The Devil and Deep Space (5 page)

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?”