Warring States

by Susan R. Matthews

  Importune chief medical officers aside, Captain Irshah Parmin was a conservative man, and no supporter of the Protocols past their point of usefulness — which ruled out most of the apparatus. He had protected Andrej. He had protected the bond-involuntaries. He would protect them still. And because of Captain Irshah Parmin, Code had never seen the Ragnarok, not from the inside, not when Lowden had been in command.

  “I’ll tell the officer that the officer said so,” Code said, with a broad grin in his voice and his eyes, and a little smile on his face.

  It was a rebuke — a loving rebuke, Andrej realized — and smiled back, delighted. Code was telling him that he should be more polite to the captain than he had been. It was true that he had not comported himself in the captain’s presence as a man truly appreciative of all that Irshah Parmin had done for him. To be scolded by Code about it was wonderful.

  There was a signal at the door; one of the other Bonds went to see what it was, engaging the talk-alert. The talk-alert was on muted standby in token of Andrej’s status as a man in confinement; that way he didn’t have to listen to the administrative chatter on board.

  “Bench specialist Jils Ivers, your Excellency.” It was Chief Samon’s voice, and it was strained. “With pilot. To see you, sir.”

  As if he had any choice, but the troop at the door did him the courtesy of waiting to be told. Andrej nodded, and the troop opened the door. Specialist Ivers, well. He hadn’t seen her since the Ragnarok had broken out of Taisheki Station, and sent her away on the Malcontent’s thula.

  The door slid open. There was Chief Samons. There was Specialist Ivers. Chief Samons was pale, though, and Ivers looked a little tense herself. Andrej stood up to greet her; she had been the bearer of very good news as well as very bad news, in his life, and there was something about her personality that he found very appealing, though he had never given much thought to exactly what it might be.

  “Your Excellency,” she said. “I hope I find you well, sir. May I introduce to you Joslire Ise-I’let’s surviving brother.”

  She stood aside from the open doorway, and the man who had been behind her stepped forward. Andrej felt the skin across his shoulders prickle as though his uniform were full of static electricity. It was a young Emandisan of average height and build, and average appearance too for all Andrej knew, but there was his brother in that man’s face, and Andrej had and still loved Joslire with gratitude for the enrichment of his life and companionship in evil hours, and sorrow for his loss.

  “I have been very anxious to make your acquaintance,” Andrej said, and could hear a tight sort of longing in his own voice. “I am Andrej Koscuisko, and I loved your brother. But he only ever called me by my name once in his life that I know of, and we are family now, the old woman said. Will you come and embrace me, for your brother’s sake?”

  Code had risen from the table when Andrej had stood up, as had the others — it being a concession on their part to sit down with him in the first place. Now Code drew his fellows out of the way, to the side of the room.

  The Emandisan, Joslire’s brother, advanced with an uncertain step. “Shona,” he said. “Shona, your Excellency. Very glad — to meet you — very — ”

  An Emandisan, and in the uniform of the Emandisan home defense fleet, which Andrej could recognize by now; an apparently responsible person, and with a wife and child. For one moment he was overcome. In that moment Andrej took Joslire’s brother to himself, and kissed him for his brother’s sake, weeping. He hadn’t expected to meet Joslire’s brother after all. He hadn’t been prepared for this.

  But Emandisan were a people of dignity and sobriety. Releasing the man Andrej stood for as long as it took for him to fumble for a white-square and wipe his face; by the time he had thrust the dampened cloth away, both he and Joslire’s brother had recovered themselves to a degree, howsoever temporarily.

  “And what brings you, Dame Ivers?” Andrej asked, a little breathlessly. He was in control of his emotions. Yes. He was. He would not look at Shona Ise-I’let, or he would lose his composure. “Grateful as I am to you for bringing this man to me, you must have some other object as well, I am sure.”

  She stepped across the threshold and into the room, now, keeping her distance as if unwilling to interpose herself. “Even so, your Excellency. You are a situation, sir, single-handedly creating a point of contention between local and Fleet authorities no less potentially dangerous for its unexpected nature. I have to speak to the captain on your behalf.”

  She was serious about the danger of friction, but not about his fault. He could tell. “Take your time.” He was not yet in control of his emotions; he had to pause and wrestle with them. “If Shona will humor me I have many things to say to him.”

  She nodded. “You’ll have plenty of time, your Excellency. On our way to Chilleau for your documentation.” She must have seen the sudden realization in his eyes because she grinned at him cheerfully, ruthlessly. Oh. Yes. Documentation.

  The captain claimed him for Fleet; Ivers knew he was one thin brief away from being a civilian. Ivers didn’t know that the record was to have protected the Ragnarok had been destroyed, and the Ragnarok’s best chance for vindication with it. “If I may leave my pilot with you, Chief, I need to join Specialist Delleroy. I don’t mean to keep the captain waiting.”

  Chief Samons bowed; Ivers went out of the room. Chief Samons waved two of the bond-involuntaries after Ivers, on escort, Andrej supposed; and turned her attention to the pilot. Shona. Joslire’s brother.

  “Not wishing to intrude,” she said. “We all know you were close, sir. But there’s others. Permission to let them know.”

  Others who had known Joslire, like Code, desperate not to be noticed and sent away. How could he send Code away? Joslire had been his man, bound to him voluntarily of his own free will. Be of Koscuisko, forever. But Joslire had been Code’s team-mate as well.

  “You will not mind meeting others who also loved your brother?” Andrej asked, just to be sure. He didn’t need his answer in so many words; he could read it in Shona’s honest Emandisan face. Shona was not Joslire. Shona was not. But, oh, he looked like Joslire, in ways that went beyond his face and form. “By all means, Chief. Send to us the people who were here. And Code, if it isn’t cruel to ask, Code will help me tell about the night when Joslire died.”

  It would be good to talk about Joslire with other people who remembered him. So long as he was to have his time alone with this Shona Andrej would share the wonder of Joslire’s brother with an ungrudging heart, and be glad for Shona’s sake.

  ###

  Chapter Seventeen

  Vector Transit

  Yes, one ship was very like another, and yes, she knew where she was going. Scylla’s security escort was politeness, not guidance. The last time she’d been on board one of Fleet’s cruiserkiller-class warships it had been the Ragnarok; the Ragnarok was a substantially newer ship than Scylla was, and Scylla’s corridors looked just that little bit more worn by comparison.

  Scylla had been to war, as well, and the Ragnarok never had. There was no such wear and weariness about the uniform or carriage of Scylla’s crew, however. In that at least Scylla and Ragnarok were similar; both crews seemed to have a sense of their identity as a Command, and to care for how they represented themselves to one another.

  At the one critical turning, the Security pointed her toward the captain’s office rather than toward the officer’s mess; Jils nodded — as much to herself as anybody — and took the indicated route. They didn’t expect too many people, all together. Who did they really need? The captain, his First Officer most like, and the representatives from the Emandisan Home Defense Fleet that Padrake had stopped to collect from Emandis proper as she came directly on to Scylla to have a word with Koscuisko, if possible, before negotiations were begun.

  Koscuisko looked well. She hadn’t really given him much of a chance to speak, however, not springing his man’s brother on him the way she’d done; nor was
she sorry. The relationship between Koscuisko and Joslire Ise-I’let had been unusual enough to excite remark from its beginning, and it had only gotten more interesting when Koscuisko had taken Curran’s life and inherited Emandisan steel.

  Padrake was waiting for her in the captain’s office when she arrived, Captain Irshah Parmin standing up to nod politely as she entered the room. He was not a tall man, and very broad-chested; most of the hair had gone from the top of his head and much of it seemed to have migrated to his eyebrows, giving him a very owlish look.

  His First Officer was taller than he was, sturdily built, and looked vaguely annoyed; Scylla’s chief medical officer was there as well — the man had no neck to speak of — and something gave Jils the impression that it was the chief medical officer, and not the three Emandisan officers, who annoyed Saligrep Linelly, Ship’s First Officer.

  “You made good time,” Jils said to Padrake, by way of greeting.

  Padrake bowed to her with an expression of satisfaction on his face. “I’ve borrowed one of Emandis’ couriers, I like flying with the Emandisan, they’re the best. I’ll be needing to leave as soon as we have a satisfactory resolution.” Turning toward the captain — who was waiting — Padrake raised his voice, and got down to business.

  “Since we are at this moment involved in very critical negotiations at Brisinje, your Excellency, the Ninth Judge hopes that we will be able to resolve this dispute in an expeditious manner. We’ve asked Specialist Ivers to accompany us because she has a particular past relationship with the officer and his Command — although that won’t do us as much good as it might have done, since the Ragnarok has left the system.”

  “Was allowed to leave the system,” the captain corrected, calmly. “Gentlemen. Would you care to be seated?” This was directed at the Emandisan officers; who declined with shakes of their heads. Jils wasn’t about to sit down. She’d been sitting down all of this time. On the other hand, her ribs hurt. Padrake had been very careful, and her ribs still hurt.

  He couldn’t have received instruction from the Ninth Judge, though, so he was making that part up; but it was well within his brief. She wouldn’t have brought the Judge into it, but Padrake was here specifically to represent her, since the dispute was within her jurisdiction. Everybody played fast and loose with attributions from time to time, when the situation called for it. Everybody.

  Padrake kept to his feet, maintaining solidarity with the Emandisan officers. “These officers state that Andrej Koscuisko is an Emandisan national,” he said to the captain, clearly by way of opening his argument. “You removed him under armed escort and in secret from an Emandisan port, in violation of police protocols. He should be returned because you should not have taken him. You further have no authority over him in his capacity as the custodian of Emandisan five-knives.”

  Padrake couldn’t exactly call Koscuisko a knife-fighter. Koscuisko wasn’t, not in the Emandisan sense. Someone who could fight with knives, yes, he had proved himself there — and she’d seen him.

  “I regret the inadvertent impropriety I committed when I had him escorted to Scylla,” the captain said, choosing his words with evident care. “I had not anticipated that my action, an internal Fleet redirect, would be interpreted as disregard of the Port Authority in any way. This was a failure of judgment on my part for which I am prepared to apologize.”

  One of the Emandisan officers nodded; they’d been over this ground before, as it seemed. The captain wasn’t finished, though, and the Emandisan officer apparently knew it — they’d been over that as well, clearly enough. “However, Andrej Koscuisko is a Bench officer with a sworn duty to the Fleet. Whether the Emandis nation wishes to embrace him as their own is not at issue. He is a Fleet officer. Now that his command of assignment has left the system this is the only appropriate place for him to be.”

  Jils could see the argument. Unfortunately she was sure that the Emandisan could see its implications as clearly as she could; the unspoken “where he can be protected” was shimmering in the air. She was going to need to intervene before people got even more annoyed with one another than they were already.

  “You’re holding him against his will,” one of the officers said. “In an environment in which he is exposed to insult.” This was said with a meaningful glance in the direction of the unprepossessing person wearing the rank of chief medical officer coupled with Scylla’s ship-mark; there’d been friction, there, Jils surmised. “He is the custodian of the knives. There is enough residual hostility over the circumstances surrounding the unprecedented enslavement of the steel in the first place, your Excellency. We earnestly advise the minimization of anxiety over their present disposition. His family is waiting for him.”

  His family? Koscuisko’s family was waiting for him — that was true enough — but nowhere near Emandis Station. Jils shook her head to clear it: she had to concentrate. And her ribs hurt.

  “Permit me to intervene,” she said, firmly. “Specialist Delleroy is here for the interest of the Bench; we can’t afford conflict between Fleet and the EHDF, gentles, especially now when we are experiencing such increasing difficulty with keeping the peace. I was asked to come to represent Koscuisko’s interest, though he didn’t send for me. There’s something you don’t know, Captain, with respect.”

  It was something nobody knew but her, and Koscuisko, and maybe someone who had prepared the documentation. The Second Judge knew, if she hadn’t forgotten under the strain of events. Verlaine knew, Verlaine had known, but Verlaine was dead.

  Yes, they were all looking at her. She took a deep breath. She was going to have to shave a few curls off of the truth to make this work; was she going to be able to pull it off?

  “Before his unexpected death First Secretary Verlaine sent me to Koscuisko when he was home on leave to offer him relief of Writ, in acknowledgement of some irregularities surrounding his renewal of his term of service with Fleet. Koscuisko has executed the documentation, and I have witnessed it. He requested a delay in filing while the legal status of the Ragnarok was in question — a matter of loyalty to his Command.”

  And the legalities surrounding the custody and placing-into-evidence of a record with forged evidence. But those were details whose disclosure was not required under the present circumstances, and which could only raise more questions than they answered.

  “Koscuisko is a citizen again?” the chief medical officer said loudly — the adjective “brayed” sprang to Jils’ mind, but she suppressed it sternly. “Then he’s in violation for wearing the uniform, isn’t he? Told you, your Excellency, there’s something about your precious Ship’s Inquisitor that just isn’t what it ought to be.”

  Professional jealousy could be an ugly thing. It was particularly ugly in its immediate incarnation. The captain exchanged a quick — frustrated? — glance with his First Officer, but said nothing.

  “Specialist Ivers, surely we can all agree that any such charge would be very poorly timed as far as the cause of political stability is concerned,” one of the Emandisan officers said to her, very seriously.

  She couldn’t afford to let him continue; she was afraid that he’d say something that would be difficult to overlook, something that might come too close to appearing to be an overt threat. She held up her hand, and the officer fell silent.

  “Koscuisko is not at this moment a citizen. It is only a question of filing, however. So you see that there is no need for you to offer Koscuisko a berth on Scylla pending a new assignment, your Excellency.”

  There was a wistful expression on the captain’s face for one swiftly fleeting instant. It was gone so quickly that Jils wondered if she’d imagined it. “If you put it that way, Dame Ivers, I suppose not,” the captain said. “Pity. We could have used him. Damn fine battle surgeon, I never saw a better one.”

  “Better rid of him, your Excellency,” the chief medical officer said suddenly; Jils started — she hadn’t exactly forgotten that he was there, but she certainly hadn’t expected him
to contribute to the conversation after the captain’s wordless rebuff.

  The First Officer looked either annoyed or disgusted, or maybe both, but let him talk.

  “He’s a disruptive element, he is. Encourages insubordinate behavior on the part of troops assigned. If I didn’t already know that he can do no wrong in your eyes I’d have some issues to discuss at Captain’s Mast, but I will content myself with pointing out his history of resisting his Judicial duty.”

  Captain Irshah Parmin stood up. “Disruptive,” he said, with a sort of an almost affectionate disgust in his voice. “He’s always been that. True enough. Specialist Ivers, if this is so, why did it require your personal intervention? You could have told us so. He hasn’t mentioned it.”

  The captain was not suggesting that she’d made it up — not exactly. Padrake clearly had a slight touch of the uncertainties himself, however; and Padrake already knew that sending her personally was partially due to the sensitivity of the situation, and in larger part simply a face-saving approach to the fact that she had to be gotten away from Convocation before someone else decided to attack her.

  “Koscuisko has no reason to mention the matter because it is in process, not complete. Until his ship of assignment left the system without him, he was probably content to wait out the appeal, and now that the ship has gone I am the only person at Chilleau who knows where I have put his documentation.”

  She’d had plenty of other things to think about when she’d gotten back to Chilleau Judiciary. Koscuisko had told her to put off filing the documentation. Whether he’d be willing now to take the freedom that Verlaine had offered him and go home was probably going to depend on how he felt about the legal status of the evidence that the Ragnarok held in custody; she’d talk with him once they were on their way to Chilleau. Away from here.

  “If Koscuisko is in transitional status you cannot hold him, your Excellency. And we would not wish to, either.” The Emandisan spokesman seemed to grasp what Jils was trying to do, and was apparently willing to put the face-saving solution forward. “We will provide you with transport to Chilleau. We’ll need to call up a fresh crew, the one you’re carrying has been on extended assignment. It will be a few hours. Captain?”