Elizabeth Moon - Winning Colors

Surprising tolerance from someone who had been Lorenza’s helpless victim, for someone planning to sue her family . . . family that had, however ineptly, tried to protect her interests. This was no time to argue, though. Heris looked away, and spotted another bit of scrap from the renovation.

“I don’t hate Piercy,” Cecelia said. “I don’t even hate Lorenza, although if she stood in front of me I would kill her without a second thought, as I would kill anyone that vile. I do hate to think of her running around loose somewhere.”

“I don’t think she is,” Heris said, glad to change the subject from the yacht. “A few of my crew—” Oblo, Meharry, Petris, and Sirkin, though she didn’t intend to mention names where anyone might have left a sensor. “—had a bone to pick with the individual who gave the orders that led to Yrilan’s death. The . . . er . . . remaining biological contaminants were salted into her quarters. In the ensuing investigation, it was discovered that she had a very efficient lethal chamber built into her counseling booths—”

“I didn’t hear about this—”

“Station Security didn’t allow it to be newsed. They thought it would cause panic, and they were probably right. Just the discovery of that many illicit biologicals could panic Station dwellers. Anyway, they also found items the lady could not account for, which apparently match with jewels known to the insurance databases as Lorenza’s.”

“And you found out because—?”

“I found out because I have the best damn datatech in or out of Fleet, milady, and that’s all I’ll say here and now.”

“Ah. Then suppose you come to my suite—if you still consider it my suite—and we’ll decide where your ship is headed, and whether I want to tag along.”

Cecelia’s furniture had been reinstalled, and they settled into her study. Cecelia looked around nodding. “I do like the effect of that striped brocade with the green carpet,” she said finally. “Although I’m not sure about the solarium yet.”

“I thought you were going to restock it with miniatures,” Heris said.

“I was—but I keep thinking that I could go back to riding—” She meant competition, Heris understood, just as she herself would have meant “the Fleet” if she’d said “return to space.”

“I like the ferns,” Heris said, watching the miniature waterfall in the solarium; she preferred falling water to any sort of fake wildlife.

“One thing I will insist on, if you’re to have me for a passenger, is a crew no more than half ex-military.” Cecelia leaned back in her chair, with an expression that made it clear she meant what she’d said.

Heris bit back the first thing she could have said, took a deep breath, and asked, “Why?” Skoterin, probably, but surely Cecelia ought to realize that Skoterin had been more than balanced by that crew of civilian layabouts and incompetents she’d had before. This didn’t surprise her, but she’d hoped Cecelia would be less blunt about it.

“Not just Skoterin,” Cecelia said, as if she’d read Heris’s mind. “I know you can argue that my original civilian crew was just as full of lethal mistakes. Of course not all ex-military are crooks or traitors, nor are all civilians honest and hardworking. But what bothered me was your inability to see past the distinction yourself. You had had superb performance from that girl Sirkin all through the earlier trouble; you had been so happy with her. And you were willing to believe that she went bad when even I, isolated as I then was, could spot sabotage.”

Heris nodded slowly. “You’re right; I did make a mistake—”

“Not a mistake, my dear: a whole series of them. You misjudged her not once but repeatedly. That’s my point. You have a pattern, understandable but indefensible, of believing that the military is more loyal, more honorable, than most civilians. You even told me that Sirkin was ‘as good as Fleet’ more than once. And your inability to see past that pattern nearly got us all killed.” She grinned, as if to take the sting out of it. It didn’t work. “I’m doing this for your own good, Heris—as one of my early riding instructors used to say when making us post without stirrups by the hour. You have chosen to live in a civilian world; you must learn how to trust those of us who can be trusted, and recognize deceit even in former shipmates.”

“And you think the way to do this is to hire civilians.” That came out flat, with an edge of sarcasm. She didn’t like that “chose to live in a civilian world.” If there’d been any other way . . .

“I think the way to do it is to admit what went wrong and work on correcting it. Isn’t that what you would do if an admiral pointed out a characteristic error?”

Heris wanted to say that Cecelia was no admiral, but she had to admit the logic of Cecelia’s argument. She had mistaken the cause of Sirkin’s problem; she had not even looked for sabotage, not seriously. “I don’t want to fire any of our present crew,” she began, crossing mental fingers as she told herself that Koutsoudas, not yet aboard, still counted as “present crew.”

“No need. Just hire civilians for a while. Like Brun.” Heris almost glared. Had she set this up with Bunny, as much to force a civilian crew on Heris as to help Brun? Cecelia smiled at her. “I’m sure you can find others, perhaps not as good as Sirkin, but good enough. Think of recruits, if you must, rather than the trained people you had. Surely there were good and bad recruits.”

“Oh yes.” Heris chuckled in spite of herself, remembering a miserable tour as an officer in charge of basic training. She had hated it, and she hadn’t been very good at it. Of course there had been bad recruits—Zitler, for instance, who had come into the Fleet convinced that he could make a fortune manufacturing illicit drugs aboard ship. Or the skinny girl from some mining colony who had gotten all the way through medical screening without anyone noticing she had parasites.

“There you are, then,” Cecelia said. “It’s just a matter of overcoming your biases.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Heris, with enough emphasis that Cecelia should know when to quit. She hoped. It was unnerving to see all those years of experience in the bright eyes across from her. She began to understand why Cecelia had been reluctant to have rejuv treatments before.

“I don’t see why it makes the least difference,” Ronnie said, into Raffaele’s dark hair. “I didn’t go along with my family; you know that. I’m the one who got Aunt Cecelia out of that nursing home. Why should your parents take it out on me?”

“They’re not taking it out on you,” Raffaele said. “They’re pulling their investments out of your parents’ operations, and they don’t think that’s a good time to discuss marriage settlements.”

“But will they come around later?” He didn’t want later; he wanted right this minute. But with Raffaele, pressure wouldn’t work.

“I don’t know, Ron. They’re seriously annoyed with your parents, and they don’t see your prospects improving any time soon. They think you’ll be under a cloud politically—”

“Hang politics!” Ronnie said. “I have enough; you have enough; we could go off somewhere and just live—”

“But you have a Seat in Council now—”

“As long as that lasts,” Ronnie said under his breath. While daily life seemed to be unchanged, the political structure had shifted back and forth dramatically in the past few weeks.

“They don’t want trouble between us because you’re voting your family stock, and your Seat, and they’re voting against you. And don’t say it wouldn’t cause trouble, because look how angry you are now.”