“Sir?”
“My gunner wasn’t culpable. He’s dead.” His tone was icy, derisive.
He’s angry with me. Jessica, who had a closer acquaintance with death than most of her crewmates, absorbed his fury without complaint. “Wasn’t, sir,” she corrected herself.
Stomp, clank. Jessica wondered if they couldn’t make something a bit less robotic, even for a temporary. Çelik had enough oddness to deal with. “Why isn’t your time frame more precise?” he asked.
“Parts of the core were damaged, sir.”
“Any suspects?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Weapons are under command codes, sir, but not priority ones. They’re not that hard to crack.”
Another look, although this one was more calculating than angry. “Not for you,” he said. “For the average Corps grunt?”
“Your people all have excellent reputations, sir, including the infantry. But if you’re assuming someone figured it out on their own, then … no, sir, not for the average Corps grunt. Although I imagine most of your cyber people could have done it.”
Stomp, clank. “You’re saying it requires knowledge, but not skill.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Which doesn’t eliminate anyone.”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then, the information isn’t actually helpful, is it?”
“I don’t agree, sir.”
That stopped him. He turned to face her down, and she looked up at him, careful not to react. Jessica was short, and most people made her feel tiny. But Çelik—wide and glowering and angry—made her feel like an insect. He had a reputation for being ill-tempered and intimidating, and Jessica was discovering it was not exaggerated. What was interesting was how deliberate it was, how much of what he was doing to her was designed to get her to respond. He was, in a way, the diametric opposite of her own captain. Greg turned everything inside, measuring and calculating before he moved. Çelik targeted everyone with laser-precise shots, daring them to react to him.
Jessica was used to people thinking they could intimidate her by making her feel small. It had never worked.
“How long have you been second-in-command of this ship, Commander?” he asked her.
“Eight months, sir.” Eight long, bureaucracy-filled months—too many of them spent worrying that Greg was going to get demoted … or fired. He’d given her the job because he knew she could run the ship in his absence.
Never mind if I wanted to do it.
“And exactly how is it you feel entitled to tell me you know what the hell you’re doing?”
Well, it was hardly surprising she had struck a nerve. “Because I do, sir. I was hacking computer cores long before I hit command. Are we going to keep arguing about this, sir, or are we going to discuss what we’re going to do about it?”
He straightened a little, and she took a breath, realizing she had frozen under his looming gaze. “How’s your security?” he asked her.
“On alert,” she told him. Greg had ordered the heightened security before they started taking on Exeter’s crew—even before she had proof that the battle had been anything other than one starship overwhelmed by numbers. They had people monitoring all of the strangers, but Jessica would feel better after they offloaded them to Cassia.
And how much do I hate myself for suspecting my fellow soldiers? She had mistrusted Greg’s previous second-in-command, and with good reason, but suspicion always made her feel angry and irritable.
Çelik was looking away from her, frowning. That, at least, was a look she knew: Greg had it sometimes, when he had absorbed everything he could and was sorting through it in his head. “I need to speak to them,” he said abruptly, “and then I’ll talk with Foster.” He focused on her again. “Where are the rest of my people?”
She escorted Çelik to the pub, reflecting that his slowed-down pace was just about perfect for her relatively short legs. Bob had shoved a cane into his hands, which he carried in one fist like a spear. The crew members they passed tended to give him first a look, then a wide berth. Jessica wanted to laugh at them. Their own captain had been known to tear furiously through the corridors, although lately he had been working to do less of that; but the studied scowl of Captain Çelik was far more alarming than anything Greg ever expressed publicly.
Çelik must have caught her look, because he slowed his pace a little and tried to arrange his features into something less horrifying. “How long have you served on Galileo, Commander?”
If he had read anything about her at all, he would know. “Almost seven years, sir.”
“Did you want the job?”
“Yes, sir. I beat out sixteen people for it.”
She felt him glance at her. “Selection is blind, Commander. You couldn’t have known how many you were competing with.”
Shows what you know, she thought. “Given my background, sir, I think you’ll find you’re mistaken.”
“So you cheated.”
“No, sir.”
“You broke the law.”
That was closer. “Technically, sir, yes.”
“And Foster hired you anyway?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Even knowing you could have fabricated your own history.”
Greg had offered her the position, and after her enthusiastic acceptance, he had taken the discussion off the record and told her that if he ever caught her falsifying records or using privileged information for fraudulent reasons, he’d have her thrown in jail. Youth and inexperience had made her more angry than frightened. I don’t need to fake my talents, sir, she had told him stiffly.
He had laughed.
“Captain Foster is almost as good as I am, sir,” she said. “He would have known if I’d hacked the records.”
“You have a strange sense of ethics, Commander. I could have used someone like you on Exeter.”
Jessica absorbed the odd sensation of being complimented and insulted at the same time.
There was too much ambient noise in the pub for the sound of Çelik’s artificial foot to be detected, but she was surprised it took so long for people to feel his presence. He filled the doorway, and as she stood to one side of him, she felt him change: he straightened, and all of the rage and frustration he had been radiating turned to calm confidence. She felt the hair on the back of her neck go up as the room slowly fell silent. He stood still for a moment, then walked past her to approach the bar, effortlessly becoming the center of gravity in the room. That, she thought, is not a thing you learn. It’s a thing you are.
Çelik stood steadily on both feet, one real, one artificial, hands behind his back closed over the cane. His eyes moved from face to face, one at a time; she could see in their reactions that they felt the personal touch. “I’m glad,” he said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the big room, “to see all of you.
“And I know you, like me, are thinking of our comrades who are not with us. Who were lost in this act of war against our ship, against our government. They fought with bravery and strength, as we all did. Every one of us. Why they were lost and we were not—” He broke off, and his next words were quieter. “There is no answer to that question. But I will tell you this: every one of you must take pride in how you responded