In the past, Henry hadn’t known any of those officers, and they’d all been given a lethal dose of painkillers before being put on display. In his dream, the victims had still been alive—and they’d included both Sylvia Todorovich and Kalad, his old Kozun friend who’d commanded the retreat from La-Tar.
He was reasonably sure that Sylvia was still alive, even if the last report from Shaka was several days old. Kalad, on the other hand…she had not expected to survive returning to the Hierarchy. Refusing would have doomed her mate and child, so she’d gone back to face the penalties of failure.
So, Kalad was joining his dead in his nightmares. Henry couldn’t blame his subconscious for that. He ran through the dream scenario again in his mind, facing it and letting it flow over him. He had a lot of practice with that now.
He’d lost a lot of friends and subordinates in the war. He’d lost a marriage—consummated with the immortal certainty of young men and then sacrificed on the cold realism of old soldiers. He’d spent months under medical supervision to make sure he didn’t commit suicide…and he was far from the only one.
The psychic wounds of war and genocide were torn deeply into the soul of the United Planets Space Force. That was why he was there, in La-Tar, trying to keep strangers safe.
With a long exhalation, the dark-skinned Chinese American officer rose from the floor and crossed to his desk. He wasn’t going to get back to sleep, which meant he may as well go over the files for his new officers.
He was meeting the destroyer captains in the morning, only a few hours away. He’d have been better if he could have rested, but he could tell when that wasn’t happening.
“Take a seat, people,” Henry ordered the four officers waiting for him. “I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.”
None of the four were physically present. The four destroyers were all within ten thousand kilometers of Raven, allowing for real-time transmission. The holograms were as solid and present as if the Lieutenant Colonels had shuttled over.
“We await your orders, ser,” Lieutenant Colonel Heléna Orosz told him. The pale woman commanding Glorious was the youngest of his four destroyer captains, an Earth-native officer responsible for the most advanced of the escort warships.
“I have reviewed Captain Rahmi’s standing orders for your assignment in the system,” Henry said. “I see no reason to change any of them at this moment, so I won’t be issuing any immediate orders.
“This is an introductory meeting for us to touch base,” he continued. “I know Captain Spini from my last visit here.” He nodded to Hadrosaur’s captain, the Indian man returning the gesture.
“If you have any concerns about our position or situation here, now is the time to raise them. From my conversation with the Arbiter on our way in, I expect to be moving Raven out in company with Cluster forces shortly.
“We are also on standby, waiting for an update from the diplomatic mission attempting to find a peaceful solution to this conflict,” he reminded them. “While Raven is officially posted to La-Tar, there is a reason you four are assigned to the La-Tar station as opposed to a Cruiser Group Raven.
“The nature of the Initiative and our limited hull numbers require you all to maintain a certain degree of independent posture. While you answer to me as the senior officer while I am present, I expect my duties to have Raven outside of the La-Tar System on a regular basis.”
He looked around the four virtually present officers.
“If you have any concerns, any questions, about our mission or our situation, now is the time to raise them.”
“We are supposed to be a peacekeeping force, ser,” Albertosaur’s captain said slowly. Lieutenant Colonel Omobolanle Abiodun was an immense African with swirling tattoos inked across their face. Henry didn’t know quite what the tattoos meant, but he understood them to be related to Abiodun’s culture’s traditional third gender.
“Our position here in La-Tar is not a peacekeeping role,” Abiodun continued. “This is a defensive position with clear rules of engagement and an expected enemy. This seems…contrary to our role.”
“It’s part of the role, unfortunately,” Henry replied. “I agree, Captain. However, sometimes, keeping the peace requires us to get in the way of people trying to fight wars. We do not and cannot recognize the use of force for conquest as a legitimate tool.
“If the Initiative is to stand behind that statement, we must back it up with the necessary tools. That means we have to be prepared to defend systems that have been the target of violence.
“We will attempt to find peaceful solutions, and if at all possible, we want to avoid the UPA getting drawn into a real fight with the Kozun or anyone else. But…protecting these people is very much part of our mandate.
“Our task is to keep the peace and restrain the warlords rising from the Kenmiri’s ashes. We can’t do that without fighting anyone—and the best way to avoid a fight sometimes is to make it very clear you’re ready to have one.”
He grimaced.
“I hope that our presence here acts as a deterrent and keeps the Hierarchy from repeating their attempt to conquer these systems. If it doesn’t…well, we fight.”
Abiodun nodded silently.
“I appreciate you establishing that, ser,” Straton Nosak, the fourth destroyer skipper, said. “It helps us know where we stand and what to tell our people. No one signed up for the Initiative because we didn’t think we needed to do something out here.”
Even the crews of the two destroyers pulled out of Cruiser Group Lioness, Nosak’s and Abiodun’s commands, had been assembled from volunteers. Not that they’d needed to make much adjustment to Stegosaur or Albertosaur’s crews. They’d basically volunteered as a body.
“Once we have the situation with the Kozun resolved, this all should become much smaller-scale,” Henry promised them. “We weren’t expecting to stumble into a war out here, after all. All of our missions were supposed to be making contact with single planets or maybe a dependency cluster at the most.
“Ambassador Todorovich and I were out here to make contact with just Tano,” he said. “We all saw how that turned out!”
“These are good people,” Spini added softly. “They never deserved to be slaves, and I don’t think I have it in me to stand by and see them enslaved again.”
“None of us do, Parvan,” Abiodun assured him. “We all volunteered for this.”
“We are under your orders, ser,” Orosz told Henry, “but we’re all here for a reason. I have no concerns about our positioning in this system.”
“Good,” he said. “Now. Supplies? Weapons status? Morale issues? Anything I need to know about or that you need backup on?”
Both the UPA and the fledgling defensive forces of the Cluster were based on the old Vesheron logistics pipelines—which meant everyone’s missiles were clones of the Kenmiri weapons. The Cluster could easily replenish almost every munition Henry’s people needed.
Chapter Twelve
“It is a pleasure to meet you in person again, Captain Wong,” Zast told Henry as he stepped off the shuttle, her Kem smoother than he remembered. The old Tak—she was older than Casto Ran by a significant margin, he suspected, with liver spots that stretched up onto her head-tendrils—took his hands in hers in a strange two-handed gesture.