Last Measure of Devotion (TCOTU, Book 5) (This Corner of the Universe) (16 page)

“You
haven’t a clue as to my pain!” Vernay snapped irritably and jerked her arm out
of his grasp.  “Or the source of it.”

Heskan
reeled from the venom directed at him.  He studied her expression and wondered
how she could be the wounded party in the room.  Perhaps sensing no further
comment from him, Vernay sighed and resumed her movement for the door.  Heskan’s
stomach twisted at the imminent departure of his best officer. 
I’m losing
her,
he realized as more volts of panic shot through him. 
Do something!

“Stacy,
I need you.”

Vernay
stopped dead in her tracks.

“I
can’t get through this mess without your help,” Heskan confessed.  “Please
don’t abandon me.”

Vernay’s
shoulders plummeted at the simple, impassioned appeal.  An eternity of silence
stretched out between them until, finally, she answered softly.  “I’m only
doing this one more time, Captain.”

Heskan’s
spirit soared at the ultimatum; the relief washing through his body shook him. 
He felt his lips curl into an involuntary smile that was quickly extinguished
by her next, chilling words.

“Don’t
force me to watch you die, Garrett.”

Stacy
Vernay stared longingly at the wall screen in her quarters.  The oversized, three-bedroom
apartment was located on the top floor of Cooke Tower in Seshafi Major’s fourth
largest city, Port Crown.  The building was named after Margaret Cooke, great-grandmother
of Piers Cooke and famous ship captain during the birth of the corporate
systems.  The structure currently served as both officer and enlisted quarters
for the primary naval base on the planet’s northern continent.  Vernay had
lived in the spacious apartment since
Elathra’s
cannibalization for
parts needed to repair the other three Colossus-class snows.  Those snows remained
conspicuously absent during the last few months, still moored in shipyards
inside the Lagrin star system.

Vernay
stared, transfixed, at the image before her, feeling a combination of hope and doubt. 
She stubbornly tried to will the doubt away.  It was an elusive dream.  The
ethereal ambition was tangible enough to reach for but incorporeal enough to
resist all attempts to wrangle it into reality.

Her
datapad chimed from a nearby tabletop and broke Vernay’s trance.  She walked
away from the dream to see that Selvaggio was on her way.  After unlocking the
front door with a datapad command, she returned to her present predicament: how
to pack twenty days of clothes into her two allotted deployment bags.  She
frowned at the Federation-style bags that contained nearly a half-dozen
compartments and dividers to organize her belongings but in reality only served
to limit the total useable space.  Her old LG-3 standard Brevic-issued bags
were yet another thing she preferred over the “new and improved” versions
handed to her by the Seshafian navy.

Despite
her unease, she was looking forward to the trip to Nessus.  In fact, she was
approaching the trip as more recreation than a burden of duty.  She had spent
two hours speaking with lawyers from AmyraCorp who explained the possibility of
her actually being called to the witness stand was slim.  Their reasoning was
sound.  First, Seshafi did not intend to call her to testify.  Second, it was
highly unlikely that opposing counsel would call to the stand someone obviously
devoted to the Seshafian cause when there was very little to gain from it.  She
had not even made the list of personnel to be deposed by Saden counsel, and the
risk of calling a witness to the stand when a barrister did not know how that
person would testify was generally unacceptable.  When Vernay confessed her fear
of being called specifically to answer questions regarding the most recent
skirmish in Sade, attorneys dismissed her apprehension on the grounds that
those events were irrelevant to the actual proceedings: the murder of Admiral
Piers Cooke.

With
that weight removed from Vernay’s shoulders, she decided to treat the journey
to such a cosmopolitan planet as Nessus as a paid vacation instead of a work
requirement.  She stood over her baggage and deliberated briefly over bringing an
extra pair of flats before attempting to stuff the additional shoes into the
bag.  The wrinkles they might cause in her clothes, she decided, could be pressed
later.  A knock on the door interrupted her packing triumph.

“Come
in, Diane,” Vernay called out while tugging at the bag’s closure.

Selvaggio
entered Vernay’s living room and whistled in admiration.  “Wow, this is so much
bigger than what I have.  What the hell, Stacy?  We’re both ship captains; how’d
you get this huge apartment?”  The raven-haired woman walked over to help
Vernay zip the deployment bag.  As the pair struggled, Selvaggio’s eyes strayed
around the spacious room and stopped on the wall screen.  “Where’s that?”

Vernay
grunted as the zipper moved its final centimeters.  “About forty kilometers
south of here.  Kind of in the middle of nowhere.”

“The
sand is so white,” Selvaggio admired softly.  “I’d love to live on the coast
but Jack wants a farm with a lot of land.”  She screwed her eyebrows at Vernay
quizzically.

“A farm?”
Vernay barked between fits of laughter.

The
brown-eyed woman stifled her own amusement before answering, “Yeah.  He wants
to farm animals or something.”

“You
raise animals.  I think you mean a ranch.”

“Oh,
whatever.  I think Jack fancies himself as some future cattle baron.  Can you
see Jack on a horse?”  Selvaggio shook her head as she looked toward the
ceiling in resignation.  “But it’s his dream and I love him so what can you
do?”  She shrugged her shoulders as her eyes dropped to the third finger on her
left hand.

“I
can’t believe he proposed,” Vernay said.  “I’m so happy for the both of you. 
Have you set a date?  Will you have a ceremony?”

Selvaggio
admired her engagement ring dreamily.  “Thanks, Stacy.  Jack was ready to set a
date but I wanted to wait.  I didn’t want to jinx ourselves with another battle
looming.  We’ll figure out if we want a traditional ceremony or not later. 
It’s not like our families could sail in to attend anyway.”  She looked at
Vernay’s two, burgeoning deployment bags.  “You ready?”

Vernay
nodded.  “How many uniforms did you take?”

“Two. 
One duty and my dress blues in case I have to testify.  I know the captain said
we didn’t have to wear our uniforms during the trip but I’d feel naked without
having at least one available.”  She looked away guiltily.

“I brought the same,”
Vernay admitted.  Even though there was a certain logic to keeping the military
passengers in civilian attire during the trip aboard
Hawk
, the old habit
of having a duty uniform ready to go at a moment’s notice was not easy to ignore. 
She snatched her datapad off the table and deactivated the wall screen.  With
the press of her thumb, she initialized the security protocols for the flat. 
The two friends each grabbed a deployment bag and started tugging.  “Let’s go
start our vacation.  It better be more relaxing than the one to Erriapius.”

*  *  *

“Everything
is squared away,” Chief Anderson promised his captain for the fourth time.

“I
know I’m being a pain,” Clayton Covington acknowledged.  “I just want
everything to be perfect.  Not only is it the fleet commander we’re hosting but
his entire command crew, Boats.  We can’t let them down.”

Anderson
stifled a slight smile at the title.  Covington had overheard Heskan use the
archaic moniker and adopted it ever since.  The old chief had to admit that the
label’s distinction was a satisfying one.  “We’re ready for them, Captain. 
Everyone on board is set to impress.”

The
two men entered
Hawk’s
shuttle bay.  The brig was awaiting the return of
its missing shuttle, out now on its mission to retrieve Heskan and company. 
Hawk’s
passenger manifest read like the who’s who of the “New” Seshafian Navy: Heskan,
Nguyen, Vernay, Tannault, Selvaggio, Truesworth and Hall.  The entire command
crew of Elathra would make the trip, except the young sub-lieutenant in charge
of Operations who had left the star system after recovering from wounds she had
sustained during the battle.

Covington
had felt both delighted and horrified when his father informed him that Heskan wanted
transport to Nessus on
Hawk
.  He had grown up with access to the inner circle
of the highest-ranking Seshafian naval officials, leading him to view Piers
Cooke and others in a respected but different light than most.  Cooke was
certainly a legend within the Seshafian navy, but Covington heard and
occasionally witnessed minor foibles that made the legend human.  Covington had
observed Cooke’s status without the rose-colored glasses of most sailors.

Garrett
Heskan, on the other hand, had taken the navy by storm.  To Covington, the exemplar
of honor and combat was an unspoiled and uncompromisingly honest fighter who
valued courage and integrity above pomp and circumstance.  The man and his
equally dauntless crew were veterans of the Hollaran-Brevic War and represented
everything that officers should be.  Garrett Heskan was the finest example of leadership
and that path now shone brightly for the CEO’s son, who was determined not to let
his privileged status diminish the truly noble route illuminated before him.

Warning
claxons alerted the sailors inside the hangar to the paragon’s imminent arrival
as containment fields snapped into place.  A marine second lieutenant called
his reception detail to attention and even Covington felt his back stiffen
slightly at the woman’s powerful command.  Covington exhaled slowly to release
some of his rising tension.

“We’re
set, Captain,” Anderson assured him again.

The aft-most
portion of
Hawk’s
hangar deck split to reveal infinite space. 
Condensation bubbles momentarily appeared as atmosphere evacuated from the
enclosure.  Minutes later,
Hawk’s
wayward shuttle rose from the depths
of space and into the bay.  Covington felt his heart rate rise with the
shuttle’s upward movement.  A terrifying instant later, the shuttle settled
rather abruptly onto the deck and the bay doors behind it began to close.

Covington
gritted his teeth at the imperfect touchdown. 
That’s our best shuttle
pilot,
he thought with more than a little irritation but quickly exhaled once
again. 
They probably didn’t even feel it, Clayton… don’t sweat it.

Once
atmosphere was restored and the containment fields collapsed, the opening
shuttle door and piped-in music foretold the fleet commander’s presence. 
Covington and his boatswain walked in step to the shuttle ramp.  From behind them,
the marine ordered “present arms,” causing every soul in the hangar to salute
in unison.

Captain
Garrett Heskan led the boarding party out of the shuttle.  He walked down the
ramp with an ease and grace that suggested a degree of comfort with pomp and
circumstance far above his apparent age. 
Hollarans have always been big on
ceremony,
Covington reminded himself. 
I just hope he realizes that our
tiny navy can’t match the grandeur of his Commonwealth… if, in fact, that’s
where he’s from.

The
notion that the honorable man walking toward him could be a Brevic sailor
threatened to upend everything he knew about the Republic. 
Everyone knows
that ‘Vics are hyper-aggressive, dishonorable and untrustworthy savages,
he
thought
.  This man can’t be one.
  History was replete with examples of
Brevic treachery against AmyraCorp’s key ally, the Commonwealth, and he had
been educated on every transgression. 
Besides, ‘Vics hate what privateers
and the corporate systems stand for.  They hate our values and beliefs.  No
self-respecting ‘Vic would be caught dead in Seshafi or be able to integrate so
well among us.

Covington
exhaled slowly a final time to settle his heart rate at a level just below that
experienced in his last combat.  When Heskan locked eyes with him,
Hawk’s
captain valiantly fought to keep his bearing.  The fleet commander, on the
other hand, simply smiled.  That friendly expression sent chills down Covington’s
back and a feeling of pride upward into his chest.  Behind the great man, Covington
barely recognized Heskan’s almost equally renowned but civilian-garbed former
first officer.  The woman was only a few years older than himself but she
carried the gravitas of an admiral.

Although
puzzled at the time by Vernay’s decision to forego a potentially devastating
fusillade against the Saden rearguard in favor of grazing shots against its
main, Covington determined that the scale of honor tipped toward protecting one’s
comrades over destroying the enemy.  He had thought long and hard about her
actions and accepted them as yet another, vital lesson about valuing life above
glory.  His mind returned to her enigmatic origins. 
That’s a Commonwealth tenet
too,
he told himself. 
A ‘Vic would be more than happy to sacrifice her troops
for a killing shot at the enemy.
  He reflected on months-old news stories
about the Brevics defending a star system using an all-out attack on retreating
Hollaran forces rather than withdrawing to defend a populated planet from the invading
Hollarans’ forward elements. 
Mark can’t be right about Heskan.  It’s just
not possible.  If these people were ‘Vics, it would throw everything I’ve been taught
about them since I was a child into question.  Nothing good or noble can
flourish in the Brevic Republic.  It simply is not possible.

Vernay’s
noble choice of defense over offense made the treatment she received from the
Seshafian media nauseating.  Lurid rumors churned among the talking heads and
refused to die.  It made Covington feel ashamed, for the first time in his
life, of his heritage.  As he watched the lithe predator glide down the shuttle
ramp behind her commander, he predicted the future with a sickening revulsion.  
We’re
going to chase these people out of Seshafi with our pettiness and politics.  They
are showing us the way forward… they’re forging a new code of honor based on
the simple reality that our warfare is changing whether we wish it to or not. 
Sade started this.
  He felt his right hand tremble slightly at his temple. 
And we’re ushering them out the airlock with our prejudice.

Covington
pushed the dreadful thoughts aside and opened his mouth to address the man who
commanded the entirety of the Seshafian Navy.  Once again, the outlander beat
him to the punch.  Heskan offered a jaunty salute and smiled more broadly.  “My
crew and I request permission to come aboard, Captain.”