Heritage of Flight (36 page)

Even the smoky air was better than that on board ship, Neave thought as he watched Becker blink through the thinning smoke. He was probably trying to recognize in the small, shabby crowd circling the ship the people he had left here: Project Seedcorn. The Secess’ woman's eyes bored into his back as they had for the entire trip.

Only the Secess’ training—and the Alliance's—had kept former enemies from tearing apart the ship they now shared. The Secess’ had emphasized military virtues. And the Alliance, of necessity, had stressed discipline. Both sides had succeeded far too well. That was why the damned war had dragged on for so long, slagging planets, and gutting stations, and exiling Earth from her own.

Only exhaustion had finally allowed Earth forces to break through the blockade and regain an ascendancy that was as much moral as military. Remembering the first coded messages that announced Earth's release, Neave blinked hard once. If need be, he would blame it on the smoke.

Earth had seen the end of the blockade as freedom, but it had quickly turned to care. With production lines in place, a population undiminished by a war that relied as much on attrition as planet-slagging, Earth was in a position to dictate terms to the exhausted combatants, who—after many years of rebellion—turned back to the mother world with a relief that they fought not to show.
As if they were runaway children, relieved at the approach of adults. What, Neave asked himself, would they think if they knew how scared we were when we saw what they had done?

Imperceptibly he tried to shift his shoulders, to ease the ache in them. His spine felt as if some demon interrogator had beaten each separate vertebra with a particularly hard club.
I am too old to hop from world to world, dammit.

What could Earth do for these returning prodigals?

Never mind Earth. What
can I
do
? It wasn't for a strong spine or iron nerves that he had been included on this mission, a fifty-year-old smiling public man who was neither that smiling nor that public, if the truth be known. A Franklin party member in philosophy as well as in politics, Neave had helped argue for a speedy reintegration of both sides into a systems-wide government.
God help us all,
he thought as he had thought every day since accepting this assignment.
A pragmatist with a sense of ethics
. Pragmatist that he was, he could understand why such a person might be valuable. The only problem was that he was the only such person of sufficient tact and seniority, and that he himself must bring the news to worlds isolated (some lacking ships with Jump capability, others actually—it was hard to believe—planet-locked) by a generation of combat without being killed as the messengers of ill fortune by militant holdouts. Still, it had been his duty; and he had agreed—just as they had known that he would.

And then, Becker had revealed his doomsday plan, this Operation Seedcorn.

Unlike many of the strategies he'd heard of, this one had even held a demented sort of promise. For one thing, it was nonviolent; and part of the Franklin party's political agenda was a highly pragmatic pacifism. You didn't fight, not from some lofty principle of nonviolence, but because you'd already lost more than you could bear. Earth ... Earth was weary, drained after a generation of what amounted to siege. As for the groups that called themselves Alliance and Republic ... perhaps our pacifism goes deeper than common sense, Neave had thought the first time his ship stood off from one of the slagged worlds.

He had insisted on an orbital flight: someone, he declared, had to witness. Had they gone closer to investigate, he learned, the entire crew would have had to undergo the painful, humiliating rituals of decontam.

And he had enough trouble with that crew already. Politics and safety decreed a mixed crew for Becker's pickup mission: and a very mixed crew it was, intimidated by vague threats to believe that not even God would help anyone from the Alliance who picked a fight with a citizen of the former Republic, or hoped to, by calling them Secess'.

It had not been an easy trip for Neave. The others were regular military, veterans with the strongest possible opinions on shiphandling and tactics, and who barely controlled those opinions when Neave ordered the weapons systems disabled. But it was hard on the regulars too, who were forced to live and stand watches with the very people whom they had tried to kill before the Armistice.

Now it was going to be hard on the marshal who found himself faced with people he had marooned and given the command: “Live and be human.” After all, he had told them to be human, and humans weren't all that forgiving, now were they? It remained to be seen whether this group would welcome Neave or throw rocks at him.

"You must remember, ladies and gentlemen.” In the best Franklin style, Neave had harangued the ill-assorted, ill-at-ease crew on board
Amherst II
each time someone quarrelled. “We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately."

Now, he would have to bring the glad tidings to yet another group.

It had been a hard trip, always waiting for the other shoe to drop, or the other crewmember to swing, or the other ship to shoot. He hadn't felt especially noble, the way people who used passive resistance were supposed to. In fact, he had been conscious of a furious irritation He—and Earth—were being used, he suspected, by factions whose weapons had scared them into temporary cooperation. So, for now, they would try it his way Then, once their fear subsided, they would probably revert.

As a Franklin, he wasn't averse to fighting, much though he preferred negotiations; it was just that it hadn't worked during the blockade ... and he had been assigned to this ship. In order to survive, most citizens of Earth had submitted themselves to the type of discipline that allowed a man like Neave to walk unarmed among warring parties: it created a moral, rather than a military, ascendancy. Or so he hoped.

Before he had been pried from his university with the damnable direct commission that put him in charge of veteran officers and a scar-sided ship, he had been a scholar whose passion for military, political, and legal history made him the perfect victim when his superiors looked for someone dispassionate to draft for this assignment.

"Anyone who wants this job deserves to get it!” he had protested, and been told that his reluctance only indicated how well suited he was to his new role as commissioner. Wonderful: he had used that line himself to inveigle people onto university committees, and never had realized how obnoxious it was.

He missed his university, his library, his peace. A generation living under blockade had been a generation turned inward: when Neave thought of exploration, he thought to explore the mind and spirit, not a galaxy barred to him by armed ships ... yet here he was, commanding just such a ship. Others would fly it, and fire—better yet,
not
fire—the weapons; Neave's job was to weld a fragile accord into a lasting peace, reconciling Alliance and Secessionist into one human—and one humane—government before there was nothing left to govern, and before the only peace that could be expected was the silence of slagged and wasted planets.

Accordingly, the woman behind him, seniormost of his Secess’ staff, would not push forward, indignant that a man of the Alliance had been granted precedence. Nor would the Alliance marshal take advantage of it. If Earth had been appalled by the war, so had the worlds who fought it. That was Neave's only hope: that former enemies would prefer Earth rule, Earth protection, to the desert they had made for themselves. It seemed to work for now.

So far, so good, thought Amory Neave, who had learned to be thankful for small mercies. He started down the ramp himself, slowly, so he might examine the thin, wary people who made up Becker's Operation Seedcorn on this world.

For civilians and refugees who had farmed, not fought, during the last suicidal war years, they weren't much, Neave thought. They looked as much like veterans as his crew. Many of the adults were still of an age to be in the service, though all but the man and woman heading toward Becker wore drab civilian gear.

But the eyes on them, especially the youngest! They glittered, flat, unreadable, almost ophidian. Barely out of their teens, many of the settlers watched the ship, not with the excitement or relief Neave had hoped for—
here are your rescuers!—
but with suspicion. Their hands twitched near belts bare, thank God, of sidearms.

Neave caught the eye of a thin, dark man, barely more than a youth. As soon as the boy perceived himself observed, he jerked up his chin and looked away.
Don't trust us, do you?
he asked silently.
If I had been dropped here on Marshal Becker's bare word, I doubt. I'd trust
us either.

"Lieutenant Yeager?” he heard the marshal greet the woman in uniform, a worn, sagging outfit she must have saved for years against just such an occasion. Small and alert, and browned from years of weathering, her eyes gazed at the ship with such longing that
she must have been a pilot
, Neave concluded. With really remarkable discipline, she turned from her loving scrutiny of the ship's lines to Marshal Becker.

"Where is Captain Borodin?"

"The captain ... he died our first season here,” said the woman. Her voice went hoarse, and she glanced up at the man at her side. He nodded encouragement, and she smiled faintly.

She's still young!
Neave realized, and sighed at the weariness that her voice and glance betrayed. She limped forward, and her eyes flicked over him in a brief, shrewd examination. Then, again, she turned her attention back to Becker. He, at least, was someone she remembered.

Interesting, Neave noted, that she looked at nothing for very long, least of all at the newcomers. He tried to catch her eye again, and noted how she flushed and looked away, as if frightened or ashamed. Two children ran up to her and the man beside her, clutching them by the legs. Gently the woman disengaged their grips and nodded at a heavily pregnant woman little more than a girl herself to take them away.

Bless you, child, I'm not your enemy,
he thought at her earnestly.

"Since I was next in chain of command,” the woman said, “I took over ... as best I could. I have the captain's log here for your examination. May I present Rafe Adams, lieutenant—Life Sciences? You may remember him,” said Lieutenant—no, better call her Captain—Yeager. It was always better, Neave thought, to assign a higher rank to a stranger. And this thin, strained woman would require gentle handling.

"Indeed, I do. You've all done well,” said Becker.

Had they? Though many of the adults and all of the many children (who had constantly to be kept away from the ship, the skin of which was still burning hot from deceleration and landing) looked fit and hale, there were others—two or three looked notably weak. One man with enormous shoulders balanced on crutches; he was missing a foot. And there was even one elderly woman, leaning on the arm of the angry, dark young man whose gaze had challenged him. Neave could already sense the restlessness of his medcrew, who would probably put her in sick bay's intensive care unit as soon as they got their sterile hands on her.

The settlement bore signs of fresh construction. One point in their favor. Acres of thriving fields stretched out behind it down to and along the riverbank—another point. But then there was a brown stretch of fallow ground heavily dotted with crude markers and flowers. Neave counted the graves and tightened his lips.
"I had not thought death had undone so many,"
a line from an old verse flickered across his memory in ironic comfort. Too many dead for the colony whose records Becker had showed him, with its complement of young adults and children. This world of theirs looked friendly, even kind. Yet the graveyard was full. What had happened here?

But the Yeager woman was speaking again, shaking her head against Becker's words. “Begging the marshal's pardon, but we have not done well. We have merely done the best we could.” She took a deep breath. “I have added to Captain Borodin's log. And kept records of my own. An inquiry, you could call them. Here they are."

The tall man, Rafe Adams, gasped. “Pauli, you never told me..."

She hushed him with a glance that told Neave that these two were very close. “My husband, Raiford Adams,” she said, explaining.

"Secrets, Rafe? Command responsibility.” Her voice took on the singsong of memorization. “'Upon the receipt of charges or information that a member of his command has committed an offense punishable by the code, the commander exercising immediate jurisdiction over the accused will make, or cause to be made, preliminary inquiry into the charges or the suspected offenses sufficient to enable him to make an intelligent disposition of them ... ‘"

"Pauli, for God's sake!” the man called Rafe blurted She hushed him with a hand that, though callused and scarred, was very small.

The people behind began to mutter, and Becker gestured more quickly, more urgently, than any subordinate should to his commander. Neave hastened the rest of the way down the ramp.

"Commissioner Neave,” said Becker. “May I present Lieutenant—or is it Captain?—Pauli Yeager?"

"Sir,” the woman drew herself up and saluted. At Neave's gesture—he still was ill-at-ease among the spit and polish of military rituals—she relaxed into the slightly crooked stance enforced by the fact that one of her legs was shorter than the other, probably from a badly healed break.

Then her glance fell on the insignia he wore. “Earth,” she breathed. “Then the blockade's down."