Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

Her father would never have put up with this mess. On Altiplano, the military medical service was firmly and formally subordinate to the operational command. Yes, and that’s how he was able to conceal your trauma , her memory prompted. No one was going to argue with the hero of the war . . . .

That wasn’t fair. She wasn’t even sure it had been a military hospital. She wasn’t going to think about it anyway. She put the displays away; she understood the command structure well enough now. She could start preparing for her presentation to the discussion group in two days.

The Koskiusko had a personnel complement the size of a small city or large orbital station, and the officer list alone was as large as the crew of any normal ship. Esmay knew that, in the intellectual sense, but when she saw the mass of ensigns jamming the lecture hall and crowding the passage outside, numbers became experience.

“You’re not all in the tactics discussion group, surely,” she said to Ensign Dettin, who had offered to introduce her.

“No, sir. But a lot of others wanted to come—I’ll have to shift some of them out, because they’re overloading the compartment . . .” She could see that. All the seats had been taken long ago; ensigns were crowded knee to knee in front, and were sitting squashed together in the aisles and in back. They were jamming the passage outside, too.

She watched Dettin trying to shoo them back out, to no avail. She should, she realized, have told someone more senior about this . . . if she’d thought it would be more than a dozen or so ensigns, she would have. Dettin wasn’t getting anywhere, and it was her responsibility. She reached for the microphone. “Excuse me,” she said. Silence fell, chopping off words in mid-utterance. “How many of you are regular members of the tactics discussion group?”

A few hands went up, about what she’d expected originally.

“This meeting was scheduled for that group,” Esmay said. “We can’t have a mob scene like this; it’s not safe. Those of you who are not members of the discussion group will have to leave, until we’re sure we have seating for that group, and then we’ll see how many others we can accommodate.”

Low mutters of protest, but these were ensigns and she was a full lieutenant now. Squirming awkwardly, those crammed into the aisles began to stand up; those in front waited, perhaps hoping for a reprieve, but Esmay gave them a stern look. Slowly, more awkwardly than necessary, they heaved themselves up and shuffled out. She could hear raised voices from the passage, but first things first. Some of those in seats were now standing; some sat as if glued in place. She hoped those were all discussion group members.

“Ensign Dettin.” He looked mildly embarrassed. “Make sure all the discussion group have seats—you know them all, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When they’re seated, and if it’s agreeable to the others, I don’t mind having any spare seats filled. But that’s all.”

“Sir.” He glanced around, his lips moving as he ran down some internal list. “All here but two—they may be outside.”

“Go check on them. By name.”

He made his way up the crowded aisle and called out into the passage. A knot of ensigns congealed in the opening, and finally two more elbowed their way in. That left seats for another two dozen, Esmay figured. She wished she knew a fair way to allocate those seats, but it was too late for that. More quickly than they’d left, more ensigns came in until all seats were filled.

Dettin introduced her, excitement edging his voice. The lights dimmed, except where she stood. The eager young faces faded into a blur with highlights of eyes and teeth. She had not expected that, but after standing in the glare of flag officers’ disapproval, she was not about to crumple in a merely visual spotlight.

She had prepared a display cube with the same information given in court: the geometry of the Xavier system, the disposition of Fleet vessels, available Xavieran and civilian vessels, the number and armament of the invaders. She had been over this so many times, for her counsel and for Board of Inquiry and for the court-martial, that she could have explained in her sleep just how outnumbered Serrano had been even before Hearne defected.

When she put up the first display, a faint sigh came from her audience. Breathless silence while she spoke, reciting the familiar sequence. Some of it she knew only by report, and she said that. But the events themselves were so compelling that no one seemed to mind: the Benignity intrusion, the lagging pair of Benignity ships . . . possibly a new tactic, possibly malfunction. No one knew for sure. The successful attack on those ships, the damage to one assault carrier, the effective ambush of the killer-scout sent to form its own ambush. The long and dangerous harrying of the invaders in their course to Xavier, the loss of the space station, the damage to the Xavieran cities.

“Only a scorch, after all,” she heard someone mutter. She stopped short; silence returned, thick and tense. She could not see, against the glare of light focussed on her, who had spoken.

“ Only a scorch . . . someone thinks a scorch is a minor problem? Let me show you video . . .” She switched to that, the former capital of Xavier on one side of the screen, as it had been, a small city of wide streets and low stone buildings, gardens and tree-shaded parks. That was file footage from Fleet databanks; Xavier’s own records had all been destroyed.

On the half screen, an uneven field of rubble, the shattered remains of trees, the languid columns of smoke twisting in their own heat, a damage assessment team from Fleet in their protective gear. The video pickup had zoomed in on dead bodies, human and animal. Esmay recognized a dead horse, if no one else did. “All population centers,” Esmay said, “were reduced like this. Fire destroyed outlying settlements, as well as millions of hectares of pasture and farm crops. A ‘scorch’ is intended to leave the planet barely habitable for the Benignity’s own troops, with return to agricultural production in three to five years. That doesn’t leave much for the people who live there.”

“But weren’t they all killed?” someone asked.

“No, thanks to the foresight of Commander Serrano and their own government. Most of the population survived in remote regions—they have caves, I heard—but their economic base is gone. It will take a generation or two just to recover what they lost.” She could imagine the sequence; Altiplano had suffered similar damage during the Succession Wars when their Founder had died. The years of hunger, while they reestablished their agricultural base. The years after that when just enough to eat was no longer enough. As distant as they were, they could not expect much help from the rest of the Familias, once some new crisis caught public attention.

Silence again, this time with a different flavor.

“Let’s begin with the situation as it first appeared to Commander Serrano.” Esmay changed displays, to show the Xavier system again. “Xavier had been troubled by periodic incursions over the past few years, that appeared to be independent raiders of some sort. These had threatened the orbital station, and in fact had damaged it on more than one occasion. Xavier’s defense consisted of outmoded, under-supported Demoiselle-class ships, of which only one was really space-worthy by the present. The others had been cannibalized for parts to keep that one working. Xavier is off regular passenger service, and ships out its agricultural products—mostly large-animal semen, ova, and frozen embryos—aboard locally-owned private vessels. Nearly all its mining production is used locally, for building up the infrastructure.”