An Officer’s Duty (67 page)

“That could backfire, you know,” Bennie warned her.

Ia wrinkled her nose, glancing at her friend. “Why do you think I’m so worried about winding up in the Dungeon? Come on, we’ve a long way to go and a short time to get there.”

“Are you sure you’re safe to travel this early in your convalescence?” Bennie asked her. “I’m not a doctor, if you go into a relapse.”

“Hello, precog?” Ia retorted, spreading her hands. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. OTL might exhaust me silly, but that’s it. Trust me, I’m disease-free. No more sepsis. At least, this year.”

The look Bennie shot her was definitely not an amused one. The corner of Ia’s mouth quirked upward anyway.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2495 T.S.
THE TOWER, TUPSF HEADQUARTERS
EARTH

The weight of her fully pinned Dress Black jacket, bundled up in her arms with the lining side out, was nowhere near as heavy as the lump in her stomach. Ia glanced at the chrono on her new command arm unit, which had been issued during her convalescence, then paced nervously back to the corridor junction for another peek around the corner.

The staff desk was still manned by the same brass-eagled major, still patiently going through whatever it was on his workstation
screen that lit up his Dress Greens uniform. Before he could glance her way, she paced back to where Bennie waited, ostensibly reading the history placard on the wall.

“You’ll have to quit doing that,” the chaplain stated under her breath. “He’s going to get suspicious.”

“He’s already suspicious,” Ia murmured back. “You don’t sit any post in the Tower without looking for enemies, whether they’re hiding in plain sight or lurking behind a potted tree. Particularly not in a post as sensitive as that one.”

“I’m not lurking behind a tree. The tree is merely next to me,” Bennie replied primly, nodding her head at the sculpted branches of the ficus next to the placard. “You’re the one who looks like she’s lurking.”

“That’s because I’m nervous,” Ia muttered.

“What’s there to be nervous about?” Bennie asked her. “Aren’t you Bloody Mary, scourge of the Salik? Besides, between what you’ve told me, and what I saw of the reactions from those three volunteers, all you have to do is flutter your fingers and
show
them what they need to know. Right?”

The very thought made her stomach churn. Ia shook her head. “No. I cannot cheat. It
has
to be done the honest way.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean?” Bennie asked, eyeing Ia with suspicion. “You promised me you’ve been playing everything as straight as you can, so far.”

“And I
have
, as much as anyone could in my position,” Ia replied. She started to say more, but fell silent. A few moments later, a trio of officers walked past, conversing quietly among themselves. She waited until they had passed out of earshot before continuing. “Bennie…the things I have asked of you, the things I haven’t yet explained, you have understood and agreed to follow because you have
faith
in me. You have lived on the same base ships as me, you have served with me, you have seen me in in the classroom and in action on the battlefield.

“The men and women I am about to face have
none
of that personal level of experience to back up their faith in me.” That wasn’t entirely true; there were at least two people in the minutes ahead who did have at least some personal experience with her. But it was true enough in the general sense. “However, the things I must do in the future
will
have to be undertaken on the fly, without any time to spare to explain myself in advance.

“The Future
does
shift, even under my feet,” she confessed. “I cannot win the battles that must be fought if I do not have their
trust
in me. And no amount of psychic legerdemain or mental chicanery will
prove
they have that trust in me, unless I win it blindly. The things I must do…I am facing a forty-one percent
failure
rate. But I have no choice I can live with, other than to try for my best shot at this.

“If I used my gifts, I
might
make it on my second-best chance, but second-best might not be enough. Particularly if I am accused of undue psychic influence, farther down the line. I
cannot
afford that kind of stain on my record.” Another check of her chrono made her clutch her jacket to her stomach. “Two more minutes—promise me you will stay out of this?”

“Since I still don’t quite know what ‘this’ is, you’re asking for some of that same blind faith out of
me
,” Bennie quipped. At Ia’s chiding look, she relented. “Alright, I promise. And if they throw you in the Dungeon, I promise to come and visit you, as you have asked. But only if you tell me why it’s so important for this…this Doctor Silverstone fellow to visit you in the Dungeon if things go nova in there.”

“Let’s just say he owes me two little favors,” Ia muttered, thinking of the Feyori she had met in basic training, and the preparatory meddling he was doing right now in the lives of his twin sons. Twins she had predicted several years ago. “But that would also be cheating. I need to win this argument on my own, so calling on him is a last-ditch effort only—it’s too important for me to win, Bennie. You have no idea how much. Enough
to
cheat, if in the end I must, but…that would create a host of new problems. I’d rather win through on my own.
If
I can.”

“So stop fretting, go forth, and
win
it,” Bennie ordered her.

Sighing roughly, Ia unfolded her jacket. She placed the black cap on her head and swung the heavily weighted material onto her arms. Shrugging into it, she focused on fastening the buttons. Bennie moved around her, adjusting the pins fastened to her sleeves and her back so that each medal and ribbon lay flat.

“You have an absolutely ridiculous number of awards and merits, young meioa-e, particularly for so few years on Border and Blockade Patrols,” the older woman fussed. “If they cannot see the high value their own armed forces have clearly placed on you, then they don’t deserve your faith in
them
. Faith is a
two-way street, after all.” A last adjustment of Ia’s lieutenant bars, a slight twitch of the cap, and she stepped back. “There. God has faith in you. So do I. Now, go knock some of
our
belief into them.”

Her warm words and her soft smile made Ia feel slightly better, but they couldn’t dispel the knot of anxiety tightening inside her stomach. Squaring her shoulders, Ia walked around the corner. The major seated at the staff desk glanced up at her. He seemed to still be focused on his work, but she knew he was watching her carefully as she approached.

Except she didn’t approach him, but rather the airlock-thick doors next to his desk.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant, but where do you think you’re going?” he challenged her.

“I have an appointment to keep with the Command Staff, Major.” Stopping in front of the doors, she reached for the security codes with her mind.

“The Command Staff is in a sealed conference, Lieutenant, and you are one step from being in a restricted…area…” He trailed off, frowning in confusion as the doors slid open in front of her. His hand reflexively grabbed for the pass key clipped to his waist, one of the physical components required for access on top of the ident scans, which she had not used. It was still there. “What the…?”

Ia stepped into the small room beyond the blast-proof doors, literally an airlock. She could hear the major scrabbling for the weapon stored at his desk, and triggered the doors a second time.

“That is a
restricted area
, Lieutenant, and you are
not
auth—”

The panels sealed shut. Ia relaxed marginally; at least now she couldn’t be shot in the back. Shot in the face, maybe, but not in the back.
One more obstacle,
she thought, working the security system electrokinetically. Part of her mind was keeping the emergency beacon paralyzed, despite the repeated thumping of the major’s fist. Part of her mind was focused on opening the inner doors at just the right moment without any advanced warning signs broadcast to the inner chamber.

Part of her was focused on the potential fallout from the very risky decision to cut off any warning signals from
inside the inner sanctum. The rest of her struggled against the urge to either turn tail and run, or double over and lose her lunch. Except she wisely hadn’t eaten any.
That’s the
only
wise thing about any of this. From this point on…the probabilities are stacked too close to each other to tell
which
way they’ll go. And I daren’t try to manipulate the system, not with a fellow psi about to watch my every move in there.

The doors slid open in time for her to hear the voice of Admiral-General Myang, right on cue. “…brings us to the issue of who will command Project Tita…Lieutenant!”

Ia strode into the room, fear squashed, determined to be brave. The schematics displayed on the screens lining the round chamber flickered and blipped off. She lifted her hand in dismissal. “Don’t bother, sirs. I’ve already seen it.”

“Lieutenant Ia!” Admiral-General Christine Myang snapped. She was seated in the center of the bottommost ring of five tiers of horseshoe-shaped tables, the only person in the room clad in solid black. The others around her were clad in the Dress Colors for their particular Branches. The head of the Space Force scowled at Ia, face reddening. “You have
five seconds
to explain your presence here!”

“Actually, sir, it’s supposed to be five minutes,” Ia countered, feigning calm. It took conscious effort to keep from letting her hands tremble, or from balling them into fists. Right fingers flat, she lifted them to the brim of her cap, her eyes on the grey-haired woman at the center of her vision. “Lieutenant First Grade Ia, requesting permission to perform a Shikoku Yamaneuver, sir.”

“I don’t see a starfighter anywhere,
soldier
,” one of the green-clad generals off to her left growled. “Request de—”

“Not
that
kind of Yamaneuver, General,” Ia countered, cutting him off, fingertips still angled at her brow. “I’m referring to the Star of Service Yamaneuver, sir. And I
don’t
mean the whitewashed, heavily edited version they teach to schoolchildren, sirs.”

Myang studied her a long moment, then returned Ia’s salute with a flick of her hand to her brow. “Do tell, Lieutenant.
Which
unedited version are you referring to?”

Ia dropped her arm and answered the older woman’s question. “The one where the Command Staff
didn’t
admit him
willingly to their presence. The one where he broke into their sanctum because they
refused
to give him a hearing regarding his idea that the Loyalist AIs could be, and should be, used to infiltrate the Rebel AIs in order to bring the AI War to a swifter end. The one where he
spat
on his Star of Service, and said that if everything that his many medals represented weren’t worth even so much as
five minutes
of the Command Staff’s time, sir…then they could go straight to hell, and be damned for dragging the rest of the United Planets with them.

“The one where the shock of his actions caused them to rethink their stubborn closed-mindedness, and call him back into their presence to listen to what he had to say.
That
Star of Service Yamaneuver, sir.” She held Myang’s gaze without wavering. The others around the room were important, but the Admiral-General was the keystone of her plan. If Ia failed to convince
her
, the rest would barely matter.

“There’s just one big flaw in your request, Lieutenant,” an admiral off to her right stated. “We are not currently at war, and we are definitely not
losing
that war.”

That turned her head. Ia stared at the blue-uniformed man. “Admiral Fulk. You may have not noticed, but the only reason why we
aren’t
at war is because I personally went to Sallha to
stop
it. That was their Eve of Battle Banquet. As soon as they finished eating us, they were going to
launch
the next Salik War. If I hadn’t stopped them—if I hadn’t
slaughtered
their high command, at great personal risk—we’d be eyebrow deep in body parts and broken ships by now, sir.”

“I don’t think—” he scoffed.

“No, Admiral, you
don’t
think.” That came from the tier behind him. Ia lifted her gaze to Admiral Viega, who was looking a lot better than the last time she had seen the other woman. Healthier and fully dressed, Viega stared down at Admiral Fulk. “That exact same information was in my debriefing report, two weeks ago. My captors told me that six Sallhan hours after the banquet, they were going to launch everything they had at us…And my captors boasted multiple times during my incarceration just how
much
they had ready to throw at us. I know they didn’t tell me everything, either.”