The Serrano Succession

by Elizabeth Moon

  Livadhi sighed. "You're the best, Koutsoudas; if they were there, you'd know." He paused. "How long have you been on duty?"

  "Sir, you said you were worried, so I came on early—I've been coming on at every insertion and downjump, just in case."

  "Ah. Good man." Livadhi turned away.

  Koutsoudas busied himself with the scan system. Suiza was still there, yes, but if Livadhi was making deals with the Benignity, he didn't want a flotilla of Black Scratch ships jumping in on top of them. He'd experienced that in the Xavier system; once was enough.

  The hours passed, and Livadhi did not call for another jump. Instead, he paced back and forth, back and forth. He left the bridge for only moments at a time. Koutsoudas went off for a short nap, but couldn't really sleep. When he came back, he stared at the display, wondering what would happen next. He wished Livadhi would change his mind, be what he'd always thought the man was, a fine Fleet officer, pleasant and competent and thorough.

  Then he stiffened. There, far away from the system's mapped jump point, a curious ripple in the scan, as if someone had dropped a very small pebble into the far edge of a pond. He snatched that input for his station.

  "Sir!" he said.

  "What?" Livadhi stayed across the bridge from him, where he'd been listening to some engineering reports, but Keller, the Exec, came over to look.

  "Something coming in, sir, and not at the jump point. At least I think it is; it's too far away. Could be an FTL trace."

  "Direction?" Livadhi asked, coming nearer.

  "Unclear. It's skipping—it's definitely an FTL trace, someone with a badly tuned drive. Just sort of hitting the surface of normal space and bouncing back out."

  "Can you tell anything about mass?"

  "Not yet." Koutsoudas watched the screens; the two other scan techs on watch leaned toward him. He growled at them. "Benally, Vince—watch your own screens. There could always be more than one thing going on. I've got this."

  Rascal's scan officer, lacking Koutsoudas' personal additions to standard equipment, identified an arriving ship minutes after Koutsoudas did. "Something coming in, Captain," he said.

  Esmay looked at the scan and saw the familiar pattern of a badly tuned FTL drive just skip-jumping through. Was it even bound for this system? It didn't come in like she thought Serrano would, a clean downjump.

  It could be a Benignity ship, come to lead Livadhi away. She had to do something. "Bring us to red," she said to the bridge. Alarms rang out. Those sitting first at the positions raced to put on p-suits, while their seconds acted. She heard lockers opening, and Chief Humberly held her p-suit ready; she stepped backwards into it. The firsts, suited now, returned to their places and the seconds went to suit up. "Weapons, ready." That would light up Vigilance's scan displays. At least their shields were already active. She turned to her comm officer.

  "Get me a tightbeam to Vigilance."

  Koutsoudas, trying desperately to dissect the fluttery scan signal into something he could identify—he hoped very much it was not a Benignity ship—was shocked when the warning red flashers showed live weapons in close proximity, where scan showed no ship at all.

  "What—?!" He and Livadhi said it almost together. Too close for the injumping ship, too close, and no ship icon—Suiza. It had to be Suiza, bringing her weapons live. But why?

  "What have you—" began Livadhi, but the Comm officer signalled him.

  "Commodore—there's a tightbeam message from R.S.S. Rascal, Suiza commanding."

  "Suiza!" Livadhi was white to the lips, his red hair in stark contrast to his face. "That stupid—what does she think she's doing?" Then, in a furious hiss to Koutsoudas, "You are relieved—I don't know if you're just exhausted, or a liar, but you let a pissant lieutenant crawl up our tail! Get to your quarters; I'll deal with you later." And to the comm officer, "Pipe it to my office."

  Koutsoudas, more shaken than he'd ever been, shook his head at the second—luckily one of the old crew—who came to relieve him. "I didn't see it," he said. "I swear I didn't see a thing. It's not there . . . ."

  "Go on, 'Steban, you're exhausted. It'll be all right."

  Livadhi, on the communications screen in Esmay's bridge, looked thoroughly disgusted and angry.

  "Lieutenant Suiza, you are in big trouble. Just what do you mean by disobeying orders and gallivanting around the universe?"

  Esmay had thought about what to say that might take suspicion away from the Vigilance crew.

  "Sir, may I ask if the admiral's bridge crew had detected Rascal prior to the tightbeam message?"

  "No, you may not ask. Answer my question, dammit!" This was not the suave, pleasant commander she'd met at dinner aboard.

  "Sir, the admiral is aware that Rascal has been fitted out with a new suite of weapons—"

  "Yes, what of it?"

  "And a new suite of stealth gear, sir. Which I was told you were not aware of, and which I am under orders—secret orders—to test in a realistic situation. A ship-on-ship pursuit, in fact. So when the admiral left, I executed my other orders, and followed. Since the admiral has not commented before, I presume we were not detected."

  "You weren't," Livadhi said, now in a growl. "Not until you brought your weapons live. Care to explain why?"

  "Sir, we're out near the border with the Benignity. I'm assuming the admiral is aware of another ship entering the system. On the possibility that it might be hostile, I brought the weapons live, and contacted you so that you would not worry about us when we seemed to jump out of nowhere."

  "I didn't know about any such stealth capability," Livadhi said.

  "Of course not, sir. It was all highly secret—" So secret it didn't exist; she put that thought rapidly aside.

  "And they gave it to a jumped-up captain with a checkered past, an Altiplanan? Somehow I doubt that, Landbride Suiza . . ."

  "I'm not the Landbride anymore," Esmay said. "I renounced it officially, before witnesses—I told you that, sir, at the dinner."

  "So you did. Still, I could as easily believe you somehow suborned someone in my crew to conceal your presence . . . Suiza, you are meddling in something you do not understand."

  "You're right, Admiral," Esmay said. "I don't understand what you're doing, and I am concerned that you are out here alone, on the border—"

  "You're not the only one who can have secret orders, Suiza. I'm not here because I decided to go for a joyride. If we end up in a full-scale war because of you—"

  "Not because of me, Admiral," Esmay said. She dared not glance aside to see if her scan officer had identified the incoming ship. If she could just keep Livadhi engaged, keep him busy, so he didn't jump Vigilance out . . .

  "Back off, Suiza. That's an order. Back off, go home, and if I were you I'd keep my mouth shut—" With every word he spoke, she became more convinced that he was, in fact, a traitor.

  "No, sir." Esmay took a deep breath. "I don't entirely trust you, sir."

  "You flaming idiot! Are you trying to get yourself and your crew killed? You do realize Vigilance could blow you apart like tissue paper, don't you?" Out of the corner of her eye she could see a sort of ripple of dismay go through her bridge crew. But she herself felt steadier, now that he'd openly threatened her.

  "Sir, I've been yelled at by admirals senior to you—with all due respect, sir, yelling at me isn't going to work. Tell me what you're doing, and why, or I will sit right here watching you until I figure it out for myself."

  "No, you won't, because I will run right over you and jump out of here. Dammit, Suiza, haven't you caused enough trouble in this organization? Back off or else do exactly what I tell you." He took a deep breath. "You want to know what I'm doing? I'm under orders to make an illicit jump into Benignity space to pick up a very important defector. I've been told it's of utmost importance. Now that you've stuck your nose in, you can guard my back."

  R.S.S. Indefatigable, in Copper Mountain system

  Heris Serrano was asleep in her cabin when the comm off
icer buzzed her. "Captain—there's an urgent message, ansible relayed, from a Captain Suiza."

  "In code?"

  "Yes, sir, in code."

  Heris frowned as she shoved her feet into her boots and headed to the bridge and the decryption desk. Esmay Suiza was back in Fleet and a captain? That was good, but now what had happened?

  She sat at the desk, inserted her command wand, entered the authorization numbers, and watched the message wriggle into clear. urgent urgent urgent . . . All right, she'd got that. petris kenvinnard aboard vigilance reports suspicious activity by admiral minor livadhi. requests rascal relay messages to you and shadow vigilance. will report via ansible.

  "Captain, there's another from the same source, by a different relay . . . I was just downloading all messages for this ship . . ."

  "See how many there are," Heris said. "Forward them all to this desk. We have a situation."

  The next message gave a set of navigation coordinates. vigilance taking this course. will follow and report.

  The third, fourth, and fifth were the same. Heris could almost see the big cruiser trailed by the little patrol, through one jump point after another, zigzagging through Familias Space. What was Livadhi up to? And why didn't he realize Suiza was back there reporting on him?

  Petris must have convinced Koutsoudas, she realized.

  "Navigation," she called. "I'm going to read off some jump point coordinates—throw me up a visual, and let's see if we can figure out where someone's going." She read the coordinates aloud—she didn't want the bridge crew to know the rest of this yet—and while Nav set up the visual, she wrote out her own quick report to Sector HQ. Whatever Livadhi was up to, she was sure he was not acting under orders.

  "Captain, an urgent from HQ was down the queue—"

  "Send it." She watched as that message came up clear. all ships, all ships, report any contact with cruiser vigilance or patrol rascal. these ships failed to report on schedule. presumed location 389.24.005. any ship jumping through that point, report debris fields or other evidence of conflict.

  Right. Someone had noticed they weren't where they were supposed to be. She encrypted her report, told the comm officer to tightbeam it to the system ansible, and looked up to see the Nav officer's visual up on the main screen.

  It looked like a random walk example in a math text. But something about it nagged at her mind.

  "What kind of jump points?" she asked.

  "All multiples. Nothing under a three. But mostly low-density systems."

  Not random at all then, but an attempt to throw off pursuers.

  And, except for two jumps early in the sequence, they trended toward the border with the Benignity.

  "Damn the man!" Heris said. Heads turned. "Sorry," she said. "We have a situation, a Fleet cruiser possibly trying to abscond to the Benignity. I have just sent a message to Sector HQ, but by the time someone there figures out what to do, it'll be far too late."

  "You're going after him?"

  "We're going after him. Alone, because we can't strip this system of the other ships. We have evidence that the crew—or some of the crew—may be aware that something's wrong, but they don't know what. In the context of a real mutiny, they're unlikely to start trouble—" Though she could hope Meharry or Oblo would manage to knock Livadhi on the head anyway.

  "But—" the navigation officer looked worried. "But, sir, how can we know where to find them? They could be anywhere. And we can't cross the border—that'd start a war."

  "There's a tail on them," Heris said. "A very smart junior officer took the initiative and is reporting at every jump point. When we know what point next to the border they're at—"

  "But they'll see the tail," someone said. "They have to, they've got scan—"

  "Yes, but they've got scan technicians who are loyal. They're covering the tail. What we need to do is get closer to the points they're likely to pick."

  "Do you know whose ship it is?" asked the Exec.

  Heris nodded. "It's mine—or it was. Admiral Minor Livadhi's on it now. It's my crew who figured out how to get word out."

  There was a long moment of silence as they digested this.

  "But thanks to the mutiny, and the resulting scrambling of crew, a good part of the crew wasn't on the ship before, and probably hasn't a clue."

  "How are you—we—going to stop them if we find them?"

  "I'll figure that out when we find them," Heris said. The obvious solution was one she didn't want to contemplate. "First we have to find them."

  "Should I put a message to Rascal onto the general ansible relay, sir? Do you think they can pick up messages, or are they lying too low?"

  "Lying low, I would think, and I don't want to alert Livadhi by sending messages to the shadow we hope he doesn't know he has."

  "Right. It must be tough on Captain Suiza."

  "Not any tougher than things have been before," Heris said. But she could easily imagine the younger officer's tension . . . she was disobeying orders, she was sneaking along behind a ship that could destroy her if it noticed her . . . she was way out on the end of a very fragile string. Still, Suiza had a habit of making good decisions in emergencies. Keep going, she thought at her. Keep on his tail until I get there.

  She did not follow the earlier part of Vigilance's twisting course; she headed straight to the point indicated in the most recent of Suiza's messages. By cranking Indefatigable to the limit, she was able to ice through the intervening jump points, and hoped that she would be no more than one jump behind, when she came out and got Suiza's outgoing messsage. Her ship still had that annoying vibrato in its FTL drive, one that would leave its signature scrawled across any system it came to. But that had its uses too—though Koutsoudas wouldn't know it as her ship, he wouldn't miss that it was some ship.

  Indefatigable wallowed out of FTL with a last gut-wrenching shimmy, and Heris wished very much she had Koutsoudas here to sort out the wavering bars of probability on the scan. If there was anything in this system, it was likely Livadhi and his tail.

  Koutsoudas, watching the downjump transition, barely restrained a triumphant whistle. The others had told him, but he had not quite believed that any of this would work, that Heris Serrano could find them before Livadhi took them over the border into certain captivity and probable death. But the ship's beacon broadcast her identity loud and clear: the R.S.S. Indefatigable. Shields up, he was glad to see. Weapons hot—well, they were all running with weapons hot these days. They'd come out of jump a mere ten light-minutes away; the scan clutter cleared quickly. He pressed the button that signalled the others that Heris had arrived.

  "Sir," he said to Livadhi. "That's a Fleet ship, a cruiser, Indefatigable. She's running like we are, shields up."

  "Damn!" Livadhi came up behind him. "How close?"

  "Ten light-minutes, sir, on insertion. It was a messy downjump; I'm sure there's something wrong with the FTL drive."

  "How long before her scan clears?"

  "Well, considering that flutter in the drive, there may be flux refraction for longer than usual. I'd say minimum of three minutes, maybe four, not more than five."

  "Can we jump out before she's clear?"

  "Not with the course combination, sir."

  "Mmm. Why do you think that ship's in this system?"

  "Unstable FTL drive," said one of the engineering officers down the row. 'Steban, if you'll 'port those scans over, I can check them, but I'd say that much flutter could yank even a cruiser out of FTL space."

  "I'd like to believe that," Livadhi said slowly. "But—tell me, Koutsoudas, do you know who's commanding that ship?"

  "I can look it up," Koutsoudas said.

  Someone else answered. "Commander Serrano, isn't it? It was Wiston's ship, but she was closer when the mutiny started—"

  "I cannot believe," Livadhi said, "that Commander Serrano would permit her ship to have such a badly tuned FTL drive."

  "Could have been damaged in combat," the same voice offered
.

  "I don't think so," Livadhi said, and something in his voice made the hairs on Koutsoudas' arms stand up. "I think Commander Serrano came here for the same reason we did. As to how she knew—"

  His gaze swept the bridge. No one said anything. "I'll be in my office," he said. "I expect a message shortly: pipe it there."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  R.S.S. Rascal

  Esmay Suiza had another of those swooping moments of doubt that had afflicted her off and on with Commodore Livadhi. Could he really be under secret orders, or was his claim as false as hers? Ships did sometimes cross the border on secret errands, both ways. The Benignity did have defectors; she'd met one. And Livadhi's anger seemed so genuine, so straightforward: no tinge of guilt, just the natural annoyance of a commander whose subordinate has screwed up yet again.