Low mutters of protest, but these were ensigns and she was a full lieutenant now. Squirming awkwardly, those crammed into the aisles began to stand up; those in front waited, perhaps hoping for a reprieve, but Esmay gave them a stern look. Slowly, more awkwardly than necessary, they heaved themselves up and shuffled out. She could hear raised voices from the passage, but first things first. Some of those in seats were now standing; some sat as if glued in place. She hoped those were all discussion group members.
"Ensign Dettin." He looked mildly embarrassed. "Make sure all the discussion group have seats—you know them all, don't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"When they're seated, and if it's agreeable to the others, I don't mind having any spare seats filled. But that's all."
"Sir." He glanced around, his lips moving as he ran down some internal list. "All here but two—they may be outside."
"Go check on them. By name."
He made his way up the crowded aisle and called out into the passage. A knot of ensigns congealed in the opening, and finally two more elbowed their way in. That left seats for another two dozen, Esmay figured. She wished she knew a fair way to allocate those seats, but it was too late for that. More quickly than they'd left, more ensigns came in until all seats were filled.
Dettin introduced her, excitement edging his voice. The lights dimmed, except where she stood. The eager young faces faded into a blur with highlights of eyes and teeth. She had not expected that, but after standing in the glare of flag officers' disapproval, she was not about to crumple in a merely visual spotlight.
She had prepared a display cube with the same information given in court: the geometry of the Xavier system, the disposition of Fleet vessels, available Xavieran and civilian vessels, the number and armament of the invaders. She had been over this so many times, for her counsel and for Board of Inquiry and for the court-martial, that she could have explained in her sleep just how outnumbered Serrano had been even before Hearne defected.
When she put up the first display, a faint sigh came from her audience. Breathless silence while she spoke, reciting the familiar sequence. Some of it she knew only by report, and she said that. But the events themselves were so compelling that no one seemed to mind: the Benignity intrusion, the lagging pair of Benignity ships . . . possibly a new tactic, possibly malfunction. No one knew for sure. The successful attack on those ships, the damage to one assault carrier, the effective ambush of the killer-scout sent to form its own ambush. The long and dangerous harrying of the invaders in their course to Xavier, the loss of the space station, the damage to the Xavieran cities.
"Only a scorch, after all," she heard someone mutter. She stopped short; silence returned, thick and tense. She could not see, against the glare of light focussed on her, who had spoken.
"
Only
a scorch . . . someone thinks a scorch is a minor problem? Let me show you video . . ." She switched to that, the former capital of Xavier on one side of the screen, as it had been, a small city of wide streets and low stone buildings, gardens and tree-shaded parks. That was file footage from Fleet databanks; Xavier's own records had all been destroyed.
On the half screen, an uneven field of rubble, the shattered remains of trees, the languid columns of smoke twisting in their own heat, a damage assessment team from Fleet in their protective gear. The video pickup had zoomed in on dead bodies, human and animal. Esmay recognized a dead horse, if no one else did. "All population centers," Esmay said, "were reduced like this. Fire destroyed outlying settlements, as well as millions of hectares of pasture and farm crops. A 'scorch' is intended to leave the planet barely habitable for the Benignity's own troops, with return to agricultural production in three to five years. That doesn't leave much for the people who live there."
"But weren't they all killed?" someone asked.
"No, thanks to the foresight of Commander Serrano and their own government. Most of the population survived in remote regions—they have caves, I heard—but their economic base is gone. It will take a generation or two just to recover what they lost." She could imagine the sequence; Altiplano had suffered similar damage during the Succession Wars when their Founder had died. The years of hunger, while they reestablished their agricultural base. The years after that when just enough to eat was no longer enough. As distant as they were, they could not expect much help from the rest of the Familias, once some new crisis caught public attention.
Silence again, this time with a different flavor.
"Let's begin with the situation as it first appeared to Commander Serrano." Esmay changed displays, to show the Xavier system again. "Xavier had been troubled by periodic incursions over the past few years, that appeared to be independent raiders of some sort. These had threatened the orbital station, and in fact had damaged it on more than one occasion. Xavier's defense consisted of outmoded, under-supported Demoiselle-class ships, of which only one was really space-worthy by the present. The others had been cannibalized for parts to keep that one working. Xavier is off regular passenger service, and ships out its agricultural products—mostly large-animal semen, ova, and frozen embryos—aboard locally-owned private vessels. Nearly all its mining production is used locally, for building up the infrastructure."
Esmay had not known any of this until she read Heris Serrano's brief—concise, but hardly brief in the usual terms—to the admiral. She had found it easy to follow, because Altiplano and Xavier had many similarities.
"The government enlisted Commander Serrano, then acting as a civilian captain of a private yacht—but a very well-armed one—in defense against just such a raider. As you might expect—" she allowed herself a brief smile "—the unsuspecting raider didn't have a chance."
"How big was it?" came from the back of the room.
"According to scan reports at the time, it was an Aethar's World raider—" Esmay flashed the hull specifications on the display. "Commander Serrano anticipated its attack course, and was able to surprise it."
"But that wasn't the whole battle, was it? One lousy little raider?"
"No, of course not." Esmay changed displays again, to show the location of Xavier relative to Benignity and Familias territory. "Commander Serrano's scan techs noticed another ship in system, which appeared to be an observer . . . she suspected that the raider's attack was merely a probe for a larger invasion force. She transmitted that concern to the nearest Fleet headquarters."
"And got a bunch of traitors," came a mutter from midway back.
"Not a 'bunch,' " Esmay said. "Most of the officers and crew of all three ships were loyal, or things would have turned out very differently. Fleet dispatched a small force, under the command of Dekan Garrivay. Two patrol ships, one cruiser. The captains of all three ships were prepared to cooperate with the Benignity, but that is not true of others."
"Exactly how many traitors were there, and how do we know they were all discovered?"
"I don't know the answer to either question," Esmay said. "Some died fairly quickly—it's impossible to determine their alliance. And it's possible—though unlikely—that some traitors did not reveal themselves during the fighting on each ship. The last estimate I saw was that five to ten percent of each crew was actually traitorous—that includes both officers and enlisted."
She watched the sideways looks, as the young officers estimated how many of the people in the room that would be.
"Naturally, most of them were in fairly senior, critical posts. Five traitorous ensigns wouldn't do the enemy as much good as one captain and the senior scan tech. The problem for the Benignity, as I understand it, is that the sort of thing they planned at Xavier required their long-standing agents to identify themselves to each other—a very risky affair. This need to confer was their undoing."
Esmay skipped rapidly past the still-classified methods by which Koutsoudas had overheard the conspirators in the midst of their plotting.
"Commander Serrano had to prevent Garrivay from destroying Xavier's orbital station, and she needed those ships to defend from the expected invasion. That meant she had to relieve Garrivay and the other traitorous captain of their commands, identify any other traitors, and rally the loyal crews."
"Well, but she's Admiral Serrano's niece," someone said. "She could just say so—"
Esmay almost grinned. Had she ever been that naive, even before she went into Fleet?
"Commander Serrano, remember, was operating as a civilian, whose resignation from Fleet had been highly publicized. There is some evidence that Commander Garrivay worried about what she might do, especially the influence she might have on the Xavieran government. He was trying to discredit her there. But consider: you are a civilian—at least apparently civilian—and you are on a space station where two Fleet vessels are docked. Another one is on picket at a distance. How are you going to gain access to the docked ships? We don't let civilians just wander in. And once in, how are you going to convince an ignorant crew that their captain is a traitor, and you should be allowed to take over? Would you, for instance, readily believe that your captain was a traitor, just because someone told you so?"
She saw comprehension of the difficulties on most faces.
"I didn't," she said, fighting down the tension of that confession. "All I knew of the situation—as a jig on
Despite
, under Kiansa Hearne—was that we were on patrol, while the rest of the group was docked. I knew nothing about an invasion; we thought we had come to Xavier to babysit some paranoid colonists who had panicked over a perfectly ordinary random raid. A lot of us were annoyed that we'd missed the chance to compete in the annual Sector war games . . . we felt our gunnery was outstanding."
"But surely you suspected—"
Esmay snorted. "Suspected? Listen—my real concern was stuff disappearing out of personnel lockers. Minor theft. I didn't worry about the captain . . . the captain was the captain, doing her job of commanding the ship. I was a mere jig, doing my assigned job, which was servicing the automatic internal scanners and trying to find out who was getting into the lockers, and how. When the . . . mutiny started on
Despite
, I was so surprised I nearly got shot before I caught on." She waited for the nervous giggles to die down.
"Yeah—like that. It was ridiculous . . . I couldn't believe it. Nor could most of us. That's why conspirators are always a step ahead of the people who get real work done . . . they can count on that surprise."
"But how
did
Serrano get command?" someone asked.
"I can only tell you what I heard," Esmay said. "Apparently, she and some of her former crew got aboard by some ruse, asked to talk to Garrivay in his office. By good fortune—or perhaps she had some way of knowing—some of the other conspirators were there. She and her crew . . . killed them."
"Right away? You mean they didn't try to talk them out of it?"
Esmay let that lie in a stillness that was as scornful as her own. When the stirring began, she ended it by speaking. "When someone has determined on treason—is commanding a ship, and planning to deliver helpless civilians to the enemy—I doubt any moral homilies would change his mind. Commander Serrano made a command decision; she eliminated the most senior conspirators as quickly as possible. Even then it wasn't easy."
Esmay put up new displays. "Now—Captain Hearne took
Despite
—with me, and the rest of the crew—quickly out of Xavier system. Our exec was also involved, but the next junior officer was both loyal, and on the bridge to hear Commander Serrano's transmission to Captain Hearne, requesting her return to station and her assistance in defending Xavier. He actually began the mutiny, appealing to the bridge crew . . ." She stopped, flooded in memories of the next few hours. The contradictory orders on the ship's internal communications, the total confusion, the time it took—which now seemed inexplicable—for the loyalists to realize that a mutiny was necessary, and that they'd have to use deadly force on their crewmates.
"From the tactical point of view," she said, forcing all that back down, "Commander Serrano faced a very difficult task. The Benignity force arrived almost simultaneously with her assumption of command. Had she waited even a few more hours, it would have been impossible. The Benignity force—" Esmay outlined its specifications, reminding her audience of the usual tactics used by Benignity strike forces. Now, describing decisions and actions she had not personally witnessed, she found it easier to be calm and logical. This ship here, these over there, expected and unexpected choices of maneuver . . . results, neatly tabulated without reference to the people whose lives had just been changed forever.
All too soon, she had to come back to her own experience. She skipped over the internal battle for control of
Despite
. She had relived that too many times for the court to do it again, for these callow youngsters. But they needed to know how the battle ended, including the mistakes she had made.
"We came in too fast," she said, displaying yet another visual. "My concern was that we might arrive too late, and I assumed that any insertion barrage would be sufficiently dispersed. As you know, calculation of real elapsed time in multiple FTL hops is difficult at best—but the error is usually negative, not positive. As it happened, we made it through insertion safely, and skip-jumped to here—" she pointed. "Without dumping enough residual vee. We were short-crewed, with some damage to the nav computers, so I couldn't get a quick solution to a microjump that would have allowed the right angular motion. So . . . we blew past Xavier, and in that interim
Paradox
took fatal damage." More than eighteen hundred dead. Her fault. War left no margin for mistakes. She remembered the desperate scramble on the bridge of her ship, the bridge crew fighting to get control, to get a jump solution that would let them get back in time to do some good.