“You’ve been relieved of your command of the Clarke,” Brode said. “The determination has been made to scrap the ship. Command has been transferred to the port crew that will disassemble it. This is all standard practice for scrapped ships, Captain. It’s not a reflection on your service.”

“Yes, sir,” Coloma said, and doubted that. “What is my next command? And what is the disposition of my staff and crew?”

“In part, that’s what this inquiry is about, Captain Coloma,” Egan said, and glanced over at Brode, coolly. “It’s regrettable that you had to learn about the disposition of your ship in this way, in this forum. But now that you do know, you should know what we’re going to decide is not what we think about what you did, but where we think you should go next. Do you understand the difference here?”

“With apologies, ma’am, I’m not entirely sure I do,” Coloma said. Her entire body was coated in a cold sweat that accompanied the realization that she was now a captain without a ship, which meant in a very real sense she was no longer a captain at all. Her body wanted to shiver, to shake off the clamminess she felt. She didn’t dare.

“Then understand that the best thing you can do now is to help us understand your thinking at every step in your actions,” Egan said. “We have your report. We know what you did. We want a better idea of the why.”

“You know the why,” Coloma said before she could stop, and almost immediately regretted it. “I did it to stop a war.”

“We all agree you stopped a war,” Maciejewski said. “We have to decide whether how you did it justifies giving you another command.”

“I understand,” Coloma said. She would not admit any defeat into her voice.

“Very good,” Maciejewski said. “Then let’s begin at the decision to let the missile hit your ship. Let’s take it second by second, shall we.”

*   *   *

The Clarke, like other large ships, did not dock with Phoenix Station directly. It was positioned a small distance away, in the section of station devoted to repair. Coloma stood at the edge of the repair transport bay, watching crews load into the work shuttles that would take them to the Clarke, to strip the ship of anything and everything valuable or salvageable before cutting down the hull itself into manageable plates to be recycled into something else entirely—another ship, structural elements for a space station, weapons or perhaps foil to wrap leftovers in. Coloma smiled wryly at the idea of a leftover bit of steak being wrapped in the skin of the Clarke, and then she stopped smiling.

She had to admit that in the last couple of weeks she’d gotten very good at making herself depressed.