In the Rouge

8 - Garza

A small slab of fake meat and a serving of mixed vegetables cooled in a tray on Admiral Garza’s desk, ignored while he sat, chin on fist, idly scanning through reports. Half the ships in his fleet were undergoing refit and resupply, while the other half waited their turn for the same. Their crews were so anxious that there had been more than a hundred injuries from fighting in the last two days. Five years was a long time to be floating around in space with only the occasional ground-leave at a backspace fuel depot or fringe colony: a long time to have almost no contact with their homes or loved ones.

     The door-chime sounded. He ignored it.

     Five years and they came home to find an insane accountant running the empire. Garza was fully prepared to admit that Lord Harrimont hadn’t exactly been in the running for sanest tyrant of the year. And the man had been supplanted by his own chief accountant, so he definitely wasn’t the brightest. But at least he’d had style. And he wouldn’t have just left two-million people stranded on some dying world: at least not when he could have used it for politico-media grandstanding.

     The door-chime sounded again. He ignored it.

     Garza sighed. A man who listens to voices, he could work with. A man who listens to numbers . . . What could he do with that?

     The door chime sounded, and then quickly sounded again.

     “Yes, what is it?” said Garza.

     “Mhmmm mhm mmmhmmm hmmmm,” said a voice muffled by the closed door.

     “What?”

     “MHMMM MHM MMMHMMM HMMMM,” said the voice. It apparently belonged to someone who thought speaking louder made one easier to understand.[29]

     “Oh for—Just come in.”

     “HMMHMM?”

     Garza walked over to the door and slapped the panel. “What!” he said, as soon as the door was open the barest fraction.

     A frightened-looking young woman stood in the hallway. She didn’t speak.

     “Yes, Ensign?” said Garza.

     “Er . . .” she said. Her eyes were wide and darting, and she gripped the edge of her uniform blouse tightly in one hand while clutching an AUD in the other.

     Garza recognized all the signs of someone who had been democratically elected[30] to be the bearer of bad news. Garza was not sympathetic. “Out with it, Ensign.”

     “Er . . . Lieutenant Macklin,” came the expected attempt to shift blame, “told me to inform you that we’ve been scanning the comms traffic of the Titan as you ordered, and we just picked up a message with one of the keywords we were hunting.” She handed Garza the AUD.

     Garza took it from her trembling hands. “And Lieutenant Macklin thought it needed to be brought to me personally?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     “I see. You may go.” He tapped the door panel and went back to his desk. There was no telling what this particular bit of ‘bad news’ might be; he hadn’t told Macklin and his team why they were parsing the Titan’s comm traffic, so they probably assumed any instance of any of the keywords was bad. He turned on the AUD and was soon angrily jabbing the intercom control.

     “Yes, sir?” answered a voice.

     “Get me a secure comm with Admiral Haslie aboard the Brava. Immediately.”

     Garza spent the next few minutes staring at the wall and drumming his fingers on the AUD before Admiral Haslie’s voice came over the intercom, preceded by the whispery sound of a stifled yawn. “Yes, Manny, what is it?” Her voice sounded muffled.

     Garza’s fingers ceased their drumming. “What the hell is going on with the Titan, Theora?”

     “What are you talking about?”

     “Jim Whorley. The Titan. What are they doing?”

     “Still chasing pirates, as far as I know. It’s one ship, Manny. I don’t spend all my time trying to figure out what Whorley is doing at any given moment. What is this about? He can’t have blown up the universe in the last three hours while I’ve been trying to sleep.”

     “The Mime, Theora. He’s found the Mime. They’re capturing it right now. You were supposed to keep them occupied for weeks. Now they’ll be back at Capitol in a couple days, floating around for who knows how long.”

     “Manny. The Mime isn’t real. They’re just attacking some random pirate base, and I’ll just send them off chasing the Mime again. Why is this so important? It’s just one ship. How much trouble can he possibly cause?”

     “It’s Whorley. He’s capable of anything. Eight of his Grand Commendations are for things even the Admiral’s Board isn’t cleared to know about. And the ones we do know of are so ludicrous that I wouldn’t believe them if I hadn’t been there one time. Did you know he and that damned ship once saved the entire empire by going back in time to recover some special platypus? He saved the empire with a damn platypus, Theora! So, I don’t really care if he actually does anything or not. Just his reputation could be a problem for us; his mere presence could cost us the other admirals. So get him under control.”

     “If it’s such a problem, why not simply ambush the Titan and destroy her. We can make it look like pirates and—”

     “No. We are not killing five thousand innocent people just because they happen to be inconveniently good at their jobs.”

     There was a long moment of silence. “Manny . . . You’re staging a galactic coup. Do you really think you are somehow going to pull this off without some bloodshed? There is going to be a lot of it before this is through, and if you’re not—”

     “We aren’t killing anyone we don’t have to. Just take care of Whorley.”

     “It’s being handled, Manny. You really ought to get so—”

     Garza slammed his hand down, silencing the intercom. No one was going to die who didn’t have to. That was the whole point. No one. He would see to it.

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[29] Generally the same kind of person who believes speaking louder makes them more likely to be listened to. This is probably due to an unconscious awareness that they themselves only ever listen to the loudest person in the room, and only then so they can intentionally ignore that person.

[30] This particular election probably began with the phrase ‘Not it’.