Stephen Baxter: Exultant

Pirius turned away, his heart thumping.

Nilis immediately conceded the accuracy of the reconstruction. “I’m not here to pick holes in a story told fully and honestly by three very honorable young people. And I’m not here to question, either, the central charge against Pirius: that he disobeyed orders both standing and direct in the course of the action. Of course he did; he doesn’t deny it himself. I’m not here to ask you to set aside self- evident fact.”

The old general asked dryly, “Then why are you here, Commissary?” Muffled laughter.

Nilis rose up to his full height. “To ask you to think,” he said grandly. “To think for yourselves — just as Pirius did, in extremis. We must think beyond mere orders. Why obey a pointless order if it will cost you your life, and the lives of your crew, and your ship, and gain absolutely nothing? Isn’t it better to put aside that order, to flee, to return — as Pirius self-evidently has done — and to fight again another day? Isn’t it obvious that Pirius disobeyed his orders the better to fulfill his duty?”

Pirius was shocked. If one thing had been drummed into him more than anything else since his birth, it was: orders are everything. He could tell from the thunderous expressions on the bench how well that sort of sophistry was going down with the service personnel.

Nilis went on in detail to analyze Dans’s use of the “Brun maneuver” — he described it as “the ingenious use of a closed timelike curve in a computing algorithm” — which he considered the crux of Pirius’s innovatory tactic. “Thanks to these two brave pilots, Pirius and Dans, at last we have a way, at least in principle, of overcoming the Xeelee’s single biggest advantage over us: their computing resource. This will need further investigation, of course, but surely you see that that alone is an achievement far beyond the dreams of most warriors in this endless war. And then, on top of that, Pirius brought home a Xeelee, a captive nightfighter! The information we will acquire may — no, will — transform our prospects in this conflict.” He paused, breathing hard.

Pirius had never heard a speech like this. Nobody talked about victory — not victory anytime soon, anyhow. The war wasn’t to be won, it was to be endured. Victory would come, but it was for future generations. The brass on the bench weren’t impressed by Nilis’s grandiose declarations either.

And Nilis proceeded to make things a thousand times worse.

“Sirs, once again I urge you to think. Rise above yourselves! Rise above your petty rivalries! Isn’t it true that soldiers of the Green Army habitually resent Strike Arm for the perceived luxury of their bases? Isn’t it true that Navy officers traditionally imagine that the Commission knows nothing of the pressures on warriors, even though the Commission plays such a significant role in running the war? And as for we of the Commission, are the Doctrines really so fragile that we fear their breaking even in such an extraordinary case — even in a case where a brave officer is simply overriding a pointless order for the sake of prosecuting his duty more effectively?” And so on. By the time Nilis was done insulting everybody, Pirius knew that any chance of the case going his way, if there had ever been one, was lost.

The panel’s deliberation was brief. The president of the court took only a few seconds to announce its verdict.

For his gross violation of orders, Pirius Blue was to be demoted, and transferred to a penal unit at the Front. Pirius Red knew, everybody knew, that such a posting was tantamount to a death penalty. It was scarcely more of a shock when the court announced that Pirius’s crew, Cohl and Tuta, would be transferred along with him for their “complicity” in his “crimes.”

And, in an almost causal afterthought, the president announced that Pirius Red, the pilot’s younger version, would likewise be transferred to a penal Rock. There were reassignments, lesser punishments, for the younger versions of Cohl, Tuta, and Dans.

By now Pirius understood the theory of temporal-paradox law. But he found this impossible to take in.

Once the president was done speaking, Nilis was immediately on his feet again. He announced his intention to appeal the verdict. And he requested that in the interim he have both Pirius Red and Pirius Blue assigned to his personal retinue. He would act as guarantor of their behavior, and he would seek to make best use of their services in the betterment of mankind’s greater goals.

The panel conferred again. It seemed some bargain was done. The judges did not dispute Nilis’s right to appeal. They would not allow Pirius Blue, as prime perpetrator of this anti-Doctrinal lapse, to escape the sentence passed down, but as a gesture of leniency they placed Pirius Red, the younger copy, in Nilis’s care.

Nilis got up one more time, to make a final, angry denunciation of the court. “For the record let me say that this shameful charade is in microcosm a demonstration of why we will never win this war. I refer not only to your sclerotic decision-making processes, and the lethality of your interagency rivalry, but also to the simple truth of this case: that a man who defeated a Xeelee is not lauded as a hero but prosecuted and brought down…”

It was stirring stuff. But the automated monitor was the only witness; the court was already emptying.

Pirius stood, bewildered. He saw faces turned to him, Torec, Captain Seath, even Pirius Blue, his older self, but they seemed remote, unreadable, as if they were blurred. So that was that, it seemed, Pirius’s life trashed and taken away from him in a summary judgment, for a “crime” he hadn’t even had the chance to commit.

He shouted down at Pirius Blue, “This is all your fault.”

Pirius Blue looked up from his lower tier and laughed bleakly. “Well, maybe so. But how do you think I feel? Do you know what’s the worst thing of all? That mission, my mission, is never even going to happen.”

Then he was led away. Pirius Red didn’t expect to see him again.

Here was the broad, crumpled face of Nilis, like a moon hovering before him. “Ensign? Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem real. Sir, I don’t want to be placed under your supervision. I only want to do my duty.”

Nilis’s expression softened. “And you think that if I pull you back from the Front, that pit of endless death, I’ll be stopping you from doing that? You think your duty is only to die, as so many others have before you?” The old man’s eyes were watery, as if he was about to cry. “Believe me,” Nilis said, “with me you will fulfill your duty — not by dying, but by living. And by helping me fulfill my vision. For I, alone of all the fools and stuffed shirts in this room, I have a dream.”

“A dream?”

Nilis bent close and whispered. “A dream of how this war may be won.” He smiled. “We leave tomorrow, Ensign; be ready at reveille.”

“Leave? Sir — where are we going?”

Nilis seemed surprised at the question. “Earth, of course!” And he walked away, his soiled black robe flapping at his heels.

Nilis’s corvette was a sleek arrow shape nuzzled against a port, one of a dozen strung along this busy Officer Country gangway.

Captain Seath herself escorted Pirius Red to the corvette. They were the first to get here; they had to wait for Nilis.

Pirius wasn’t sure why Seath had brought him here herself. It wasn’t as if he had any personal effects to be carried; he had been issued a fancy new uniform for the trip, and anything else he needed would be provided by the corvette’s systems, and it would never have occurred to him to take such a thing as a souvenir. Officially, she said, Seath was here to make sure Pirius “didn’t screw up again.” Pirius thought he detected something else, though, something softer under Seath’s scarred gruffness. Pity, perhaps? Or maybe regret; maybe Seath, as his commander, thought she could have done more to protect him from this fate.