The Devil and Deep Space (4 page)

Koscuisko stepped through the door into the courier bay, and Security 5.1 came to attention smartly, lined up beneath the belly of the craft and waiting only for Koscuisko’s word to be away. It was a nice courier; a Combine national, the property of the Koscuisko familial corporation in fact. One of the things that still amazed Stildyne after four years and more with Andrej Koscuisko was how inconceivably rich the man was — at least so far as disposition of material goods was concerned.

“Thank you, gentles, and we must leave very soon, but I want a moment. Stand down. Stildyne. Kits on board?”

Stildyne knew what urgency First Officer had concealed behind his calm demeanor and his careful drawl. If First Officer was worried Stildyne was near frantic; but Koscuisko would not be hurried.

“Cleared and ready for departure, your Excellency, immediately. As the officer please.”

Koscuisko frowned at him a little over that. He didn’t usually resort to formal language with Koscuisko; it was almost a form of bullying. It was the only way Stildyne could come up with to express the urgency he felt. First Officer wanted 5.1 clear of the
Ragnarok
. Stildyne didn’t know why — exactly — but that didn’t concern him. First Officer knew what he was about.

“These people have just come off exercise, Chief.” There was a touch of admonition in Koscuisko’s voice, a hint of reproach. “And in particular the navigator has been worked hard. Not that the entire crew has been less fully challenged, but do we demand that Lek perform a vector transit now? This moment? Lek. Should truly we be asking such effort, from you?”

All right, maybe Koscuisko was not simply being difficult because he was angry and frustrated. It was possible that Koscuisko was checking to be sure that Lek was centered, clear, and well within the tolerances imposed by his governor. “It’s just a vector transit, your Excellency.” Lek didn’t quite shrug, but the idea was there. “Not a problem, sir. And Godsalt has already done the calculations.”

There was no halt or hesitation in Lek’s voice. If Lek had any apprehension, he would let them know by using more formal and submissive language — “as it please the officer.” For Lek to use “your Excellency” and “sir” in direct address meant that there were no issues with his governor for Koscuisko to confront. Koscuisko nodded, and made an effort to clear the trouble from his face. “Well, then, let us be off, there is no time like the present. Chief.”

Stildyne didn’t need to say anything. Koscuisko went up the ramp into the courier. Stildyne nodded, and 5.1 broke out to man the stations — finalize the checks, close the ports and portals, seal the courier for launch.

Stildyne himself followed Koscuisko up the ramp, slowly. Thinking. Wondering. Why was First Officer in such an apparent hurry to get these people away from the ship? What did Koscuisko know? And what would Koscuisko tell him?

It was an unfortunate complication to the start of a man’s holiday. But maybe once they’d passed this rocky bit the track would be smooth and level for the duration of Koscuisko’s home leave.

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.