Chapter Two
Damage Control
Admiral Sandri Brecinn sat at her ease in her war room watching the course of the exercise on the massive screens that filled the whole half of the room: top, bottom, sides. “What do they think they’re doing?” she demanded, watching, as the Wolnadi made an audacious move on its next–to–last target. “Eppie, I’m going to want a blood test on that navigator. He’s got to be on something.”
An appreciative chuckle ran through the room, passing from sycophant to toady to sidekick. Brecinn stretched comfortably. She was in her element, surrounded by her people, and they all knew that nothing the Ragnarok accomplished during this exercise would make any difference in the end. The Ragnarok was history. History, and a very significant addition to her asset account.
“You might have to hold the crew here for a while.” Eppie, her aide, picked the line up and stretched it out ably. “Once you start looking into such things. Who knows how far it goes?”
Brecinn liked Eppie. Eppie was a reasonable person. They were all of them reasonable people, people one could deal with, people with whom one could do business. Well, almost all of them. Some of the observers were unknown quantities. The armaments man, Rukota, for one; Brecinn didn’t know too much about him except that he was very solidly protected — his wife had an intimate understanding of long duration with somebody’s First Secretary.
The Clerk of Court that Chilleau Judiciary had sent to take legal note of the proceedings, however, was a woman with a very interesting past about whom Brecinn’s sources wished to say surprisingly little; that piqued Brecinn’s interest. Noycannir was just a Clerk of Court, one who didn’t seem to be very well placed. Her apparent status was inconsistent with what little Brecinn had been able to find out about her contacts. So was she a different sort of an observer? And why exactly was she here, under cover as an exercise observer?
If Noycannir was here on a secret mission she had yet to approach Brecinn about it, which showed a lack of respect on Chilleau’s part. Chilleau was getting too self–confident by half. The Selection was far from certain, and — favorite or no favorite — Chilleau’s victory would not be guaranteed until the last Judge had logged the consensus opinion of the last Judiciary. That was weeks away.
“No sense of propriety.” Brecinn vented some of her frustration with Chilleau Judiciary at the expense of the Wolnadi crew on–screen. The Ragnarok’s fighter had taken its next–to–last target; it had only one left. “Anybody with a feather’s–weight of sensitivity would settle for a solid showing. Instead of this — shameless display — ”
That crew knew as well as anyone that the program was as good as cancelled. If they had any sense at all, they’d be doing what they could to facilitate the cancellation, and hoping for a few crumbs of the spoils to drop their way. If they were reasonable people, they’d play along. Nobody was going to be looking closely at anybody’s personal kit once the ship was decommissioned, after all.
The Wolnadi closed on its last target. Brecinn frowned.
There was an observation station right there, just there, to the other side of the containment field. The Ragnarok’s observation party was on that station. The Wolnadi wouldn’t know that, or at least they weren’t supposed to know. What was she worrying about, anyway? Brecinn asked herself, and took a deep breath, willing herself to relax. The odds of the fighter missing the target, breaching the containment field, and hitting the observation station were low indeed.
Maris had sworn that the stock he had stowed there was stable. Fresh stuff. New loads. Rocket propellant didn’t start to degrade until it got old, unless it had been contaminated. Maris knew better than to have sold her inferior goods. He knew she needed them to satisfy the debt she owed to reasonable people.
And the fighter didn’t miss the target. Admiral Brecinn sat back in her chair, satisfied and annoyed at the same time — satisfied, that she’d been concerned over nothing; annoyed at the fighter’s arrogance in pushing for a perfect run.
The fighter heeled into its trajectory, starting back toward its base ship while the debris from the target blossomed in the familiar dust–rose of a solid kill. The target had been very close to the boundary; the plasma membrane of the containment field belled out, fighting to absorb the energy of the blast, and kissed the observation station, sending it tumbling.
There was a murmur of amusement from the observers assembled, nine in all, seated in ranks arrayed before the great monitoring wall — getting a lick from energy wash was a harmless mishap, a pratfall, more amusing than anything else unless it was your bean tea that got spilt. Still Brecinn frowned, despite herself.
Armaments were intrinsically unstable to a certain degree, but it was a moderate degree, a very moderate degree, and it wasn’t as though she could have redirected the Ragnarok party. They’d made the selection at random from the available platforms as part of the exercise protocol.
She hadn’t thought about excluding that one station until it had been too late, not as though she really could have without drawing attention to herself, and not as if that was the only station she was using for storage. The storage spaces were all inerted anyway. Why should she worry? Nobody paid any attention to what might be stored out on unmanned observation stations. Nobody cared about miscellaneous stores.
There was a sudden flare on–screen, and the room fell silent. Brecinn stood up, staring.
“What was that?”
It couldn’t be. It would be such disgustingly stupid luck.
“Observation station, Admiral,” the technician on duty said, disbelief clear in her voice. “Seems to have exploded. No coherent structure on scan.”
No trace of a lifeboat, then. They hadn’t had time. They hadn’t had warning. There was plenty of debris; that was all too depressingly obvious, and somewhere in that debris floated the probably fractionalized bodies of the people who had been watching the exercise from remote location. The Ragnarok’s acting Captain. A Command Branch officer. That meant a full–fledged accident investigation. She couldn’t afford one.
Some of the debris in that cluster would bear unmistakable chemical signatures of controlled merchandise — armaments, bombs — that could be traced back to specific points of origin, failures in inventory control, even the occasional warehouse theft. It would be difficult to explain, almost impossible to overlook. Unimaginably expensive to deny.
“Poll all stations,” Brecinn ordered. “Let’s be sure of our facts before we send any formal notices. We’ll take a short recess while we confirm whether the station was manned. Two eights, gentles, and reconvene here.”
Taking a recess was risky. They were her staff, true enough, but they would be watching for the first hint of uncertainty on her part to gut her carcass and throw her to the scavengers while they hurried to harvest everything they could salvage ahead of a forensic accounting team. She had to have time to think.
One by one, her people stood and left the room. The Clerk of Court from Chilleau Judiciary excused herself; the armaments evaluator from Second Fleet put his feet up on the back of the chair in front of him, with every apparent intention of having a nap in place. Fine.
Eppie and one or two of the others would have gone directly to her office. They’d be waiting for her. Damn the Ragnarok and its crew anyway, Admiral Brecinn told herself crossly; and went to join her aides and advisors for private conference.
###
Strolling thoughtfully through the halls beneath the Admiral’s management suite Mergau Noycannir switched on her snooper with a casual gesture that mimicked rubbing behind one ear; and was immediately rewarded.
“ . . . damage assessment, as soon as possible. We needed those rounds to fulfill a contract coming due. We’ll have to make up the difference in cash, if this gets out.”
Eppie, Mergau thought. It was a daring act of espionage to have planted a snoop on the Admiral. As it was, she could only afford one of the timed sneakers. One quarter of an eight, and then it would disintegrate into anonymous and untraceable dust. With luck, no one would even have discovered that there had been a transmission.
“That means an inventory of all the stations. Not just to discover what went up. To be sure we know what’s where.” Admiral Brecinn’s voice, annoyed and anxious. From the way the others’ voices rose and fell in volume, Mergau guessed that the Admiral was pacing.
“We’ll have to cover for it somehow, Admiral. After all. Command Branch. Bad luck all around.”
She’d suspected Brecinn’s command of black marketeering from the moment she’d arrived. She recognized some of the names and faces from the secured files at Chilleau Judiciary. Here was evidence; but more than evidence, perhaps.
“Our counterparts are counting on us to be well placed for the new regime. We lose their confidence, we lose everything. We’ve got to contain this somehow.” The Admiral again, and she sounded just a little — frightened. Mergau Noycannir knew what frightened people sounded like. She recognized the subtle quavering behind the fine false front.
“Admiral, it was an accident. It could have happened to anyone.” Mergau knew better. Brecinn apparently did, too.
“People who conduct business with professionals don’t have accidents, Eppie. No. We can’t afford to let it be an accident. We need a cover, and we need it fast.”
Mergau knew her time was running out; the snooper would stop transmitting at any moment. She could extrapolate well enough from what she had heard, however, and with that she could build the perfect solution to the Admiral’s problem. Her problem as well.
Admiral Brecinn needed to cover the fact that the explosion that had just killed the Ragnarok’s acting Captain had resulted from the illegal stockpiling of stolen armaments for sale on the black market; Mergau needed all the protection she could get.
Admiral Brecinn only knew that Mergau was a Clerk of Court at Chilleau Judiciary. She didn’t know how low on the First Secretary’s table of assignments her placement had become. Mergau naturally had not hastened to explain how sadly reduced her position was from the days when she had brought the Writ to Inquire back from Fleet Orientation Station Medical at the First Secretary’s desire; and she did have contacts, even yet.
That was how she had arranged for the forged entry of Andrej Koscuisko’s name on an unauthorized Bench warrant.
Had the Bench warrant been exercised, it would not have mattered, in the end, whether it had been forged or not. Once the thing had been done, the Bench would have been forced to stand behind it, or admit to the falsification. The Bench couldn’t afford to do that. They’d have had to defend the warrant as true, if anyone ever found out about it — not that there’d been any reason to fear that anybody ever would.
But the Bench specialist to whom it had fallen to execute the warrant had recorded it as written against somebody else entirely, and that raised all kinds of difficulties.
Someone had said something that Mergau hadn’t quite caught, handicapped as she was by the directional nature of the snooper. Admiral Brecinn’s response made the nature of the question clear, however. “Ap Rhiannon. Priggish little self–important bitch. Crèche–bred. Of all the luck.”
A tiny spark of heat against the skin at the back of her ear, too brief to be painful; the snooper died, and destroyed the evidence of its existence. Where she’d tagged Brecinn, the Admiral would not even notice the snooper’s disintegration.
Mergau continued in her thoughtful meditative stroll, heading for the water–garden outside the canteen. There was a great deal to think about here. Admiral Brecinn needed help. Mergau needed protection. Mergau didn’t know quite how it was going to play out, not just yet. But she was confident.
Somewhere in this morning’s events she was going to find the key to her salvation, and defense against the chance that some Bench specialist would turn up some day to confront her with her failed attempt to satisfy her vengeance against Andrej Koscuisko with a Judicial murder.
###
The observation deck cleared out. The Admiral had left the room; her staff had melted away into the figurative woodwork. The Clerk of Court that Chilleau Judiciary had sent to observe the exercise had similarly excused herself. That meant that the room was as clean as any on station just now, and General Dierryk Rukota had no particular desire to go anywhere.
The technicians were still here, of course, working the boards: status checks, population reconciliation, traffic analysis. All to try to determine for a fact whether the Ragnarok’s Command had been on that observation station when it had exploded.
Someone brought him a cup of bean tea, and Rukota accepted it with a nod of grateful thanks. Good stuff, too. He had no grievance with technicians. He just didn’t think he liked Fleet Admiral Brecinn, or her pack of scavengers.
Everybody knew that the Ragnarok’s research program was due for cancellation with the selection of a new First Judge. It was traditional. New First Judges needed all the leverage with Fleet that they could get, especially during the early formative years of their administration — leverage a new research program, with a generous provision of funding from tax revenues, could provide. That didn’t mean they had to be so obvious about it.
The Ragnarok’s black hull technology was the culmination of twenty–four years of technical research, hundreds upon thousands upon millions of eights of markers Standard, untold hours of labor, and the product of the focused intellect of some of the finest mechanical minds under Jurisdiction.
It was bad enough that the program had to be at least suspended while the new First Judge, whoever she was, decided exactly what to do with it. Rukota wanted to see Fleet concentrating on doing what it could to harvest the lessons learned to date, rather than blowing it all off as yesterday’s news. The ship had performed well in test and maneuvers. There were solid innovations there in its design.
Flying on the order of that last fighter’s run spoke for esprit as well; people who didn’t care about where they were and what they were doing couldn’t be bothered to shave their fuses like that. So the ship had more than just its experimental technology going for it. And Fleet would throw that away, too, dispersing the crew in every which direction when the time came to decommission the hull.
It was a very great shame to put so much into a battlewagon and never let it meet the enemy. And yet the enemy — the Free Government — was not one that could be met with at all, by even the greatest of battleships. They were small and only loosely organized, poorly armed, ill provisioned.
Fighting the Free Government with great ships like the Ragnarok was a little like deploying a field gun against the small annoying birds that were forever mocking one from the trees downrange. They were always long gone before a round could impact. All a person ended up with was wasted ammunition, and an overabundant supply of surplus toothpicks.
Rukota sipped his bean tea and stared into the great sweep of the observation screens, brooding. Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok. He knew an officer on board that ship; he’d been young ap Rhiannon’s commander not too long ago, when he’d had a stubborn pocket of resurgent civil resistance to deal with and she’d been sent to command his advance scout ships. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, at least not for him.
Ap Rhiannon was crèche–bred, inflexible, intolerant, and all but unteachable. When she’d seen that elements within Fleet’s own supply lines had been aiding and abetting the insurrectionaries — for a nice profit — she’d redirected her assigned ships to intercept an arms shipment, and shut the pipeline down.
There had been a very great deal of embarrassment in upper Fleet echelons. He’d been blamed for not keeping a closer rein on her, when it hadn’t been any of his doing one way or the other. She hadn’t even told him. That had given him deniability, and saved his career; but it had bothered him at the same time, and bothered him still.
Had she not told him in order to reserve the blame for herself, when blame came — as it was almost certain to? Or had she not been able to decide whether he was in on it?
She’d made her point about black–market traffic in armaments. And been assigned to the Ragnarok for her pains, a dead–end assignment on a dead–headed research vessel headed for decommission with a crew that fleet had notoriously been packing with malcontents and malingerers for years. And here he was, for his own part, pulled off–line to provide administrative support on training exercises. As close to dry–dock as an officer could get.
He knew where the Ragnarok was on–screen; its position was marked, and with its maintenance atmosphere fully expanded the lights were easy to pick out against the black backdrop of space. So when something disengaged from the Ragnarok and started moving out and away from the ship it caught Rukota’s attention. Small blip. Picking up speed quickly enough to indicate a courier of some sort.
Rukota leaned his head back against the low headrest of the chair in which he sprawled, and caught a technician’s eye. “What’s that?” Ap Rhiannon coming to see Admiral Brecinn, perhaps, though what her purpose might be was not something Rukota felt he could easily guess.
The technician squinted at the light–track, and then consulted a log. “Oh, Ship’s Surgeon, General. Home leave.”
Right. The blip wasn’t tracking for the station. It was angling out toward the Pesadie exit vector, leaving the system. Ship’s Surgeons were ranking officers; they were also Ship’s Inquisitors, and Ship’s Inquisitors never, ever, ever traveled without Security.
There was a thought at the back of his mind, a vague and unformed suspicion that there could be something interesting about that courier. If he thought about it —
If he thought about it, he might discover something that he’d have to call to somebody’s attention. It wasn’t any of his business. Pesadie was jealous of its rights and prerogatives; they didn’t need any help from him. He had as much as been told so, and by Admiral Brecinn herself.
Shifting his feet from the back of the chair in front of him to the floor, General Rukota put it all out of his mind. Pesadie Station was responsible for its own Security. Let them deal with it.
“Thanks,” he called over to the technician, still hard at work on the assessment task. “Good bean tea. Best of luck with damage control.”
So long as he left the area he didn’t have to worry about keeping his own suspicious mind in check. A quick nap before Admiral Brecinn reconvened, and any miscellaneous thoughts he might have would be safely put to rest.
###
Andrej Koscuisko was very close to sober and not entirely happy about it. Standing behind the navigation console in the wheelhouse, he watched the forward scans, listening to the traffic in braid over the inter–ship channels.
Lek — their navigator — was tired. Combat evaluations were intense enough to be exhausting even with dummy ammunition, and these had been live–fire exercises. If Lek was given a chance to start to wonder about all of this . . .
“Courier ship Magdalenja, Dolgorukij Combine, Aznir registry. Koscuisko familial corporation ship. Requesting release of pre-cleared passage.”
Lek sounded steady enough. And once they were on vector Andrej could have a quiet talk with him. There were drugs on board. He never traveled without drugs strong enough to overrule even a governor, and after what had happened to St. Clare — whose governor had gone critical at Port Burkhayden, and nearly killed him — Andrej had stocked his kit for triple redundancy. He was taking no chances with his Bonds. He was responsible for them. They trusted him to take good care of them.
The courier was approaching the perimeter of Pesadie Training Command’s administrative space, ready to clear the station. From here it was only a matter of three hours’ time before they reached the exit vector. The vector was patrolled, of course; exit from Fleet stations was controlled as strictly as authorized entry. But the transit plan had been precleared. There was no reason for anyone to challenge his departure; Andrej concentrated on that. No reason.
“We confirm, Magdalenja.” Pesadie Station’s port authority sounded bored. Almost casual. “For the record, confirm souls in transit, please.”
Lek looked around and up, back over his shoulder, seeking guidance from Andrej. Or perhaps from his Chief, Stildyne, who stood to Andrej’s left; but this was Andrej’s arena. He knew what to do. Ap Rhiannon surely had not intended her ruse to go on record so soon after its initiation.
“Voice confirm,” Andrej said, and if he sounded a little irritated it was because he was unhappy. “I am Andrej Ulexeievitch Koscuisko, Chief Medical Officer assigned to the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok. Traveling home on leave with my Security also duly assigned, and I have not been home in nearly nine years, so I would appreciate your cooperation in expediting clearance.”
Meaning, if you dare insult a ranking officer by insisting on a voice–count just because it is the letter of the procedure, said ranking officer is entirely capable of taking it personally, with subsequent negative consequences to your very own personal career. Which will be ending. Andrej didn’t usually resort to bullying, but if a man was going to pull rank there was no sense in being the least bit subtle about it.
It took several moments for the voice confirm to clear; to claim to be Andrej Koscuisko was not something that could be lightly ventured. He held the Writ to Inquire, and could lawfully deploy the entire fearful inventory of torture in the Bench’s Protocols on his own authority. Making a false claim to the authority of a Judicial officer was a capital offense; and an abomination beneath the canopy of Heaven to take pleasure from the suffering of prisoners in chains —
But that was an old guilt. Old, if ever present, sin. No less deep and damnable now than the day Andrej had first begun to realize that he was a monster, but it had been nine years, Creation had not risen up to swallow him and take him to his punishment, and Andrej needed his wits about him to get past this procedural check and to the exit vector. He could not abate his sin by brooding on it. There would be time enough for that in Hell.
“Thank you, your Excellency.” The Port Authority sounded much less casual now. “No offense intended, your Excellency. Cleared to vector. If I might presume to offer personal good wishes for a pleasant holiday, sir.” No, you insolent groom’s boy, you may not. It was presumptuous. But Andrej had already made himself unpleasant. He wanted the Port Authority to be too grateful to be out from under his displeasure to think about placing any additional administrative requirements in his path.
“You are very kind, Control, thank you. Magdalenja away here, I think? Yes?”
This was Lek’s signal to pick up the thread, and he did so smoothly, with no hint of tension in his voice. “Magdalenja away here, Pesadie. Going off comm to prepare for vector transit.”
Clear.
The corvettes standing by at the entry vector could still cause a fuss, but it was much less likely that they would do so now that Andrej had snarled at Pesadie, and they had been unlikely enough to interfere with him in the first place.
It was just his nerves. And his nerves weren’t the nerves he should be worrying about. “Mister Stildyne, may I see you for a moment?”
There was a private lounge just off the back of the wheelhouse, and it had all the privacy screens on it that a man could wish. Stildyne followed him into the lounge and pulled the barrier to, sealing the room.
Andrej went to the drinks cabinet at the far end of the lounge and considered the available options. Wodac. Cortac brandy. The proprietary liquor of the nuns over whom his elder sister was abbess, widely renowned for its healthful botanicals. Alcoholic beverages from one end of the Combine to the other, and all Andrej really wanted was a cup of hot rhyti, and something for a headache,
“How are we to hope to manage, Chief?”
Stildyne was up to something, behind Andrej. Andrej could hear the little chime of metal against fine Berrick ceramic ware, the seething of liquid coming to a boil. Trust Stildyne to have found rhyti, Andrej thought, gratefully .
“Well, you’re not helping, your Excellency. It’s not a problem so far. But if you’re paying too much attention to Lek he’ll start to wonder.”
Stildyne was right. Of course. Andrej smelled the rising fragrance of top-quality leaf, and smiled almost in spite of himself. He was going home. It was only for a visit, and he had a very great deal that would have to be accomplished; but he was going home. He had not been home in more than nine years. He was going to meet his son at last.
“I can explain, Chief. Lek is Sarvaw. I will have a quiet talk with him. You may not appreciate quite what it is to be a Sarvaw, and be borne deep into the heart of enemy territory.” It wasn’t that Stildyne hadn’t heard about the peculiar relationship between Sarvaw and other Dolgorukij, over the years. Yet how could any outlander really understand?
Stildyne had come to stand behind Andrej now; holding out a cup of rhyti. Beautiful stuff. Very hot, and milky, and smelling every bit as sweet as Andrej liked it. Stildyne was good to him. “We may need to lean on that, your Excellency, but first things first. We’ll clear the vector. Then you should probably go talk to people. I’ll leave you to your rhyti.”
And sober up. Stildyne didn’t have to say it. After more than four years together they understood each other better than that. It wasn’t the norm for relationships between officers of assignment and Chief Warrant Officers, no, but had it not been for Stildyne’s willingness to exceed the normal parameters of his assigned duties Andrej was very sure that he would not have survived Captain Lowden.
“Very good, Mister Stildyne. Thank you.”
Andrej had enough to get through at home, if he was to hope to leave Azanry prepared to seek the unknown enemy who wanted him dead — someone with the Judicial influence to have obtained a Bench warrant for his assassination, one that Garol Vogel had declined to execute almost as an afterthought, months ago, at Port Burkhayden.
He didn’t know when he would find the time and strength and courage to address the thing that had gone wrong from the beginning between himself and Security Chief Stildyne.
###
Jennet ap Rhiannon sat in the Captain’s office with Ship’s Primes around her, watching the monitors.
She wasn’t sitting behind the Captain’s desk; the kill was not confirmed. It would be premature. This office had the access they all needed to be sure they were on top of what Pesadie might be up to, however, so there was no choice but to gather here, whether or not the issue of the captaincy was unresolved.
Wheatfields didn’t fit very comfortably into the chair in the conference area. But Wheatfields was oversized. There was no way around it. The Chigan ship’s engineer was a full head taller than the late, and by and large unlamented, Captain Lowden had been; and Lowden himself had been toward the upper limit of the Jurisdiction standard.
“There’s no room for misinterpretation in the ship’s comps. Not as though that ever stopped Fleet,” Wheatfields was saying, his eyes fixed on a monitor. “We were firing training rounds, even though they were live, so the explosive payload was reduced. That last target was destroyed well in advance of the explosion on the observation station. Whatever set the remote station off, it wasn’t one of our rounds.”
They were tracking the courier ship on its way to the vector. Three hours had elapsed since its launch; the exit vector security had yet to go on alert. Another half an hour and the courier would be on vector, functionally out of reach for days, at minimum. Out of Pesadie’s reach forever, if she had anything to say about it.
First Officer took a drink of bean tea and grimaced.
“This stuff gets nastier every day. We ought to press for resupply while we’re here, now that we’re going to have to wait an investigation out. What’s the Admiral up to, Two?”
Jennet shared Mendez’s sentiments about the bean tea. The Ragnarok had always had a certain degree of difficulty breaking stores away from Fleet depots — as an experimental ship it had always taken second best. Things had begun to deteriorate at a discouraging rate after Lowden’s death, though. Lowden had been as corrupt as imaginable in some ways, his personal misuse of interrogation records among them. But he had at least had the political influence required to keep the Ragnarok well stocked.
“No official communication.” Two had to stand in her chair; she didn’t sit at all in any conventional sense. Since she was fully two-thirds of Jennet’s own height she was unnaturally tall amongst the assembled officers as they sat, but the Captain’s office had no provision for Two’s preferred mode — which was hanging upside down from the ceiling. “Traffic suggests a full–scale inventory on all observation stations and several warehouses besides. We have some eights in which to decide what to do. Perhaps as much as two days.”
Two’s voice was mostly out of range of Jennet’s hearing. The translator that Two wore gave her an oddly accented dialect, but at least it was female, like Two herself.
The translator always took longer to process than it took Two to speak. Two sat there solemnly with her black eyes seemingly fixed on Jennet’s face, waiting for the translator to catch up. It was an illusion, that fixed regard. Two didn’t actually see any farther than the first flange of her wings’ extent — an arm’s–length, more or less.
“I’m still not sure what it is, exactly, that you mean to accomplish, your Excellency.”
Ship’s First Officer had always been very straight with her. There was no disrespect in his tone of voice; there was no particular change in his demeanor. Jennet could understand that. These people were all senior. She was the third person to be acting Captain of the Ragnarok in a year. And Mendez had never paid as much attention to rank and protocol as others in his grade class: that was the only reason he hadn’t been drafted into Command Branch himself, long since.
“I’m making it up as I go along.” There wasn’t any sense in pretending to be smarter than Ship’s Primes. She needed their agreement to do anything, rank or no rank. When it came down to it rank only existed so long as everybody agreed that it was there. “The best way I could think of to keep these crew out of Fleet’s hands was to get them out of the area. If Pesadie can’t get started on them, they can’t begin to touch the rest of the crew. They’ll have to try something else. A real investigation, maybe.”
“All they have to do is wait till the crew comes back.” Wheatfields was calm, dispassionate — uncaring. She’d learned that about Wheatfields. There was very little that aroused his interest, and practically nothing outside of Engineering. “What does this give us? Apart from irritating Pesadie, and I don’t care, it’s your neck anyway, Lieutenant.”
In the months she had been assigned to the Ragnarok, the number of times Wheatfields had spoken to her could be reckoned up on the fingers on her hands. Or even on the fingers of Wheatfields’s hands, and he had only the four fingers and the thumb to her five, since he was Chigan and not Versanjer.
To Jennet’s surprise it was Two who answered for her. “Pesadie must provide some suitable answers to questions from Fleet while they wait for the crew. Or even while they send for the crew. Pesadie maybe cannot wait. They’ll have to start some alternate investigation. It will only show that the Ragnarok’s fighter could not have fired on the observer.”
Well, not that that particular issue would be a problem in and of itself. There were too many copies of the record, surely. At least three copies of training records were maintained by Fleet protocols; one of these was on the Ragnarok, and not under Pesadie’s direct control accordingly. If Pesadie wanted to tamper with that, Pesadie would have to get past Wheatfields to do it.
But the easy answer was that the round that the Wolnadi fighter was to have deployed had been exchanged for a more lethal weapon intended to destabilize the containment barrier, communicating sufficient disruptive energy to cause the station to explode — killing the Ragnarok’s Captain by design.
It would be easy to prove out by confession once Pesadie got their hands on the Wolnadi’s crew. Not every Inquisitor with custody of a Writ to Inquire had Koscuisko’s delicacy of feeling where truth and confession were concerned.
People could be made to say anything, under sufficient duress — unless they were fortunate enough to die before they could compromise themselves. Their crewmates, other Security, Engineering, the entire crew of the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok, up to and including — she realized with a start — its acting Captain, ap Rhiannon, already unpopular in some Fleet circles for having taken an uncompromising approach to black–market weapons dealing in the recent past.
Mendez was watching the monitor, drinking his bean tea absentmindedly. The on–screen track that represented Koscuisko’s courier had closed on the entry vector, and was gone. “Well, that’s put one of however many parts behind us,” Mendez said. “Koscuisko’s away. So now we’ll all find out. Not that I’m arguing the abstract point, Lieutenant, your Excellency. If you can make this work, we’ll all be just as happy about it. With respect.”
“We’ll get formal notification from Pesadie Training Command about Cowil Brem.” There were things they needed to see to in the time they had left before an audit team came on board. “We’ll take it from there. Wheatfields will sanitize the Wolnadi line. Let them try to figure out how we’re supposed to have done it. Two will be listening to Pesadie while they think about it.”
She stood up. And, somewhat surprisingly, Wheatfields and Mendez stood up as well, while Two hopped down out of her chair, bracing herself against the floor with the second joints of her great folded wings. Respect of rank. It was an encouraging sign.
She didn’t really care if they gave her the formal signs of subordinate rank relationship or not, though. All that mattered was that they came together to protect the Ragnarok and its crew. Somebody at Pesadie had been storing something on that observer that they oughtn’t have; it was the only explanation she could see for the explosion.
And it was her duty to the Ragnarok to ensure that nobody made a scapegoat out of its crew to cover an administrative irregularity: not with lives at stake.
###
“We have the Pesadie vector, your Excellency.” Turning away from the station as he spoke, Lek stood up and bowed to his officer of assignment. Koscuisko could see perfectly well for himself. The publication of the fact was a mere formula, but ritual was important, especially in the lives of bond–involuntaries. “Three days, Standard, to the Dasidar exit vector, Azanry space.”
Koscuisko nodded briskly in appreciation. “Thank you, Lek, ably piloted. Now. Let us all to the main cabin repair, so that I may put you on notice, the ordeal which you face when we are at home on my native world.”
Koscuisko was considerably relaxed, from a few hours ago; but not for the otherwise obvious reason, because Koscuisko didn’t look or sound as though he’d been drinking. Recovered a bit from his going–away party, then. Lek followed his fellows, taking advantage of his position to linger for just a moment in the wheelhouse.
It was a pretty little courier, and it spoke his language. Or at least it spoke a language he had learned as a small child, before his trouble with the Bench, before his Bond. He’d understood why Koscuisko had selected Security 5.3 to take home with him on holiday, given that Koscuisko could take only one team; Koscuisko had tried to get as many of his Bonds in one basket as he could, and there was nothing personal about Lek’s situational exclusion from the privileged party.
But none of the others were Combine folk. It made Lek so homesick to be talking to Koscuisko’s courier that he wished he was back on the Ragnarok, rather than going with Koscuisko to Azanry. So close to home. So far away from his own people.
Distracted for a moment by the strangely painful familiarity of the courier’s accent, Lek lingered a bit longer than he had intended. Someone stood in the doorway between the wheelhouse and the rest of the ship; someone big and solid and silent, patiently waiting. Stildyne.
“Sorry, Chief.” It wasn’t Stildyne’s fault that Lek was Sarvaw, after all. “Daydreaming. Coming directly.”
Stildyne could easily have made a point about it, but he simply turned and left the room. Stildyne had mellowed since Koscuisko had come on board; he’d been considerably rougher to deal with when Lek had first met him — though he’d never been abusive. He’d taken some of the customary advantages from time to time, true enough, but he’d always been a reasonable man, and fair. Koscuisko was too hard on Stildyne. Koscuisko didn’t understand how much worse than Stildyne warrant officers could be, when you put some of them in charge of bond–involuntaries.
Glancing around quickly to make sure that everything was in order Lek followed his Chief out of the wheelhouse and into the main cabin, where the officer of assignment was sitting on a table at the far end of the cabin, swinging his feet. He’d changed his dress boots for padding–socks, Lek noticed.
The rest of the crew were seated in array in front of Koscuisko, except for Stildyne standing in the doorway. Lek found a place at Smish’s left; Koscuisko nodded at Lek and began to speak.
“We have not had a chance to talk, gentles, because we were in such a hurry to be gone before someone could change their minds again, and send me away with people of Wheatfields, from whom all Saints preserve me.”
That was by way of a joke. Ship’s Engineer was a moody and difficult man with very particular reasons to detest Ship’s Inquisitors; Koscuisko was a proud and self–assured officer who was accustomed to having his own way. The personalities had not blended well on board the Ragnarok. Over the years a species of truce had gradually evolved between them, but it was still a fragile sort of detente.
“We are to be on holiday, gentles, and yet the environment into which I bring you is not one in which we can all equally be comfortable.” Koscuisko didn’t look at Lek when he said it. Koscuisko didn’t need to. They both knew who Koscuisko’s thrice–great–grandfather had been. Koscuisko didn’t need to know the details of Lek’s family background to understand that he led Lek into the presence of his enemies.
On the other hand, though Koscuisko was the living descendant of Chuvishka Kospodar, he was not Lek’s enemy. Koscuisko had earned Lek’s trust over the years they’d been together on the Ragnarok, and in so doing had made Lek more free, even under Bond, than Lek had ever hoped to be until the Day when it expired at last — if he lived that long.
“We go first to a place that is called the Matredonat. It is my place. My mother’s family made of it the present when my father cut my cheek, what would that be, when I was held up to the world as his inheriting son.”
The details of Aznir blood–rites were arcane and not widely published, but Koscuisko’s general meaning was clear enough. “Living at this place you will meet my friend Marana, and my son. I also will be meeting my son, for the first time, as you are. He is eight years old. His name is Anton Andreievitch, because I am Andrej his father.”
Lek knew by the eager tension in Smish’s body beside him how interested she was in this news. They were all interested. There had been guarded talk among them, but Robert St. Clare — who knew more about Koscuisko than anyone on board, including Stildyne — had either been unclear on the details or too reticent to gossip about them. Koscuisko’s friend Marana, Koscuisko had said. It seemed an odd way to describe the mother of his son, even given that Koscuisko was Aznir and Aznir were peculiar.
“This place of mine, the Matredonat, is in the farmland, but there are hills behind. There is riding. One may swim in the river if one does not mind the fish. They are very large fish. And that brings to mind a point.”
If Koscuisko’s estate was in the grain–lands Koscuisko would be talking about the old ones, the huge, old, wise, green–and–gold fish with their solemn expressions and their faces that were like the private member of a man. His fish. The old ones were as long and sometimes longer than a man was tall, and the roe that the females carried was worth its weight in hallucinogenic drugs. Lek wondered if the others knew that when a man like Koscuisko spoke of his place, he meant an estate the size of a respectable city, or larger.
“Lek and I have blood in common, in a way. He will be able to explain much when I am not with you.” Koscuisko’s reference startled Lek out of his meditation; Koscuisko was being very frank indeed, to admit to genetic ties between Aznir and Sarvaw. “Among these things about which it may be necessary to explain are requirements of hospitality. You are to be lodged each of you apart in guest quarters, because you are my Security. The household will wish to ensure that you lack for nothing that will increase your comfort under the roof of the Matredonat.”
This was going to be awkward. Stildyne did have women, from time to time, but women were not his preference. Maybe Koscuisko’s people would make allowances for the fact that Stildyne was an outlander, Lek decided. Maybe they’d call for a Malcontent. If they did that, Stildyne was in for an interesting experience . . .
“The difficulty here is this, Miss Smath.” Why Smish? She tensed beside Lek, when Koscuisko said her name. “There is no tradition in my house of a woman warrior. To Security is to be offered the hospitality of the house.”
Suddenly Lek realized how long he had been away from home. How thoroughly he’d learned to think in Standard. He had not even thought about it. Koscuisko was right.
“It will be a little unusual. But you need not feel the least bit reluctant to decline, should your interest not tend in that direction. I assure you that you will not give offense.”
Warriors were greeted with soft words and warm embraces, granted the privilege of taking comfort with the women of the household. The fact that Smish was a woman herself would be considered secondary to her role as a warrior, a Security troop. Someone was probably going to offer sexual hospitality to her and so far as Lek knew Smish had as much interest in having sex with women as Stildyne did — or even less.
“Thank you, sir.” Smish sounded a little confused overall. She wasn’t Dolgorukij. She wouldn’t know. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
Koscuisko nodded. Then Koscuisko turned his attention to Lek himself, looking directly at him while speaking in general to the team. “There will be much that is strange. I can only guess, remembering how it was when first I left Azanry for the school at Mayon. I could not warn you about everything if I talked for three days, and I would rather have something to eat.”
Home food, Lek thought suddenly, and smelled remembered fragrances in his imagination. Thin little cakes made with soured grain mash and cream. Thick soups of stewed root vegetables, and when times were good meat to go with cabbage and water–grass.
“Therefore I will only say this, though I repeat myself. I request you all pay particular attention to what Lek does and says while we are home. In this way you can be sure of keeping your dignity in the land of the outlander.”
It was a sensible suggestion, yes. But it was much more than that, though none of the other people here might realize it. Koscuisko told them all to point on him, Lek Kerenko, Sarvaw. That would be a sign to the Dolgorukij into whose territory Koscuisko was carrying them all, and Lek was grateful to Koscuisko for having thought of such a natural way to give him face in an unfriendly environment.
“And now I mean to go and lie down. Perhaps Lek will consent to discuss with ship’s computers on your behalf and find out where the liquor has been stored. There are three days from here to Azanry, and we are on holiday.”
Lek didn’t want liquor. He wanted root stew and cabbage–stuffed sausages; but this was an executive courier, and there was no hope of finding such homely food as that. He’d just have to make do with pearl–gray roe and cured fish wrapped in flour skins, he supposed. It was a hard task.
But someone had to do it.