Warring States

by Susan R. Matthews

  Koscuisko hadn’t known about the borrowed — now destroyed — surgical set when he’d been operating. A good thing for Vogel, too, Rukota decided, with a sideways glance at Koscuisko’s thunderous scowl. He’d never seen Koscuisko in a really bad mood before.

  Ap Rhiannon looked thoughtful. “Might have been a good start, Specialist. Because without that Record I don’t know how I am going to protect this crew from Fleet, and that means that you may have cost me lives.”

  Vogel rubbed his forehead wearily, seeming not so much aggravated now as discouraged. “I can give testimony. I saw it. That should count for something. And we ran all of the checks, you can ask your weaponer, he was there.”

  Oh, no, you don’t, Vogel, Rukota thought, and kept his gaze fixed firmly on the scene below. He could see the status-boards. He could see the forward scans. The Ragnarok was due to drop vector; ap Rhiannon liked to watch. Vogel was not going to drag him into this if Rukota could help it. Vogel was the Bench specialist here. He could just deal with Jennet ap Rhiannon —

  “We know,” Two said cheerfully. She had no other mode that Rukota had ever been able to determine. It was an artifact of her translator. Her normal conversational range was well out of reach for most hominid ears, and her vocal apparatus was not set up for Standard. “We saw you. Yes. Every precaution. And if it had been anybody but a Bench specialist we would have no doubt. You suffer from the reputation of your breed.”

  In a manner of speaking. Vogel rubbed his forehead idly, as though his head ached; it should, Rukota thought. The skin that covered it was halfway healed already, but the plate that Koscuisko had laid over the brain tissue to keep bone in place while it healed would not be fully metabolized for at least three months.

  “I’m not in the habit of losing evidence,” Vogel said. “It’s just not what I do. I’m annoyed about this myself, I’ll never live it down.”

  Not the way in which to introduce the subject of regret, perhaps, “living it down.” Rukota cleared his throat to draw attention away from Vogel’s choice of words. “Coming up on a drop, your Excellency,” Rukota said. “Go to audio?”

  Ap Rhiannon seemed to think about it, but nodded. Rukota opened the feed. Wheatfields was talking.

  “Shave a few off lateral, it’s a loose vector and we’re hot. Calm it down, Tamer.” The main display screen was a muted blank, but at odd intervals a person could begin to see a speck of black that seemed to fly out of the blank center and off-screen in an arc that was still so wide it didn’t look curved at all, from Rukota’s point of view. It was just a schematic, Rukota knew that. But it meant that they were nearing the exit vector they had targeted on entry.

  “How many hours since we hit?” Vogel asked, sounding curious even past his basic apparently discouraged condition. “The man’s a maniac.”

  Yes, they’d made a swift transit. Wheatfields had taken nearly two days off of the trip by keeping up his velocity as they hit the entry vector. There were limits to how useful that sort of risk could be — miscalculation could spike a ship onto a harmonic, and you might end up somewhere quite different from where you were going.

  But the Ragnarok had been an experimental test bed, a proving-model, and Wheatfields had been its Ship’s Engineer for as long as it had been a functioning hull. Engineers didn’t usually take risks. That was what Command Branch was for.

  “He may be a maniac but he never blew up Secured Medical. And he had cause to,” ap Rhiannon retorted. Rukota didn’t think her heart was in it, though. She was watching the power oscillation monitors from over Wheatfields’ shoulder, several lengths removed.

  As if Wheatfields knew that he was being watched, he reached for the exact read that ap Rhiannon appeared to be examining, to make an adjustment. The key to successful vector exit was a smooth approach with no sudden shifts in the ship’s momentum to throw the figurative stream of vector space into an eddy that would take the ship down with it. Nobody knew what “down” might mean, on vector.

  When ships snagged on something on an exit vector they were invariably torn to pieces by the shearing shifts in force, like a thin-skinned glass boat hitting a rapids. There was no particular reason why it had to be done slowly; just that the less time one allowed oneself to brake to exit velocity the higher the possibility that you weren’t going to be able to smooth your speed down perfectly, and come out of it alive.

  “Set the index, Fan. Conner, take us down another three on that lateral, I want those engines recalibrated as soon as we drop vector. Careful. Sarend? What are you reading?”

  Wheatfields did know that he was being watched, of course, Rukota reminded himself; he knew perfectly well that there were people on his observation deck. It had just been the illusion of cause and effect, that was all.

  “The debouch’s shifted a bit, your Excellency, we’ll have another twelve to sneak up on it. I’ve sent a report out to Local. I read seven point six four by eight. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.”

  Now Wheatfields stood, which brought his head almost uncomfortably close to the edge of the observation deck’s overhang. Wheatfields was an unusually tall man, even for a Chigan — Chigan ran tall and thin to the Jurisdiction Standard to begin with. “Not good enough,” Wheatfields said, firmly. “Need I remind you that our captain is watching? Nothing less than exceptional will be accepted. Recalculate, Sarend, vector in six.”

  Rukota couldn’t see the technician’s face from where he stood, but he knew how to interpret that set to a woman’s shoulders. She wasn’t in the least put out by the rebuke because it hadn’t been a rebuke, but a compliment. A reminder. You’re exceptional. Be yourself. Show your captain what you’re made of.

  “Seven point eight six nine by eight, sir, respectfully apologizing for point one three one variation due to yaw on section five outboard two. Confirmed.”

  Looking up over his shoulder to catch ap Rhiannon’s eye Wheatfields smiled. Rukota wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Wheatfields do that, but he hadn’t been on board for more than a few months. “Thank you, Sarend, Tamer, Fan, Conner. Tamer. Acquire the exit vector.”

  On the main screen those little black dots were flying less and less quickly, their arcs more and more pronounced. A thin border of accumulated black dots had begun to collect all around the perimeter of the forward screens like snow falling on a warmed wind-screen. The Ragnarok was shedding speed.

  “Up on twelve,” Tamer said. “Down eight. Down eight. Down seventeen. Up six.” It clearly meant something to Wheatfields’ people, if not to Rukota. He knew the general idea — minute adjustments to impulse streams and main reactor core feeds, to make equally minute adjustments in the Ragnarok’s precise velocity. Strictly speaking it wasn’t necessary to come off vector exactly as one had entered it but in reverse. Pilots and engineers prided themselves on backing off a vector — facing forward — none the less. Point of honor. And least wear and tear on the equipment from vector shear, that way.

  “Drop vector in three,” Wheatfields said. “Tamer, if you’re going to fix that shift, now is the time to do it. Shade it for me — perfect.”

  Those little black dots were whirling out of the center of the screen as though they were bullets of black ink shot into a funnel, collecting at the sides, piling up. Thicker. Darker. Denser, almost moment by moment. Nothing was actually arching or collecting or congealing, Rukota knew it was just a schematic: but one whose data representations made an elegant and effective sort of a description of a ship on an inbound spiral off a vector.

  “There it is.” Wheatfields turned back to his chair and sat down, leaning well back with an expression of mild benevolent self-satisfaction on his face. “Your Excellency. We have Brisinje Jurisdiction, Emandis space. — There is a communication waiting for you.”

  Ap Rhiannon keyed the transmit. “Thank you, Engineer, beautifully done, smoothest yet. Very impressive.”

  And it was, too, but ap Rhiannon was still talking. “That’ll be Emandis Station telling me I can’t have c
annon. Route it through to my office, please, and Vogel can come with me to explain why we need to add a replacement surgical set and related equipment to an already full manifest.”

  “My pleasure, Captain,” Vogel said with a gentle bow. He was lying, Rukota was sure, but nobody cared. Together ap Rhiannon and Vogel left; and once they were gone Two hopped down off of the chair in which she had been perched and lifted her beautiful black velvet muzzle with its extraordinary array of very sharp white teeth in Koscuisko’s direction and chattered with her mouth, stilling herself — as usual — before the translation was well begun, to wait. Looking up at Koscuisko expectantly. Not only was Two’s dialect out of range, it was apparently significantly faster — or perhaps simply that much more efficient — than normal hominid speech.

  “You have reviewed the record, Andrej,” she said. “What do you think?”

  Koscuisko didn’t answer directly. He looked to Rukota instead. There was something going on behind Koscuisko’s pale eyes that Rukota didn’t understand, but knew he didn’t like. “I think that Secured Medical has been thoroughly destroyed,” Koscuisko said. “It will never be usable for its original purpose again. To that degree Vogel has done me a significant service.”

  The words were pretty. But there was tension in them. “For which I cannot take credit, your Excellency,” Rukota said modestly. “Nor assign any to Vogel. Nothing that I heard or saw would lead me to suspect that he was up to no good.” Except for theft of surgical apparatus, of course. That had been a little underhanded of them. “You saw the tapes, what’s your professional opinion?”

  Koscuisko shook his head, looking very discouraged all of a sudden. He sat down, brooding over the Engineering deck on the other side of the clear-wall. “There are no obvious signs of hidden intent, but Vogel is a Bench specialist and I would not expect to see any from such a man. I have seen him produce what amounted to a raw-pelted lie by inference and misdirection, and in a very serious matter, and I doubted my suspicions even when I knew that they were all but certain to be true.”

  That would have been an interesting thing to see, Rukota decided. What had happened at Burkhayden — where Koscuisko had last seen Vogel, by report of gossip — that could possibly have elicited such a remark? Or did Koscuisko have history with Vogel that went further back than that?

  “But you have no suspicions in this case,” Rukota urged, to cover the awkward silence.

  Koscuisko shrugged, turning his attention back to Two — who was waiting patiently for her answer. “I have no evidence. Vogel blew it up. I have no reason to believe that Vogel had any ulterior motive that would lead him here with the intent of destroying the forged record. But it is so convenient for the Bench, and so inconvenient for the Ragnarok. You know that the captain means to make an announcement on all-ship?”

  “Very soon,” Two agreed, with a crisp nod that came only half-way through the first word of the translation. “She does not trust her crew. She cannot believe that they are fully aware of consequences. It is insecurity.”

  Ap Rhiannon? Insecure? Rukota could have laughed, at that, except that he could understand Two’s point. He didn’t like it. “See here, Koscuisko, what motive could Vogel have had? He’s a Bench specialist. Dedicated to the rule of Law.”

  “Yes.” Koscuisko sounded somber. He was simply not in a very good mood, it seemed. He hadn’t been in a very good mood since he’d come back off leave with a forged record. “The rule of Law, and the maintenance of the Judicial order. Both of which receive a very hard blow from the knowledge that a record has been compromised in order to incriminate innocent people. How are you to feel if you discover after years of mourning that someone you loved might never have even confessed — never mind enduring what inhumane duress — at all, before he was put to death by torture?”

  So Vogel might have destroyed the record because it was forged, because the injustice of condemning the Ragnarok as a mutineer and its crew to Inquiry was not as potentially grave a threat to justice as the introduction of proof that the record could be manipulated. “I’d be willing to swear to the sincerity of Vogel’s claimed motive, your Excellency. I couldn’t, of course, not under oath. But I’d be willing to.”

  Koscuisko nodded. “Vogel was interested in knowing whether there was a connection between two forged Judicial instruments. We can speculate therefore that Vogel did not himself create the forged instruments. But whether he was about to discover a link, and was prevented by the forger’s self-defense mechanism; or had discovered a link — and destroyed the record in order to protect somebody, an accomplice, perhaps — I don’t know. I’d like to have him under a speak-serum. But without the captain’s permission I have no authority.”

  Ap Rhiannon didn’t care. She’d said so. The real importance lay in the fact that the forged record had been destroyed. They were naked and defenseless, and ap Rhiannon was much more interested in finding clothing than in determining whether Vogel had stolen her trousers. Time enough for that when she’d covered her back, Rukota supposed.

  He could hear the clear-tone for the allship, and the voice of the captain. “Jennet ap Rhiannon, for the Command and crew of the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok. We are approaching Emandis Station for resupply. Down-leave will be granted according to policy with the First Officer’s approval.”

  Was it his imagination, or could he hear her taking a deep breath before she went on?

  “A recent accident has seriously compromised evidence that this ship was holding pertinent to its Appeal against Pesadie Training Command for inappropriate charges in the death of acting captain Cowil Brem during evaluation exercise. While I remain determined to defend the honor of this ship and the loyalty of its crew until it is vindicated, I cannot conceal from you the fact that we have lost significant leverage.”

  That was an understatement if he had ever heard one. The crew could be under no illusions as to what it meant.

  “I encourage you all to take advantage of the opportunity to take down-leave at Emandis Station to consider your personal options in light of this information. Jennet ap Rhiannon, away, here.”

  It was quiet on the observation deck. Two raised one wing to scratch behind her ear with the claw at the end of the second joint, thoughtfully.

  Koscuisko shook his head.

  “Leave now, or forever wed your destiny to mine. She is an incurable romantic underneath it all; someone clearly permitted her to watch the wrong entertainment in her off hours when she was a child. If she had access to entertainment. If she had off hours. If she ever was a child.”

  Rukota snorted. Crèche-bred and romance? “Well, I’m not going anywhere,” he declared firmly. “She might just try to leave without me. And she needs me. The ship, I mean. Who’ll look after her cannon? No. How about you?”

  “There are deserts on Emandis,” Two said, suddenly, as though the idea had only just occurred to her. “With fat and juicy thermal columns. The maintenance atmosphere is not the same.” Nor did the Ship’s Engineer care for her using his maintenance atmosphere for soaring; it tended to unnerve his technicians. Who knocked into things. That knocked into other things. Rukota had heard more than one story about it. “And you, Andrej?”

  “I believe she would be just as pleased to leave without me,” Koscuisko said. “We have never been particularly comfortable with one another. I do not mean to leave these crew with an inadequate surgery.” Was that a jab — Rukota wondered — or did Koscuisko have something else on his mind?

  Koscuisko kept talking. “And still I cannot come all of this way, and not speak to Joslire where he rests. Where Joslire has gone I cannot guess. His marker is here. I am simply going to have to risk it.”

  There seemed to be nothing more to say. Excusing himself with a polite nod Rukota went away. The last thing that he heard as the door closed behind him was Two’s voice, Two’s translator’s voice. “And Scylla will be coming there as well, you have friends on Scylla, if I remember?”

  But the door
closed before he heard Koscuisko’s reply, and it was none of his business anyway. He went out to his work-station near the docks in the maintenance atmosphere to check the manifest one last time, to be sure he hadn’t forgotten anything on his wish-list for weaponry from Emandis Station.

  ###

  Chapter Ten

  Sharp Words

  “Yes, I grant you that Delleroy surrendered most of his markers to Chilleau,” Bench specialist Nion said. “It’s not a persuasive argument, though, is it? Only proves that confederacy is even less good an idea. Nothing more.”

  Jils sat at the side of the room, listening, watching. After taking an active role in the debate with Padrake — an exercise which had taken six full sessions, each one of them intellectually and even physically exhausting — it was as good as a holiday to do nothing more complex than sit and listen.

  “Then you should simply extend that line of reasoning.” Rinpen’s voice was admirably calm in the face of Nion’s almost-sneering one, Jils felt. Surely the fact that what Nion was sneering at was the very idea of selecting Chilleau Judiciary in any way, shape, or form had nothing to do with Jils’ own feelings of mild aggravation. Surely. “We have previously established that selecting the Second Judge at Chilleau right now is better than confederacy. Selecting Chilleau Judiciary right now is less prudent than waiting for her administration to regroup, with Ivers’ very professional help.”

  Nion rolled a pale eye at Jils and all but lifted her lip. There was something wrong with Nion, Jils decided. Andrej Koscuisko was a blond man of fair complexion and very pale eyes whose hair — fine-textured as that of Dolgorukij men who lacked chin-beards tended to be — was always falling across his forehead. Nion was so fair of face as to be almost blue with it, however, and her eyes were almost as pale as Koscuisko’s.