“I am the commander of a capital ship with forty-five hundred souls aboard, Ambassador, I am well familiar with creating time for time-sensitive matters when I’m busy. I’m not sure how I can help with personal matters, though.”
Sylvia paused for a few moments, then took a sharp breath and dove in.
“Henry Wong,” she said bluntly. “You’re his ex-husband. May I ask what happened?”
“That’s…very personal,” Barrie admitted, clearly surprised for a moment before his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “But you’ve been aboard his ship, on and off, for almost a year now, haven’t you?”
“About that, yes,” she confirmed.
The Commodore sighed, laying his hands on the table and looking down at them.
“The short version is that practically every other couple I knew had an understanding about the nature of wartime relationships and their requirements,” he said bluntly. “Rather than actually talking to Henry, I assumed. Given what I knew about Henry’s own nature as far as romance and sex go, that was, in hindsight, spectacularly stupid.
“Our divorce was reasonably amicable, but I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t my fault,” Barrie said. “I regret it, but it is far from the worst sacrifice the war demanded.”
“I wondered,” Sylvia admitted. “He seemed surprisingly un-bitter about it, for all that he didn’t talk about it, either.”
“He’s a better man than I am,” the Commodore said. “I am far more upset with my younger self than I think Henry is.” He shrugged. “I don’t think that’s what you need to know, though, is it?”
Sylvia had the self-control required to be a key ambassador of a nation of seven star systems and over forty billion human beings. She still flushed at Barrie’s blunt assessment.
“How the hell did you even get him to notice you?” she finally asked.
Barrie laughed.
“I beat him with a metaphorical stick for six long, frustrating months,” he admitted. “Once I decided I was interested, I told him. We were already friends and I knew he was as interested in men as women…but I also knew the level of his interest.
“I didn’t push him; I just kept gently reminding him, week after week, month after month, while we ran peacetime operations in the old FighterDiv. Eventually, his brain flipped a switch and things worked out.” Barrie sighed. “I don’t know quite what to suggest, Em Todorovich. Tell him, I guess? Let him make up his own mind.”
“That’s more helpful than you might think,” she admitted. “Thank you.”
She rose from her seat and he made an airy gesture.
“It’s nothing, Ambassador,” Barrie told her. “Just promise me one thing, all right?”
“Captain?” she said carefully.
“Make him happy, if you do make it work. A good chunk of me still needs to see him happy.”
“I hope I get the opportunity,” Sylvia said.
Chapter Forty-Six
Raven limped her way into the rest of the fleet, with her younger sister hovering around her like an overprotective puppy. The two destroyers circling the battlecruisers broke off as they entered the defensive perimeter of Scorpius’s slowly returning fighter wings, joining the rest of the escorts.
Henry was on his ship’s bridge as they reached safe space, and he allowed himself to finally relax as ten SF-122’s swung around behind his ship, a physical barrier between Raven and the system where she’d been so badly mangled.
Only a tiny watch was on the bridge, with over ninety percent of his crew unconscious in their bunks. What damage could be repaired had been fixed under the ice. Only a shipyard could do more at this point—and even most shipyards couldn’t do much about his poor ship’s broken spine.
Or Henry Wong’s exhausted soul. Sylvia Todorovich and Alex Thompson were alive. Those were powerful balms against his mental wounds, but the toll of the Drifters’ betrayal continued to stack up.
Few of Carpenter’s or Glorious’s crew had survived. They’d been fired on at close range without warning. There had been no chance for anyone to make it to escape pods or safety bunkers. Of the four hundred and twenty-three UPSF officers and spacers aboard Glorious—all of them under Henry’s command, hence his responsibility—seventeen had been found alive.
The Kozun had at least been at battle stations, and many had made it to escape pods. The survivors’ stories there were the worst wound of all, though. Star Voice Kalad’s flagship had lost her bridge early in the action, and Kalad had taken direct command of the cruiser, fighting her to the last.
She’d still been aboard and in command when the ship ran into the minefield no one had anticipated. There was no evidence that anyone aboard the heavy cruiser at that last moment had survived.
Henry Wong had sent Star Voice Kalad away in defeat once, but she’d survived both her battle with him and the consequences of that defeat in the Hierarchy. The Drifters had changed that fate, orphaning her child in a single moment of violence.
“Ser, Scorpius reports they’re sending a shuttle for you,” the Chief holding down the com console told him. “ETA is ten minutes. There’s apparently going to be a command meeting including all three ambassadors in two hours.”
“Understood,” he replied. He glanced around the sparsely inhabited bridge and sighed. “Chief, can you get a team to pack up Ambassador Todorovich and her staff’s things? They’ll be far safer aboard Scorpius, and while I don’t know where they’re ending up, well…”
He shrugged. He didn’t even need to tell the Chief. No one aboard Raven had any illusions about the battlecruiser. A surprisingly large portion of the crew had survived, but only through the sacrifice of the starship herself.
“I guess I’ll go find a dress uniform,” he said, glancing around. “Lieutenant Henriksson!”
The engineering officer looked up in surprise. She’d been entirely focused on her console and the task of finding anything still repairable aboard the battered ship.
“Ser?” she asked.
“You have the con, Lieutenant,” he told her with a grin. Engineering officer wasn’t a watch standing role, though any officer who wanted to advance to command would volunteer to backfill the watch standers to get experience.
“Ser!” she confirmed, her voice concerned.
“We’re in the middle of a friendly fleet with our engines off, Lieutenant,” Henry told her. “I know you can handle Raven in that situation—and you’re the only other officer on the bridge. So, yes, Lieutenant, you have the conn.”
“Yes, ser!” she said, straightening slightly and tapping commands to transfer central control to her console. “I won’t let you down.”
“I know.”
Not only did Henry have full faith in the junior officer, there was basically nothing she could do to let him down in Raven’s current state.
Henry’s dress uniform was his normal slacks and turtleneck with an additional white-piped and short-tailed black jacket. The jacket was collarless, allowing the white collar of his turtleneck to showcase his rank insignia above it.