So instead she said, “Yes, there were casualties.”

“They might have been avoided,” Egan said.

“Yes,” Coloma said. “I could have avoided them entirely by allowing the missile—a Colonial Union Melierax Series Seven—to hit the Utche ship, which would have been unprepared and unready for the attack. That strike would have likely crippled the ship, if it did not destroy it outright, and would have caused substantial casualties, including potentially scores of deaths. That seemed the less advisable course of action.”

“No one disputes your actions spared the Utche ship considerable damage, and the Colonial Union an uncomfortable diplomatic incident,” Maciejewski said.

“But there still is the matter of the ship,” Brode said.

“I’m well aware of the matter of the Clarke,” Coloma said. “It’s my ship.”

“Not anymore,” Brode said.

“Pardon?” Coloma said. She dug her fingernails into her palms to keep herself from leaping across the room to grab Brode by the collar.

“You’ve been relieved of your command of the Clarke,” Brode said. “The determination has been made to scrap the ship. Command has been transferred to the port crew that will disassemble it. This is all standard practice for scrapped ships, Captain. It’s not a reflection on your service.”

“Yes, sir,” Coloma said, and doubted that. “What is my next command? And what is the disposition of my staff and crew?”

“In part, that’s what this inquiry is about, Captain Coloma,” Egan said, and glanced over at Brode, coolly. “It’s regrettable that you had to learn about the disposition of your ship in this way, in this forum. But now that you do know, you should know what we’re going to decide is not what we think about what you did, but where we think you should go next. Do you understand the difference here?”

“With apologies, ma’am, I’m not entirely sure I do,” Coloma said. Her entire body was coated in a cold sweat that accompanied the realization that she was now a captain without a ship, which meant in a very real sense she was no longer a captain at all. Her body wanted to shiver, to shake off the clamminess she felt. She didn’t dare.

“Then understand that the best thing you can do now is to help us understand your thinking at every step in your actions,” Egan said. “We have your report. We know what you did. We want a better idea of the why.”

“You know the why,” Coloma said before she could stop, and almost immediately regretted it. “I did it to stop a war.”

“We all agree you stopped a war,” Maciejewski said. “We have to decide whether how you did it justifies giving you another command.”

“I understand,” Coloma said. She would not admit any defeat into her voice.

“Very good,” Maciejewski said. “Then let’s begin at the decision to let the missile hit your ship. Let’s take it second by second, shall we.”

*   *   *

The Clarke,like other large ships, did not dock with Phoenix Station directly. It was positioned a small distance away, in the section of station devoted to repair. Coloma stood at the edge of the repair transport bay, watching crews load into the work shuttles that would take them to the Clarke,to strip the ship of anything and everything valuable or salvageable before cutting down the hull itself into manageable plates to be recycled into something else entirely—another ship, structural elements for a space station, weapons or perhaps foil to wrap leftovers in. Coloma smiled wryly at the idea of a leftover bit of steak being wrapped in the skin of the Clarke,and then she stopped smiling.

She had to admit that in the last couple of weeks she’d gotten very good at making herself depressed.

In her peripheral vision, Coloma saw someone walking up to her. She knew without turning that it was Neva Balla, her executive officer. Balla had a hitch in her gait, an artifact, so Balla claimed, of an equestrian injury in her youth. The practical result of it was that there was no doubt of her identity when she came up on you. Balla could be wearing a bag on her head and Coloma would know it was her.

“Having one last look at the Clarke?” Balla asked Coloma as she walked up.

“No,” Coloma said; Balla looked at her quizzically. “She’s no longer the Clarke. When they decommissioned her, they took her name. Now she’s just CUDS-RC-1181. For whatever time it takes to render her down to parts, anyway.”

“What happens to the name?” Balla asked.

“They put it back into the rotation,” Coloma said. “Some other ship will have it eventually. That is, if they don’t decide to retire it for being too ignominious.”

Balla nodded, but then motioned to the ship. “ Clarkeor not, she was still your ship.”

“Yes,” Coloma said. “Yes, she was.”

The two stood there silently for a moment, watching the shuttles angle toward what used to be their ship.

“So what did you find out?” Coloma asked Balla after a moment.

“We’re still on hold,” Balla said. “All of us. You, me, the senior staff of the Clarke. Some of the crew have been reassigned to fill holes in other ship rosters, but almost no officers and none of those above the rank of lieutenant junior grade.”

Coloma nodded. The reassignment of her crew would normally come through her, but technically speaking they were no longer her crew and she no longer their captain. Balla had friends in the Department of State’s higher reaches, or more accurately, she had friends who were assistants and aides to the department’s higher reaches. It worked out the same, informationwise. “Do we have any idea why no one important’s been reassigned?”

“They’re still doing their investigation of the Danavar incident,” Balla said.

“Yes, but in our crew that only involves you and me and Marcos Basquez,” Coloma said, naming the Clarke’s chief engineer. “And Marcos isn’t being investigated like the two of us are.”

“It’s still easier to have us around,” Balla said. “But there’s another wrinkle to it as well.”

“What’s that?” Coloma asked.

“The Clarke’s diplomatic team hasn’t been formally reassigned, either,” Balla said. “Some of them have been added on to existing missions or negotiations in a temporary capacity, but none of them has been made permanent.”

“Who did you hear this from?” Coloma asked.

“Hart Schmidt,” Balla said. “He and Ambassador Abumwe were attached to the Bula negotiations last week.”

Coloma winced at this. The Bula negotiations had gone poorly, in part because the Colonial Defense Forces had established a clandestine base on an underdeveloped Bula colony world and had gotten caught red-handed trying to evacuate it; that was the rumor, in any event. Abumwe and Schmidt having anything to do with that would not look good for them.

“So we’re all in limbo,” Coloma said.

“It looks like,” Balla said. “At least you’re not being singled out, ma’am.”

Coloma laughed at this. “Not singled out, but being punished, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t know why we would be punished,” Balla said. “We were dropped into a diplomatic process at the last minute, discovered a trap, and kept the trap from snapping shut. All without a single death. And the negotiations with the Utche were successfully completed on top of that. They give people medals for less.”

Coloma motioned to what used to be the Clarke. “Maybe they were just very attached to the ship.”

Balla smiled. “It seems unlikely,” she said.

“Why not?” Coloma said. “I was.”

“You did the right thing, Captain,” Balla said, becoming serious. “I said so to the investigators. So did Ambassador Abumwe and Lieutenant Wilson. If they don’t see that, to hell with them.”

“Thank you, Neva,” Coloma said. “It’s good of you to say that. Remember it when they assign us to a tow barge.”

“There are worse assignments,” Balla said.