He stood. The motion unhurried.
He looked around the small ready room at the four of them: Lyn, with her arms still folded. Alita, half out of her seat as though she'd been ready to argue before he'd finished the sentence. Camaro, watching him with her jaw set and her bandaged hand very still in her lap. And Swan, by the door, who had said nothing at all yet. He looked, Alita thought, like a man doing complicated arithmetic in his head and not liking any of the sums he was arriving at.
"Here is what I know for certain," Taisen said. "I am not returning this ship to Whitehall. I am not delivering our prize to the people who built it, either, not after what it cost to take it from them. I am going to Triskelion. Because Malkor has offered me a door I have been trying to find for two lifetimes, and I do not believe in leaving doors like that closed simply because the timing is inconvenient."
He paused, letting the silence settle into the corners of the room.
"Any of you who wishes to take the shuttle we're about to leave at the next waypoint, and return home to answer whatever questions Whitehall has for you honestly, with a clean conscience and a clean record, may do so. I will make certain the paperwork reflects that you were following my orders right up until the moment you chose not to. Nobody who takes that shuttle owes me an explanation. Nobody who takes it will hear one word of judgment from me for it."
He looked at them.
"I would take it myself, if I thought I could live with having taken it."
Nobody moved.
Then Camaro, with the same flat, deliberate care she'd brought to every word since the Cell system, spoke.
"I didn't get this hand sitting on my own porch, Commander. I got it doing my job on your bridge. I'm not getting off at the next stop because the job got harder."
"Nor am I," Lyn said, "though God knows I've told you often enough what I think of your plan."
"Someone has to keep translating for you," Alita said, with the particular brightness she used when she meant something too much to say it plainly, "and I've grown fond of the work."
Swan, by the door, took a slow breath. Alita watched him consider it seriously, weighing the fear against the loyalty with an honesty that never once tried to disguise which side was winning at any given moment. He had rehearsed a version of it in the mirror of his own quarters that sounded braver than he currently felt standing in this room, with the recall order still glowing faintly on the display behind Taisen's shoulder.
"Can I ask something first," he said, "before I answer?"
"Of course," Taisen said.
"If this goes the way the worst version of it goes," Swan said, "if we get to Triskelion and there's nothing there worth the risk, or worse, if there's exactly the trap Lieutenant Alita's afraid of and none of us walk away from it... was any of this worth it? I'm not asking to talk you out of it, sir. I've made my peace with dying for a reason I believe in. I just want to know that you believe in this one as much as you're asking the rest of us to."
Taisen considered the question with the same unhurried weight he gave every question that actually deserved one.
"I believe Malkor ordered the attack that killed Earth's fleet at the Fringe, and the Beluga. And I believe he has spent years making certain no one anywhere in the galaxy could prove it in a room that mattered. I believe that if I don't go looking for that proof now, while the door's actually open, it will close, and stay closed, for longer than either of us has left to live."
He met Swan's eyes.
"Whether that's worth dying for is a question I can only answer for myself, Ensign. I won't pretend the answer is the same for everyone standing in this room, and I meant what I said about the shuttle."
"That's a fair answer," Swan said. And something in his shoulders settled. The particular kind of settling that came less from certainty than from simply having asked the question honestly and been given an honest one back.
"I've got a mother on Terrenus who thinks I'm flying cargo runs for the trade commission," he added, finally. "She is going to be extremely unhappy to learn that isn't true, whatever happens next."
He straightened.
"I'm staying, sir. For what it's worth."
"It's worth a great deal," Taisen said. And meant it plainly enough that even Swan, not yet used to being thanked by this particular commander, heard it land.
Fleet Marshal Zhang's reply arrived nine hours later.
Routed through three relay stations to keep it from being traced any faster than the sender wanted it traced. It came, unlike the recall order, in Zhang's own voice rather than the flat administrative register of Fleet Command's standard channel.
Taisen read it alone in his quarters first. The way he read anything he suspected would cost him something to read in front of an audience. Then he called Lyn and Alita in to read it a second time over his shoulder, because some decisions, he had learned across two lifetimes, were worse to carry alone than they were to share.
[ENCRYPTED AUDIO TRANSCRIPT - EYES ONLY]Commander. I am going to say this once, in language that cannot be walked back later if this message is ever produced before a board of inquiry, so listen to it carefully.
I approved Usyk's request for the Beluga personally, on my own authority, without consulting anyone above me, because I read your proposal and judged the risk worth taking. Usyk is dead. That is on my ledger before it is on yours, whatever the tribunal eventually decides to believe about it, and I intend to say so, to anyone who asks, exactly that plainly.