Hadn’t the captain greeted him with genuine sorrow on his return to Scylla from Rudistal, to tell him that he was to be transferred and that no bond-involuntaries assigned were to be allowed to follow him, with the single exception of Robert St. Clare — whom Irshah Parmin was not permitted to keep?
And yet he could not have kept silent and held his peace about the Domitt Prison. Even if he had known what ruin would come into his life, what atrocities he was bound to commit, what was to become of him, once he had looked upon the pitiful fuel to the furnace fires of the Domitt Prison he could not have said nothing, not without embracing a damnation even more detestable than that to which he was fairly condemned.
“Rumor has it that there was a warrant out,” First Officer was saying. She’d cleared the room; it was just three of them, First Officer, the Intelligence officer — Bassin Emer — and Andrej Koscuisko. Fast-meal, but neither of them were eating. “And an assassination attempt, first at Burkhayden. Then on home ground. And definite undercurrents of unhappiness in some senior Fleet quarters. He’s worried about you.”
Irshah Parmin was a good captain. Perhaps that meant he took occasional liberties with ethical behavior, and doubtless he wouldn’t mind if it turned out that ap Rhiannon wanted Andrej so much that she’d trade stores or munitions to have him back and argue the legal points later. That hadn’t been why Irshah Parmin had sent Samons to kidnap him. Andrej was trying to respect the captain’s charitable impulse, but it was hard to feel reasonable about anything with the freighter carrying his Bonds still short of the exit vector, by his reckoning.
“There was no assassination attempt at Burkhayden.” He was in a position to know, though he wasn’t going to tell. Robert had murdered the man who had brutalized his sister. He himself, Andrej Koscuisko, had killed Captain Lowden, and he should have done it very much the sooner than he had, too. There had been a warrant, that was true. But he couldn’t verify the existence of a warrant without leading intelligent people to wonder about the assassination of Griers Verigson Lowden, officially on record as a Free Government terrorist attack.
How many other Free Government terrorist crimes had actually been Bench-sanctioned actions? There was a Free Government, he knew that; nothing he had ever heard or seen in his personal experiences as an Inquisitor would support its existence as anything more than a small, stubborn, desperate, only very loosely organized resistance movement.
If there was a grand plan and a command structure and an authority hierarchy, Andrej had never heard of any such thing first-hand from persons in a position to know. Maybe that was what was really dangerous about the Free Government, though. If it hadn’t represented genuine population unrest, it wouldn’t keep on cropping up spontaneously.
First Officer was watching him, waiting. Andrej frowned at himself, and refocused. “Assassination attempt on home ground, yes, but I have good reason to believe it was an isolated act. A deranged clerk of Court.” There almost had to be conspiracy behind the forgery of the record, true enough; but he wasn’t going to get into that. He certainly wasn’t going in any direction that might lead an intelligent person like First Officer to conclude that the evidence of that conspiracy, the forged record, no longer existed. Had been destroyed under circumstances that were ambiguous, at best.
“And for the rest, the captain has never been very happy with me either. So there are no new issues there.” His principle antagonist, First Secretary Verlaine, had declared truce, and sent him documents for relief of Writ. Verlaine was dead and he had told Specialist Ivers to hold the documentation until the Ragnarok’s appeal had been resolved, so there were complications — but no surprises. “There, we are done. May I go back to Jeltaria, now?”
He was tempted to add that his Security would be wondering where he’d got to, but he didn’t want to raise the issue of Security in anybody’s mind. The longer he could avoid people starting to wonder where his Security had got to the better, and for that he had to do what he could to prevent people from noticing that they were missing. They weren’t missing. He knew exactly where they were, if only in a general sense. That was between him, and Security, and Chief Stildyne, though, and there was a thought, Stildyne would cover for Security. Stildyne was in on it. Stildyne knew that Andrej wanted those troops away.
How Stildyne felt about Andrej’s plan was something Andrej had yet to discuss with him. He’d wanted to talk to Stildyne much earlier, and been prevented. He didn’t think he was looking forward to the interview, but it was unquestionably owed. How could he, of all men, have exiled his own people to Gonebeyond, sent bond-involuntaries out on their own to make a new life in an environment about which they knew next to nothing?
After years of impressing on Stildyne how seriously Andrej took protecting his people, how could he send them away unprotected, abandoned them all with a wave of his hand and an it’s-been-good-to-know-you? Stildyne would never accept such behavior without remark, rebuke, objection.
“Not my call, Andrej,” First Officer said cheerfully. “I can’t swear to Captain that you show evidence of understanding the gravity of the situation, and the peril in which you appear to be. Reflects badly on a man to have his subordinate officers murdered, he feels. Even if they’re not his subordinate officers any more. You can’t possibly expect him to believe ap Rhiannon is in a position to protect you.”
No, indeed, especially given the fact that ap Rhiannon didn’t like him. Or didn’t trust him. Or something. Andrej poured himself another flask of rhyti, since there were no Security here to do it for him. “Cold as it may sound, Salli, it is no longer Captain Irshah Parmin’s business. I’m very annoyed. I have people to see, down-planet.”
He could almost hear Stildyne’s voice, mocking and scornful. Yes, sir, of course, sir, spend six years — twelve years — talking about how people ought to treat troops, and then decide that it’s for other people. Right. Almost, but not quite. There was something about the imagined sound of Stildyne’s voice that puzzled him. He was missing something.
“I’ll tell him. But he’s pretty annoyed himself, I don’t mind telling you. The depot’s not stripped bare, exactly, but all of the sexiest goodies are gone, and you know how Irshah Parmin feels about home defense fleets to begin with.”
Yes, he knew how Fleet felt about HDFs. They were useful political tools, sops to proud world-families or systems; they were cost-effective reserve resources that Fleet could, and did, deploy when it didn’t want to spend its own money. They were a means to an end, a way to encourage continued investment in research and development that Fleet could direct and profit from, again without having to pay for it. But to the extent that they represented an exception to Fleet’s otherwise absolute monopoly on the lawful use of force of arms, Fleet distrusted them all in principle, as opponents just waiting for a good excuse to cause trouble.
And if you expect me to accept this without an argument after all the years I’ve spent trying to figure out what you wanted from me you’ve got an over-rated reputation for psychological acuity, with respect, your Excellency.
What was it about the unusual tone of Stildyne’s imaginary voice in his head? It sounded like Stildyne — half-disgusted, laying down the law — but Stildyne indistinct around the edges. Fuzzy. Distant. Half-way to the exit vector.
Andrej jumped to his feet as though the seat of his chair had suddenly bitten him in a very delicate place. Distant. Half-way to the exit vector. Stildyne had left, Stildyne had gone, Stildyne had exiled himself to Gonebeyond to take care of those troops — to stand between them and their conditioning, to ease them back into the life of free men. Stildyne. Gone.
Why hadn’t he guessed it? Why hadn’t he realized that once Stildyne knew, Stildyne would make exactly that decision?
Was it because he had gotten so used to Stildyne that he hadn’t envisioned a life without him? Or was it — to his shame — that after all that Stildyne had done to be what Andrej wanted, Andrej still expected him to fall short of expectation?
“Something the matter?” First Officer asked carefully, dropping a napkin onto the table to soak up the rhyti Andrej had spilled when he’d stood up so suddenly.
“Nothing new.” It was true. He hadn’t foreseen it. He hadn’t planned for it. He should have at least wondered, he should have tried harder to talk to Stildyne about it, and now Stildyne was gone and Andrej was ashamed.
There had to be a dancing-master. Reborn men were never simply abandoned to their freedom without the careful assistance of people who could teach them to be free again, the same people who had taught them to be slaves in the first place. What had he been thinking? “I am as immense an ass as I have ever been, Salli, and the captain is quite right to be annoyed with me. I should be locked up for my own safety, in the Saint Andrej Thick-Headed Refuge for the Hopelessly Oblivious.”
He sat down again, slowly. Gone, without a word. Why should there have been one? Stildyne would assume that Andrej would speak if he had something to say. Andrej had not spoken. But Stildyne had gone anyway, true to the calling Stildyne had embraced, and he was in so much more trouble with his cousin Stanoczk than he had been before when he had been in enough trouble already for accepting Stildyne’s service without acknowledging its motivation or ultimate source. Just because he disapproved in principle of men who enjoyed other men, when the man that they sought to enjoy was him.
Stildyne had never made anything like an improper advance, not after the first one. All of these years he had blamed Brachi Stildyne for being what he was; but Stildyne was an honest man who had changed and grown and sacrificed with no hope of reward — or even recognition — and now there was this.
“If you say so, of course.” First Officer sounded a little bit dubious, but not disposed to pry. “Finished with your meal? There are people out there who are eager to see you, Andrej. Doctor Lazarbee has made himself unpopular. I’ll just turn you over to Samons for the time being.”
First Officer pushed herself away from table to stand up. Andrej folded his napkin and matched the gesture, gazing at the debris on his plate with a bowed head. “I’m sure Captain has only my best interest at heart,” Andrej said. “A man doesn’t care to be handled quite so casually. But I was unquestionably among the less responsive of his junior officers, and he was far more charitable to me than I could have deserved. I’m not minding seeing you again, Salli.”
“Nor I you,” First Officer said, and grinned; held out her hand with a sudden spontaneous gesture, and clasped his very warmly. “Come around after third-shift and you’ll hear more than you probably need to know about Lazarbee. If Captain made allowances for you, you spoiled this ship for all but the very highest standard of medical administration ever after, and Weasel-Boy is not it.”
That was kind of her, as well. There was nothing he could do at this moment to repair the injustice he had done to Brachi Stildyne except to dread what his cousin Stanoczk would have to say to him about it. The best he could do right here and right now was to keep people busy, keep them from wondering why there was no alarm from Emandis Station about officers gone missing from service houses.
The longer he could hold off the inevitable questions the better chance they had of successfully acquiring the dar-Nevan vector for Gonebeyond space. And no matter how careful the planning, there was always the possibility of an error — the chance of a mistake —
No, he wouldn’t give it life by thinking about it. Andrej waved to the Security who stood outside the now-open door to the officer’s mess, calling them in. “Tell me who is wearing green-sleeves on board of Scylla, in these days,” he suggested. “And all of the gossip about Chief Samons. Before she gets back.”
Where Caleigh Samons was concerned he needed all the help that he could get to fortify himself against her elegant lithe body, and her beautiful eyes, and the fact that she could probably break him into two pieces as easily as though he had not been Dolgorukij at all.
###
In Koscuisko’s absence, Jennet ap Rhiannon had had the Chief of Psychiatric in, to represent Medical at her staff meeting. It was not a regularly scheduled staff meeting; ap Rhiannon was in undress uniform, and had lowered the horizon in the flask of strong red wine that she was drinking by an appreciable margin within the past hour. Rukota had to grant that she showed no signs whatever of being under the influence.
Different categories of hominid reacted differently to given intoxicants. If his suspicions about her genetic background were correct, she should be as vulnerable to that wine as anybody; perhaps that was why she drank so much of it — to keep up an habituated, if relative, immunity.
“She slept how long?” ap Rhiannon asked Doctor Farilk, with a tone of slightly outraged incredulity in her voice. “So she hadn’t been to a service house for a while, what had she been doing all night to sleep till half-way to sundown? Why didn’t they turn her out?”
“Your Excellency,” Doctor Farilk said, gently. “With respect.”
Yes, the woman had slept that long, she’d had a physically intense experience of whatever sort, perhaps the first opportunity she had had to sample a particular form of recreation that made no sense whatever to Rukota but neither did the idea that his wife loved him, out of all the men and women that so beautiful and intelligent a woman could have had for the asking, and yet it was true.
They hadn’t turned her out of bed because she’d been sleeping in the officer’s suite, and the house staff hadn’t had any instruction to rouse her. For all the house staff had known, Koscuisko had intended to come back.
But above all, it was none of the captain’s business, and an invasion of privacy to speculate. Ap Rhiannon rubbed her eyes with a weary gesture, and nodded. “Of course, Doctor Farilk. Please excuse my indelicacy.”
That wasn’t a word Rukota would have expected to hear, out of ap Rhiannon. He frowned. What was in that wine? Ap Rhiannon was still talking, though, and sounding enough like ap Rhiannon to allay any fears he might have had about drugs in her liquor.
“So Scylla sent troops to take Koscuisko away, and we have a witness who can attest to the ship’s-mark, which the night staff also confirm. But she was asleep at the time, and by the time she woke up it was much later than she had expected. She found no Security from the Ragnarok on site. So she came back to report, and Scylla is probably wondering why nobody’s sent for their chief medical officer back, yet.”
Just exactly so. The night staff was also in a position to attest to the fact that Koscuisko had ordered transport for his people out to the launch-field, after which they’d not been seen again. Nor did Stildyne seem to be on the job, though nobody appeared to have seen him leave. They had left; so much was almost screamingly obvious.
Koscuisko had jacked the bond-involuntaries’ governors and sent them away, and they’d either killed Stildyne or taken him with them. Rukota didn’t think they would have murdered their Chief, but he had almost as much difficulty imagining them inviting Stildyne to come on a picnic with them to Gonebeyond — which was their only possible destination, under the circumstances.
“If somebody doesn’t say something soon somebody is going to really wonder,” First Officer Ralph Mendez observed. Rukota liked Mendez. Mendez was a very comfortable man to be alone with, in the sense that you could be with Mendez and completely alone at the same time. “We’ve got to make some noise, your Excellency.”
“One of the best battle-surgeons in the inventory,” Karol Vogel added, quietly, from where he sat at the far end of the table savoring some bean tea. “You’d almost think you didn’t want him back. And if a ship doesn’t want its battle surgeon it’s because it doesn’t think it’s going to need one, which means no battle, which means conflict avoidance.”
Which all added up to Gonebeyond space all over again, though Vogel wasn’t so rude as to come right out and say so. The Ragnarok had no intention of being held at Emandis Station, however. Their escape from Taisheki had been narrow enough, and loss of life had been avoided by lucky accident
alone. They weren’t likely to have any such luck again, and they were still all one Fleet. Any casualties inflicted by one ship upon the other would be casualties inflicted upon themselves, in a very real sense.
“Koscuisko knows how I feel about him, Vogel,” ap Rhiannon retorted. A lot of people didn’t care for Inquisitors as a class, but Rukota didn’t think that was ap Rhiannon’s problem with the man. “He hasn’t convinced me to trust him differently. He has more to lose than any twenty of the rest of us combined. He’s better off well clear of Ragnarok, and Ragnarok is, consequently, better off well clear of him.”
She did have a point. Rukota’s very limited experience of Andrej Koscuisko had led him to conclude that Koscuisko was as stubborn as ap Rhiannon, and to suspect that the equivalence was an at least partial explanation for ap Rhiannon’s distrust; but it was abstractly true that Koscuisko was to be a very important man in Combine affairs, and could buy even the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok for a garden-ornament, if he decided that he wanted one.
“There is a ship.” It was Two. She’d been very quiet; Rukota had almost forgotten she was there. He was getting used to sitting with giant bats, perhaps. “One that is still several hours from acquiring the exit vector, unlike another ship similar in some ways that has almost reached the vector even now. If the captain determines that the ship is carrying contraband, she could very well go in pursuit of it.”
“The Ragnarok leaves Emandis Station, Scylla will follow after it — ” Rukota started to object. Two lifted up the flange of her wing for silence, and Rukota shut up.
“Emandis Station is not pleased to have Scylla borrowing other peoples’ officers without prior clearance. It seems to communicate a lack of respect, I am told. And also Andrej wears five-knives. Emandis Station will not facilitate Scylla’s pursuit, from analysis. It is possible that Scylla’s departure might even be impeded. Shocking.”
Warring States Page 34
