Free Tales From the Clarke by John Scalzi Page B

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. “ Clarke or 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.
    Coloma was about to respond when her PDA pinged. She swiped to her message queue and read the mail there. Then she shut down the screen, put the PDA away and returned her gaze to what used to be the Clarke .
    Balla watched her captain for a moment. “You’re killing me over here,” she finally said.
    “Remember when you said that there are worse assignments than a tow barge?” Coloma said, to her