The Insurrection

She squeezed once, then stepped back as Tsing turned to leave. But he halted at the door of her office and placed his cap very carefully on his head, then turned and threw her an Academy-sharp salute.

Han was startled. Navy regs prohibited headgear doors dirtside, and it was officially impossible to salute without it. But her own hand rose equally sharply, and Tsing turned on his heel and vanished.

Good bye, Tsing Chang, she thought wistfully.

You never doubted me during the mutiny. You fought with me at Cimmaron. You saved my life. I suppose that's all I really need to know about you, isn't it... my friend?

"Well, Admiral," Robert Tomanaga crossed Han's office without even a limp to betray his prosthetic leg, "it's a new staff, but it looks good." "Not entirely new. We've got you and David from the old team. That's a pretty good survival rate, considering." "I suppose so, sir," he agreed, but his tone was a clear rejection of her implied self-criticism, and she shook her head mentally.

Bob Tomanaga's voice and face were as communicative as a printed message and it felt strange to always know precisely what he was thinking, but right now he meant what everyone meant whenever she let her guard down. No one else seemed to think the casualties might have been lighter... if only she'd been more clever.

She put the thought aside and leaned back in her chair, considering her new staff. Aside from Reznick, now a lieutenant senior grade, whom she'd been determined to have, she hardly knew any of them, but Bob was right: they looked good.

Her new ops officer, Commander Stravos Kollentai was small, slight, and arrogant--the perfect fighter jock--but his efficiency reports were excellent and he radiated an aura of almost oppressive energy and competence. Her astrogator, Lieutenant Commander Richard Heuss, was a [NSURRECTION quiet firstffltJw with fair hair and eyes like gray shutters. He said little, but his navigation was beautiful to see. And finally there was the new staff slot filled by Lieutenant Irene Jorgensen: battlegroup intelligence officer.

Fleet had decided to remove the intelligence function from the ops officer's jurisdiction, which made sense, Han supposed, given the type of war they were fighting, but it felt strange to have the spooks speaking for themselves on the staff. On the other hand, the tall, scrawny lieutenant hid a lurking humor behind her muddy brown eyes and appeared to have a computer memory bank concealed somewhere about her unprepossessing anatomy.

"Have the official orders come through yet, Admiral?" Tomanaga asked, breaking her train of thought.

"Yes. Admiral Iskan will relieve me tomorrow and we'll move out to da Silva." Thank God. She'd been half-afraid the Admifralty would leave her here now that Cimmaron had been upgraded into what was clearly an admiral's billet even for the admiral-starved Republic.

"I think Fleet wants to keep an eye on Admiral Trevayne," Han said slowly, swinging her chair gently. "We're still not sure what happened, you know. I think someone's ru

"Oh? And on what do you base that pronouncement, Commander?" "I don't think any 'mystery weapon" did in Admiral Ashigara, sir. The ops plan relied too much on surprise and ECM, and they screwed up when they tried a pincer. Alt it gave them was lousy coordination. That's why the diversion got chewed up when the main attack went wrong." "And how did it go wrong?" "I'm not certain," Tomanaga admitted, "but the survivors all agree BG 32 wasn't involved in the Gateway fighting till close to the end--so Trevayne mst've been busy destroying the carriers. But carriers are faster than monitors, and Admiral Ashigara's fighters had more firepower than BG 32, which means that somehow or other he spotted them despite their ECM and clobbered them before they launched. It's the only answer I can think of, sir." "So it was bad luck?" "Maybe," Tomanaga said, "but it was compounded by bad pla

That's why we should hit them again nov0 immediately.

Forget the border. We've got the Rump on the run; keep them there with feints and go. for Zephrain now, before they really do get new hardware on line." "I'm inclined to agree, Bob. Unhappily, grand strategy is the First Space Lord's job. And whether you're right or not, it makes sense to picket the old Rigelian and Arachnid systems, whatever the Rim is or isn't up to." "Agreed, sir, but a monitor battlegroup with carrier support is hardly a "picket." It's a vest-pocket task force, and one cut for a mighty big vest. We'd be better employed striking directly at Zephrain rather than worrying about what they may do to us." Tomanaga sounded unwontedly serious, even worried. "If we don't hit them pretty quick, we may find ourselves up against exactly what we're afraid of right now.

Give Trevayne time to get the new systems on line, and..." He shrugged eloquently.

"Consider your point made," Hah said softly.

"Write up a staff appreciation and we'll sit on it long enough to see where they send us. If we wind up out near Rigel and we still agre you know what you're talking about, we'll up- date it and fire it off. Fair enough?" "Yes, sir." "Good. Meanwhile, tidy up here and we'll transfer out to Bernardo da Silva." "Yes, sir." Tomanaga leiSo, and Han frowned pensively down at the desk she would delightedly turn over to ('ack Iskan in two days, wishing she disagreed with her chief of staff.

"Another day with nothing to report, sir." Tomanaga sounded disgusted. "I don't see why they're so damned mesmerized by the need to picket the Rim. Go in now and smash "em up fastmtake some casualties if we have to, but get it over with--and we won't need to scatter a quarter of our available strength out over the damned approaqhes." Hah tried and failed to imagine Tsing Chang unburdening himself with equal frankness. It was strange how well she got along with someone so different from Tsing. lust as strange as to remember that she'd once distrusted Tomanaga's enthusiasm.

Yet that very boredom had been a godsend for Hah, and she would have been the first to admit it.

Patrol duty wasn't glamorous, but at least it let someone a bit skittish over reassuming a space command ease back into x. Her had faded as she grappled with her new responsibilities, and she could look in her mirror now and recognize herself again.

"Well," she said finally, "let's find something to occupy them, then." She swiveled her chair down and frowned--comher equivalent of raging consternation--and tapped her terminal. "You've seen this from Shokaku?" "That freighter, sir?" The light carrier's recon fighters had found the remains of a freighter drifting erratically around the star Orpheus.

"Yes. Does anything about it strike you as odd?" "You mean aside from what she was doing there to begin with?" "Exactly. There haven't been any inhabited planets in the Orpheus System since the Alliance dusted the Arachnids out eighty years ago. I suppose her skipper might'ye taken a short cut, but it's hard to believe anyone would try it unescorted this close to Tangri space." "But she's here, sir, and she was looted." "True," Han nodded. "But did you examine the passen- ger list Shokaku pulled out of her computers?" "Well, no, sir. Why?" "Yhey recovered the bodies of all twenty-five crewmen," Han said.