The Devil and Deep Space (19 page)

She hadn’t a prayer of making it work, whatever it was. But he understood her motives and her rationale. And he liked them better than he liked Pesadie, with its corrupt Admiral and its opportunistic staff of reasonable people.

If Brecinn was going to enforce her will against the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship
Ragnarok
, it would be without aid and comfort from General Dierryk Rukota.

###

Well satisfied, Admiral Brecinn toggled into her on–station braid for Dame Noycannir to share the news. Not just the news she had just gotten from that tiresome little petty officer on the
Ragnarok
, but the other news as well, the news that had made ap Rhiannon’s call welcome but not exactly a surprise.

Names. Names and identifications, received just this morning from remote. “Mergau. Yes. If you would come and pay me a visit, please. A note from a mutual friend with news that may be of interest.”

They’d had two weeks to prepare. Noycannir had everything she needed to conduct a valid, legal Inquiry; with the names, she would be able to start to set up her strategy. Her interrogatories. Her in–depth personal file analysis, looking for the evidence of disaffection and corruption that would explain what they had done — and support the confessions that Noycannir had promised.

Sacrificing four lives to the rule of Law was not something to be done lightly. And yet Chilleau Judiciary would need Pesadie’s support, in the coming weeks. The Second Judge would surely make her declaration soon. Pesadie had to be ready to defend the Second Judge’s claim against any challenges, had to be in position to move against civil unrest; for the greater good.

She couldn’t do that if Pesadie was compromised by an unfortunate, ill–timed accident. She could not afford the compromise. She had to be ready to deploy all of her resources, to stabilize the sector should the Selection be contested, to achieve the privileged position in the new administration that the reasonable people with whom she did business expected her to gain and maintain for the mutual benefit of all parties.

It was only four lives.

Noycannir would find a way to hold it to four. Surely. Noycannir was a reasonable woman herself. And four lives were as nothing, compared to the greater good, compared to the lives Pesadie would save by being there and being ready to act to restore order.

Forty lives were not too much to pay for that. So four were not worth mourning. It was to be their glory to give up their lives to ensure a safe and stable transition when the Selection was announced. Theirs would be a sacrifice no less noble for being hidden for all time. Yes.

It was only six days to Laynock and back. It would be at least three before ap Rhiannon would force herself to release the official report with the names. By the time the Warrant had been endorsed at Chilleau Judiciary and returned, the
Ragnarok
would be back at Pesadie Training Command.

Noycannir had enough to worry her. There was no sense in cluttering her mind with unnecessary details. Brecinn had the names; that would be more than enough information for Noycannir to start to work.

Chapter Seven

Thresholds

Mergau Noycannir looked over the list of names that Admiral Brecinn had handwritten out for her, realizing with joy in her heart that this was even more perfect than she could have hoped.

“These are to be the prisoners, then?” she asked, hoping the note of admiration in her voice was suitably transparent. Brecinn was vain; it was not difficult to handle her. “Your team is to be congratulated. When must I be ready to begin processing?”

She’d presented Brecinn with a conflict of sorts, between Brecinn’s desire to bask in her acclaim and the fact that she didn’t have a good answer for the question. “I don’t mind telling you that the
Ragnarok
is not being reasonable at all, Dame Noycannir. Why am I not surprised? I’ll be able to get a Warrant as soon as the official report is released, and we’ll have the prisoners very shortly after that. Four days?”

Impossibly optimistic, Mergau was sure. But that suited her purpose just as well. She didn’t need the prisoners. She just needed to know who they were going to be to mount a coup that was so daring it would win her power and influence beyond her fondest hopes.

“Very good, Admiral. I’ve got some preliminary data pulled on the
Ragnarok
’s Security. I can start to bring it all together. Shall I get started?” Mergau stood up as she spoke, to indicate her eagerness to be on about her part of this important task. To tell Brecinn that she was leaving, now, but doing it politely.

“You have everything you need, Dame?” Brecinn asked. “Good. Yes, thank you, we can’t be on top of this unfortunate situation too quickly. It’s gone on for far too long already. Ap Rhiannon will be sorry. I promise you that.”

Mergau didn’t care about ap Rhiannon. She had her own agenda to put forward.

The fact that the named Security were all people assigned to Andrej Koscuisko only made her task more poignantly appropriate.

“No matter how clever these little officers think they may be, sooner or later they all pay, eh, Admiral?” Mergau agreed, and bowed. Leaving the room on a graceful note of conspiracy. Not bothering to point out that Admiral Brecinn herself might well be one of those “little officers” who would eventually pay.

Not before Koscuisko paid. And Koscuisko had so much to pay for. Everything that had gone wrong with her life went back to him; but she would have revenge — all the more sweet because his own people, his own precious and famously cherished Security, would be the instrument of her ultimate victory.

Hurrying through the halls, Mergau made her way to the out–of–the–way stores–room that had been configured for an interrogation arena, a theater of inquiry.

Had she everything she needed, Brecinn had asked. The instruments of torture were here, the drugs from the Controlled List, restraints and implements, shackles and chains; all secondary, though Brecinn did not know it.

What was truly crucial to her purpose was the Record: and the equipment Mergau needed to effect her plan. She’d told the Admiral that she would gain confessions to whatever Brecinn decided the story should be; she hadn’t lied. She’d only stretched the truth a little.

She had realized what she could really do with this opportunity only gradually. Pesadie Training Command was a testing facility; its judicial records were naturally weighted in just the direction she needed to go — insubordination, sabotage of training exercise, failure to comply with instructions received from exercise commanders, mutinous intent.

She could hardly have hoped for so generous a field from which to choose had she been free to survey all of Chilleau Judiciary’s records. Koscuisko’s people. She would send a message to her spies on Azanry. She would know exactly where to find him.

Koscuisko was no match for her in cunning or in strategy; it was only the unfair advantage of his medical training — the product of the privileges of wealth and rank — that had made her look bad in front of her Patron, that had persuaded the First Secretary to devalue her worth and her abilities.

Mergau checked her secures and engaged the privacy barrier. “Smish Smath,” Mergau said to her voice–trans. Secure. No one could forge her voice. She had to be very careful. Nobody had done what she planned to do in all the history of Jurisdiction. “Murat Spodinne. Taller Archops, Lek Kerenko.”

More luck, on top of luck. Kerenko would be easy. He was one of Koscuisko’s Security slaves, a bond–involuntary troop. There was no need to create a confession for Lek Kerenko; all she needed there was a simple “expiration of a Bond during the process of Inquiry, without prejudice.”

The others would have misled him all along, of course; by definition, a bond–involuntary could not plot mutiny. The governor would not allow it. Once she began to probe and test for what knowledge he might have, his governor — the story would go — would so work on him, in combination with her keen interrogation into matters that he should have seen and noted and reported to his First Officer, that he would die of self–inflicted punishment.

She would be sure to specify that he had not been at fault in any way. That way, his family would not have to repay the Bench for the costs of his training and his keep, Andrej would be grateful to her for that. She would see to it.

Three confessions. Only three. Smath would be the most challenging. There were relatively fewer women in Security; they tended to be absorbed in Engineering instead because of their superior skills in operating under pressure. They were disproportionately underrepresented in Brecinn’s records accordingly. Women were more logical, better at covering their tracks, harder to catch up doing something stupid.

She’d make do. She had the Record here.

“Index on class of hominid. Sex. Physical characteristics.” She’d preselected the data files on the cases that would match any of the
Ragnarok
’s Security; this would be a much swifter search. “Execute.”

Andrej Koscuisko had been there at Fleet Orientation Station Medical when Verlaine had sent her to take the Writ to Inquire, and come home as Inquisitor to Chilleau Judiciary. She had done the best she could. It had been hard. And Koscuisko had done better.

In an evil hour she had commended Koscuisko to her Patron while she was still at Fleet Orientation Station Medical, to spite the station’s administrator and her Tutor, to put them all on notice that she was a force to be reckoned with and had the immediate ear of the First Secretary. That they had good cause to be careful how they misused her, because she had more power than they seemed to realize. It had been a mistake.

Verlaine had compared her to Koscuisko and found her wanting. No matter how hard she tried when she returned to Chilleau Judiciary, Verlaine had Koscuisko always in the back of his mind, pointing out her every small miscalculation, jeering at her every failure. Every defeat.

Koscuisko was a rich man from a powerful family; he had education and a certain degree of personal charm. People were so easily impressed by superficialities. They ascribed talent to Koscuisko that no one could hope to match, and built him up into a sort of legend against whom a mere mortal was powerless to compete. But just because she did not have Koscuisko’s medical education did not mean that she lacked for knowledge of the Record . . . and how it could be used.

She had technical knowledge of Bench Record devices that few other people could hope to touch. Her access codes had never been revoked — Verlaine had thought he could yet find a use for her access, she supposed, as legal cover for some desperate act.

Now she would make use of her Writ against them all. She would use her knowledge of the Record to create a false history of interrogation and confession for three of the four Security troops who were on that Wolnadi fighter.

It would be a daring piece of work. The technical integrity of the Record was the cornerstone of the rule of Law and the Judicial order. No one had ever forged a Record. No one would ever dare reveal that she had done it. If the Record lost credibility, the Bench lost credibility. For the good of the Judicial order, Chilleau Judiciary would be forced to formally accept her forgeries as the truth.

She would take the Record to Azanry to confront Andrej Koscuisko. He was the Ship’s Inquisitor on board the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship
Ragnarok
. It would be his duty to accompany her to Chilleau Judiciary to conduct the investigation. He would have no choice. And once she but had him in her hands, he would have no choice about anything, anything at all, ever again.

She would bring Koscuisko to Verlaine, a very special gift, captive, revealed as a co–conspirator in the death of Cowil Brem — and who was to say that he had not been involved in that of the
Ragnarok
’s other recently dead officers as well? Was there to be no limits to the depth of Koscuisko’s guilt? Verlaine would be gratified.

If he were not grateful, he would have to seem to be. He would be unable to reject her gift, not unless he was willing to risk not only his career, but that of his Judge as well. Verlaine would be forced to keep Koscuisko secured, concealed, hidden away, her prisoner; or be destroyed. And she would be secure.

She would have knowledge that could destroy the new First Judge and destabilize all of Jurisdiction space: knowledge that the Record could be forged, knowledge that Chilleau Judiciary could be blackmailed into compliant silence. She would be First Judge, because Verlaine would not dare deny her anything.

Pesadie Training Command would get its just reward.

And Mergau Noycannir would be revenged at last on Andrej Koscuisko for all of the humiliations she had suffered in the past because of his wealth, his education, his position, the unfair advantage he enjoyed as an Inquisitor, putting her to shame in the eyes of her Patron.

###

Andrej Koscuisko walked hand in hand with his son in the garden, feeling the warmth of the afternoon sun like a blessing on his face. His home sun. His body knew this air, this gravity, this light. It was almost physically painful to be here in his own place, the world that had bred him, the sun that ruled the chemistry of his blood. Home ground.

Anton looked up at him from time to time, strolling with him, but said little. Andrej didn’t mind. What did he have to say to this young boy?

“Do you like the summer, Anton?” Andrej asked.

He knew there were other things that fathers were supposed to say. Studies. Saints. Obedience. Hunting. Things a young lord had to learn and know. Andrej didn’t care. And he didn’t have time. He would be leaving soon. If he was lucky, he’d be coming back; but if he wasn’t, he would at least know something of the person his child was. Someone else would teach Anton who he was supposed to be.

“Summer is empty, sir,” Anton replied, after a moment’s apparent thought. “I like harvest. Harvest–time is full. I see people I only sometimes see in summer. I like harvest.”

What was he to make of such a claim
? Andrej wondered.

It was true, wasn’t it?

In the summer the house was empty. Everyone was dispersed out into the fields, all across the estate. There was so much to do, and so much day in which to do it. Wasn’t part of what made harvest glad the knowledge that the heavy work was done until the spring?

“Harvest is good,” Andrej agreed. “I also like snow. Not wind. But snow. I never liked the wind, Anton.”

Now Anton smiled up at him with an open, candid expression that wracked Andrej’s heart, for reasons that he wasn’t sure he understood. “Ferinc says it’s words in the wind, sir.”

Yes, that was what Andrej had been taught. Words in the wind, messages gone astray, and if you could catch the whole of the message the soul who’d breathed it would be free at last. “Who’s Ferinc, son Anton?”

“Cousin Ferinc, sir; I love him very much. If he hadn’t gone to Dubrovnije I would show you to him.” Malcontent, then. Anton would show his father to his friend?

Andrej frowned up at the clear blue sky, surprised to feel the pain in his own heart. He shouldn’t feel pain; he should be grateful. Anton had a special friend that he loved. It wasn’t as though that would have been different had Andrej lived at home all of this time; Dolgorukij fathers and their sons were never friends. There was too much to stand between them. Anton called him “sir” with grave and unfailing respect. What might it be like to be called “Papa”?

The sun caught on the glass panes of one of the garden gates in the distance. Someone had come in from the other side of the garden, the side that faced the motor stables. Andrej sighed. “Yes, I would like to meet him, Anton. Since you love him, I must love him also. Now you must go with Lek. He’ll take you back to the house. I have company come.”

Anton stood waiting on the garden path, and after a moment, Andrej realized that Anton was waiting to be kissed.

Crouching down on his heels, Andrej kissed Anton on the cheek, and Anton put his arms around Andrej’s neck to hug him. It was peculiar behavior for a Dolgorukij son, to hug his father. Whoever Cousin Ferinc was, he had taught Anton to be a loving child.

Suddenly Andrej felt overwhelmed with gratitude that Anton felt free to offer him affection. Of all things. Had he ever, ever hugged his father? Or had they been too formal with each other from the start?

Anton went away hand in hand with Lek, whom Andrej particularly wanted to show to his household as someone to be trusted with the most precious thing he had. His child. And corning down the garden path was his cousin, Stanoczk, and the Bench intelligence specialist, Jils Ivers.

“The peace of the Malcontent is with you,” Cousin Stanoczk said, formally. “You know the Bench intelligence specialist, your Excellency?”

Of course he did. He had spent some very unpleasant moments with Ivers in his office on the
Ragnarok
; but it was not a question of personal fault. He had seen her within the past year. He hadn’t seen his cousin Stanoczk for far longer than that. “Bench specialist,” Andrej nodded. “But, Stoshik, how long?”

Now Stanoczk grinned at him and relaxed. “Some time, Derush. Do you embrace the Malcontent, or have you too much dignity?”