Change of Command - Heris Serrano 06

by Elizabeth Moon

  The Loyal Order of Game Hunters had survived Lepescu’s death and, in the years since, had even grown. Its leaders used one political event after another to demonstrate the need for more toughness, a more realistic attitude towards war, more loyalty between brothers in arms. Weakness in high places-from the king’s abdication to Lord Thornbuckle’s inability to keep his daughter in line-proved the need for a stronger, more warlike, military arm.

  Like Lepescu, they saw themselves as more loyal, more dedicated, than other Fleet members, and the others as wishy-washy, irresolute, and ultimately ineffective. They recruited widely, more often in the NCO levels than Lepescu had-as Drizh said, if their founder had a fault, it was his misplaced belief in high birth.

  The removal of senior NCOs and flag ranking officers because of problems with rejuvenation gave them an obvious window of opportunity. The following burst of temporary promotions gave the group a flag rank member again. He might be only an admiral-minor, and only for the duration of the emergency-but that emergency would last long enough for his purposes.

  Bonar Tighe’s three LACs dropped into atmosphere under control of the orbital Traffic Control. Atmospheric Traffic Control on Copper Mountain was minimal except near the main training centers-and the Big Ocean had none. Once below 8000 meters, they were automatically untagged on orbital screens.

  Still they stayed on course until under 2000 meters, when they angled northward, towards the Stack Islands.

  CPO Slyke did not know exactly how Commander Bacarion had intended to deal with the prisoners and guards who were not part of the conspiracy. For his part, he had no intention of leaving witnesses behind, even on that isolated base. When the storm passed, and the radios once more punched through with the usual demands for daily reports, he’d had to say something to divert suspicion, and had reported Meharry and Bacarion both as “missing, presumed swept away by waves.” Incredulity had followed; he knew that someone would send an investigative team as soon as possible, along with a new CO. No one must be left to talk about it. Even if the mutineers gained support of the orbital station, they wouldn’t have the whole planet by the time someone could get here and write a damning report.

  His confederates first took care of those members of the staff who were not part of the conspiracy. Those bodies he left in place . . . he hoped later investigators would think it a prisoner breakout. Killing the uninvolved prisoners was another matter. He had them brought out into the courtyard and then turned the riot weapons on them. They had time to scream . . . and when the prisoners he’d recruited came out, they were more respectful, just as he’d hoped.

  By the time the LACs were in atmosphere, he had the prisoners lined up and waiting. The most reliable had the weapons and PPUs out of the guardroom. When the first LAC screamed out of the sky, and settled on the cold stone of Three Stack’s landing pad, Slyke didn’t wait for the hatches to open-the men were in motion, running. The first LAC lifted, and the next settled in place. Sixty more men raced aboard, just ahead of another rain squall. Then another sixty, and another. Slyke rode the last one up.

  Behind him, a driving rain battered the corpses sprawled in the courtyard, washing the blood into gutters, and finally through drains down into the sea. When the squalls moved on, the seabirds came, and for a time made a column of flickering wings above the towering stack.

  Bonar Tighe’s LACs screamed south, and rose from their designated drop zones back to orbit an ample twelve minutes before Martin-Lehore finally fixed MetSatIV’s glitch.

  MetSatIV picked them up at near-orbital level, but they were outbound, carrying Fleet beacons; the satellite’s AI tagged them as friendlies.

  The first LAC eased into Bonar Tighe’s drop bay and settled onto its marks. Pivot Anseli Markham, who always read manuals and followed them to the letter, aimed the hand-held bioscan at its fuselage.

  “Put that down,” growled her boss, Sergeant-minor Prinkin.

  “But sir, the manual said-” Anseli goggled at the readout. The LACs had gone out empty, with flight crew only, and her instrument was showing dozens and dozens of little green blips.

  “Put it down, Pivot; it’s out of order.”

  “Oh.” Anseli racked the instrument. So that’s why it was showing troops aboard an empty LAC. “Should I take it to the repair bay, Sergeant Prinkin?”

  He gave her a sour look. “Do that, Pivot. You’re no damn use in here anyway.”

  Anseli unracked the bioscan and headed toward the repair bay. She was tempted to turn it on and see if it worked when it didn’t have to read through hull material, but she could feel Sergeant Prinkin watching her. He’d never liked her; he was always sniping at her, and she tried so hard . . . she let her mind drift into her favorite reverie, of how much better she would treat pivots when she made sergeant-minor.

  The repair bay for small scan equipment was out of sight of the LAC service bay. Once around the corner, Anseli experi­­mented with the bioscan. When she pointed it at her foot, a green blurry foot-shaped image appeared. When she aimed at the squad coming down the passage, it showed all eight of them. When she aimed it at a bulkhead, there were two squatting shapes . . . and then a rush through the water pipes that made her blush. She hadn’t meant to do anything like that.

  Chief Stockard, in the repair bay, took the bioscan and gave her forms to fill out.

  “But I think it’s working now,” Anseli said, trying to fit the entire thirteen-digit part number into a space only two centimeters long. Print clearly, the directions said, but how could she print clearly that small? And why did she have to fill out forms at all, when the computerized ID system would read the part number right off the bioscan itself? She did know better than to ask that one; it wasn’t her first trip to the repair bay. “I tried it on people coming along here, and it always registered them.”

  “If your sergeant said it wasn’t working, then it wasn’t working,” Stockard said, folding his lips under. “It may be working now, but it wasn’t working then. What was he trying to do when he said it malfunctioned?”

  “He wasn’t using it, Chief. I was. I was taking a bioscan reading of the incoming LAC, just like it says to do in the manual, and he said put it down, it’s not working right. And I guess it wasn’t, because it said the LAC was full of troops.”

  “LACs usually are,” Stockard said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”

  “But they dropped empty,” Anseli said. “I was there; I scanned them going out, just like the manual says, and they carried only flight crew. It was just a practice flight.”

  Stockard froze, his hands flat on the counter between them. “Are you saying the LACs went down empty and came up full?”

  “Well . . . no, sir, not really. They couldn’t have. It’s just this bioscan unit, but since it’s malfunctioning-”

  “You just wait there a minute.” Stockard turned away, and Anseli could see him talking into a comunit, though she couldn’t hear him. He turned back, shaking his head, still muttering into the comunit. Then he gave her a rueful look. “I guess it malfunctioned . . . I just asked Chief Burdine if the LACs carried troops, and he said no. Oh-he says for you to take a detour up to Admin and pick up the liberty passes for the section. We’ll be docking in a few hours.”

  “Yes, sir.” No chance that her name would be on the list, given Sergeant Prinkin’s animosity, but maybe he’d go, and she’d have a few hours of peace.

  Chief Burdine, on the LAC service bay deck, strolled over to Sergeant Prinkin as if making his usual round of stations. “Just had a call from Stockard in repair-that idiot pivot of yours told him all about the malfunctioning bioscan showing the LAC full of troops. I think Stockard bought my assurance that they’re empty, but how much chance that pivot will blab to someone else about the bioscan reading?”

  “Near a hundred percent,” Sergeant Prinkin said. “The girl’s got no sense.”

  “Is she popular?”

  “She’s got friends.
Hard worker, shows initiative, always willing to help out.”

  “A milk biscuit.” That with contempt.

  “Oh yes, all the way through.”

  “I wish we didn’t have any of that sort aboard,” Chief Burdine said. “They could have a happy life milking cows somewhere; what’d they have to join Fleet for?”

  “For our sport,” Sergeant Prinkin said.

  “That’s true.” Burdine grinned at him. “Though it’s little sport someone like her will give us.”

  Running up to Admin from the repair bay meant running up a lot of ladders, which other people seemed busy running down. Again and again Anseli had to stand aside while one or more officers or squads of NEMs clattered down. She wasn’t really in a hurry, because the longer she was away from Sergeant Prinkin the better, but standing at the foot of ladders wasn’t her idea of fun. Her mind wandered to the LACs and the bioscan. If LACs could drop and pick up troops . . . or drop troops off . . . why couldn’t they pick troops up? Go down empty, come back full? And if you didn’t bioscan the LACs, how could you tell?

  “Stand clear!”

  She flattened herself to the bulkhead yet again, not really seeing the uniforms flashing past her. What if there were people on the ship who weren’t crew? People from down on the planet?

  Of course, everyone on this planet was Fleet, so it didn’t matter. Did it?

  Anseli knew that pivots weren’t supposed to think-well, not beyond memorizing instruction sets in manuals. But she’d always had a sort of itchy feeling in her head if she didn’t get things straight. Machines either worked or they didn’t, in her very clear interior universe. A bioscan which reported on real, verifiable human-sized beings behind one wall didn’t turn liar and report that there were people where there weren’t any. That very same bioscan unit had reported nothing in the LAC holds when the LAC left . . . when it was known to be empty. So how did the sergeant know the LAC was empty when the bioscan said it was loaded with troops? Sergeants knew every­thing, but . . . her mind itched.

  A non-itchy part of her mind began its own commentary on the crew members who kept coming down the ladders. There had been no general alarm, so why were the ship’s security details on their way to the LAC bays?

  By the time she reached Admin, her mind was worse than a case of hives, and the only way she knew to scratch it was ask questions. The chief in Admin growled and handed her another job to do. How was she supposed to learn if no one answered her questions?

  Bonar Tighe reported its LACs recovered, and requested and received permission to dock at the orbital station. This, like the request to practice LAC drops, was standard procedure, and the Traffic Control gave Bonar Tighe a docking priority assignment based on her ETA. The stationmaster approved station liberty at the captain’s discretion, and forwarded the station newsletter. Ships of Bonar Tighe’s mass could not microjump so close to a planet, so the cruiser had to crawl patiently in a spiral to catch up with the station, a process which took several hours.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Margiu Pardalt boarded the odd-looking aircraft before dawn.

  If not for the briefings, she’d have had no idea that such craft existed. On Xavier, she had seen only surface-to-station shuttles and low-flying aircars or flitters. Her years at the Academy had introduced her to high-altitude passenger aircraft like the one she’d been in from Drylands to the coast. But this uneasy compromise between aircraft and boat looked like something a mad scientist would come up with: four fat engines on the high-set wings, with whirligig propellers set into adjustable ducts; a peculiar blob hanging from the end of each wing, suspended on a thin pole. The bottom of the fuselage had the conchoidal shape, scooped and ridged, that she associated with shattered glass. She found it hard to believe it would actually fly.

  This time the craft carried only three passengers besides its crew. One was a gray-haired major, with a pinched mouth and a narrow line of decorations which she recognized as efficiency awards. Admin, most likely. He went to the head of the little line waiting on the dock as by rights, boarded first, and installed himself in a seat midway down the port side, where he immediately flicked on his seat lamp and opened a handcomp.

  The other passenger had waved Margiu ahead, with a flamboyant gesture that matched his flamboyant appearance. In the harsh lights of the harborage, his leather jacket blazed a garish yellow, and the metallic decorations glittered. Margiu climbed over the entrance coaming, and followed the major, almost stumbling once when the gentle motion of the seaplane on the water surprised her.

  She picked out a window seat, on the starboard side. As she buckled in, she looked up to see the third passenger watching. One of those? He had pulled off his cap, revealing fine gray hair fluffed around a bald pate, and in this light she could see that his yellow jacket might be some theatrical troupe’s idea of a uniform. Its shoulders were decorated with loops of green braid, and a line of stars on the upstanding collar, now open to ­reveal a green shirt; his dark pants were actually green.

  “May I?” the man said, in a surprisingly sweet voice. “I’m really quite harmless.”

  She had hoped for a quiet ride, perhaps even a nap. But courtesy demanded that she say yes, so she nodded.

  A crew chief checked to be sure they were all wearing the PPU, and a life vest, and that all the survival gear aboard was actually in place. Predictably, the man in yellow wasn’t wearing his PPU. Unpredictably, he was quite cheerful about having to change, and quicker than she would have expected. Margiu had flown between the stars, but never over large bodies of water; she began to realize that this was serious.

  Then the pilot swung the stumpy plane around, revved the engines, and Margiu felt acceleration shoving her back. The plane slammed its way across the low ripples of the harbor, spray blurring the lights outside. A few moments later they were airborne.

  The headlands of Dark Harbor, edged with lights, fell away behind and below them, and then it was nothing but darkness below. Down there somewhere was water, invisible to the eye but cold and wet. Margiu shivered. To her relief, her seat companion turned a little away and started snoring almost immediately. By dawn, they were flying under high clouds, and the water below looked like a vast sheet of wrinkled silk patched with shades of blue and green and silver that she could not identify.

  The man beside her woke up, and gave her a sweet smile. “I hope my snoring didn’t keep you awake,” he said.

  “No, sir.”

  “I’m no sir, milady. I’m Professor Gustaf Aidersson, if you want my dull, boring, everyday name, which goes with my dull, boring, everyday profession, about which I cannot talk, or we will both be in serious trouble. Or you could call me Don Alfonso Dundee, most noble knight of the Order of Old Terra, and we could have a pleasant conversation about anything you wish.”

  “I’m sorry?” She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “No, I’m sorry.” He hit himself dramatically on the forehead. “Never accost young ladies before breakfast with strange tales out of distant mythology. You’ve heard of SPAL?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Ah. Well, it’s the biggest collection of galoots and misfits in the universe, and the letters stand for the Society for the Preservation of Antique Lore. Antique lunacy is more like it-I have no faith whatever in the actuality of our tomfoolery, but it is fun. We got the idea back when the rich folks in the Families first took up antique studies and arts-long before your time, milady-and we put our own interpretation on it. Let them flit about with fencing masters from the Company of Sabers, create titles for themselves, and imagine that they’re re-creating scenes from Old Earth history. They’re so serious about it, it takes all the fun out.”

  Margiu listened to the rolling flow of words and wondered if the man were entirely sane. His bright sidelong look seemed to catch her thought in midair, as if it were a ball being tossed.

  “You wonder if I’m crazy. Of course you do. I’m not sure myself, and my wife tells me regularly that my
pot is a little cracked. But the fact of the matter is, craziness is not necessarily a bar to genius, and my kind of craziness consists only in boring total strangers to distraction in airplanes. Or spacecraft. Or anywhere else I can trap them.” He grinned at her with such obvious good humor that Margiu felt herelf relaxing.

  “What is that yellow jacket?” she found herself asking.

  “Good question,” he said promptly, in a tone that she could well believe went with a professor of something. “There was a colony world-second-order colony out of Old Earth by way of Congreve-which had successive waves of settlers. They didn’t get along, so of course they started fighting. Back then fabricators were pretty basic machines-couldn’t turn out any useful sort of protective garments. So the colonists started using leather from their herds of cattle. The color told what side they were on. Mine is a semiaccurate reproduction of a Missen-Asaya officer’s uniform of the Third Missen-Asaya/Tangrat War. Except the insignia. I should have a little wooden bird, but I couldn’t find it before I left. My wife swears I must have left it at the last awards banquet . . . so I just took the stars off a model spaceship. Not a very good model, either; Rose-class ships never had double batteries of beam weapons. I told Zachery that when he showed me the model, but he got huffy about it and threw it in the corner, the one where Kata drops her dirty boots. That’s why I knew where to find stars when I wanted them. And I thought stars might be more impressive when I had to travel with Fleet officers, but of course they see that yellow canary-jacket and try not to laugh.”

  It was like drowning in treacle.

  “But I’m talking too much about myself. Just whap me on the head when I do that; that’s what my wife does. Or ­ignore me and look out the window if you want. I can see you’re an ensign, with red hair exactly the color of my niece’s, but-who are you?”