Free The Serrano Connection by Elizabeth Moon Page A

on all of them. The Minerals Development Commission was still squabbling with the Marine Biological Commission over control of benthic development. Some things never changed, but in the years she'd been gone the focus of the battle had shifted from the Seline Trench, as the colonies of interest to the biologists died, and were mined for their rich ores, to the Plaanid Trench, where new vents nourished new vent communities. That quarrel would have been unimportant on many worlds, but on Altiplano the Minerals Development Commission represented the Secularists, while Old Believers and the Lifehearts controlled the Marine Biological Commission. Which meant that an argument over exactly when a benthic vent community was dead and could be mined might erupt in religious riots around the entire planet.
     
    "Sanni," Berthol said, when she had clicked off the cube reader, "is involved with the Lifehearts again."
     
    Esmay remembered vividly the moment when her romantic feelings about the night sky became utter certainty that she would have to leave her home forever. Her aunt Sanni—Sanibel Aresha Livon Suiza—and her uncle Berthol, screaming at each other across the big dining room at the estancia. Sanni, a Lifeheart as rigid in her piety as any Old Believer. Esmay found the Lifeheart philosophy attractive, but Sanni in a rage terrified her. Yet it was Berthol who had thrown the priceless chocolate pot, shattering its painted water lilies and swans, scarring the wide polished table. Her own father had walked in on the end of that, with Sanni scrabbling on the floor for shards and Berthol still yelling. And Papa Stefan, two paces behind him, had shamed them both into apologies and hand-shakings.
     
    Esmay hadn't believed it. Whatever was wrong between Sanni and Berthol stayed wrong, and was still wrong, and here she was back in the middle of it.
     
    "It's not my problem now," she said. "I'm only here for a short leave—"
     
    "She likes you," Berthol said. His gaze flicked to his aides, who were studiously ignoring this. "She says you're the one sane member of your generation, and now you're a hero."
     
    Esmay felt herself reddening. "I'm not. All I did—"
     
    "Esmay, this is family . You don't have to pretend. All you did, you babykin, was survive a mutiny, come out on top, and then defeat a warship twice your size."
     
    Bigger than that, Esmay thought. She didn't say it; it would only make things worse. "It didn't know I was there until too late," she said.
     
    "So you were smarter than its captain. Hero, Esmay. Get used to it. You're carrying our flag out there, Esmay, and you're doing very well."
     
    She was not carrying their flag, but her own. They would not understand that, even if she dared say it to them. And Berthol sounded too much like Major Chapin, too much like Admiral Serrano. She had been a hero by accident—why wasn't it as obvious to the others as it was to her?
     
    "And Sanni's very proud of you," Berthol went on. "She wants to talk to you—ask you all about Fleet, about your life. If you're meeting anyone eligible, if I know Sanni." He laughed, but it sounded forced.
     
    She had left for a good reason. She should have stayed away. Yet at the thought of the whole family for once approving, for once seeing her as an asset rather than a very chancy proposition, her heart beat faster. The Starmount . . . when she'd been a little girl, she remembered the first soldier she'd seen awarded the Starmount, a lean, red-haired fellow who walked lopsided. She had stared and stared at the medal on its blue and silver ribbon that dangled around his neck until a disapproving grownup made her apologize and then quit following him. No one from Altiplano could be indifferent to the Starmount . . . and she didn't have to tell Fleet how she felt.
     
    At the shuttlefield, the only media wore the green and scarlet uniforms of the Altiplano Central News Agency. No one tried to speak to her; no one tried to crowd