by David Weber
"Don't bother using the excuse of Tresca, damnation. I'm well aware that sadists and perverts have been tolerated—whether I approve of it or not, and I don't—on prison detail. But this is a task force of the People's Republic! Officially, on armed duty in time of war. The behavior of a deviant like Jamka posed an obvious security risk! Especially one who was also a sheer madman!"
Glaring, Cachat picked up one of the chips and brandished it like a prosecutor holding up the murder weapon before a jury. "This one records the torture and murder of a naval rating!"
Yuri felt the blood drain from his face. He'd heard rumors of what went on in Jamka's private quarters down on the planet, true. But, from the habit of years, he'd ignored the rumors and written off the more extravagant ones to the inflation inevitable to any hearsay. Truth be told, like Admiral Chin, a large part of Radamacher had been thankful for Jamka's secret perversions. It kept the bastard preoccupied and out of Yuri's hair. As long as Jamka kept his private habits away from the task force, Radamacher had minded his own business. It was dangerous—very dangerous—to pry into the private life of a StateSec officer as highly ranked as Robert Jamka. Who had been, after all, Radamacher's own superior.
"Good God."
"There is no God," snapped Cachat. "Don't let me hear you use such language again. And answer my question—why didn't you report it?"
Yuri groped for words. There was something about the youngster's sheer fanaticism that just disarmed his own cynicism. He realized, if he'd had any doubts before, that Cachat was a True Believer. One of those frightening people who, if they did not take personal advantage of their own power, did not hesitate for an instant to punish anyone who failed to live up to their own political standards.
"I didn't—" He took a breath of air. "I was not aware of any such murder. What went on dirtside—I mean, I kept an eye on him—so did Chin—when he was aboard the admiral's flagship—or anywhere in the fleet—which wasn't too often, he was lax about his duties, spent most of his time either on the SDs or on the planet—"
I'm babbling like an idiot.
"That's a lie," stated Cachat flatly. "The disappearance of Third Class Missile Tech Caroline Quedilla was reported to you five months ago. I found it in your records. You did a desultory investigation and reported her 'absent without leave, presumed to have deserted.' "
The name jogged Radamacher's memory. "Yes, I remember the case. But she disappeared while on shore leave—it happens, now and then—and . . ."
He forgot Cachat's warning. "Oh, God," he whispered. "After I did the first set of checks, Jamka told me to drop the investigation. He said he had more important things for me to do than waste time on a routine naval desertion case."
Cachat's dark eyes stared at him. Then: "Indeed. Well, for punishment I'm going to require you to watch this entire chip. Make sure you're near the toilet. You'll puke at least once."
He rose abruptly to his feet. "But that's for later. Right now, we need to finish your investigation. The situation here is such an unholy mess that I can't afford to have an officer of your experience twiddling his thumbs. I'm desperately in need of personnel I can rely on." He jerked a thumb at the sergeant; scowling: "I even had to summon Marines from one of the task force vessels, since I can't be sure which StateSec personnel on this ship were involved with Jamka."
The scowl was now focused on Yuri himself. "That's provided you can satisfy me of your political reliability, that is, and your own lack of involvement in Jamka's . . . I'm still calling it 'murder,' even if I personally think the man should have been shot in the head. As long as it was done officially."
Yuri hesitated. Then, guessing that Cachat would rush the matter, decided to take the chance to volunteer for chemical interrogation. And why not? Cachat could order it done anyway, whether Yuri agreed or not.
"You can give me any truth drug you want." He tried to sound as confident as possible. "Well, there's one I have an allergic reaction to—that's—"
Cachat interrupted him. "Not a chance. Among the people implicated in Jamka's behavior—there seems to have been a whole little cult of the swine—was one of the ship's doctors aboard this vessel. I have no idea how he might have adulterated the supply of drugs, precisely in order to protect himself if he came under suspicion. So we'll use the tried and true methods."
Cachat turned and opened the door. Without a glance backward, he led Yuri into the hallway. As Radamacher, following, came up to the big Marine sergeant, he suddenly realized that he recognized the man. He didn't know his first name, but he was Citizen Sergeant Pierce, one of the Marines attached to Sharon Justice's ship.
"Three squads of us from the Veracity just got called in by the Special Investigator," whispered Pierce. "Only been here four hours."
Radamacher left the room. Cachat was stalking down the corridor perhaps ten yards ahead of him. Just out of whispering range.
"What going on?" he asked softly.
"All hell's breaking loose, Sir. Been maybe the most interesting four hours of my life."
The citizen sergeant nodded toward Cachat. "That is one scary son-of-a-bitch, Sir. Would you believe—"
Seeing Cachat impatiently turning his head to see what was holding them up, the sergeant broke off.
Thereafter, they traveled in silence. Cachat set a fast pace, leading them through the convoluted corridors of the huge warship with only an occasional moment of hesitation. Yuri, remembering how he'd gotten lost himself the first time he came aboard the superdreadnought, wondered how Cachat was managing the feat.
But he didn't wonder much. It was a long voyage from Nouveau Paris, and he was quite sure the Special Investigator had spent the entire time preparing for his duties. Part of which, he was sure, involved studying the layout of the vessel he would be working in.
Duty. The Needs of the State.
He spent more time wondering about something else. He finally remembered that the woman who had been murdered by Jamka had also been attached to Sharon Justice's ship.
That was . . . odd. Not the fact itself. The fact that Cachat, after throwing Sharon Justice—and Yuri himself—under arrest, would then turn around and use Marine personnel from the same ship for—
For what, exactly? What the hell is he doing?
As soon as they entered the large chamber which was their destination, Yuri understood. Some of it, at least.
The chamber was normally used as a gym for StateSec troopers. In a way, it still was. Insofar as administering a beating could be called "exercise."
He stared, horrified, when he saw the person shackled to a heavy chair in the center of the compartment. It was Citizen Captain Sharon Justice, nude from the waist up except for a brassiere. He could barely recognize her. Sharon's upper body was covered with bruises, and her face was a pulp. Blood was splattered all over her head and chest.
"Sorry, Sir," whispered the Marine. Sharon's groans covered the soft sound of the words. "We'll go as easy as we can. But . . . it's either this or get what the good doctor got."
Yuri's brain didn't seem to be functioning very well. Despite State Security's reputation, there were plenty of StateSec officers like himself who were no more familiar with casual brutality than anyone else. Radamacher had never found it necessary to enforce discipline with anything more severe than a sharp tone, now and then.
There was a huge pool of blood around the chair Sharon was strapped into. Yuri groped for the answer . . .
How can she bleed so much?
Finally, the Marine's whispered words registered. Dimly, Radamacher realized that there were a number of other bleeding bodies in the compartment. He hadn't noticed them at first, because they'd been hauled into two of the compartment's corners and there were perhaps twenty other people crowded into the other two corners of the compartment.
"Crowded" was the word, too. They seemed to be pressing themselves against the bulkheads, as if they were trying to get as far away as possible from the proceedings in the center. Or, more likel
y, as far away as possible from the Special Investigator. That they were all members of State Security, except for the Marine citizen major and three Marine citizen sergeants who had apparently administered the beatings, made the whole situation insanely half-comical to Radamacher. No wonder the Marine noncom had called it "maybe the most interesting four hours of my life." Talk about role reversal!
Then Yuri took a better look at the bodies in the other corner, and any sense of comedy vanished. The bloody and dazed people in the one corner had just been beaten. They were being attended to now by a couple of medics, but despite the bruises and the gauze he recognized all of them. Essentially, that little group constituted most of the top StateSec officers assigned to the naval task force. What Yuri Radamacher thought of as "his people."
The other group of bodies . . .
He didn't recognize any of them, except one woman he thought was one of the officers from the other superdreadnought. He was pretty sure they were all members of the SD personnel, who'd always kept their distance from "fleet" StateSec.
They were the source of most of the blood pooled around the chair, he realized. They'd all been shot in the head.
Jamka's accomplices, he was sure of it.
Dead, dead, dead. Six of them.
"Well?" demanded Cachat.
The citizen major overseeing the Marines was Khedi Lafitte, the commanding officer of the Veracity's Marine detachment. He shook his head. "I think she's innocent, Sir." He gestured with his head toward the holopic recorder being held by a StateSec guard nearby. "You can study the record yourself, of course. But if she had anything to do with Jamka's killing—ah, murder—we sure couldn't get a trace of it."
Cachat studied the beaten officer in the chair, his jaws tight. "What about her political reliability?"
The citizen major looked a little uneasy. "Well . . . ah . . . we were concentrating on the Jamka business. . . ."
Cachat shook his head impatiently. "Never mind. I'll study the record myself. So will whoever Citizen Chairman Saint-Just assigns to examine my report, once it reaches Nouveau Paris. " He turned his head to the StateSec guard holding the recorder. "You did get a good record, yes?"
The guard nodded his head hastily. He seemed just as nervous around the Special Investigator as everyone else.
Apparently satisfied, Cachat turned back to study Justice again. After a few seconds, he twitched his shoulders. The gesture seemed more one of irritation than an actual shrug.
"Get her out of the chair, then. Put her with the others and see to it she gets medical attention. Thank you, Citizen Major Lafitte. I'll question Citizen Commissioner Radamacher myself. By now I'm almost certain we've cauterized the rot, but it's best to be certain."
Two of the Marine citizen sergeants, moving more gently than you'd expect from two men who had just administered her beating, unshackled Sharon from the chair and helped her toward the medics in the corner. Once the chair was empty, Cachat turned to Yuri.
"Please take a seat, Citizen Commissioner Radamacher. If you're innocent, you have nothing to fear beyond a painful episode which will end soon enough." There was a pulser holstered on his belt. Cachat lifted the weapon and held it casually. "If you're guilty, your pain will end even sooner."
Yuri took some pride in the fact that he made it to the chair and seated himself without trembling. As one of the sergeants fastened the shackles to his wrists and ankles, he stared up at Cachat.
Again, he ignored the Special Investigator's dictum. "Jesus Christ," he hissed softly. "You shot them yourself?"
Again, that irritated little twitch of the shoulders. "We are in time of war, at a moment of supreme crisis for the Republic. The security risk posed by Jamka and his cabal required summary judgement and execution. Their perversions and corruption threatened to undermine the authority of the state here. It did undermine that authority, as a matter of fact, when Jamka's behavior got himself killed."
Yuri had to fight not to let his relief show. Whether he realized it or not, Cachat had just stated that the significance of Jamka's murder was personal, not political—and had done so on the official record.
Cachat spoke his next words a bit more loudly, as if to make sure that all the StateSec officers in the room heard him.
"Citizen Chairman Saint-Just will naturally review the whole matter, and if he disapproves of my actions he'll see to my own punishment. Whatever that might be." His tone was one of sheer indifference. "In the meantime, however"—his eyes left Yuri and swept slowly across the crowd of officers watching in the corners, glittering like two agates—"I believe I have established that Legislaturalist-style cronyism and back-scratching between unfit and corrupt officers will no longer be tolerated in this sector. Indeed, it will be severely punished."
All three citizen sergeants were back. All of them donned gloves to protect their hands.
"Have at it, then," said Yuri firmly. For reasons he could not quite understand, he was suddenly filled with confidence. In fact, he felt better than he had in a long time.
The feeling didn't last, of course. But, as Cachat had stated, it was eventually over. Through one blurry eye—the other was closed completely—Yuri saw the pistol go back into the holster. And through ears that felt like cauliflowers, he dimly heard the Special Investigator pronounce him innocent of all suspicions. True, the words sounded as if they were spoken grudgingly. But, they were spoken. And properly recorded. Yuri heard Cachat enquire as to that also.
As Citizen Sergeant Pierce helped him over to the corner where the medics waited, Yuri managed to mumble a few words.
"Dink 'y noze id boken."
"Yessir, it is," muttered the citizen sergeant. "Sorry about that. We broke your nose right off. The Special Investigator's orders, Sir."
Cachat, you vicious bastard.
Later, after he was patched up, he felt better.
"You'll be okay, Sir," assured the medic who'd worked on him. "A broken nose looks gory as all hell at the time—blood all over the place—but it's really not all that serious. Few weeks, you'll be as good as new."
5
Radamacher spent the next several days in his cabin aboard the Hector Van Dragen, recovering from his injuries. Although he was no longer officially under arrest, and thus under no obligation to remain in the cabin, he decided that the old saw about discretion being the better part of valor applied in this case.
Besides, he got a full daily report from Sergeant Pierce anyway, concerning the events transpiring on the superdreadnought—indeed, throughout the entire task force. So he saw no reason to venture out into the corridors himself, since he had a perfectly valid medical excuse not to do so. Philosophically—especially with the aid of new bruises added to old saws—he thought that phenomena which went by such terms as "Reign of Terror" were best observed indirectly.
He got the term "Reign of Terror" from Pierce himself, the day after his interrogation.
"Just checking up, Sir," Pierce explained apologetically after Yuri invited him into the room, "making sure you were okay." The sergeant examined his face, wincing a bit at the bruises and the bandages. "Hope you don't take none of this personally. Orders, Sir. We Marines never had no beef against you, ourselves."
The sergeant's wince changed into a scowl. "Sure as hell never had no beef against Captain Justice. He shouldna had us do that, dammit. It idn't proper."
The injuries to Yuri's face caused his ensuing snort of sarcastic half-laughter to hurt. Especially his broken nose. He added that little item to his long list of grievances against Special Investigator Victor Cachat.
"Ide 'ay nod!" he wheezed. "Ma'ines an'd zuppose do bead dey own ovizuhs." He steeled himself for more pain. "'Ow iz Zha—Gabban 'Usdis—doin'?"
"She's fine, Sir," the sergeant assured him, almost eagerly. "We went as easy as—I mean, well—the Special Investigator left before we started on Captain Justice, Sir. So he wasn't there to watch. So—"
Pierce was floundering, obviously feeling trapped between
human sympathy and duty—not to mention the possible Wrath of Cachat. Yuri let him off the hook. Given the difficulty of speaking, he also decided to ignore the citizen sergeant's unthinking use of the forbidden term "sir." He understood full well the word was an indication of Pierce's trust in him.
"Nedduh mine, Ziddezen Zajend. Z'okay. Iz 'uh noze boke doo?"
"Oh, no, Sir!" Yuri had to force down another laugh. The sergeant seemed deeply aggrieved at the suggestion. "Pretty a woman as she is, we wouldn't do nothing like that. Didn't knock out none of her teeth, neither. Just, you know, bruised her up good for the recorder."
Feeling two missing teeth of his own with a probing tongue—they also hurt—Yuri was pleased at the news. He'd always found Sharon Justice a very attractive woman. So much so, in fact, that on more than one occasion he'd had to remind himself forcefully of the prohibition against romantic liaisons between officers in the same chain of command. That hadn't been easy. He was a bachelor beginning to tire of it, Sharon was a divorcée about his own age, and their duties brought them into constant contact. Just to make things worse, he was pretty sure his own attraction to her was reciprocated.
The citizen sergeant began moving about the cabin, fussily tidying up here and there. As if trying, somehow, to make amends for the events of the previous day. There was something utterly ludicrous about the whole situation, and another little laugh wracked pain through Yuri's face.
"Nedduh mine, zajend," he repeated. Then, gesturing toward the door. "Wad's 'abbenin' oud deh?"
Pierce grinned. "It's a regular reign of terror, Sir. Look on the bright side. You're well and truly out of it, now. Whereas those sorry worthless bastards out there—"
He broke off, coughing a little. It was also against regulations for a Marine noncom to refer to the officers and crew of a State Security SD as "sorry worthless bastards."
Under the circumstances, Yuri decided to overlook the citizen sergeant's lapse. Indeed, with a lifted eyebrow, he invited Pierce to continue. Even went so far, in fact, as to invite the Marine to sit with a polite gesture of the hand.
