Conduct Unbecoming

Of course none of his relatives would be making the shuttle transfer from Luna to attend his memorial service. They'd bludgeoned him into marrying, a decade or so earlier-into taking a female of his own kind and siring offspring, a family that his salary as a senior Defender officer supported generously-but that was where his value began and ended, as far as his society was concerned. To them Rik Boehmer was no hero, now dead in the line of duty. He was someone who'd lived by choice among the monsters, among those Terrans whose ancestors accepted amalgamation.

Why the Protectorate's leaders of long ago permitted Humans-Humans only, out of all known sentients-to maintain an unamalgamated remnant of their species, was lost now to history. What Thanta Orwell did know was that as a Defender who'd helped to put down more than one rebellion, she understood why the Human reservation on Luna could have no counterpart elsewhere.

She didn't understand why Rik had felt any degree of loyalty to his fellow Humans. But his marriage to one demonstrated that he had; and for that reason she was more glad than astonished, when a female whom she recognized from tridee images Rik proudly displayed aboard ships where they'd shared duty entered the local Defender base's chapel at last.

Rik's coffin rested on a bier at the front of that chamber, which was crowded along its walls with symbols of dozens of the Protectorate's assorted faiths. For now just his three closest friends were with him, but in a little while the dignitaries would arrive-such dignitaries as Terra had, anyway. This wasn't an especially powerful Protectorate world nowadays. Yet it was home to Thanta Orwell, and (since Luna wasn't a Protectorate member in its own right) it was also home world of record for Rik Boehmer.

It wasn't that to Anja Britton; or to Thimor, the single-named former ship's surgeon who was the third watcher at the dead man's side. Thimor's substantially Blaintain heritage showed plainly in her softly rounded body structure, and in her eyes that lost all pigmentation from their irises during times of stress.

"Mistress Boehmer?" Human women changed their names when they entered into a matrimonial covenant. Thanta knew that, because Rik had told her.

A cloak concealed the Human woman's body. Her hood was thrown back, though; and it revealed a face that was, by Human standards of attractiveness as Thanta understood them, a lovely one. Lovely, yet care-worn. Tired.

Understandably, since Thanta knew (although the cloak kept her from seeing) that Rik's wife was in the advanced stages of pregnancy. The couple already had two daughters, and soon now Salla Gardner Boehmer would bear Rik a son.

A posthumous son. Thanta couldn't imagine being pregnant, herself; but now she thought that it must be comforting, no matter how uncomfortable otherwise, to feel a loved husband's baby stirring as counterpoint to the sight of his sealed coffin.

The Human woman was paying no attention to the retired commodore in a full dress uniform. Salla Boehmer walked past Thanta, past Anja and Thimor, and stood beside Rik's casket.

Only a full captain or above, a command or flag officer who'd died in the line of duty, rated being brought home for a memorial service. Rik's body had spent the passage from the far-off H'cpt planet in a stasis tube on board the Solomons. Once here he'd been scanned thoroughly by Thimor and her colleagues at the local military hospital, since just how the H'cpt executed him remained a mystery; and then he was sealed up inside that gleaming black coffin, to lie in state until combined fire from his closest comrades' side arms vaporized both casket and corpse at the service's climax.