Jack McDevitt: A Talent for War

His lips curled in amusement. "I’m dead now, Alex. I have to take the long view."

Ludik Talino: what a wealth of contempt and pity that name generated over two centuries. It had always lacked the power of a Judas or an Arnold, who had wantonly betrayed their trusts, who had actively engaged to ruin the men to whom they owed their loyalty. Talino was never a traitor in that sense. The universal view was that his courage rather than his moral sense had faltered. No one ever believed he would have sold his captain over to his enemies. But the act of which he stood accused, and for which his name became a synonym, was in its way even more despicable: at the critical moment he had fled.

I entered Talino into the library, and spent the evening reading accounts of the old story.

Contemporary records were fragmentary. None of the original Dellacondan ships were known to have survived the Resistance, whole data networks were wiped out, and few witnesses from the early years were still alive at the end.

Little is known about the man himself. He might have been a Dellacondan, but there’s evidence he was born in the City on the Crag, and at least one major historian claims he grew up on Rimway. What is known is that he was already a certified technician on one of Dellaconda’s dozen frigates at the outbreak of the war. He served almost two years as a weapons specialist and navigator on the Proctor before assuming the latter post on board Sim’s celebrated Corsarius.

Apparently, he fought with distinction. There’s a tradition that he was commended by Sim personally after Grand Salinas, though the records have been lost and confirmation has never been possible. In any case, he remained on that fabled vessel through the great days of the Resistance, when the Corsarius spearheaded the allied band of sixty-odd frigates and destroyers holding off the massive fleets of the Ashiyyur. Eventually, of course, Rimway and Toxicon and the other inner systems recognized the common danger, buried their old quarrels, and joined the war. But by then, Christopher Sim and the Corsarius were gone.

After Grand Salinas, when the Dellacondans and their allies were reduced to a desperate few and had given up hope, Sim withdrew the remnants of his fleet to Abonai for refitting and rearming. But the Ashiyyur, seizing the opportunity to destroy their old enemy, pressed him hard; and the Dellacondans prepared for an engagement that they were certain would be their last.

And then, on the eve of battle, something happened which provoked historical debate for two centuries.

Most accounts maintained that Talino and the other six crewmen of the Corsarius, discouraged, and seeing no escape, tried to persuade their captain to give up the suicidal struggle and to make terms with their relentless enemy; that, when he refused to do so, they abandoned him. They are said to have left a message damning him and the war, and fled to the surface of Abonai.

Others have it that Sim, himself convinced of the futility of further resistance, called his crew together and released them from their obligations. I’ve always felt less comfortable with this version than the others. I suppose it’s easy to sit in a warm room and condemn actions taken under extreme duress; but somehow the notion that Talino and his comrades would have taken advantage of his generosity, and left their captain at such a moment, seemed even more contemptible than the honest cowardice of slinking off into the dark.

However it may have occurred, this was the event that triggered a legend: Sim’s descent to Abonai; the trek through the bars and dives of that dismal place; the appeal for help to deserters, derelicts, and convicts who had escaped, or been driven, to that frontier world; and ultimately, of course, his immortal sally with them against an overwhelming enemy.

It was a time fashioned for greatness. Every child in the Confederacy knew the story of the seven nameless men and women from that grim world who agreed to join him, and who thereby rode into history. And of how they died with Sim a few hours later, during the final encounter with the Ashiyyur, wedding themselves irrevocably to his legend. Most researchers agreed that they must have had naval backgrounds, but some maintained that a few technicians would have done as well. However that might have been, they were a popular subject for doctoral theses, novels, the fine arts, and serious drama.

There was little of a factual nature concerning Talino. Birth and death. Engineering degree, Schenk University, Toxicon. Abandoned his captain. No charges filed, because the navy in which he served ceased to exist shortly after the offense.

I called up Barcroft’s impressionistic tragedy, Talinos. (He adds the final s to lend the name an aristocratic aura, and for dramatic effect.) I’d intended to scroll through, but I got hooked in the first act. That surprised me, because I’m not usually strong on classical theater.

Talino was played as a driven, melancholy figure by a rangy, bearded simulat of considerable physical presence. He is consumed with rage against the Ashiyyur, and against the powerful worlds that blindly stand by while the small force of allies are gradually reduced to impotence. His loyalty to Christopher Sim; and his passion for Inaissa, the young bride whose marriage has never known peace, fuel the action. The drama is set on the eve of the climactic engagement off Rigel.

Sim has given up hope of personal survival, but intends to save his crew. He will take Corsarius out alone, deliver what blows he can, and accept a death that may rally the human worlds. "If not," he tells Talino, "if still they do not come, then it will be up to you to salvage what you can. Disengage. Retreat to the Veiled Lady. In time, Earth and Rimway will be forced to fight. Then, perhaps, you can return and teach the damned fools how to beat the mutes…"

The gray, shadowy sets breathe gloom and despair. There is much of the medieval fortress about the orbiting station at Abonai: its ponderous weapons, the long curving walkways, the occasional guard, the hushed tones in which passersby converse, the heavy air. Over all, one senses transience and tragedy. The course of events has passed beyond the control of any human agency.

But Talino refuses his captain’s orders. "Send someone else to rally the survivors," he argues. "My place is with you."

Sim, in a moment of weakness, is grateful. He hesitates. Talino presses the point: "Do not humiliate me in this way." And Sim reluctantly accedes. They will make the final assault together.

But Talino must break the news to Inaissa. She has been hoping for a general retreat, and she is outspoken about Sim’s determination to kill himself, "and take you along." She does not ask her husband to break faith, knowing that, to do so, and succeed, would destroy any future for them.

Consequently, she goes to Sim, arguing that his death would so demoralize the Dellacondans that the cause would be lost. When that effort fails, she asks to man one of the weapon’s consoles, to be with her husband at the end.

Sim is so moved by her appeal that he orders Talino off the ship. When the navigator objects, he is confined to the orbiting station, from which he is able to watch the technicians completing repairs on Corsarius, preparing her for battle. And he observes also the arrival of the crew, summoned at this unusual hour by their commander. He tries to link into the shipboard systems to follow the conversations there, but someone has cut the external feed. And a few minutes after boarding, they leave, heads lowered, faces hard.