Expendable - James Alan Gardner [133]
“Apart from pushing the High Council out an airlock?”
She didn’t smile. “Is that what you need to do, Festina?”
“Someone should.” I gave her a look. “Why didn’t you?”
“You think Chee and I could actually sway the council?” She shook her head. “We gave it a shot: all the silly things you see in entertainment bubbles. Letters marked TO BE DELIVERED TO THE PRESS IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO US. Sworn affidavits, with accompanying lie-detector certificates. A plan for confronting the council in public forum…naïve nonsense. At worst, we could have made ourselves an inconvenience—forced the council to sacrifice a scapegoat low down the chain of command. But before we could do even that, we were outmaneuvered. We’d taken too long to set things up. The council was ready for us.”
“What happened?”
“We were shown trumped-up documents proving we were mentally unstable…histories of our inventing complaints to get back at superiors who were only doing their jobs. The frameup was quite thorough. Maybe we could defeat it in court, if we had enough resources to expose the lies; but we didn’t.” She spread her hands wide, then let them fall. “What could we do? And the alternative they offered looked better than getting locked up as liars or paranoids.”
“The alternative was becoming one of them!” I protested. “How could you stomach that?”
“I may have become an admiral,” Seele said, “but I was never one of them. That’s an important distinction. The Outward Fleet has many admirals: seven different ranks of them. Only the top rank sits on the High Council. Most other admirals do reasonably honest work—pushing papers, organizing this project or that, keeping the wheels turning. The council are the ones who make policy. Chee and I weren’t even traditional admirals. We were officers without portfolio, so to speak. Or perhaps, officers without politics—without obligations to people who had paid us favors and without the ambition to seize more power. The shrewd half of the council realized they needed people like us to be troubleshooters and muckrakers…just as they needed Explorers for the same work. They need people to do the job, Festina. To stand apart from the mentality that says, ‘It’s someone else’s problem,’ and to do the thing that needs doing.
“Chee set up his spy network to keep an eye on planetary bureaucracies,” Seele went on. “I did the same within the Admiralty itself. We did good work, Festina. We saved lives that would have been lost through greed and negligence. I’m proud of what I’ve done, even if I had to put on an admiral’s uniform to do it.”
“But you still let them send Explorers to Melaquin,” I said.
“How could I stop it?” she asked. “The High Council likes using Melaquin to solve their problems. It’s convenient. And the League of Peoples doesn’t object. That’s what makes the council happiest; the League doesn’t give a damn. If the League ever intervened—if there was even a suggestion the League might intervene—the council would cower and back off. They’re terrified of being labeled a non-sentient governing body.
“Like the Greenstriders,” I said.
“Precisely. But for forty years, I’ve tried to think of a way to involve the League in Melaquin, and haven’t made a millimeter of headway. Sending humans to an Earthlike world doesn’t put them in lethal danger…not when you compare Melaquin to almost every other planet in the galaxy.”
“No…” I said slowly.
“I promise you,” Seele went on, “I’ve tried to rescue Explorers from time to time, but I’ve always been stopped by the picket ships. You’re the first person I’ve got out, and that was only because the ship with the other Explorers distracted the sentries. I’ve tried to help as much as I could. Most of the time, I hear advance rumors about missions to Melaquin, and I tip off the Explorers involved. Unfortunately, the council moved on Chee while I was distracted with other business. I only found out when I received your eggs….”
Her voice trailed off, but I was only half paying attention. “Admiral,” I said, “I know