Asimov's Science Fiction Read Online Free PDF Page A

had been successful.
    "It will make a difference as to how we plan our response. A cursory study of the ships on front line tells me that none of us have the kind of diplomatic experience that the crew of the
Ivoire
have, and if this is still a diplomatic mission, then—"
    "We will get back to you," Nawoki said, and the images vanished from the screen. The contact had been severed.
    Sabin stood and let herself out of the room, leaving the panel open in case Command Operations responded immediately. She didn't want anything to record the expression that she had barely been able to keep off her face inside during the meeting.
    She knew why Zeller had asked her why she cared now. The bastard thought she was panicking. Even after fifteen years of exemplary command, he thought some ship slipping into foldspace made her panic.
    Then she let out a long breath. Maybe she was misjudging him. Maybe the problem was something else entirely, a diplomatic problem that no one in Command Operations could discuss in front of her.
    She stretched, trying to relax her muscles, and willed herself to focus on the moment.
    The past did not matter, whether it was her past relationship with General Zeller or the disappearance of her father.
    What mattered was this mission, and how she would handle it. How her crew would handle it. How the front line would handle it.
    And whether or not they would imperil a diplomatic mission.
    And if anyone in Command Operations asked her about her reasons for asking questions, she would not be defensive. She would answer honestly. She would tell them she wanted to do what was best for the Fleet.
    Because she did.
5
    Her first encounter with George Zeller had come more than two decades before, when he was still a major. He reluctantly ran the counselors in the evaluation section of the academy's officer training program and, she later learned, he had taken no interest in the psychological evaluations or their necessity until she enrolled.
    Correction: until she enrolled and did well.
    Then, apparently, Major George Zeller made it his business to prove that she wasn't fit to command anything larger than an engineering staff on a third-class Fleet vessel.
    He had been younger then, not just in age or experience, but in manner. He had red hair and green eyes that flashed when he was angry, which to her, seemed like all of the time.
    He was the one who mentioned her father's disappearance to the academy staff, he was the one who believed that disappearance would cause problems, and he was the one who insisted on psychological training so rigorous that Sabin had to go without sleep for days to complete the testing and her schoolwork. When she complained to the head of her department, he moved the testing to dates between the school terms, enabling her to at least get some rest.
    She always tested well, but Zeller kept accusing her of gaming the system. She finally reported him to his superior, one Colonel Gaines, who would eventually disappear himself in an
anacapa
accident two years later. She never quite got over the irony of that; Zeller never got over the fact that she went over his head.
    He might have overcome it, had she failed in Officer Training, but she had graduated first in her class, with high honors, the only person in twenty years to get a perfect score on all of the final term tests—including the physical ones.
    She never quite figured out what Zeller had against her; other students had lost parents to accidents, disappearances, and explosions, and Zeller had never taken an interest in them.
    Just her.
    It wasn't until years later, after she had become a captain, that she found a reference to Zeller in her father's file. The record itself was mostly redacted. What did exist was deliberately vague.
    After that discovery, she told herself that Zeller's reactions to her came from survivor's guilt, but she never really wanted to test that theory. So she avoided him whenever possible.
    In fact, she had