Conduct Unbecoming

Orwell failed to flinch under Britton's accusing stare. That wasn't surprising, of course, if you considered that not so many years ago Orwell was captain to Britton's conn lieutenant-but most people reacted quite differently when Anja decided to glare at them. Patriarca's children tended to be a pugnacious lot, and a first-generation amalgam like Anja was apt to have both a bad temper and a parsec-wide stubborn streak to go with it.

Thanta Orwell, whose ancestors amalgamated into the Protectorate generations ago, had thirty-five years of starship service to help her face Anja down. She also had memories of Anja as a junior officer, and before that as the scared (although still decidedly contentious!) kid whom Rik Boehmer took in hand during the evacuation of survivors from what was left of Patriarca after the rebels were through there.

The H'cpt weren't the first species to decide that they would take almost any risk rather than submit to amalgamation, once they learned what the Protectorate required of its members. The rebels of Patriarca were willing to do whatever it took to cleanse their planet of youngsters like Anja Britton, after all; and there had been movements like theirs on other worlds. But the H'cpt panicked much earlier in the process-and that was Thanta Orwell's fault. This was her mission, her first as a diplomat. A solo diplomat, to a culture on the verge of entering into its initial covenant. Orwell didn't yet know exactly how she had failed, but she knew for sure it had happened.

"Have you had any contact with the H'cpt since Rik went down there?" she demanded of Anja Britton. "And how long is it going to be until help gets here?"

Before Rik's executive officer could reply to either question, the comm whistled. A disembodied voice wanted to know, "Commander Britton? Is Commodore Orwell available yet? There's a H'cpt who wants to speak with her."

"Tell her, him, or it to go ahead," Anja said into the small silence that followed, after she glanced first at the medic-who nodded reluctantly-and then at Orwell.

"Thanta," said someone whose voice the commodore recognized easily, after months of living among the H'cpt. They were beings who used single names and avoided addressing others by titles, and she'd adapted to their ways out of courtesy.

"Yes, H'rck. I'm listening."

"The man who offered to replace you as our messenger is on the flying boat that he used to come here. You may retrieve him now. Good-bye, Thanta. I will not see you again, I think."

"H'rck! Wait!" Thanta found her voice, frantically. Lack of dignity didn't matter right now. "Communications. Get him back! Immediately!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am. No response." From the bridge, from decks above sickbay, came the apologetic reply.

"Britton to ops," Anja snapped, stepping into the situation with confidence now that she knew what needed to be done. "Get a tractor beam on the captain's shuttle, and bring it on board. Stat!"

"Aye, Commander." There was a pause, an endless several minutes during which a small craft on the H'cpt planet's surface was lifted through layers of atmosphere to intercept the starship's orbit. Then, "We've got it on board. But there are no life signs."

"Oh, no." Thanta drew in a horrified breath. She knew, now, what kind of message the H'cpt were sending to the Protectorate's leaders-and what her own fate would have been, if her friend hadn't replaced her.

* * *

His family didn't claim his body. That came as no shock to Captain Rik Boehmer's friends and superiors.

No one was surprised, either, when Boehmer's family didn't even acknowledge receiving official notification of his death. Humans, after all, weren't supposed to leave their reservation on Luna except to be educated or for business that could only be transacted on Terra. They certainly weren't supposed to join the Defenders like Rik Boehmer, weren't supposed to take up arms on behalf of a Protectorate whose citizens they referred to with age-old scorn as "mongrels" or "mutants." Or by worse terms still, according to what Rik had told Thanta Orwell.