Emerald Heights Tower,
City of Landing,
Planet Manticore,
Star Kingdom of Manticore,
Manticore Binary System,
April 1851 PD.
For all their estrangement, Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou reflected, his sister was definitely their mother’s daughter. They might have become the proverbial irresistible force and the immovable object, but under the skin . . .
He sat at the small table in the kitchen, watching Allison carefully check the oven. Like their mother, she disdained the top-of-the-line auto chef in one corner. No doubt she did use it . . . for breakfast, perhaps, or other times she and Alfred were too rushed to cook. But under more sedate circumstances? Never! For her, cooking was as much therapy as a means of actually feeding people, and Alfred was almost as bad. In fact, he’d spent the last couple of years introducing her—thoroughly—to the Star Kingdom’s cuisine. Today, though, she’d opted for roasted Beowulf shellbuck in Jacques’s honor, and he inhaled its fragrance appreciatively as she closed the oven door.
“That smells delicious, Alley!”
“It does, does it?” She smiled at him. “You know, if you came to visit more than once every, oh, nine or ten T-months, you might get to smell it more often.”
“Guilty as charged,” he acknowledged. “The schedule’s just so damned crazy lately. That’s not much of an excuse, I know, with Beowulf right on the other side of the Junction, but it’s the best I’ve got.”
“Tell us about ‘crazy schedules’!” Alfred said, stepping in from the apartment balcony.
The crystoplast doors slid shut behind him, locking out the midday heat. Landing was right on Manticore’s equator. It was far warmer than Grendel, back on Beowulf, at any time, and today’s temperature was just over thirty-three degrees.
Alfred carried the four large, ripe tomatoes he’d taken from the balcony garden across to the sink, washed them, and began dicing them—with, Jacques observed, an old-fashioned knife, not the auto chef—to prepare fresh pico de gallo. Jack watched his brother-in-law’s hands. For all Alfred’s size, they moved with the precision of the surgeon he’d become.
“Your schedule is getting crazier?” Jacques asked, and Alfred snorted.
“No, it’s been crazy. We thought it was going to get less crazy, now that Alley’s finished her residency. But it’s not.”
“It’s not?” Jacques’s eyebrows rose. “I thought your last letter said the two of you were going to have more time together.”
“We thought that, too,” Allison said, beginning to peel potatoes while Alfred worked on the pico. “It appears we were in error, however, which is one reason we’re so glad you found time to accept this invitation, Jacques. When we extended it, we thought it would just be a ‘celebrating Alfred’s promotion’ party, but we were wrong.” She grimaced. “Turns out it’s a ‘going away’ party, too.”
“Going away?” Jacques frowned, then looked at Alfred. “Should I assume the person doing the going happens to be extremely tall, male, newly promoted to lieutenant commander, and married to my baby sister?”
“You should, indeed.” Alfred finished chopping tomatoes and started on the onion. “The only good news is that BuPers is a lot like the mills of the gods. It may not be overly concerned with justice, but it does grind exceedingly fine, and occasionally, at least, it also grinds slowly. Which means sometimes you get at least some warning before your new orders strike.”
“I thought you were firmly ensconced at Bassingford.”
“Alley’s right. You really ought to drop in more often.” Alfred scraped finely cut onion from the chopping board into a bowl. “You do realize we just celebrated our fifth anniversary? If you visited a little more often, we might be able to share our surprises while they’re still surprises to us. It would appear I’ve been such a good little worker bee at Bassingford that they’ve decided to jump me ahead in the box-checking queue. You’re looking at the chief surgeon (designate) for HMS Scepter. She’s just begun a five-month overhaul, so the yard dogs have her right now, and the appointment doesn’t become effective until October, when she recommissions.”
“Really?” Jacques sat back in his chair. “She’s . . . what? A battlecruiser?”
“Yes, she is.” Alfred looked over his shoulder at his brother-in-law. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Jacques waved one hand, and Alfred turned completely around to fold his arms across his chest. Jacques looked at him innocently, then shrugged.
“Well, actually, I was thinking that chief surgeon aboard a battlecruiser on an independent deployment is something of a professional compliment. Even I know that!”
“I didn’t say anything about independent deployments. In fact, nobody’s said anything to me about independent deployments.”
“Oh.” Jacques looked a bit embarrassed. “Well, it’s just that somebody mentioned she’s supposed to be heading for Silesia once she gets out of the yard.”
“Most of the Navy ‘heads for Silesia’ at one time or another,” Alfred pointed out. “Well, most of the Navy smaller than a dreadnought. But should I feel more than usually suspicious over the fact that you know that’s where my ship is deploying?”
“It’s nothing devious!” Jacques held up both hands. “It’s just that the BSC’s sending a team to Silesia sometime in the next year or so. And we tend to coordinate ops like that with your Navy.” He shrugged. “We don’t have any official naval presence in the area, and we’ve always worked well with Manticore.”
“Why would it happen that this particular team may be heading to the Confederacy in the not-too-distant?”
“The usual.” Jacques shrugged again. “There are some ugly reports that need checking out. Admittedly, it’s a little more . . . complicated than usual.” He shrugged again. “That’s why there’s so much lead time in the planning.”
“And they picked you as their checker-outer?” Allison finished peeling the last of the potatoes and turned to face her brother, and her eyes were dark.
“It’s what I do, Alley.”
“No,” his sister said repressively, “that’s what Biological Survey Corps recon teams do. What you do is take in an action team, shoot every slaver you can find, and load the slaves aboard transports bound for Beowulf.”
“We do not ‘shoot every slaver’ we can find. Sometimes there are innocent bystanders in the way.” Allison snorted, and Jacques grinned. But then his expression sobered. “And this really is basically a recon run, Alley. I’ll admit my team and I will be along to ride shotgun, though. We’ll be taking a look at the Gorlice System, and the governor there doesn’t like us very much. Go figure.” He shrugged. “She can’t tell us to stay the hell home because of the treaty the Directors extorted out of the Confederacy twenty-five T-years ago, but she’s not going to make things any easier than she can help. And she won’t go out of her way to protect our teams if someone takes exception to them. Hence, your humble servant’s presence as a member of said teams. And the reason I’m so happy Scepter might be in the neighborhood. When you’re stuck on the wrong side of town, it never hurts to know a local cop.”
Allison glowered at him, but he met her eyes with an expression of bland innocence.
“I know that’s your story and you’re sticking to it,” she said finally, “but you be careful, Jacques! You’re the only brother I’ve got.”
And the only Beowulfan family I’m still speaking to, she did not add out loud, although he heard it anyway.
“I have no intention of being anything but careful. And, like I say, this is primarily a scouting run. Which doesn’t mean it won’t eventually lead to something else. That’s why we do intel runs. But I’d be astonished if anything untoward were to occur this time around. Governor Schreiber’s not stupid enough to let things get too out of hand.”
Allison looked less than totally reassured, but she turned back to begin cutting the potatoes which would shortly become potato salad. Jacques gazed at her back for a moment, then glanced at Alfred. His brother-in-law looked less mollified than his sister was pretending to be, he observed, and shrugged ever so slightly.
Alfred snorted and returned his own attention to the pico de gallo.
“How is Alley? Really?” Jacques asked much later that evening.
He and Alfred sat on the balcony, chilled bottles of beer in hand, gazing out across the magnificent nightscape of Landing. The city was actually a tiny bit larger than Grendel, and Grendel didn’t have Jason Bay and the pleasure craft out enjoying the cooler temperatures on its dark waters.
“She’s . . . good,” Alfred said after considering for a moment. “Not perfect. She’s tireder than she pretends. Everybody over at Queen Elizabeth’s knows her by now, but she’s very much the new kid on the block in the Genetics Department. They’re keeping her on the hop while she learns the ropes, and my mom managed to break a leg back on Sphinx. Alley’s been worrying about that. Well, I have, too. She’s not getting any younger, and fractures are no joke in Sphinx’s gravity. And now, just when we thought we’d actually have time to settle into something approaching a sane schedule, we find out I’ll be deployed off-planet for at least a couple of years. Alley’s made a lot of friends, but she’ll still be pretty lonely, whenever exhaustion gives her time to admit it.”
Jacques nodded. In fact, Allison was at Queen Elizabeth’s at that very moment. She hadn’t been on the rotation, but one of her friends had a family emergency, and she’d volunteered to cover his shift.
“I hate it that she and Mom still aren’t even speaking,” he sighed after a moment. “It’s been five T-years! I swear I never thought even the two of them could go this long without even exchanging Christmas cards! What was God thinking when He put the two stubbornest, most obstinate females in the entire galaxy into the same family?”
“He does seem to have dropped a stitch,” Alfred acknowledged whimsically. “I think if your mother had accepted the wedding invitation, it might’ve helped, but Alley and I knew she wouldn’t. Alley even said she’d probably take the fact that we’d gone ahead as a deliberate slap in the face. Of course, if we hadn’t invited her, that would’ve made it even worse.” He shook his head. “My sisters never went toe-to-toe with Mom, but I have tons of female cousins. It’s not like I haven’t seen plenty of other mother-daughter confrontations. But Alley and your mother take it to an entirely new level.”
“I know. I know! Sometimes I want to strangle both of them.” Jacques took a swallow of old Tillman. “But having said that, Mom can’t have it both ways. Either her kids were going to be independent people who do what they believe is right, or they weren’t. And she may not realize it, but I think she’d be even unhappier if Alley was some compliant little mouse.”
“Allison? Compliant?” Alfred snorted. “The mind boggles!”
“Yep. And that’s Mom and Dad’s work, but especially Mom’s. Dad would’ve spoiled Alley rotten, if it had been up to him. She had his heart in her grubby little hand before she learned to walk! In fact, he’s the innocent third party who’s hurting worst over this. And I know he’s said as much to Mom. But that just pushes her deeper into the bunker. There’s no way she can admit Alley hasn’t made a horrible mistake ‘turning her back on’ her family heritage. I think she literally can’t do it, and the longer this . . . mutual silence stretches out, the harder it gets to do anything about it.”
“Jacques, to be totally honest, Alley doesn’t want to do anything about it.” Alfred’s expression was profoundly unhappy. “She won’t admit to herself how much this estrangement hurts. She knows how bad it hurts, but she just . . . puts that away in a mental pigeonhole and gets on with her life. And she’s still pissed as hell at your mother’s attitude towards Manticore. And me. If either of them could just bring herself to make the first move, they might get past it, but—”
“Never gonna happen,” Jacques said sadly. “Mom can’t admit Alley’s the injured party. And Alley isn’t about to make the first move until Mom does admit she was wrong, especially about you. Which also isn’t going to happen. Mom can’t—or won’t, at least—believe her daughter could possibly ‘tie herself down’ in a monogamous relationship before she was even thirty unless some sort of sinister mind control was involved. And guess who the mind-controller-in-chief had to be?”
“Oh, I’ve got that part,” Alfred said wryly. “And to be fair, I’d rather she put all the blame on me, if that stopped her from taking it out on Alley. But her attitude toward me is rather part of the problem, isn’t it?”
“You can say that again,” Jacques acknowledged.
They sat in silence for five or six minutes, then Jacques stirred in his chair.
“What about the nightmares?” he asked in a much softer tone.
“Still there.” Alfred’s nostrils flared. “They’re not as frequent, and her therapist says we’re making progress. But she remembers, Jacques. That’s one of the things that worries me about this deployment. I know Mom and Dad, Richard, the girls—hell, the entire clan!—will rally round if she needs them, but none of them were there. None of them really understands, not deep down inside, what those fucking bastards did to her.”
His voice was harsh, and he looked away, staring out over the gorgeous cityscape without seeing it. What he saw was an exercise room on Beowulf, and Allison—his Allison—hanging from her wrists, three-quarters naked, while a Manpower thug tortured her.
“You and I know about PTSD,” Jacques said quietly. “We’ve both had to deal with it. What you saw at Clematis was a hell of a lot worse than anything I’ve had to deal with, but I’ve seen too much aftermath of my own, too much of the wreckage Manpower leaves in its wake. I know exactly what they were doing to her. And I know you’re the man who stopped it. If Mom could just really wrap her mind around that, if she had the kind of first-hand experience the three of us have, I don’t think she’d find it hard at all to understand why Allison had to choose you when it came down to it.”
Alfred looked back at him, then inhaled and nodded.
“Do you think it would make Alley feel any better if I told her every single one of the Manpower execs who authorized Manischewitz’s operation is no longer with us?” Jacques asked after a moment. Alfred’s eyes narrowed, and his brother-in-law gave him a shark’s smile. “Caught up with the last one three T-months ago. Took us a while, because she knew exactly who we were after—and why—and crawled into the deepest hole she could find. I don’t think Manpower will ever be stupid enough to mount that kind of op on Beowulf again.”
“I don’t know if it’ll make her feel any better,” Alfred said after a moment, “but it makes me feel one hell of a lot better.”
“I thought it might.” Jack leaned forward and patted his brother-in-law lightly on the knee, then sat back again. “So, you think I should tell her?”
“Yeah, and not just for ‘closure,’ which, by the way, I think is one of the more useless concepts where something like this is concerned. She hasn’t wanted to talk about it, but I know she’s still worried about the possibility of the BSC losing people ‘avenging’ her. She’ll be glad to know no more good guys are likely to get hurt ‘over her.’”
“Of for the love of—!” Jacques made himself draw a deep breath. “I’ve told her a dozen times that the Directors didn’t sanction our response just to punish them for what happened to her. That kind of shit can’t be allowed, and all of them understood that that was the real message to Manpower. Why the hell can’t she?”
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe because that may have been the ‘message,’ but it sure as hell wasn’t the motive, as far as you were concerned.” Alfred chuckled harshly. “In case you hadn’t noticed, my wife’s very perceptive. And she suspects—as do I—that you were perfectly prepared to sell the op to the Directors as a message-sending exercise . . . just as long as it let you collect the head of every single person who’d authorized your sister’s abduction, torture, and murder.”
He gazed at Jacques for thirty seconds or so, eyebrows raised in polite inquiry, but Jacques declined to respond.
“Anyway,” Alfred continued, “do me a favor and do try to not get shot full of holes in Silesia. You’ll probably be through here on your way back to Beowulf long before I get home with Scepter, and I’d really prefer for you to arrive intact for the visit. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Jacques acknowledged with a crooked smile. “I got it, Alfred. I got it.”