Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet by Graham Sharp Paul

Anna Cheung, then forget it. She is my problem, not yours, and I regret even telling you about it. Do not make things worse, Jayla,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m going to forget I was ever here, and so are all of you. And that’s an order,” he added running his eyes across the faces of his senior crew.
    Grim-faced, mouth set in a firm line, Ferreira refused to concede. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but whether you like it or not, that is what we are here to talk about, and I strongly recommend you hear us out. If by the end of this meeting you don’t want our help, that is of course your decision, and we will respect it. However, I have to tell you”—there was no mistaking the steely determination in Ferreira’s voice—“that you will hear what we have to say … please, sir. Sit down and listen. That’s all I ask.”
    Michael could not speak; he stared at Ferreira, stunned by her open defiance and more than a little cowed by the fact that every one of the people that his command of
Redwood
relied on was sitting in front of him, their faces every bit as unrelenting as Ferreira’s.
    Chief Bienefelt broke the awful silence. “Sir!” she said, leaning her enormous bulk forward the better to look Michaelright in the face. “You need to trust us. Hear what we have to say, then decide what to do next. Please.”
    Michael had no idea what to think anymore. Part of him wanted to accept defeat, to confess all to Commodore Anjula, to abandon Anna, to let her die. Another part of him wanted desperately to hear what the people he most trusted, the people who made
Redwood
the ship she was, said. They might see a way to save the woman he loved more than his own life, but how?
    Unless … Hope flared. Maybe there was a way; maybe he was arrogant and stupid to think he was the only person able to solve the problem. These were smart people, so why not hear what they had to say?
    “Okay,” he said at last, brushing away the tendrils of doubt. “I’ll listen, but if I say stop, we stop. Understood?”
    “Yes, sir,” Ferreira said. “Before we start, I’d like confirmation that your neuronics are not recording.”
    Michael did not even bother arguing. He had decided to trust Ferreira, so he would, even if people blocked recording only when they wanted to push the boundaries.
    “Thank you, sir. Now,” she continued, her voice brisk, “everyone here has seen the Hammer holovid with the threat to Lieutenant Cheung. Following our conversation yesterday, sir, I spoke to everybody one on one to see how we might go about dealing with that threat, and that’s what we’re here to talk about. I was a bit surprised to discover that everyone agrees there is only one way to solve this problem.”
    Ferreira checked herself; Michael’s shock must have been obvious, the idea that his people had contrived a way to save Anna too much to bear. “Go on,” he croaked.
    “Well, sir, we see it like this. To start with, we …”
       Michael struggled to come to terms with Ferreira’s proposal late into the night. Restless, unable to settle, he paced the length of his cabin, stomach knotted into a tight ball by the appalling dilemma Colonel Hartspring and the Hammers had thrust into his life.
    What Ferreira wanted to do was extraordinary … andoutrageous. No, that did not even come close to describing what his executive officer was suggesting. If he went along with her, he would be party to the biggest single crime in the history of the Federated Worlds, an honor he did not relish.
    The problem was that even though some of what she had said was good, too much of it was bad. The basic outline was fine … in principle. True, it needed a ton of detailed work to turn it into a workable plan, a plan that had a reasonable chance of getting the desired result without killing everyone in the process, but Michael was more than confident that was doable.
    Sadly, feasibility was never the issue.