Jack McDevitt - A Talent for War

His mood grew darker as the long retreat continued. And when two more ships from his diminished squadron were lost at Como Des, his anger flared: There will be a Confederacy one day, he says wearily, but they mil not construct it on the bodies of my men! It is the same voice that indicted the Spartans.

WE RETURNED TO the Centaur for a meal, and some sleep. But the sleep came late: we talked for several hours, speculating on what had finally happened to the captain and crew of the Corsarius. Had the Tenandrome found remains on board? And possibly conducted a funeral service? A ritual volley, report home, and forget it? Pretend none of it ever happened?

"I don’t think so," said Chase.

"Why not?"

"Tradition. The captain of the Tenandrome would have been bound, if she took such action, to have closed out the Corsarius’s log with a final entry." She looked out at the old warship. Its running lights glowed white and red against the hard sky. "No: I’d bet they found her the same way we did. She’s a dutchman." She folded her arms tightly across her breast as though it were cool in the cabin. "Maybe the mutes captured the ship, spirited away the crew, and left it here for us to find and think about. An object lesson."

"Out here? How would they expect us to find it?"

Chase shook her head, and closed her eyes. "Are we going back over?"

"We don’t have any answers yet."

She moved in the dark, and soft music crept into the compartment. "There may not be any over there."

"What do you think Scott’s been looking for all these years?"

"I don’t know."

"He found something. He went through that ship, the same as we did, and he found something."

While we talked, Chase took us out another few kilometers, smiling ruefully, but admitting that the derelict made her nervous.

I could not get out of my mind the image of a Christopher Sim in despair. It had never occurred to me that he, of all people, could have doubted the eventual outcome of the war. It was a foolish notion, of course, to assume that he’d had the advantage of my hindsight. He turns out to be quite human. And in that despair, in his concern for the lives of his comrades, and the people whom he tried to defend, I sensed an answer to the deserted vessel.

There will be a Confederacy one day; but they will not construct it on the bodies of my men.

Long after Chase had gone to sleep. I tried to tabulate everything I could recall or guess about the Ashiyyur, the Seven, Sim’s probable state of mind, and the Rigellian Action.

It was difficult to forget the guns of the Corsarius turning in my direction during the simul. But that, of course, was not how it had happened: Sim’s ploy had worked. Corsarius and Kudasai had succeeded in surprising the attacking ships. They’d done some serious damage before Corsarius had been incinerated in its duel with the cruiser. That at least was the official account.

It obviously hadn’t happened that way either. And I wondered, too, why Sim had changed his strategy at Rigel. During his long string of successes, he’d always led the Dellacondans personally. But on this one occasion, he’d preferred to escort Kudasai during the main assault, while his frigates drove a knife into the flank of the enemy fleet.

And Kudasai had carried the surviving brother to his death only a few weeks later at Nimrod. But Tarien lived long enough to know that his diplomatic efforts had succeeded: Earth and Rimway had joined hands at last, had promised help, and Toxicon had already joined the war.

The Seven: somehow it connected with the tale of the Seven. How did it happen that their identities were lost to history? Was it coincidence that the single most likely source of their names, the log of the Corsarius, was also mute on the subject, and in fact mute on the battle itself? What had Chase said? It could not have happened!

No: it could not.

And somewhere, along the slippery edge of reality and intuition that precedes sleep, I understood. With a clear and cold certainty, I understood. And, had I been able, I would have put it out of my mind, and gone home.

Chase slept fitfully for a couple of hours: When she woke, it was dark again, and she asked what I intended to do.

I was beginning to grasp the quandary of the Tenandrome. Christopher Sim, however he might have died, was far more than simply a piece of history. We were embroiled with the central symbols of our political existence. "I don’t know," I said. "This place, this world, is a graveyard. It’s a graveyard with a guilty secret."

Chase looked down at the frosty, cloud-swept rim of the world. "Maybe you’re right," she said. "All the bodies are missing. The bodies are missing, the names are missing, the log entries are missing. And the Corsarius, which should be missing, is circling like clockwork, every six hours and eleven minutes."

"They intended to come back," I said. "They put the ship into storage. That implies someone expected to come back."

"But they didn’t," she said. "Why not?"

During the entire history of Hellenic civilization, I know of no darker, nor more wanton crime, than the needless sacrifice of Leonidas and his band of heroes at Thermopylae. Better that Sparta should fall than that such men be squandered. "Yes," I said, "where are the bodies?"

Through a shaft in the clouds, far below, the sea glittered.

The Centaur’s capsule was designed to permit movement from ship to ship, or from orbit to a planetary surface. It was not intended for the sort of use I proposed to put it to: a long atmospheric flight. It would be unstable in high winds, it would be cramped, and it would be relatively slow. Still, it could set down on land or water. And it was all we had.

I loaded it with supplies, enough to last several days.

"Why?" asked Chase. "What’s down there?"

"I’m not sure," I said. "I’ll keep the videos on."

"I have a better idea: let’s both go."

I was tempted. But my instinct was that someone should stay with the ship.

"They’re all a long time dead, Alex. What’s the point?"

"Talino," I said. "And the others. We owe something to them. The truth should have some value."

She looked dismayed. "What am I supposed to do," she objected, "if you get in trouble? I won’t be able to come down after you to bail you out."

"I’ll be all right. If not, if something happens, go for help."

She sneered, thinking how long it would take to make the round trip. "Be careful."

We ran through the various systems checks. "Don’t go to manual until you’re down," she said. "And probably not then. The computers will do all the tricky stuff. You’re just along for the ride." She’d been staring at me.

I reached for her, but she stiffened and drew away, shaking her head. "When you come back," she said, so softly I could barely hear.

I climbed into the vehicle, pulled the canopy down, and secured it. She rapped on it twice, gave me a thumbs-up, turned quickly, and left the bay. I watched the lights change over the exit door, signaling that the chamber was sealed.

Her image popped onto my display. "All set?"

I smiled gamely and nodded.

Red lamps in the bay went purple, then green. The deckplates opened beneath the capsule, and I was looking down at wisps of cloud and a gem-blue ocean. "Thirty seconds to launch, Alex."

"Okay." I locked my eyes on the instrument panel.

"It’ll be late afternoon when you get down there," she said. "You’ll have about three hours until dark."

"Okay."

"Stay in the capsule tonight. You have no idea at all what sort of place this is. In fact, you should probably stay aloft. Keep off the ground altogether in the dark."