Heritage of Flight by Susan Shwartz

government might replace it—which, in wartime, might be never. She had had a moment's pang— never see Rafe again —and then she heard her own name mentioned. She too was grounded. Then Becker stepped back, with the air of a prudent man putting himself out of range, but otherwise refusing to change his mind.
    "You're taking me off my ship?” Borodin asked. “My ship's orders were cut for Novaya Moskva by way of New Pax,” he added with the mildness that generally heralded one of his more memorable rages.
    "Your ship's orders,” said the marshal. “They said nothing about its complement."
    "And myself?” Still that mildness, but the anger was gathering, reddening in the darkness of Borodin's eyes. In an instant more, it would reach critical mass—
    Becker reached into his tunic's inner pocket and pulled out something. Then there had been a snap, as if the marshal unsealed something. He handed the wafer to the captain.
    "A sector governorship?” asked Borodin. “But I thought that you would be remaining here."
    "Thumbprint here, Captain. Do you deny my authority to reassign you now? Here are your new orders: to take charge of this part of Project Seedcorn. You had best read it now, and fast: air contact will destroy the message soon."
    Borodin lowered his head and read these new orders, then reread them until the message deteriorated. He threw the fragments down, and rubbed his fingers against his thigh as if he sought to wipe them clean. Project Seedcorn, Pauli had thought at the time, numbed by the shock of reassignment, must be quite something if it forestalled Borodin's explosion. When that finally came, it would be a supernova, she thought. Perhaps the heat of his fury would warm her.
    "Will you accept posting?” the marshal asked finally.
    With the Secessionists busy grabbing planets, and Becker claiming a sector governorship, Borodin either accepted this assignment or boarded Amherst a prisoner, to face charges of sedition or mutiny (since Becker had been in command since planetfall) on the first world where the Amherst made planetfall. New Pax, probably. They were strict about such things on New Pax.
    "I must accept,” said Borodin. “But I repeat: you're taking me off my ship. So I think that means you owe me more than ‘theirs was not to reason why,’ Marshal."
    "Captain Borodin, you saw it during landing,” said Becker. Pauli gasped at the cruel logic of the statement, and Borodin stepped back a step. “Your reflexes are down; it almost cost us our lives. All right, maybe that was Jump stress, especially that last Jump. And maybe, once you rested up on New Pax, you could scrape past your proficiency tests. This year. But what about next? And what about your first scramble with a Secess’ that wasn't on the run? What if you didn't hit weapons or Jump fast enough, or were slow at the helm that time too? We'd be out one very expensive ship and its expensively trained crew. And those are getting to be scarce commodities."
    Borodin shook his head, his eyes going from Becker to the clean new domes to the sleek hull of Amherst with the desperation of a creature who sees the shimmer of a forcefield between himself and freedom. Then he looked at Pauli and gathered himself up to argue further.
    "You think that the war's not going to end soon. Our briefings say otherwise."
    Becker snorted. “Why else do you suppose I got authority for Seedcorn? Ordinarily—and if I thought this was an ordinary time, I'd have proposed it myself—I'd intern these people. Maybe they could have been set down on Marduk's World. The whole southern continent's been turned into a hospital to tend the survivors of that first raid ... and their children. Whatever they'll grow up like."
    Standing with the other civilians, one hand resting on the shoulder of a young girl with the eyes of an old woman, Dr. Alicia Pryor winced. Marduk's World had been hit by old-style atomics; the southern continent was the only part of it that had not