Elizabeth Moon: Once a Hero

“I didn’t!” Esmay said without thinking.

“I don’t think so myself. But right now there’s a crisis of confidence all over the Familias Regnant, and it has not spared the Regular Space Service. It was bad enough to discover that Lepescu was making sport of killing Fleet personnel, but to find that three traitorous captains could be dispatched to something like Xavier— that has shaken the confidence of Fleet Intelligence, as well it should. By all rights, you should be whisked through the obligatory court as quickly as possible, and then hailed as the hero you are—and don’t bother to deny it. You are. Unfortunately for you, circumstances are against you, and I expect you and your defense counsel will have a rugged few weeks. Nor is there anything I can do about it; right now my influence could only harm you.”

“That’s all right,” Esmay said. It wasn’t all right, not if she understood Admiral Serrano’s implications, but she could certainly see why the admiral couldn’t change reality. Growing up a senior officer’s daughter had taught her that, if nothing else. Power always had limits, and banging your head on them only hurt your head.

The admiral was still looking at her with that intense dark gaze. “I wish I knew you and your background better. I can’t even tell if you’re sitting there complacent, reasonably wary, or terrified . . . would you mind enlightening me?”

“Numb,” said Esmay honestly. “I’m certainly not complacent; I wasn’t complacent even before your warning. I know that young officers who get involved with mutinies, for whatever reason, always have a stained record. But whether I’m reasonably wary or terrified—that I don’t know myself.”

“Where did you develop that kind of control, then, if you don’t mind my asking? Usually our intakes from colonial planets are all too easy to read.”

It sounded like genuine interest; Esmay wondered if it was, and if she dared explain. “The admiral knows about my father . . . ?” she began.

“One of four sector commanders on Altiplano; I presume that means you grew up in some kind of military household. But most planetary militia are less . . . formal . . . than we are.”

“It began with Papa Stefan,” Esmay said. She was not entirely sure it had really begun there, because how had Papa Stefan accumulated the experience he passed on? “It’s not like Fleet, but there’s a hereditary military . . . at least, the leading families are.”

“But your file says you were raised on a farm of some sort?”

“Estancia,” Esmay said. “It’s—more than a farm. And fairly big.” Fairly big hardly described it; Esmay didn’t even know how many hectares were in the main holding. “But Papa Stefan insisted that all the children have some military training as they grew.”

“Not all military traditions value the absolute control of facial expression and emotion,” the admiral commented. “I gather yours does.”

“Mostly,” Esmay said. She couldn’t explain her own aversion to unnecessary display of emotion, without going into the whole family mess, Berthol and Sanni and the rest. Certainly Papa Stefan and her own father valued self-control, but not to the degree she practiced it.

“Well . . . I wanted you to know that you have my best wishes in this matter,” the admiral said. She was smiling, a smile that seemed warm and genuine. “After all, you saved my favorite niece—excuse me, Commander Serrano—and I won’t forget that, no matter what. I’ll be keeping an eye on your career, Lieutenant; I think you have more potential than even you suspect.”

Esmay had time to meditate on those words as the long arm of the Fleet’s judicial branch separated her from the other junior officers, put her aboard a courier-escort, and whisked her to Fleet Headquarters a full eight days before the others arrived. She met her defense counsel, a balding middle-aged major who looked more like a bureaucrat than an officer; he had the incipient paunch of someone who avoided the gym except in the last few weeks before the annual physical fitness test.

“It would’ve made sense for them to link the cases,” Major Chapin grumbled, poring over Esmay’s file. “Starting at the back end, you are the hero of Xavier; you saved the planet, the system, and an admiral’s niece’s ass. Unfortunately—”

“It was explained to me,” Esmay said.

“Good. At least none of the records are missing. We’ll need to prepare separately for the Captain’s Board of Inquiry and for each of the main threats of the court martial. I hope you have an organized mind—”

“I think so,” Esmay said.

“Good. For the time being, forget military protocol, if you can; I’m going to call you Esmay, and you’re going to call me Fred, because we have too much work to let formalities slow us down. Clear?”

“Yes, sir—Fred.”

“Good. Now—tell me everything you told the investigators, and then everything you didn’t tell them. The whole story of your life isn’t too long. I won’t get bored, and I don’t know what’s useful until I hear it.”

In the next days, Esmay found that Major Chapin meant what he’d said. She also found herself increasingly comfortable talking to him, which made her nervous. She reminded herself that she was a grownup, not a child who could throw herself at any friendly adult when she needed comfort. She even mentioned the nightmares, the ones connected to Xavier.

“You might want to consider a psych session,” he said. “If it’s bothering you that much.”

“It’s not now,” she said. “It was those first days after . . .”

“Sounds normal to me. If you’re sleeping well enough to stay alert . . . there’s an advantage in not going for a psych evaluation now, you see, because it might look as if we’re going to plead mental incompetence.”

“Oh.”

“But by all means, if you need it—”

“I don’t,” Esmay said firmly.

“Good . . . now about this petty thievery you said was plaguing the enlisted lockers . . .”

Circumstances conspired to shift the date of the court martial so that the Captain’s Board met first. Major Chapin grumbled about this, too.

“You don’t take counsel to a Board of Inquiry, so you’ll have to remember everything we’ve talked about by yourself. You can always ask for a short recess and come ask me, but it leaves a bad impression. Damn it—I wanted you to have experience before you went in alone.”

“Can’t be helped,” Esmay said. He looked mildly surprised, which almost annoyed her. Had he expected her to complain when it could do no good? To make a useless fuss, and to him?

“I’m glad you’re taking it that way. Now—if they don’t bring up the matter of the damage to the nav computer, you have two choices—” That session went on for hours, until Esmay felt she understood the point of Chapin’s advice, as well as the advice itself.

The morning the Board hearing began, Chapin walked her into the building and all the way to the anteroom where he would wait in case she asked for a recess and his guidance. “Chin up, Lieutenant,” he said as the door opened. “Keep in mind that you won the battle and didn’t lose your ship.”

The Board of Inquiry made no allowances for the irregular way in which Esmay had arrived in command of Despite , or so it seemed from the questions. If a Jig commanded in battle, that jig had better know what she was doing, and every error Esmay made came up.

Even before the next senior officer died of wounds, why had she not prepared for command—surely that mess on the bridge could have been cleaned up faster? Esmay, remembering the near-panic, the need to secure every single compartment, check every single crew member, still thought there were more important things than cleaning blood off the command chair. She didn’t say that, but she did list the other emergencies that had seemed more pressing. The Board chair, a hard-faced one-star admiral Esmay had never heard anything about, good or bad, listened to this with compressed lips and no expression she could read.