Jack Campbell - Guardian

She sighed, looking upward. “And after you got us through enigma space, and Kick space, and beat the Kicks and the enigmas and the Syndics again, and didn’t throw him to the wolves because he made some mistakes during the battle at Honor, Badaya is one of your closest allies now regardless of what you do. Which makes it a real shame that I can’t stand the man, but what are you going to do?”

“I hope you’re right. Fleet headquarters has also been oddly silent. We haven’t received any rants from them, any demands to yield important ships or personnel to immediate reassignment, nothing except routine acknowledgment of the reports we’ve forwarded.”

“Do you want my opinion again?”

“You know I do.”

“Yes.” Desjani waved again in the general direction in which fleet headquarters lay numerous light-years distant. “I think they’re scared of you and trying to figure out what to do next.”

“Tanya—”

“I am serious. They thought they had screwed you. Different parts of fleet headquarters thought they had handed you a rotten job and tripped you up in different ways, and at the best you were going to limp home with your reputation and your fleet in shreds. Instead, you came home having far exceeded the scope of your orders, the fleet mostly intact, and won the day for humanity!” Desjani nodded at him. “You’ve got them scared. They’re wondering if you can be beat.”

That was not good news, but it would explain the mysterious silence from fleet headquarters, and perhaps the increased disarray on the grand council. “I hope you’re wrong because I don’t want people trying to think up ever-more-challenging ways to beat me.”

Last time they had lost Orion , and Brilliant , and the- Invincible -before-the-latest- Invincible , along with a number of smaller warships. He didn’t want any more ships and their crews to die because various people were separately trying to figure out how to beat him instead of jointly trying to figure out how to save the Alliance.

Two days before departure, and Geary had to pry more time out of his day in order to grant a request from the senior fleet physician for a meeting. He greeted Dr. Nasr as the physician debarked from a shuttle onto Dauntless . Despite their many face-to-face conversations, this was the first time they had had actually met.

Dr. Nasr looked tired and sad. Geary had often seen him tired, especially in the wake of battles when the fleet’s medical staff had bent every effort to save every injured man and woman they could. But the sadness was a different thing.

“What brings you to Dauntless ?” Geary asked.

“May we speak privately?” Dr. Nasr requested.

“My stateroom?”

“I would be honored, Admiral.”

They walked through the ship’s passageways, Nasr silent and carrying a thermal carafe. Once inside Geary’s stateroom, with the hatch sealed, the doctor carefully removed the lid of the carafe and brought out two small, white, porcelain glasses, which he set on Geary’s desk. The doctor then poured a dark, steaming liquid into each glass, not spilling a drop, his every move that of someone used to the most careful and precise motions.

Nasr offered one of the glasses to Geary. “Coffee, Admiral. A special blend. Will you drink a toast with me?”

“Certainly,” Geary said, taking the small glass gingerly. It was warm from the coffee, but not painfully so. “What are we toasting?”

“Our efforts, our failure, the eternal struggle of humans to do what is right, the eternal disagreement on what right is, and the death of the last two bear-cows.”

Geary halted his movement with the glass poised near his lips. “They’re dead?”

“Yes. Please drink, Admiral.”

He finished raising the glass, tasting a powerful, bitter, yet smooth coffee that he could feel flowing all the way down to his stomach. “What happened?” Even though the news had been expected, even though there had been nothing else he could have done, Geary still felt a great sorrow at the news. Now he understood Dr. Nasr’s sadness.

“The Shilling Institute was keeping them alive, doing a very creditable job,” Nasr said, lowering his own now-empty glass. “But the bear-cows were taken from the Shilling Institute.”

“The government?”

“No. The courts.” Nasr shrugged. “Well-meaning individuals, well-meaning groups, claimed that the bear-cows deserved a chance to speak on their own behalf, to express their own wishes, to not be kept in what they called a living death. I understand. I was not happy with it, either. But I knew it was all we could do. However, the courts did what they felt obligated to do. They appointed lawyers to act as guardians for the bear-cows, to speak for them in court. And the lawyers argued very well that the bear-cows must be given the same rights as humans.”

Geary sat down heavily, shaking his head. “But they’re not humans. That doesn’t mean they are less than us, but it does mean you can’t use our standards with them. They think differently than we do.”

“So the Shilling Institute argued,” Dr. Nasr said, sitting down opposite Geary. “I was called to testify. I spoke of my experiences with treating the bear-cows. I showed them my medical records. Let them awake, and they would die by willed suicide. It was that simple.”

“But they didn’t believe you.”

Nasr frowned at the deck. “It is a difficult argument, Admiral, to claim that the best treatment for a thinking creature is to keep it forever unconscious. The lawyers, the courts, the well-meaning individuals and groups, they did not want to believe me. Custody was given to the court-appointed guardians. The bear-cows were moved to another medical facility. Well-meaning individuals gathered about them, ready to welcome a new species into friendship with humanity, the sedation was reduced until awareness came to the two bear-cows, and, five seconds later, both were dead.”

The doctor shook his head. “One of the well-meaning people came from the room, looked at me, and cried why? And I said, because they are who they are, not who you wanted them to be.”

“Damn,” Geary whispered.

“It was inevitable, Admiral. You and I deluded ourselves. We did what we would do for humans. Keep them alive and try to find a solution. But any solution is far off. You know some blame you for the awful slaughter of the bear-cows when capturing their ship. I have never been comfortable with that battle, yet I also knew we tried everything we could to avoid such a slaughter. Some commentators outside the fleet, though, have assigned us sole blame for the deaths of the bear-cows, for any hostilities with the bear-cows.”

“I know,” Geary said. “I’ve heard that. Half of the critics claim we caused it because those critics distrust the government, and the other half claim we caused it because those critics distrust the military. There don’t seem to be a lot who are willing to consider the possibility that the Kicks might have had their own reasons for acting.”

“There are many,” Nasr said. “Many who note our attempts to communicate and avoid fighting. But those are not nearly as loud as the others.” The doctor’s tone took on an acid edge of bitterness as he continued. “I have never before been accused of malpractice, not until now. In the court, they said I must have caused the deaths of the other bear-cows by somehow radiating an attitude that led the bear-cows who gained consciousness to assume they had to immediately kill themselves.”

“You’re being blamed?” Geary asked, appalled. “Nobody cared more for the fate of those creatures than you did.”

“But there must be a villain, Admiral.” Nasr sighed heavily. “I was not permitted in the room, or near the room, where they awakened the bear-cows. I understand from those who were there that the well-meaning individuals were offering wide smiles of welcome to the bear-cows as the sedation was reduced.”