A Choice of Treasons (32 page)

He turned toward the lift, turned his back on Sierka without acknowledging him, slipped between fire control and com, Paris and Frank staring at him. Then he stepped around the nav console, into the lift, closed the lift doors, and once again he could breathe.

“He sucker punched us,” Soe snarled. “The son-of-a-bitch sucker punched us. Can we get in one more shot?”

“Negative,” Jewel snapped.

“He set us up,” Soe argued. “He suckered us into giving away our position, and I’ll bet we didn’t even touch him.”

Jewel looked at Innay.

Innay shook his head slowly. “It was a good shot. We hurt him.”

“And he hurt us,” Jewel said. “Get me a damage report.”

She closed her eyes, tried to think. “One moment he makes an idiot move, gives us a clean shot. Then the next he’s one step ahead of us. It’s as if he were two different men.”

She turned carefully to Soe. “Mister Soe. We will, of course, follow. Are we close enough to track him in transition?”

Soe shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. We won’t know until we’re in transition ourselves.”

Jewel nodded thoughtfully. “We’re not done with him yet. Not if I can help it.”

The lift doors opened on an intermediate deck to pick up a young woman. York stepped aside as the woman walked into the lift.

“Lieutenant Ballin,” the young woman said. There was something familiar about her, though he couldn’t place her. She put her hands on her hips. “Why lieutenant! I do believe you don’t remember me.”

She stepped aggressively toward him, literally backed him against the back of the lift with her tits. He knew only one woman who used her tits that way. “Lady Dubye.”

She pressed a thigh into his crotch, rubbed it carefully from side to side. “I can’t believe you’d forget.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t forget, just didn’t recognize. The makeup. It covered most of your face that evening.”

She grinned evilly. “Well then you’re forgiven, though I do remember you removed most of that makeup with your tongue.”

She didn’t let up with her thigh, and York couldn’t deny it was having an effect.

“I’m bored,” she said. “Why don’t you join me in my cabin?”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I’m on duty.”

She could tell it was a lie and she grinned. “We’re a good match, you and I.”

He continued to shake his head. “I’ve got responsibility for damage control.”

“Oh yes!” she said, frowning, but still grinning. “We were attacked, or something like that?”

He nodded. “Something like that.”

She put the palm of her hand on his chest. “Are you sure you can’t join me?”

He was tempted. “I’m sure. Perhaps another time.”

She stepped away from him. “That’s a shame.”

York spent the next eight hours coordinating the marines from the ready room. He wanted to put on a vac suit and help out himself, but the ready room functioned as an excellent command center, and from there he had far greater control over operations.

Cappik had the highest priority down in Engineering, but his needs were specific and limited. They had to comb the rest of the ship, clearing out debris and an occasional body, checking for damage that didn’t show up on the computer. The gravity wave that pulsed through the ship when the warhead hit them had caused a great deal of minor damage. But as their cleanup operation wound to a close, York began to breathe easier, for with the exception of the starboard chamber, there were no other serious problems. Just a lot of injured, and quite a few dead.

“Cap’em?”

York looked up from the command console at Corporal Tathit, who sat at the marine communications console.

“Cap’em, Lieutenant Yan wants a word.”

York put Alsa Yan on one of his screens. She wore a bloody surgical gown, and leaned wearily toward the pickup, obviously exhausted.

York asked, “It was bad, huh?”

She shrugged, shook her head tiredly. “No. Not really. Mostly minor injuries. Just a lot of them. We’ve been cutting for ten hours straight.” She closed her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair. “Listen, I’ve got something funny up here I’d like you to take a look at. It’s important.”

Yan was not someone to get overly excited about something trivial, and when York got to sickbay she pulled him into her office, closed the door and turned on him frowning. “Something came up, something real curious,” she said, then hesitated. “. . . Shortly after that
feddie
blew us into transition . . . It was chaos here, injured people straggling in from all over the ship. We were swamped, stacking ‘em up in the corridors, and then the empress shows up with two marines in tow, and they’re carrying a servant of hers—woman, unconscious, nasty blow to the head.”

Yan drifted off for a moment, preoccupied by her thoughts. “About the same time someone brings in the princess, half conscious, in quite a bit of pain. But the empress is nearly hysterical, wants the servant treated before anyone else. I mean even before her own daughter. A servant!

“Got my curiosity going. So I took care of the servant—just a bad concussion—then I took care of the princess—a broken arm—then the empress lets me know she’s in pain, and I find out she’s got four broken ribs.

“By this time my curiosity’s jacked right through the ceiling, so I check them all into beds here and sedate them. Then when things quieted down I ran a full med profile on all three.”

Yan turned to a console in her office and activated a screen. “Here. Look at this.”

York stepped behind the console and looked over Yan’s shoulder at the scan of a human skull. The image was a strange, unnatural mixture of computer-generated colors chosen to emphasize anatomical features. Yan rotated the image of the skull until they were looking at the back of the head, then she tilted it forward, and with her fingers dancing across the keyboard began pealing away layers of structure. York understood little of it, but as she pealed away the last few layers and got to the center of the skull he saw a device that, though he didn’t know what it was, he did know damn well it didn’t belong there.

“What the hell is that?” he asked.

Yan looked at him, grinned. “It’s a small explosive device. They used chemicals so we wouldn’t pick up a power device with a routine scan. It’s not powerful, but since it’s implanted adjacent to the brain stem it doesn’t need to be.”

“How would it be activated?”

“It’s wired into the brain, probably activated by some specific thought sequence. It’s a suicide device.”

York shook his head. This all fit a pattern somehow, but one he couldn’t yet discern. “Which one of them?” he asked.

“The empress and the servant; the princess was clean. But there’s one more curious thing. The one in the empress’ head was manufactured in the empire, and the servant’s wasn’t.”

“A
feddie
?” York asked.

Yan shrugged. “I don’t know if she’s a
feddie
, but that device in her head isn’t imperial hardware.”

A strange connection: a
feddie
spy and the empress. “Why bring this to me, Alsa? Why not to Sierka? He’s the CO.”

Yan sneered at him. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“All right. So what am I supposed to do about it?”

“God damn it, York. I don’t know. I’m asking you what I should do about it.”

“Who else have you told about this?”

“No one but you.”

“Can you remove those devices?”

She shook her head. “Probably not without being detected. But I can disarm them.”

He stared at her for a moment. “Good. Do so.” He pointed at the image of the woman’s skull on the screen. “And erase those spools. Destroy any records you’ve got of this, and keep your mouth shut.”

She nodded, and her lips curled slowly into a grin. “Aye, aye, sir. What about the two marines?”

York shook his head. “Don’t worry about the marines. I’ll make sure they forget this ever happened.” He turned to leave, hesitated at the hatchway. “One more thing. Don’t let anyone catch on, but I want you to run the same profile on everyone you can. Anyone who comes to sickbay for any reason—if you can get them under a scanner, do it.”

Yan winked at him. “As you wish, sir.”

On his way back to the marine barracks York had to wait an unusually long time for the lift, and while he was standing there he heard a group of spacers approaching from out of sight down another corridor. They were in the midst of a heated conversation—something about
asshole marines
—but when they turned into the corridor and saw York waiting there, the conversation died abruptly. They walked up to the lift in silence and stopped to wait.

Ordinarily York would have remained preoccupied with the facts surrounding the curious incident of the empress and her servant. Spacers didn’t like marines; that was a fact of life. And more often than not they shut up in the presence of an officer. But what caught York’s attention now was that two of the spacers were wearing sidearms, and they were not navy issue.

When the lift came York stepped in with the spacers. They programmed it for the spacer barracks, and out of curiosity York followed them. He took a quick walk through barracks deck; it appeared that about one in ten carried a weapon of some sort, there was no discipline, the whole deck stank, and the mood of the place was ugly.

There were two guards standing at the entrance to the marine barracks, and they snapped to attention as York approached. York stopped, looked at them carefully. In appearance they were unarmed. He asked one of them, “Are you armed.”

The marine scowled. “Of course, sir.”

York keyed his implants. “Sergeant Palevi.”

“Palevi here, sir.”

“Sergeant. I want the guards at the entrance to our barracks visibly armed with rifles and sidearms. And I want them to carry live ammunition. I also want the barracks on tight security at all times.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it right away, sir.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. That’s all.”

Torrin Juessik stood in the corridor and knocked softly on the hatch in front of him. When it opened Arkan Dulell stood in the dark of the cabin framed in the light of the corridor. He’d obviously been sleeping, and it took him a moment to recognize Juessik, but when he did he lost his usual reticence for an instant.

“Hello, Torrin,” he said coldly.

Juessik smiled. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Dulell considered that for a moment, said only, “I was sleeping.”

Juessik stepped past him, palmed the light sensor and looked around the cabin. “These rooms are rather cramped, aren’t they?”

Dulell shrugged. “It’s sufficient.”

“Ah Arkan, always the stoic.”

“Why are you here?”

Juessik turned toward him. “I wanted to see you.”

Dulell shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”

“Now Arkan. Don’t be petulant.”

“All right. You’ve seen me.”

Juessik stepped close to him, leaned toward him, kissed him gently on the cheek, then on the side of the neck. “I’ve missed you.”

Dulell closed his eyes. “No you haven’t.”

Juessik looked up and shrugged. “Well then, you’ve missed me.”

Dulell said nothing as Juessik kissed him again, then added, “Yes. You have.”

“Where have you been?” Ninda shouted as Add’kas’adanna stepped into the Central Committee chamber. Ninda stood angrily, tried to face her down, but she was a Kinathin and she towered over him, and though there was never any real threat of physical violence, they all knew he stood no chance against her in a physical confrontation. And that knowledge thwarted his attempt at intimidation.

Ninda returned to his seat at the wide table, tried again from there. “Where have you been?”

She’d kept them waiting intentionally. She’d been monitoring the reports on the recent sighting and engagement of the
imper
. Using various erroneous excuses, she’d given her captains orders that none of Ninda’s Security Forces stationed aboard their ships were to be allowed to communicate directly with DCO, forcing Ninda to activate the spies he’d placed among the her crews. She and her captains had identified most of them as they made contact in one fashion or another, though they’d take no action against them, would, in fact, pretend they didn’t know who they were. But it was good to know your enemy.

Ninda, Zort, and Kaffair were looking at her, waiting for an answer. “I’ve been trying to assimilate the incoming reports. I’ve also been looking at the telemetry from the engagement, and attempting to correlate that with those same reports. I’m afraid it’s a confusing mess, though I think I’ve begun to accumulate an accurate, if somewhat incomplete, picture.”