It took Greg a moment to catch on to what she was saying. “You think he’s on our side.” He shook his head. “It’s dangerous to assume that, Elena. Half of what he’s said to me I have a feeling is off the record. We always need to assume when we talk to him we’re talking to them.”
“Still. I think if you contact him as part of the Admiralty—”
“—that he’ll give us real orders?”
“As opposed to running us into another raider attack? I think it’s possible.”
“ ‘Possible’ is a little hair-raising, Elena.”
“So is what happened to Exeter,” she countered. “Greg, they’re going to expect us to find out about MacBride. If we don’t comm back for orders, what are they going to assume?”
How do we live like this, he thought, second- and third-guessing every single word anyone says to us anymore? He rubbed his eyes. “Jessica’s already filed the preliminary report. The Admiralty has agreed to quarantine the area. But I don’t want to ask them for anything else until Jess finishes dissecting Exeter’s logs, and we get something back on that tracker. I don’t want to risk getting sent off somewhere we don’t want to go.”
“Do you think you can still get away with that kind of thing?”
“What kind of thing?”
She gestured into the air. “This thing you do, where you get an order and you ignore it, until you decide how to convince them to give you what you want.”
He blinked; he had never thought of it like that. “You think I disobey orders?”
“I think you interpret them creatively. Greg, after all this, they’re going to be a lot more careful with you than they have been.”
He had felt it already, the subtle shift in power that came from not being an unquestioned hero anymore. He had never cared much about his reputation, but now that it was damaged he was beginning to recognize its usefulness. “They can be careful once we know what’s going on,” he told her. He watched her haul herself wearily to her feet. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to talk to Çelik,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because as we stand here chatting about whether or not our own people are after us, I’d just as soon have Orunmila on our side. And you said yourself Captain Shiang cares about Exeter. Maybe Çelik can talk her around.”
“I’ve already sent Jess after him.”
“You afraid of us tag-teaming him?”
She sounded mildly amused again, and the moment felt familiar, the way they had been with each other before everything had gone to hell. “I’m just suggesting that he might not be especially receptive to you just now.”
He could order her to leave Çelik alone, and she would obey him; but he understood her thinking. She had a preexisting relationship with Çelik. He remembered the other captain’s notes on her transfer orders: If she doesn’t learn to keep her mouth shut, she’ll either get tossed out of this outfit, or be running it in less than ten years. Even then, Greg had known enough of Raman Çelik to recognize the statement as a compliment.
“I don’t need him to be receptive,” Elena said, turning away. “I just need him to stay still long enough for me to yell. And I want to do it while I’m still too exhausted to care if he yells back.”
Jessica had expected the infirmary to be far more crowded. All of the beds in the main ward were taken, and most of the seats in the waiting area; but most of the wounded she could see were alert and talking quietly. She caught the eye of Redlaw, the head nurse, and he came closer so they could speak without being overheard.
“The casualty rate is pretty low,” he said. “Most of the losses were immediate, or shortly afterward. Çelik is the worst, although there are a couple of head injuries I’m keeping an eye on.” He frowned at her. “You look like hell.”
“So I’ve been told.” She relented enough to give him a smile; all she’d had to face was a dead ship’s core. “I’m sorry, Fran. This being in charge shit doesn’t suit me all that well.”
“Today isn’t suiting anyone well, Commander,” he said, and she remembered why she liked him. “You’re on your feet? You’re doing fine.”
She moved slowly through the ward on her way to the private room at the end. Some of the soldiers were dozing—on their own or with assistance she could not tell—but most were sitting up, surrounded by people from both Exeter and Galileo. Despite the chatter, there was a stillness to the room, a hushed heaviness that clung to her skin like sweat. Jessica always hated the aftermath of tragedy. It involved far too much paralysis.
It reminded her far too much of home.
She headed for Doctor Hastings, who was studying a readout at his desk at the end of the ward. Beyond him, she could see the open door of the private room where Captain Çelik was staying. A small, cowardly part of herself was hoping he would be asleep.
“Is he up?” she asked Bob.
“He’s been up for three hours,” Bob replied, his expression sour. “He’s clobbering the hell out of that new leg.”
“Can’t you stop him?”
“Is that a joke?”
Jessica stole a surreptitious look through the door of the private room. Çelik was walking around the bed—slowly—testing his balance on the artificial leg. Jessica had never seen a metal prosthetic before—grafts were much more common these days, although they took time—and she found herself impressed at how well he was doing with it. His gait was slow and uneven, and he seemed to test the odd, spidery, six-toed foot every time he set it down; but he made repeated circuits around the bed without hanging on to anything. He would never be graceful on it, but he would be able to move. She couldn’t think of more than one or two officers who would be so tenacious and disciplined in this situation, and one of them she was already serving under.
What the fuck is wrong with the Admiralty, that they’d retire the man over this?
She swallowed her anger. None of this was her call, and feeling righteous wrath on his behalf wasn’t going to make what she had to tell him any easier.
Jessica stepped forward into the doorway and stood at attention, waiting. Çelik, who had certainly seen her, did not alter his careful path across the floor. She felt a moment’s uncertainty—should she wait for him to speak first?—before remembering her still-unfamiliar rank. “Captain Çelik,” she said politely, “I have a report on what happened to your ship during the attack.”
His eyes shot into hers, although he did not stop walking. “As I was there, Commander Lockwood, I’m pretty sure I don’t need your report.”
Oh, the rage that came with that look. She found it comforting, after a fashion. If he was angry, that meant he was likely to be still thinking, at least enough to help her out. “I’m referring to Exeter’s lack of defense,” she clarified, never doubting he’d known what she meant.
He looked away from her again. She would have thought he would be watching his feet, but instead he stared straight ahead, gaze unfocused. “Do you know what the worst of it is?” he asked incongruously. “It’s slow. I feel the pain in the stump where it’s attached before I get the feedback from the foot and the ankle. It’s not my balance that’s the problem. It’s my brain trying to decode nonsense.”
She