No Honor in Death (6 page)

"Security division ready for the Captain's inspection, sir."

"Any problems to report, Mister Drex?"

The Second Officer's angular features remained impassive.  "None, sir.  All small arms and battlesuits are operational, ammunition stocks are full, and security systems are functioning.  I suggest the Captain visits the brig and security centre first, then the arms locker."

"Very well, Mister Drex.  Lead on."

He was true to his word.  The facilities were spotless, his bosun's mates sharply turned out and it was clear that he took great pride in showing her that he had not let his department go slack.

The ship's bosun, a Chief Petty Officer Third Class, waited for them at the arms locker with another group of mates.  CPO3 Foste was a tall, whip-cord thin woman with closely cropped hair, intense black eyes and hawk-like features.  For a moment, Siobhan was struck by her resemblance to Drex, even though they differed physically in every respect.  Then, it occurred to her that the resemblance was due to their precise, hard-nosed attitude towards their jobs.  Nevertheless, it was an interesting observation, and it was heartening to see that Helen Forenza hadn't been able to break everyone’s spirit.

The small arms she presented for inspection showed signs of wear, but as advertised, were fully functional, just like the heavy battlesuits.  Pushkin followed her everywhere, taking notes on his personal computer, never dropping his scowl, but never making a comment. When the tour was complete, Siobhan turned towards Drex.

"Excellent turn-out, Lieutenant."  She deliberately said the compliment loud enough for the bosun and her mates to hear.

"Thank you, sir.  The rest of my department will be ready within two days, sir.  I wanted to present the security division now, so I can assign the bosun's mates to other tasks after your inspection.  My full report is in the ship's log."

Siobhan nodded.  "Very well, Mister Drex."

The Second Officer, Pushkin and Dunmoore left the weapons' locker and Pushkin excused himself.  Engineering still needed his undivided attention.  Eventually, Siobhan was going to have to ask him exactly what was going on that required his constant presence.  Alone with Drex in the passage, she glanced at him sideways, eyes narrowed.

"Tell me, Mister Drex, you're a mustang, aren't you?"

"Aye, sir.  Used to be Cox'n in the
Baikal
.  Heavy cruiser."

"How long since you got your commission?"

"Three years, sir.  Captain made me an officer when she was paid off. The old
Baikal
took it bad at the battle of Torrinos and had to be scrapped.  I came straight to the
Stingray
.  She was a good ship, the
Baikal
.  Damn shame it is."

"I know the feeling.  I was Second on the
Sala-Ad-Din
."

"One hell of a battle, sir," Drex nodded.  "Lost a lot of good ships and spacers then."

"You came aboard the
Stingray
before Commander Forenza?"

"Aye, sir.  Cap'n Yuan back then.  He got his fourth stripe and went on to command the cruiser
Nairobi
.  After that..."  He shrugged.

Siobhan sensed a reticence to speak about the more recent past and decided not to push, yet.  But she was disappointed.  She thought Drex might have been the one officer on board whom she could ask about Forenza's time in command, but it appeared not.  It couldn't be misplaced loyalty to her predecessor.  Not a former Chief like him.  The 'why' was beginning to gnaw at her fiercely and she repressed her frustrated curiosity with a lot of difficulty.

"If you'll excuse me, sir,"  Drex came to attention and saluted.

"Carry on, Lieutenant."

As soon was she was alone in the bare corridor, Siobhan felt the fatigue of the long day seep into every muscle, and a ghostly throbbing in her skull reminded her of Luttrell's words.  The second dog watch was almost over and she still had a pile of reports to sort through before going to bed.

When she entered her cabin, she was surprised to find the bed made, her clothes put away and a small coffee urn chugging in the corner.  She hadn't ordered anyone to do her housekeeping and felt a momentary stab of irritation.  Then, she frowned and turned the computer terminal towards her.  A few queries answered the question who.  Her clerk, Kery, had taken it upon herself to play Captain's steward.  Was it an attempt to curry favour, or something entirely different?

Siobhan spent the next two hours reading reports and making notes in her personal log.  Judging by what she'd seen and read so far, it appeared that only Luttrell and Drex had maintained their particular departments up to a decent standard under Forenza.  As she already knew, Engineering was a disaster in the making, with Navigation and Supply not far behind.  Signals and Gunnery she couldn't tell from the reports, and left a note for the First Officer to have Devall and Kowalski re-do them.

At six bells in the evening watch, Siobhan gratefully stripped off her uniform and slipped between the sheets, wearing nothing but her birthday suit and a neural inducer.  It was to be her first night without reliving those terrible haunting hours on the
Victoria Regina
.

She fell asleep almost immediately in the peace and solitude of her quarters.  All around her, cursing and swearing spacers worked to meet her exacting standards under the supervision of hard-faced, angry petty officers, who in turn laboured under Chief Guthren's biting tongue.  It was not the most glorious way of starting a new command.

She woke eight hours later, after the first night of real sleep in weeks, feeling surprisingly refreshed and at ease.  Doctor Luttrell's prescription had been extraordinarily effective, though the woman herself remained a closed book.  For all that she made a lousy first impression, Luttrell certainly knew her business, at least as far as migraines were concerned.

Siobhan noticed the 'message waiting' light blinking on the computer terminal.  The reminder of her ship's problems put a damper on her mood.  After a quick shower, she slipped back into her uniform and called the galley for a breakfast tray.  With the migraine's disappearance, her appetite had returned, though it could vanish just as fast after she read the messages.

Leading Spacer Kery, delivered breakfast a few minutes later.  She did not speak, apart from acknowledging Siobhan's thanks, and set about making the Captain's bed.  When she was done, Kery slipped out of the cabin, silent as a ghost, and left Dunmoore to her solitude.  Kery was a strange fish.  Quiet and unassuming, but her dark, inquisitive eyes missed little.  Twice yesterday, Siobhan had caught Kery examining her when the clerk thought she wasn't looking.  Both times, Dunmoore had felt acutely uneasy without quite understanding why.  She wondered, not for the first time, what the relationship between Forenza and the clerk had been like.  Captain's clerks held a great deal of informal power aboard ship, power that was all too easily abused.  Guthren had taken an instant dislike to Kery and suggested to Siobhan the she transfer her off the
Stingray
.  Not only did Kery know too much, Guthren believed, but if lower deck gossip was true, used what she knew.  Without Forenza's protection, the short, dark-featured woman could easily become the target of revenge.  One more question mark and one more problem.

Siobhan wolfed down the bland meal, fuelling her body without enjoyment.  Her clothes hung loosely on her lean frame these days.  The ordeal on the battleship had melted away several kilograms from a body that had no fat to spare. The Captain was grimly satisfied the wardroom food was no better than that from the lower deck galley.  The ship's cooks needed some re-training, or suitable motivation.

The migraine’s disappearance had brought the previous day's events into clearer focus, and Siobhan, never a woman to tolerate inefficiency or weakness, felt a renewed determination to clean up the
Stingray
.  Admiral Nagira had given her a job to do and she would see it through.  If her crew thought yesterday was bad, they hadn't seen anything yet.  She turned to her computer and opened the first message.  It was from HQ, and it was not exactly a ‘welcome, fellow-warrior’ note.  Warriors, in Siobhan’s estimation, did not sound this pompous and self-important.

"Dunmoore, this Commander Sones, Battle-Group Supply Officer.  Call my aide to arrange a meeting soonest. I must speak to you about your purser, Lieutenant Rossum.  His behavior is really intolerable: bullying, attempting to bribe and suborn the supply staff.  There is an established procedure to request stores.  Your people must adhere to it.  I cannot accept anything less.  Further behavior of that nature will be reported to the Flag Captain.  I expect to hear from you today.  Sones, out."

A dark grin of amusement twisted Siobhan's thin lips.  She wondered exactly how Rossum had 'subverted' supply personnel.  In her experience, a little
baksheesh
went a long way when one had to bypass the bureaucratic bullshit that made every request for toilet paper, anti-ship missiles or tungsten rivets an exercise in creative writing.  There wasn't a supply Petty Officer in the Fleet who wasn't open to a bit of creative subversion.

I must see what Rossum is doing to piss-off our friend Sones, and find out if he is actually getting somewhere.

Having been deputy commander of a notoriously corrupt Fleet Depot herself, Siobhan knew more than most about what could and couldn't be done.  But at least, Rossum was doing
something
, which was better than twenty-four hours ago, when the ship's stores had been empty with no plan to fill them.

The next message was a short written note from the Battle-Group Personnel Officer.  With regrets, he was unable to fill the
Stingray
's empty slots for the foreseeable future.  She would have to make do with her current complement.  Curious, Siobhan called up a ship's roster.

Hmmm, we’re missing the Third Engineering Officer, two bosun's mates and one Supply Petty Officer. Since when, and for what reasons, I wonder.

She touched the keypad.  “Third Engineering Officer’s slot, open since the 2nd of March of this year,” she read, “after Sub-Lieutenant Byrn was dismissed from the Service.” Siobhan frowned. 
Dismissed from the Service? Why?
 

The computer’s answer was quick and short. "That information is not on record."

"Leading Spacer Savarin was transferred to Starbase 31 on the 12th of January of this year, after contracting a chronic illness," Siobhan smiled, wondering if the chronic illness had a sexual origin.  Even five hundred years after the discovery of penicillin, the human race still found ways to contract new sexually transmitted diseases with alarming frequency.

"Able Spacer Vasser and Petty Officer Melchor died in a shipboard accident on the 16th of February of this year."

"Cause of the accident?"

"That information is not on record."

Siobhan sat back, eyes narrowed in speculation.  Sub-Lieutenant Byrn's reason for dismissal not being on record, she could understand, especially if he appealed the decision and won.  But two crewmembers dying in an accident aboard ship, that had to be investigated and the report published.

"Two crewmembers die of an accident.  No record on file," Siobhan softly spoke to herself, eyes staring at the bare bulkhead beyond the desk.  "A short while later, an engineering officer is dismissed from the Service.  No record on file.  Not long after that, the ship's Captain is relieved and ordered before a Disciplinary Board which, if it finds enough evidence, is empowered to order a general court-martial.  No record on file.  Coincidence, or related chain of events?"

Without the logs, the only ones who could tell her about those incidents were her officers and crew, and if yesterday was anything to go by, she wasn't going to get much about Forenza's days as Captain of the
Stingray
.  It wasn't a case of misplaced loyalty, she was sure of that.  A dispirited crew had no loyalty to give.

Bottling her sudden frustration, Siobhan re-routed the message to Pushkin's terminal and turned to the next one in the queue.  It was another written note from the Personnel Officer and informed her that all transfer requests from the
Stingray
were denied, as there were no available replacements.  All returned transfer requests were attached to the present message.

Well, that certainly made sense.  No point in approving transfers if he couldn't even fill the existing vacant slots.  Though why did he return the requests?  Why bother?  For a moment, Siobhan stared at the screen, frowning.  Then, out of curiosity, she took a look at the requests themselves.  The day after Forenza had left the
Stingray
, it seemed that half the crew, including officers, had asked to be posted to another ship.  She glanced at the message again and for the first time noticed the signature at the bottom.  Usually, she didn't care much for Navy bureaucrats, but this message made her curious.  Siobhan's eyes briefly widened in surprise at the name.

"Ezekiel Holt," she whispered.  "What an interesting coincidence.  I wonder..."

Her gloved hand shot out to stroke the com, then it stopped in mid-air as doubts made her hesitate.  Siobhan hadn't seen Ezekiel since shortly after wrecking the
Shenzen
at Antae Carina.  He had been her First Officer on the corvette, an officer of great promise until her pigheaded recklessness deprived him of the chance for a career.