The Devil and Deep Space

by Susan R. Matthews

  It was hard to imagine. There was a genuine coherence to the crew of the Ragnarok that Rukota found intriguing, and that would be hard to reconcile with treachery on the part of any of the souls assigned.

  Admiral Brecinn addressed him directly, calling his attention back to his immediate environment. “I was beginning to wonder what you were taking so long at, General. When may I expect my report?”

  He could answer this one honestly, which always helped. “I’m unsure as yet, Admiral. The information is just in. I haven’t had a chance to consult with the team.”

  And yes, he would play along with whatever it was that ap Rhiannon had in mind. It was poor policy to contradict Command Branch in front of other officers. He could afford to wait until he knew what she was up to before he decided what his considered response would be. He didn’t owe Brecinn anything in particular, one way or the other.

  “Well. Fair enough, I suppose. Don’t keep me waiting. Anything else to report, Lieutenant?”

  Brecinn’s insistence on ap Rhiannon’s junior status was beginning to grate on Rukota’s nerves. The crew of the Ragnarok didn’t seem to mind “Captain” ap Rhiannon; they corrected themselves easily enough when they said Lieutenant, or at least they had in Rukota’s limited experience. If the crew of the Ragnarok didn’t mind, why should Admiral Brecinn?

  Whether or not ap Rhiannon experienced a like sense of aggravation, there was more than a touch of asperity in her voice as she replied. “Yes, Admiral, in fact. I have shortages to report, and it’s impacting health and welfare. We were to have been at the resupply station days ago, Admiral. I have got to go and get some of these requisitions filled.”

  Brecinn had not been expecting anything of the sort out of ap Rhiannon, either in subject or in delivery. It was all too clear from the momentary wobbling of her stream–snapper’s beak of a mouth. “You’ve already been told three times that there simply are no replacement converters available for that secondary fusion. I’ve told you, there’s a shortage on, or don’t you believe your own supply reports?”

  What shortage? Rukota wondered, hoping his face was appropriately blank. Shortage of converters for fusion furnaces? That was ridiculous. Why would Fleet tolerate a shortage in such a critical area? Motivation and weapons systems had the very highest priorities. He must not have caught something, somewhere.

  “Understood, Admiral Brecinn. But I have other requisitions against existing inventory for nutritures. Meds. On–board recycles. Some of these have been outstanding from the beginning of the recent exercise.”

  Oh, really? That could explain why the bean tea was as bad as it was. If he’d known ahead of time, he could have packed an extra store for his personal use; although that might not have been interpreted as a friendly sharing gesture.

  “General Rukota? What do you have to say about all this?”

  Brecinn’s abrupt, direct address startled him beyond his ability to cover it up. Was she calling ap Rhiannon a liar? Or simply a poor judge of logistical requirements? Did it matter? Brecinn clearly did not care how she spoke to ap Rhiannon, Command Branch or no Command Branch. It made a man feel very uncomfortable: apart from the gratuitous rudeness of the gesture, what made Brecinn think that she could get away with it?

  “The scope of the assessment team’s brief does not extend to the Ragnarok’s requisitions–in–holding.” He could hear his own stiff outrage in his voice. And he was trying to be polite; because he believed that discipline and courtesy were supposed to move up, as well as down, the command chain. “As far as anecdotal evidence is to be trusted I can personally vouch for the generally depressing lack of required sensory characteristics in Ship’s Mess.”

  But Brecinn was already pulling her head back beneath the bony shell of her figurative carapace. “Well, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the investigation, I suppose you may as well go resupply,” Brecinn said, with a dismissive frown. “Rukota, I’ll be waiting for your report.”

  Ap Rhiannon had given her what she wanted, the promise of a report. Brecinn clearly felt she could afford to play from her rank. “But I don’t mind telling you, Lieutenant, that to my mind identifying the saboteurs responsible for the murder of Captain Brem should be somewhat more important than stocking up on sweetener for your fast–meal mush.”

  “Thank you, Admiral Brecinn.” Ap Rhiannon for her part sounded absolutely unmoved, as if she had not even noticed Brecinn’s rudeness. “For my part, I was raised to believe that the health and welfare of the souls entrusted to my Command under the rule of Law was much more important than playing pointless political games with anyone. I state once again for the Record that the evidence will show that the Ragnarok had no part in the death of Cowil Brem. Departing for resupply, by your leave, Admiral.”

  Admiral Brecinn waved ap Rhiannon off with a cavalier gesture of her hand. “Do what you must, Lieutenant. I need by–name identification of the crew of that Wolnadi, General, so that the documentation can be prepared for a formal Inquiry. The sooner we can complete the necessary reports, the better off we will all be in the long run. I trust you take my meaning. All of you. Pesadie Training Command, away, here.”

  It was a mistake on the Admiral’s part, an error. Rukota knew it in his bones, even though he did not yet know exactly why it was an error.

  Cutting the signal with a decisive gesture ap Rhiannon stood up; and remained for a brief moment with her back to them, leaning on the table’s surface as though she was tired. Rukota supposed that it was abstractly possible that she was, but there would be no getting such an admission out of her.

  Then she straightened up, and looked back, over her shoulder at them. “Let’s get out of here,” she suggested. “Before we run into any interference. You know what to do, First Officer. General Rukota, thank you for coming. I felt you would wish to be present.”

  “Tell me about this information your Excellency has just provided,” Rukota suggested, unwilling to go away quietly. “Does the preliminary assessment team know about this?”

  Ap Rhiannon smiled. Mendez didn’t. They were in this together, Rukota realized; and he was complicit as well, at least by implication. “It’s possible,” ap Rhiannon said. “We think we’ve had a leak. But as long as she thinks she’s got the names coming, we can win a little time to maneuver.”

  Well, to the resupply depot at Laynock, for instance. Except that the Laynock depot wasn’t the only depot that was accessible from the Pesadie exit vector. And he wasn’t going to think about it. It was none of his business. “If she’s got the names already, it’s all academic, your Excellency.”

  Ap Rhiannon shook her head. “It’s not official. She can’t admit to having the names until your report transmits them. And once she has the names, she’ll want the troops. I don’t know how we’re going to protect them, exactly. But we’ve got to think of something.”

  A vision from the recent past rose up on the mind’s eye of General Dierryk Rukota. A shuttle. A courier. Clearing for Azanry, if he remembered correctly. Hadn’t the technician said it was the Ragnarok’s Chief Medical Officer, going home? One of the Ship’s Primes. Traveling with Security.

  Ap Rhiannon was playing more dangerous a game than Rukota would have imagined, if she had done what he suspected. Her career was at risk, at the very least; and for what? Reluctance to surrender four souls to Inquiry, to torture?

  Or educated expectation of how the scope of Inquiry would widen with its own inexorable logic from four to sixteen to two hundred and fifty–six?

  “What’s my place in this mess, then, your Excellency?”

  Ap Rhiannon almost smiled. Almost. “Let that assessment team do what they came for, General. Ask them when they’ll have information for you to prepare your report. It’s their job, after all. With respect. General.” Stay out of it. You aren’t part of it anyway. Keep clear.

  Rukota was disgusted enough to do just that. He bowed in salute. “Very good, your Excellency. Returning to assigned offices as instructed.”<
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  She hadn’t a prayer of making it work, whatever it was. But he understood her motives and her rationale. And he liked them better than he liked Pesadie, with its corrupt Admiral and its opportunistic staff of reasonable people.

  If Brecinn was going to enforce her will against the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok, it would be without aid and comfort from General Dierryk Rukota.

  ###

  Well satisfied, Admiral Brecinn toggled into her on–station braid for Dame Noycannir to share the news. Not just the news she had just gotten from that tiresome little petty officer on the Ragnarok, but the other news as well, the news that had made ap Rhiannon’s call welcome but not exactly a surprise.

  Names. Names and identifications, received just this morning from remote. “Mergau. Yes. If you would come and pay me a visit, please. A note from a mutual friend with news that may be of interest.”

  They’d had two weeks to prepare. Noycannir had everything she needed to conduct a valid, legal Inquiry; with the names, she would be able to start to set up her strategy. Her interrogatories. Her in–depth personal file analysis, looking for the evidence of disaffection and corruption that would explain what they had done — and support the confessions that Noycannir had promised.

  Sacrificing four lives to the rule of Law was not something to be done lightly. And yet Chilleau Judiciary would need Pesadie’s support, in the coming weeks. The Second Judge would surely make her declaration soon. Pesadie had to be ready to defend the Second Judge’s claim against any challenges, had to be in position to move against civil unrest; for the greater good.

  She couldn’t do that if Pesadie was compromised by an unfortunate, ill–timed accident. She could not afford the compromise. She had to be ready to deploy all of her resources, to stabilize the sector should the Selection be contested, to achieve the privileged position in the new administration that the reasonable people with whom she did business expected her to gain and maintain for the mutual benefit of all parties.

  It was only four lives.

  Noycannir would find a way to hold it to four. Surely. Noycannir was a reasonable woman herself. And four lives were as nothing, compared to the greater good, compared to the lives Pesadie would save by being there and being ready to act to restore order.

  Forty lives were not too much to pay for that. So four were not worth mourning. It was to be their glory to give up their lives to ensure a safe and stable transition when the Selection was announced. Theirs would be a sacrifice no less noble for being hidden for all time. Yes.

  It was only six days to Laynock and back. It would be at least three before ap Rhiannon would force herself to release the official report with the names. By the time the Warrant had been endorsed at Chilleau Judiciary and returned, the Ragnarok would be back at Pesadie Training Command.

  Noycannir had enough to worry her. There was no sense in cluttering her mind with unnecessary details. Brecinn had the names; that would be more than enough information for Noycannir to start to work.

  Chapter Seven

  Thresholds

  Mergau Noycannir looked over the list of names that Admiral Brecinn had handwritten out for her, realizing with joy in her heart that this was even more perfect than she could have hoped.

  “These are to be the prisoners, then?” she asked, hoping the note of admiration in her voice was suitably transparent. Brecinn was vain; it was not difficult to handle her. “Your team is to be congratulated. When must I be ready to begin processing?”

  She’d presented Brecinn with a conflict of sorts, between Brecinn’s desire to bask in her acclaim and the fact that she didn’t have a good answer for the question. “I don’t mind telling you that the Ragnarok is not being reasonable at all, Dame Noycannir. Why am I not surprised? I’ll be able to get a Warrant as soon as the official report is released, and we’ll have the prisoners very shortly after that. Four days?”

  Impossibly optimistic, Mergau was sure. But that suited her purpose just as well. She didn’t need the prisoners. She just needed to know who they were going to be to mount a coup that was so daring it would win her power and influence beyond her fondest hopes.

  “Very good, Admiral. I’ve got some preliminary data pulled on the Ragnarok’s Security. I can start to bring it all together. Shall I get started?” Mergau stood up as she spoke, to indicate her eagerness to be on about her part of this important task. To tell Brecinn that she was leaving, now, but doing it politely.

  “You have everything you need, Dame?” Brecinn asked. “Good. Yes, thank you, we can’t be on top of this unfortunate situation too quickly. It’s gone on for far too long already. Ap Rhiannon will be sorry. I promise you that.”

  Mergau didn’t care about ap Rhiannon. She had her own agenda to put forward.

  The fact that the named Security were all people assigned to Andrej Koscuisko only made her task more poignantly appropriate.

  “No matter how clever these little officers think they may be, sooner or later they all pay, eh, Admiral?” Mergau agreed, and bowed. Leaving the room on a graceful note of conspiracy. Not bothering to point out that Admiral Brecinn herself might well be one of those “little officers” who would eventually pay.

  Not before Koscuisko paid. And Koscuisko had so much to pay for. Everything that had gone wrong with her life went back to him; but she would have revenge — all the more sweet because his own people, his own precious and famously cherished Security, would be the instrument of her ultimate victory.

  Hurrying through the halls, Mergau made her way to the out–of–the–way stores–room that had been configured for an interrogation arena, a theater of inquiry.

  Had she everything she needed, Brecinn had asked. The instruments of torture were here, the drugs from the Controlled List, restraints and implements, shackles and chains; all secondary, though Brecinn did not know it.

  What was truly crucial to her purpose was the Record: and the equipment Mergau needed to effect her plan. She’d told the Admiral that she would gain confessions to whatever Brecinn decided the story should be; she hadn’t lied. She’d only stretched the truth a little.

  She had realized what she could really do with this opportunity only gradually. Pesadie Training Command was a testing facility; its judicial records were naturally weighted in just the direction she needed to go — insubordination, sabotage of training exercise, failure to comply with instructions received from exercise commanders, mutinous intent.

  She could hardly have hoped for so generous a field from which to choose had she been free to survey all of Chilleau Judiciary’s records. Koscuisko’s people. She would send a message to her spies on Azanry. She would know exactly where to find him.

  Koscuisko was no match for her in cunning or in strategy; it was only the unfair advantage of his medical training — the product of the privileges of wealth and rank — that had made her look bad in front of her Patron, that had persuaded the First Secretary to devalue her worth and her abilities.

  Mergau checked her secures and engaged the privacy barrier. “Smish Smath,” Mergau said to her voice–trans. Secure. No one could forge her voice. She had to be very careful. Nobody had done what she planned to do in all the history of Jurisdiction. “Murat Spodinne. Taller Archops, Lek Kerenko.”

  More luck, on top of luck. Kerenko would be easy. He was one of Koscuisko’s Security slaves, a bond–involuntary troop. There was no need to create a confession for Lek Kerenko; all she needed there was a simple “expiration of a Bond during the process of Inquiry, without prejudice.”

  The others would have misled him all along, of course; by definition, a bond–involuntary could not plot mutiny. The governor would not allow it. Once she began to probe and test for what knowledge he might have, his governor — the story would go — would so work on him, in combination with her keen interrogation into matters that he should have seen and noted and reported to his First Officer, that he would die of self–inflicted punishment.

  She would be sure to spec
ify that he had not been at fault in any way. That way, his family would not have to repay the Bench for the costs of his training and his keep, Andrej would be grateful to her for that. She would see to it.

  Three confessions. Only three. Smath would be the most challenging. There were relatively fewer women in Security; they tended to be absorbed in Engineering instead because of their superior skills in operating under pressure. They were disproportionately underrepresented in Brecinn’s records accordingly. Women were more logical, better at covering their tracks, harder to catch up doing something stupid.

  She’d make do. She had the Record here.

  “Index on class of hominid. Sex. Physical characteristics.” She’d preselected the data files on the cases that would match any of the Ragnarok’s Security; this would be a much swifter search. “Execute.”

  Andrej Koscuisko had been there at Fleet Orientation Station Medical when Verlaine had sent her to take the Writ to Inquire, and come home as Inquisitor to Chilleau Judiciary. She had done the best she could. It had been hard. And Koscuisko had done better.

  In an evil hour she had commended Koscuisko to her Patron while she was still at Fleet Orientation Station Medical, to spite the station’s administrator and her Tutor, to put them all on notice that she was a force to be reckoned with and had the immediate ear of the First Secretary. That they had good cause to be careful how they misused her, because she had more power than they seemed to realize. It had been a mistake.

  Verlaine had compared her to Koscuisko and found her wanting. No matter how hard she tried when she returned to Chilleau Judiciary, Verlaine had Koscuisko always in the back of his mind, pointing out her every small miscalculation, jeering at her every failure. Every defeat.

  Koscuisko was a rich man from a powerful family; he had education and a certain degree of personal charm. People were so easily impressed by superficialities. They ascribed talent to Koscuisko that no one could hope to match, and built him up into a sort of legend against whom a mere mortal was powerless to compete. But just because she did not have Koscuisko’s medical education did not mean that she lacked for knowledge of the Record . . . and how it could be used.