by David Weber
Yuri had pondered the matter, over the years. And, with his natural bent for irony, taken a certain solace in it. Whatever else the Committee of Public Safety's ruthlessness had crushed underfoot, it had not been able to transform basic human emotional reactions. Yuri doubted now if any tyranny ever could.
"So what do you want, Yuri?" Gallanti's words were gruff, but the tone was not that of a woman issuing a rebuff. It sounded more like an appeal, in fact.
"Give me free rein aboard the ship," he replied at once. "In name I'll be the 'assistant investigator' scurrying all over rooting out rot and corruption. In the real world, I'll serve you as your commissioner. I'm good at morale-building, Jillian, try me and see if I'm not. By the time Cachat gets back, I'll have a handful of 'suppressed crimes' to wave under his nose. But, way more important, we'll have a functioning capital ship again—and a crew, including all the transfers, who'll swear up and down that the good ship Hector is a jolly good ship and Cap'n Gallanti a jolly good soul."
"And what good will that do?"
"Jillian, give Victor Cachat his due. I'd do that much for the devil himself. Yes, he's a simon-pure fanatic. But a fanatic, in his own twisted way, is also an honest man. The kid's for real, Jillian. When he says 'the needs of the State,' he means it. It's not a cover for personal ambitions. If we can satisfy him that the rot's been rooted out—even that we've got things turned around nicely—he'll be satisfied and go on his way. The fact is that La Martine Sector has been a stronghold for the Republic's economy for the past few years. The fact is that you weren't personally implicated in Jamka's crimes—and Cachat said so himself, in his official report to Nouveau Paris."
"How'd you know that?" grunted Gallanti. Skepticism mixed with anxiety—and now, more than a little in the way of hope.
He gave her his best worldly-wise smile, which was just as good as any of his other smiles. "Don't ask, Jillian. I told you: I'm a commissioner. It's my job to know these things. More precisely, to make the connections so that I can know."
And, again, that was the pure and simple truth. Even under arrest and self-restricted to his cabin, a man like Yuri Radamacher could no more help "making connections" than he could stop breathing.
He knew what Cachat had said about Gallanti in his report because the SI had asked Citizen Major Lafitte for his input and the Citizen Major had mentioned it to Citizen Sergeant Pierce, and Ned Pierce had told Yuri. None too cheerfully, as it happened, because like all Marines serving on the Hector, Ned Pierce and Citizen Major Lafitte detested the SD's CO. But Yuri saw no reason to tell Gallanti that.
It was just a fact of life; and now, finally, Yuri Radamacher accepted it entirely. People liked him and trusted him. He couldn't remember a time in his life when they hadn't—or a time when he'd ever repaid that trust except in good coin.
It was odd, perhaps, that he came to accept it at the very moment when—for the first time in his life—he was consciously plotting to betray someone. The woman sitting across the desk from him, whose confidence and trust he was doing everything possible to gain.
But . . . so be it. There was, indeed, such a thing as a "higher loyalty," no matter how cynical Yuri had gotten over the years. Something of the fanatic Cachat had rubbed off on him after all, it seemed. And if a middle-aged man like Radamacher shared none of the young Special Investigator's faith in political abstractions, he had no difficulty understanding personal loyalties. When push came to shove, he owed nothing to Citizen Captain Jillian Gallanti. In fact, he despised her for a bully and a hot-tempered despot. But he did owe a loyalty to the thousands of men and women alongside whom he'd served in Citizen Admiral Chin's task force, for years now—from Genevieve herself all the way down to the newest recruit. So, he'd use his natural skills to create a false front—and then use that front to save them from Saint-Just's murderous suspicions.
And if Citizen Captain Gallanti had to fall by the wayside in the process, stabbed in the back by her newfound "friend" . . .
Well, so be it. If a fanatic like Cachat had the courage of his convictions, it would be nothing but cowardice for Yuri to claim to be his moral superior—yet refuse to act with the same decisiveness.
As he waited for Gallanti to fall into the trap, Yuri probed more deeply into his conscience.
Well. Okay. Some of it's just 'cause I got the hots for Sharon and I will damn well keep my woman alive. Me too, if I can manage it.
Gallanti fell. "S'a deal," she said, extending her hand. Yuri rose, bestowed on her his very best trustworthy smile and his very best sincere handshake—both of them top-notch, of course. All the while, measuring her back for the stiletto.
8
Yuri did, in fact, have an excellent record as a people's commissioner. He had routinely been given top marks throughout his career for his proficiency—at least, once he got out of the abstract environment of the academy and into the real world of StateSec fleet operations. The one criticism which Radamacher's superiors had leveled against him periodically, however, had been "slackness."
By some, that was defined in political terms. Yuri Radamacher's actual loyalty wasn't called into question, of course. Had there been any question about that he would have been summarily dismissed (at best) from StateSec altogether. Still, there had been some of his superiors, over the years, who felt that he was insufficiently zealous.
Yuri could not argue the matter. He wasn't zealous at all, truth be told.
But the charge of "slackness" had another connotation. One which, several years earlier, had been put bluntly by the woman who had been his superior in the first year of his assignment in La Martine.
"Baloney, Yuri!" she'd snapped in the course of one of his personnel evaluation sessions. "It's all fine and dandy to be 'easy-going' and 'laid-back' and the most popular StateSec officer in this sector. Yeah, Citizen Mister Nice Guy. The truth is you're just plain lazy."
Yuri had argued the matter, on that occasion. And had even managed, by a virtuoso combination of razzle-dazzle reference to his record and half a dozen charmingly related anecdotes, to get his superior to semi-relent by the end of the evaluation. Still . . .
Deep down, he knew there was a fair amount of truth to the charge. Whether it was because of his own personality, or his disenchantment with the regime, he wasn't sure. Perhaps it was a combination of both. But, whatever the reason, it was just a fact that Yuri Radamacher never really did seem to operate, as the ancient and cryptic expression went, "firing on all cylinders." He did his job, and did it very well, yes—but he never really put in that extra effort to do it as well as he knew he could have done. It just somehow didn't seem worth the effort.
So he found himself amused occasionally, as the weeks went by, wondering what those long-gone superiors would think of his work habits now. Yuri Radamacher was still easy-going, and laid-back, and pleasant to deal with. But now he was working an average of eighteen hours a day.
He didn't wonder at the reason himself, though. With Yuri's love of classic literature, he could summon up the answer with any of a number of choice phrases. The one which best captured the situation, he thought, came from Dr. Johnson:
Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Granted, Yuri Radamacher had more than a fortnight at his disposal. But how much more, remained to be seen. So, he threw himself into his project with an energy he hadn't displayed since he was a teenager newly enlisted in the opposition to the Legislaturalist regime.
A fortnight came and went, and another. And another. And still another.
And Yuri began to relax a little. He still had no idea what the future might bring. But whatever it was, he would at least face it from the best position he could have created. For most of those around him, not only himself.
More than that, it was given to no person to know. Not in this world at least; and, StateSec regulations aside, Yuri really didn't believe in an afterlife.
"Give me a break, Yur
i," Citizen Lieutenant Commander Saunders complained. "Impeller Tech Bob Gottlieb is the best rating I've got. He can practically make those nodes sit up and beg."
Yuri looked at him mildly. "He's also the biggest bootlegger on the ship, and he's getting careless about it."
Saunders scowled. "Look, I'll talk to him. Get him to keep it under cover. Yuri, you know damn good and well there's always going to be an illegal still operating somewhere on a warship this size. Especially one that's been kept from having any shore leave for so long. At least we don't have to worry about Gottlieb selling dangerous hooch. He knows a lot about chemistry, too—don't ask me how or where he learned, I don't want to know. He's not a stupid kid who doesn't know the difference between ethanol and methanol."
"His stuff's pretty damn tasty, in fact," chimed in Ned Pierce, who was lounging in another armchair in Yuri's large office.
Yuri turned the mild-mannered gaze his way. The citizen sergeant was trying to project a degree of cherubic innocence which fit poorly with his dark-skinned, battered, altogether piratical-looking face. "That's what I hear, anyway," Pierce added.
Yuri snorted. "I need something, people," he pointed out. "Cachat'll be back any time now. I've got a fair number of screw-ups and goofballs on display in the brig, sure. But that's pretty much old stuff by now. About a third of them have almost served their time. And I'm telling you: nothing will soothe the savage inquisitor like being able to show him a freshly nabbed, still-trembling sinner."
"Aw, c'mon, Yuri, the SI's not that bad."
From the tight expression on his face, Citizen Lieutenant Commander Saunders did not agree with the citizen sergeant's assessment of Cachat's degree of severity. Not in the least.
Yuri wasn't surprised. Saunders had been present in the gym when Cachat personally shot six fellow officers of the Hector Van Dragen in the head. So had Ned, of course. But Pierce was a Marine, and a combat veteran. Personal, in-your-face mayhem was no stranger to him. Had Saunders been in the regular Navy, he might have encountered the kind of battering which capital ships often took in fleet encounters, where it was not uncommon for bodies to be shredded. But StateSec capital ships were there to enforce discipline over the Navy, not to fight the Navy's battles. That was undoubtedly the first time Saunders had seen blood and brains splattered all over the trousers of his uniform.
Citizen Major Lafitte cleared his throat. He and his counterpart, a StateSec citizen major by the name of Diana Citizen—her real name, that; not something she'd made up to curry favor with the regime—were sitting side by side on a couch angled next to Yuri's armchair. The two of them, along with Ned Pierce and his counterpart, StateSec Citizen Sergeant Jaime Rolla, constituted the informal little group which Yuri relied on to handle disciplinary matters on the superdreadnought. The SD's executive officer knew about it and had been looking the other way for weeks. The man was incompetent at everything except knowing which way the political winds were blowing. He'd quickly sized up the new situation and—wisely—decided that he'd be a nut crushed between Radamacher's skills and Captain Gallanti's temper if he tried to assert the traditional prerogatives and authority of a warship's XO.
Citizen Major Diana Citizen cleared her throat. "I've got a sacrificial lamb, if you need one." Her thin, rather pretty face grew a little pinched. "Except calling him a 'lamb' is an insult to baa-baas. He's a pig and a thug and I'd be delighted to see him slammed as hard as you can. Assuming you can figure out a charge that would stick. Unfortunately, he's slicker than your average shipboard bully. Keeps his ass covered. Name's Henri Alouette; he's a rating—"
"That fuckhead!" snarled Ned. "Me and him damn near came to it, once, in the mess room. Woulda, too, if the bastard hadn't backed off at the last minute. Too bad, I woulda—"
"Citizen Sergeant Pierce." Yuri's tone was as pleasant and relaxed as ever, but the unusual formality was enough in itself to draw the citizen sergeant up short. Normally, in this inner circle devoted to handling the nitty-gritty business of a warship's "dirty laundry," informality was the rule. Over the weeks, rank differences aside—even the traditional mutual hostility of StateSec and regular military aside—the five people involved had gotten onto very good personal terms. As usually happened with teams assembled by Yuri Radamacher and overseen by him.
"I will remind you that I've stressed—any number of times—the critical importance of keeping tensions between the regular military stationed on this ship and its StateSec complement to a bare minimum." He smiled easily. "Which I dare say having a Marine citizen sergeant pound a StateSec rating into a pulp—yes, Ned, I'm sure you woulda and coulda—might cut against."
"Don't count on it," piped up StateSec Citizen Sergeant Rolla. "Alouette's notorious all over the ship, Yuri. I'd give you three-to-one odds all the StateSec ratings in that mess room would have been cheering Ned on."
"You'd 'a won the bet," gruffed Ned. "Two of 'em offered to hold my coat. Another asked the fuckhead what blood type he was so he could make sure to tell the doctors in the ship's hospital."
Radamacher eyed Pierce for a moment. He'd been on such friendly personal terms with the big citizen sergeant for so long that Yuri tended to forget what a truly ferocious specimen of humanity the man was. Jesting aside, he didn't have much doubt at all that anyone who'd apparently angered Pierce that much would be needing transfusions after the brawl was over.
"Still." Yuri swiveled his chair around and began working at the keyboard of his computer. "We've gotten morale to such a good point on the Hector that I'd just as soon avoid any possible interservice problems." He glanced over his shoulder, still smiling. "I'm sure I can find a better way to nail Alouette than have Ned here try to frame him up on a brawling charge. Not even Special Investigator Cachat would believe for a minute that somebody deliberately picked a fight with him."
He turned back, letting the easy laughter fill the room while he worked.
It didn't take long. Less than five minutes.
"I must be slipping," he muttered. "How'd I possibly miss this?"
"Working eighteen hours a day at everything else?" Major Lafitte chuckled. "What'd you find, Yuri?"
Radamacher jabbed a stiff finger at the screen. "How in the hell did Alouette pass his required annual spacesuit proficiency test when there's no record he's even been in a spacesuit once in the past three years? And how in the hell did he manage that —when he's rated as a gravitic sensor tech? Isn't external inspection and repair of the arrays sort of part of that specialization?"
He swiveled back around. "Well?"
The two Marines in the room had bland, blank none-of-my-business expressions on their faces. The sort of expressions which polite people assume when another family's skeletons are spilling out of an opened closet.
Radamacher approved. This was StateSec's dirty laundry. As was obvious from the scowls on the faces of the two StateSec officers and—even fiercer—on the face of StateSec Citizen Sergeant Rolla.
"That rotten SOB," Rolla hissed. "Give you three-to-one—no, make it five-to-one—that Alouette's been intimidating his mates and the section chief. Probably threatened the rating recording the test results, too."
Citizen Major Citizen looked uncomfortable. "Yeah, that's probably it. I hate to say it, seeing as how I sure didn't shed any tears over those bums that the SI blew away, but their absence did hurt us a lot in security. It left holes all through my department, which I still haven't been able to get filled up all the way. Especially since I had to start from scratch coming over from the fleet."
"Nobody's blaming you, Diana," Yuri assured her smoothly. "Isolated little tumors like this are bound to turn up, now and then, when a ship's security department was in the hands of human cancer cells for years. Which is about the most polite way I can think of to describe Jamka's cronies."
He rubbed the back of his neck. "To be perfectly honest about it—cold-blooded, too—this is damn near perfect. Cachat'll rub his hands with glee over a bust like this one. Beats a penny-ante bootleg
ging case hands down. Inquisitors, you know, thrive on real sin."
"Aw, c'mon, Yuri—" Ned started again. "The SI's not—"
The sudden burst of laughter from everyone else in the room caused a look of grievance to come over the citizen sergeant's face. "Well, he's not that bad," he insisted.
Radamacher didn't argue the point. At the moment, he was in such a good mood that he was even willing to grant that Special Investigator Victor Cachat probably didn't really match up to Torquemada. His understudy, maybe.
He looked to Citizen Major Citizen. "You'll handle this, Diana? Mind you, I want a good, solid, rock-hard case against Alouette. Nothing flimsy."
She nodded. "Won't be hard. Assuming we're right, everybody in the section will fall all over themselves spilling the beans—as long as they're sure that Alouette will get put away for a long time. Somewhere he can't retaliate against them."
"Have no fear on that score. Just going by a minimum reading of regulations, if Alouette has been threatening his mates with violence in order to cover up his skill deficiencies—much less a senior rating like a section chief—he's looking at five years, at least. That's five years served in a StateSec maximum security prison, too, not a ship's brig."
