Zero-Option | Page 7

now, as he looked over her dossier, he could see a distinct pattern emerging. Vice-Admiral Carter's prints were all over it. The admiral had constantly intervened in her career; it was as though he had made it his personal mission to do so.
Imbrahim pondered this, considering the many possibilities, and reaching the conclusion that whatever it was that had happened to her on Obsidian had had something to do with the Reds and why she seemed to hell-bent on exacting some sort of revenge. He better understood her, he thought, despite the blacked out information. Jhordel's recklessness��as some would call it��was firmly rooted in her past. It was a simple enough motivation; and he could sympathize with her wholeheartedly. But it was an emotional response, and in his experience that was the sort of thing that led to mistakes. And in space, mistakes got you killed.
While the episode that seemed to have changed her life was sealed from scrutiny, there was considerable information regarding the incident for which she was publicly famous��the one for which she had almost been court-martialed. And would have been, Imbrahim thought, if not for Admiral Carter.
For Imbrahim much of this information was new, since he had not been on Earth at the time of the furor. By the time he had returned, the details had already become blurred by countless retellings. Of course, as far as what had gone on in the Council of the Admirals, that information had been limited to the handful who had been there. It wasn't counted among the data the computer offered up for his edification. He did know, however, that quite a battle had been fought as to whether Jhordel should be demoted and denied future command. Some of the traditionalists had insisted it was the only way of maintaining discipline, but the more moderate element in the Admiralty had foreseen that such a move would alienate the public, and consequently the politicians whose support the Navy so desperately needed.
He smiled roguishly as he imagined the fur flying in that closed room of seasoned military strategists. It had long been rumored that the Admiral of the Fleet himself, Silas Jackson, had taken a personal interest in the case and had come down in favor of Jhordel. For that reason and that reason alone, many argued, Jhordel had been given the much sought after and prized command of the Confederation. He thought it more likely that Carter had played the bigger role, but Jackson would have gone along with it because of the flak he'd been receiving at the time: Jhordel's success against the Unity in her unprecedented action had been the first major victory for the Federation in several years. It had come, too, after a spate of embarrassing losses.
Certainly in the time that Jhordel had held command of the Confederation she had proven herself an able��and daring��officer. Her ship and crew had the highest success rate of any in the fleet; and hers was currently the only ship given letters of marque that allowed it to raid indiscriminately beyond the Pomerium Line, deep in Unity space. Imbrahim surmised that much of her success arose from the ruthlessness for which she prosecuted her missions��a ruthlessness that had garnered a considerable reputation. And it was probably because of this that in the Unity they called her 'Satan's whore.' The Cardinali, it was said, had put a price on her head, with a reward of untold riches and an assured spot in the Heavens for the captain who brought her down. From what he had heard through the grapevine, there had been many among the Unity fleet who had taken up the challenge; and what he had seen of the Confederation as he had come in from Earth had been visible proof. How long, he wondered, before someone succeeded? Even the magnificent Jhordel, he ventured, was not invulnerable.
Satan's whore. He found it difficult not to smile at that; it was easy to admire someone who could so enrage the enemy they felt it necessary to single her out for attention. Clearly she'd come a long way since that day when she'd evacuated the crew of the Grand Banks and primed it for self-destruct. He tried to imagine what it must have been like for her watching from the tenuous safety of her life pod as her ship had hurtled through the black infinity of space, the defensive array of the Unity waystation pounding it mercilessly. But not enough. Not enough. The old Grandy had defied the odds and made it through the screen of defenses, through the shields, where it had unceremoniously plowed into the station. That in itself would have been enough to wreak havoc; but then the ship's auto-destruct had done its work. The graviton collection coils had collapsed