of young men? My poor stepmother spent years on me, trying to make me normal. And none of it worked."

"But . . . you got into the Fleet prep school program. You must have recovered very well. What did the psychnannies say? Did they give you any additional therapy?"

Esmay dodged the question. "I had read psych texts on Altiplano—there wasn't any therapy available there—and after all I passed the exams."

"I can't believe—"

"I just did it," she said sharply. He flinched, and she realized how he might take that. "It's not the same for you."

"No . . . I'm a grown man, or supposed to be." The bitterness was back in his voice.

"You are. And you did what you could—it's not your fault."

"But a Serrano is supposed to—"

"You were a captive. You had no choices, except to survive or die. Do you think I never tortured myself with 'A Suiza is supposed to—'? Of course I did. But it doesn't help. And it doesn't matter what you did—if you spewed your guts—"

"I did," Barin said in a small voice.

"So? That's your body . . . if it wants to vomit, it will. If it wants to leak, it will. You can't stop it." She was aware that she was talking to herself as much as Barin, telling the self that had grieved so long what it had needed to be told.

"If I'd been braver . . ." in a smaller voice still.

"Would bravery have kept your bones from breaking? Your blood from flowing?"

"That's different—that's physical—"

"Vomiting isn't?" She could move again, and now she stepped closer to the bed. "You know you can make anyone vomit with the right chemicals. Your body produces the chemicals, and you spew. A leads to B, that's it."

He moved restlessly, looking away from her. "Somehow I can't see my grandmother admiral puking all over a musclebound Bloodhorde commando just because someone mentioned the arena combat."

"You had been hit in the head, hadn't you?"

He twitched, as if he'd been poked in his sore ribs. "Not that hard."

Esmay fought down a flash of anger. She had tried; she had told him things she had not told anyone else, and he was apparently determined to wallow in his own pangs of guilt. If someone could wallow in pangs . . .

"I just don't know if I can face it," Barin said, almost too quietly to hear over the soft buzz of the ventilator.

"Face what?" Esmay asked, her voice edged.

"They'll . . . want me to talk about it."

"Who?"

"The psychnannies, of course. Just as they did with you. I . . . don't want to talk about it."

"Of course not," Esmay said. Her mind skidded away from his assumption that she had had therapy.

"How bad is it, really? What do they say?" A pause, a gulp. "What do they put in your record?"

"It's . . . not too bad." Esmay fumbled through her memory of those texts, but couldn't come up with anything concrete. She looked away, aware that Barin was now staring at her. "You'll do fine," she said quickly, and moved toward the door. Barin raised a hand still streaked with the pink stain of nuskin glue.

"Lieutenant—please."

Esmay forced herself to take a deep breath before she turned back to him. "Yes?"

His eyes widened at whatever he saw on her face. "You . . . you
haven't
talked to the psychs, have you? Ever?"

The breath she'd taken had vanished somewhere; she could not breathe. "I . . . I . . ." She wanted to lie, but she couldn't. Not to him; not now.

"You just . . . hid it. Didn't you? By yourself?"

She gasped in a lungful of air, fought it into her chest, and then forced it out through a throat that felt stiff as iron. "Yes. I had to. It was the only way—" Another breath, another struggle. "And it's better . . . I'm fine now."

Barin eyed her. "Just like me."

"No." Another breath. "I'm older. It's been longer. I do know what you're feeling, but it gets better."

"This is what confused people," Barin said, as if to himself. That non sequitur snagged her attention.

"What do you mean, confused?"

"It wasn't just the difference in Altiplano social customs and Fleet's . . . it was this secret you had. That's why your talents were all locked up, hidden . . . why it took combat to unlock them, let you show what you could do."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Esmay said. She felt a tremor in her mind like that of stepping onto the quaking surface of a bog.

"No . . . but . . . you need help as much as I do."

Panic; she could feel her face stiffening into a mask of calm. "No, I don't. I'm fine now. It's under control; as you say, I can function."

"Not at your best. I heard about your best; Grandmother said the combat analysis was unbelievable . . ."

For a moment it seemed funny. "Your grandmother wasn't on the Board of Inquiry."

His hand flipped a rude gesture. "Boards of Inquiry exist to scare captains into heart attacks and ulcers. What I heard, through the family, was how the real commanders, who have combat experience, saw it."