The Service of the Sword

by David Weber

  And rightly. Whatever the promise, the reality had turned it inside out. A post created to shield a republic from the possible depredations of its own military had been turned, not only against the military, but the republic itself. The old conundrum, reborn again. Who will guard the guardians?

  Yet, he remembered reading of an inquisitor in the Basque country, in that ancient era when humanity had still lived on a single planet. Sent there by the Spanish Inquisition at the height of its power to investigate the truth behind a wave of accusations of witchcraft, the inquisitor had stopped the witch-burnings. Indeed, had insisted upon proper rules of evidence at all subsequent trials—and then released every supposed witch for lack of any such evidence.

  Yuri had run across the anecdote in his voluminous reading. Years ago, that had been; but he'd taken a certain comfort from it ever since.

  He even managed a chuckle, at that moment. Yuri Radamacher did not believe in an afterlife. Yet, if there was one, he was quite sure that at that very moment in Hell, some good-natured, round-faced, overweight, apprehensive little devil was being chewed out by Satan for "slackness."

  It was time for the People's Commissioner to do his duty, then. The people of the republic needed protection against an officer run amok. Yuri advanced onto the bridge, with resolute steps.

  * * *

  The bridge was . . . quite a scene.

  Citizen Captain Gallanti was standing in the center of it, glaring red-faced at a display split into two screens. One screen showed the bridge of Admiral Chin's flagship. Yuri could see Genevieve herself standing there, along with Commodore Ogilve and Commissioner Wilkins. At their center, seeming to be in the forefront, stood Victor Cachat.

  Cachat, as always, was an imposing figure. Even through a holodisplay, the young man's intensity seemed to burn. But Yuri's eyes were immediately drawn to the other screen. Sharon Justice was in that screen, which was showing the bridge of the other StateSec SD, the Joseph Tilden. So he assumed, anyway, given that the SD's captain Vesey was standing next to her.

  He was relieved to see that Sharon seemed in fine health. Even in good spirits, for that matter. Her facial expression was one of solemnity, but Yuri knew her quite well after all these years and could detect the underlying . . .

  Excitement? Maybe. It was hard to tell. But whatever else, she certainly didn't seem gloomy.

  Captain Vesey, on the other hand, did look on the gloomy side. The words "nervous, worried, and more than a little depressed" might capture the expression on his face a bit better.

  One thing was clear, just from the body language of the two people alone. Whatever was happening on the Tilden, it was obvious that Sharon was calling the shots and not the superdreadnought's nominal commander.

  That was good enough, for the moment. Yuri looked away from the screens and quickly examined the bridge of the Hector itself. All of the ratings and as many of the officers as could possibly manage it had their heads buried as far down as they could get them into their work stations. As long-beaten underlings will do, when their mistress is having another temper tantrum, trying their very best to be inconspicuous.

  That was not possible, of course, for some of the officers. The nature of their duties required them to be directly attentive to the citizen captain.

  The Hector Van Dragen's executive officer was standing not far from Gallanti, bestowing upon her his well-practiced look of fawning vacancy. The man's name was as comical in its own way as that of the long-suffering Diana Citizen. Kit Carson, no less. Fortunately for him, Yuri Radamacher was one of the few people in the task force who had the historical knowledge to understand how ridiculous the name was, given the man's nature.

  Yuri dismissed him from consideration. Carson was a nonentity. Of the other top ship's officers on the bridge, most of his attention went to the tac officer, Edouard Ballon. Partly that was because of the nature of a tac officer's duties, since Ballon controlled the ship's armament. Mostly it was because Yuri knew that if there was going to be trouble from anyone other than Gallanti herself, it would come from Ballon.

  The tac officer was not precisely a StateSec "fanatic." Certainly not one cut from the same cloth as Cachat. Ballon had no particularly strong ideological convictions. But he was the type of sour, nasty, mean-spirited person who tended to gravitate naturally to an organization like StateSec. Not a sadist, no. Just cut from the same cloth as the grim villagers who were always the first to raise the cry of "witchcraft!"—and always took satisfaction in the punishment of others. As if that validated their place in the world.

  Neither Gallanti nor Ballon was watching him. Neither of them, in fact, had even noticed Yuri coming onto the bridge, they were so fixated on the screen. Yuri took the opportunity to nod toward Ballon while giving both the sergeants standing behind him a meaningful look. Sergeant Rallo nodded back, relaxed; Ned Pierce just smiled thinly and hefted the flechette gun in his hands a centimeter or two higher.

  It's time, then. Do it.

  Yuri turned back to face Gallanti. And suddenly—did life always have to be ridiculously awkward?—realized that the first obstacle he faced was simply the pedestrian problem of getting the damn woman to hear him. She was making enough of a racket herself to drown a bugler.

  "—at's pure horseshit, Cachat! I don't give a flying fuck what fancy titles you carry around! I'm the captain of this ship and what I say goes! And if you think when there's treason all about I'm going to disarm a StateSec capital ship, you're out of your fucking mind! The impellers and the sidewalls stay up—and I'll tell you what else, wet-behind-the-ears errand boy. Your sugar daddy Saint-Just isn't around any longer to cover your ass. You're on your own now, punk. You try shooting me in the head with that piddly pulser of yours, I'll show you just what kind of hell on earth a superdreadnought can unleash! Go ahead, try me!"

  Yuri saw Captain Vesey wince. To the man's credit, he tried to intervene. "Jillian, please. Until we find out what's really happening on Haven—"

  "Fuck off, you gutless bastard! What? Does that bitch Justice intimidate you? She doesn't intimidate me! Nobody does—and that includes you. That scow of yours may technically be a sister ship of mine, but command is what matters, don't think it doesn't. If the gloves come off here—and we're getting real close—I'll tear that thing down around your ears before I turn Chickenshit Chin's task force into so much dog food. You'll see an SD turned into a funeral pyre faster than you can believe!"

  Yuri had always heard about Gallanti's temper tantrums, but this was the first time he'd ever personally witnessed one. How in the world had this woman ever been given command of a capital ship? Even State Security should have had enough sense to realize she was unfit for such responsibility. If he wanted to be charitable about it, Yuri would have likened Gallanti to a spoiled five-year-old child throwing a fit.

  Unfortunately, five-year-old children, no matter how spoiled, never had the terrifying power of a superdreadnought under their control. Gallanti did. Which made the situation deadly instead of simply pathetic. Under the circumstances, she was as dangerous as a maddened bear.

  Gallanti finally took a breath, and Yuri began to speak. But before he managed to get a word out, Victor Cachat's audio-amplified voice filled the bridge.

  As always, it was a cold voice. "What took you so long, Assistant Special Investigator? I was beginning to wonder if you were slacking off again."

  Yuri suddenly realized that he'd advanced far enough onto the bridge to enter the field of the comm pickup and become visible to those on the other two ships. Even though Gallanti herself hadn't noticed him until that very moment.

  God, he was tired of that arrogant young voice.

  "Have a certain regard for natural law if nothing else, would you, Cachat?" He took an admittedly petty pleasure in neglecting all honorifics. "I just got the news myself and got here as soon as I could."

  The fact that Cachat didn't seem to take any umbrage at the lack of honorifics—didn't even seem to notice, damn the man�
�just irritated Yuri still further.

  "And if you don't mind"—making clear by his tone that he didn't care if he did—"I prefer the title 'people's commissioner.' I don't really see where there's anything left to investigate, anyway."

  Cachat stared at him. In the big display a capital ship could manage, the young fanatic seemed even larger than life.

  Then, to Yuri's surprise, Cachat gave him a deep, slow nod. It had almost the sense of a ceremonial bow to it. And when his head lifted, for the first time since Yuri had met the man, Cachat's dark eyes seemed a warm brown instead of an iron black.

  "Yes," said Cachat. "You have the right of it, Yuri Radamacher. Now do your duty, People's Commissioner."

  Gallanti was gawping at Yuri. Then, burst into the start of another tirade.

  "What the hell are you doing here? I didn't give you permission—"

  Yuri had no desire at all to listen to more of that screech. When he needed it, he could manage quite a loud voice himself.

  "You are under arrest, Captain Gallanti. I am relieving you of your duties. You are unfit to command."

  That cut off her off in mid-screech. Again, she gawped.

  Yuri, at the end, tried one last time. He put on his most sympathetic smile and added: "Jillian, please, there's no need for this. Just let it go and I'll give you my word I'll see to it—"

  It was no use, and Yuri had a sick feeling that in his effort he'd simply condemned himself. Gallanti's hand was already grabbing the butt of her pulser—and, like a slack idiot, his own pulser still had the flap fastened.

  "You fucking traitor!" Gallanti screamed. Her weapon was coming out of the holster and Yuri had no doubt at all she intended to fire. The woman had completely lost it. Out of the corner of one eye, as he scrabbled to get the flap of his holster open, Yuri saw the tac officer starting to rise from his chair. Ballon was reaching for his own sidearm.

  Then—

  Whackwhack. Whackwhack.

  Small holes appeared in the foreheads of both Gallanti and Ballon, and the entire backs of their skulls exploded in a gory spray of splintered bone and finely divided brain tissue.

  Rallo's doing, Yuri realized dimly. He'd double-tapped both of them. Yuri hadn't known the StateSec sergeant was that quick and expert a shot.

  Brrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

  Before Gallanti's body could even begin to slump, Sergeant Pierce's short, lethally accurate three-round burst flung her five meters against a bulkhead, the deadly flechettes literally shredding the body along the way. No one else was standing there, thank God. Thank Pierce, actually; even in the shock of the moment Yuri understood that the experienced veteran had made sure he had a clean line of fire. Although at least three of the bridge's officers and ratings were frantically scraping bits and pieces of Gallanti off of them—now one of the ratings started vomiting—nobody else had actually gotten hurt.

  "Ned," Yuri heard Rolla complaining, "can't you do anything neatly? What do you use when you go fishing? Missiles?"

  "Hey, Jaime, I'm a Marine. This is what we do. You wanna transfer? I'll put in a good word for you—so will at least ten other guys I know. Probably even be able to keep the same rank."

  Rolla started to make one of his usual retorts about the mental deficiencies of Marines, but broke off before he got through the first four words. Then, after a moment's silence, said quietly: "Yeah, actually, I probably do. I've got a feeling State Security is about to get seriously downsized."

  The StateSec sergeant had reholstered his pulser by now, there being clearly no other armed threat posed on the bridge. To Yuri's surprise, he pushed past him—not rudely, no; but firmly nonetheless—and came to stand at the center of the bridge staring at the figures in the display.

  At Victor Cachat, to be precise.

  "You tell me. Sir, or whatever else I'm supposed to call you. Who's running this show these days?"

  Good question, thought Yuri.

  "And what are we all supposed to do now?" Sergeant Rolla continued.

  And that's an even better one.

  10

  Cachat didn't even hesitate, and Yuri damned him again. All the unfairness of the universe, in that moment, seemed concentrated in the fact that a twenty-four-year-old fanatic—even now!—never seemed to have any doubts about anything.

  "I think the situation is clear enough, Sergeant—ah?"

  "Rolla, Sir. Jaime Rolla."

  "Sergeant Rolla. As for titles, I think we can all dispense with the curlicues." Cachat's razor-thin smile appeared. "I'll confess that I get tired myself of all those longwinded syllables. My standing rank in State Security is Captain, so I'll go with that. As for the rest—"

  Cachat's eyes moved slowly across the people on the bridge of the Hector; then, briefly, at those he could see in his display on the sister SD; finally, at greater length, he looked at the naval officers standing next to him. Especially Admiral Chin.

  Then he looked back at Rolla.

  "Here's what I think. We have no real idea what's happened—or is happening—on Haven. The news brought by the merchant ship is simply too garbled. The only two things which seem clear at the moment are that Saint-Just is dead and Admiral Theismann holds effective power at the capital. But we still don't know what new government will emerge in its place—or upon what political principles that government will be based."

  Genevieve's lips tightened. "I'll go with Theismann, myself."

  Yuri could sense the StateSec officers on the bridge of the Hector stir a little. Not for the first time in his life, he found himself wishing that Admiral Chin would learn to be a little more diplomatic.

  "Would you, Admiral?" Cachat demanded. "You know absolutely nothing about what sort of regime Admiral Theismann might—or might not—be putting into place. It might be an outright military dictatorship. Are you really so certain that's what you want?"

  "It's better than Saint-Just!" she snarled.

  Cachat shrugged. "Perhaps. And perhaps not. But Saint-Just is dead anyway, so he's irrelevant. Let's not all forget that our first responsibility—all of us—is to the republic and its people. Not to any organization within it."

  "Fine for you to say! StateSec man!"

  Yuri was practically grinding his teeth. For Christ sake, Genevieve! We just barely averted disaster because one woman couldn't control her temper. Are you going to blow it now? In case you hadn't noticed—Admiral!—we've still got two fully armed StateSec SDs in this system. Yeah, sure, I might be able to control this one, seeing as how I've effectively created my own command staff. Except it's a jury-rigged hybrid staff, and if you start giving the StateSec people the idea that the Navy and Marines are going to start a counter-purge . . . Jesus, the whole thing could dissolve into a civil war!

  He broke off the angry, desperate thought. Cachat was addressing Chin again, still in that same calm, cold, controlled tone of voice.

  "Yes, I am State Security. But tell me, Admiral, what is your grievance with me?" Cachat glanced at the screens. "Or Commissioner Radamacher. Or Commissioner Justice."

  That—finally!—seem to rattle Chin. "Well . . . you had my people beaten up!"

  Cachat's eyebrows rose. "Your people? Admiral Chin, I cannot recall a single instance where I had corporal punishment of any kind inflicted on any member of either the Navy or the Marines." He glanced at Ned Pierce, who was also in line of sight of the display. "Well, I suppose you could argue that I punished the Sergeant's knuckles by having him pound a number of my people into a pulp. Or have you forgotten—again—that Radamacher and Justice are part of StateSec, not the military."

  If Yuri had had any doubts whether he loved Sharon Justice, she resolved them right then and there. She grinned at Pierce and said: "Sergeant, if you'll forgive me your poor knuckles, I'll forgive you my poor face. How's that?"

  Pierce grinned back. "That's a deal, Captain. Uh, Commissioner."

  Sharon's head swiveled a little, to bring Chin's image into view. Yuri was getting a little dizzy with this thr
ee-way holographic discussion.

  "Genevieve, cut it out," she said forcefully. "For six years now, you've rebuilt your career—and probably saved your life—by trusting StateSec people you thought you could trust. Why are you screwing around with it now? For years now, we've all managed to spare La Martine from the worst of what happened, by working together. I say we stick with it."

  Genevieve's temper was fading, now, and her usual intelligence returning. Yuri could recognize the signs, and drew a deep breath.

  "Okay, fine," Genevieve. "But that only applies to—you know, you. The fleet StateSec people."

  Cachat's face was impassive, as usual. Vesey, the CO of the Tilden, on the other hand, was looking distinctly uneasy.

  "I believe Commissioner Justice has had no complaints against Captain Vesey," Cachat stated curtly. "At least, all the reports I received from her throughout our mission were completely positive. Am I not correct, Commissioner Justice?"

  From her moment's hesitation, Yuri suspected that Sharon's reports to Cachat had been somewhat edited. He doubted very much if she'd found working with the stolid SD captain all that positive an experience. But she piped up cheerfully: "Oh, sure. I've got no problem with Captain Vesey. Neither do you, Genevieve. You told me yourself you were happy with the captain's work—especially the way he participated when we nailed that Mantie battlecruiser in Daggan."

  Yuri's eyes flicked to the image of Chin, and he had to fight down a laugh. Chin's hesitation lasted longer than a "moment." Yuri was quite sure that whatever praise Chin had heaped on Vesey, it had been grudging at best. However, Chin also did not argue the point.

  "Yes, yes. Okay. I've got no bone to pick with the Tilden." Genevieve was starting to think like an admiral again. "And since I see that Yuri's got the Hector under control—thanks for taking down the impellers and sidewalls, Yuri, that makes me a lot less nervous—"

  Radamacher was startled. He hadn't ordered . . .