Logs (dread empire's fall)

by Walter Jon Williams

Gulik, the rat-faced little Master Weaponer, stood there braced along with his crew. Once more Martinez watched as Fletcher conducted a detailed inspection, including not just the launchers and loaders but the elevator systems used to move personnel along the battery, and the large spider-shaped damage-control robots used for repairs during high-gee, when the crew themselves would be strapped in their acceleration couches and barely able to breathe or think, let alone move. Fletcher checked the hydraulic reservoirs of the robots, inspected the radiation-hardened bunker where the weaponers would shelter in combat, and then had two missiles drawn from their tubes. The missiles were painted the same green, pink, and white pattern as the exterior of the ship, and looked less like weapons of war than strange examples of design, art objects commissioned by an eccentric patron, or perhaps colorful candies intended for the children of giants. The captain dusted them with his white-gloved fingers-he expected missiles in their tubes to be as clean as his own dinner table-then had them reinserted and asked Gulik when the loaders had last been overhauled.

  At last Fletcher inspected the weaponers themselves, the line of immaculately-dressed pulpies, arranged in order of rank with the petty officers at the end.

  Martinez felt his perceptions expanding through the battery, sensing every last cable, every last switch. He seemed hyperaware of everything that occurred within that enclosed space, from the scent of oil on the elevator cables to the nervous way Husayn flexed his hands when the captain wasn't looking to the sheen of sweat on Master Weaponer Gulik's upper lip.

  Gulik stood at the end of the line, properly braced. Fletcher moved with cold deliberation up the line, his practiced eyes noting a worn seam on a coverall, a tool inserted in its loop wrong way round, a laundry tag visible above a shirt collar.

  Martinez' nerves flashed hot and cold. Fletcher paused in front of Gulik and gazed at the man for a long, searching moment with his deep blue eyes.

  "Very good, Gulik," Fletcher said. "You're keeping up your standards."

  And then Fletcher, incredibly, turned and walked away, his brisk footsteps sounding on the deck, his knife clanking faintly on the end of its chain. Martinez, head swimming, followed dumbly with the rest of the captain's party.

  Out of the corner of his eye, as he stepped over the hatch sill, he saw Gulik sag with relief.

  Fletcher led up two companionways, then turned to Martinez.

  "Thank you, captain," he said. The superior smile twitched again at the corners of his mouth. "I appreciate your indulging my fancies."

  "Yes, my lord," Martinez said, because "You're welcome" wasn't quite the effect he was after.

  Martinez went to his office and sat behind his desk and thought about what he'd just witnessed. Fletcher had called him to witness an inspection at which nothing unusual had occurred.

  Fletcher makes scores of inspections every year, Martinez thought. But he's only killed one petty officer. So how eccentric is that, really?

  An hour or so later Lieutenant Coen, Michi's red-haired signals officer, arrived with an invitation to join the squadcom for dinner. Martinez accepted, and over a cup of cold green melon soup informed Michi that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred at the morning's inspection.

  Michi didn't comment, but instead asked about contingency plans for the squadron's nearest approach to Termaine, the next day. Martinez outlined his plans while frustration bubbled at the base of his spine.

  What are you going to do? he wanted to ask. But Michi only spoke about the Termaine approach.

  At the end of the meal he was more baffled than ever.

  That night he came awake out of a disordered dream to find himself floating. He glanced at the amber numerals of the chronometer that glowed in a corner of the wall display and saw that it was time for a course reorientation around one of the Termaine system's gas giants, a final slingshot that would send Chenforce racing past the enemy-held planet.

  Martinez watched the seconds tick past, and then the engines fired and his mattress rose to meet him.

  Two hours later his orderly, Alikhan, woke him with a breakfast of coffee, salt mayfish, and one of Perry's fresh brioche. After this Alikhan began assisting him into his vac suit in preparation for the walk to the Flag Officer Station.

  Everyone on the ship knew the hour at which general quarters would be called, and most were now struggling into their vac suits, or would be shortly.

  The suit's checked its own systems and displayed the result on its sleeve display: all was well. Martinez took a last sip of coffee, then took his helmet from Alikhan and dismissed him to go to quarters, where he'd don his own suit with the aide of another weaponer.

  Martinez clomped down the corridor, awkward in the suit, and dropped down two decks to the Flag Officer Station. Michi was already present, along with her aides Li and Coen. Michi stood with her back to him, her helmet off, her hair tucked into the cap that held her earphones and the projectors of the virtual array. The unfixed chinstrap dangled on her shoulder. Her head was bent, and one hand was pressed over an ear as if to aid herself in hearing.

  Even in the bulky suit Martinez could see the tension in her stance. "Stand by," she said, and swung around to Martinez, her face a mask of furious calculation. He braced.

  "My lady."

  "I need you to take command of Illustrious immediately. Something's happened to Captain Fletcher."

  "Has he…?" Martinez began. Run amuck with a kitchen knife, perhaps? He couldn't seem to find a way to phrase the question tactfully.

  Michi's words were clipped and curt, nearly savage. "There's a report he's dead," she said. "Now get to Command and take charge before things to completely to hell."

  Martinez shifted to the channel that allowed him to address everyone in Command, then paused to collect his thoughts. It was difficult to pass on information that he did not himself possess. He decided to keep it simple as possible.

  "This is Captain Martinez," he said. "I wished to inform you that the lady squadcom instructed me to take command of Illustrious, as Captain Fletcher has been reported ill. I don't know any details, but I'm sure that Captain Fletcher will return to command as soon as circumstances permit."

  Well, he thought as he settled into his couch, that was as bland an announcement as he could possibly imagine. He doubted the curiosity of the watch was in any way softened.

  Martinez then called up the tactical display and familiarized himself with the situation: Chenforce on its way to pass by Termaine, the two pinnaces and their squadrons of missiles ahead, Termaine surrounded by a cloud of ships that had been cast off and abandoned. If the enemy commander was preparing any act of defiance, he had yet to launch it.

  The day crawled by like an arthritic animal looking for hole to die in. Every so often the icons on the tactical display would move very slightly in one direction or another, and then everything would be still again.

  Crewed pinnaces launched by the warships flashed past Termaine, cameras and sensors sweeping the planet's ring for hidden weapons or warships, the data fed to the sensor operators in Command and Auxiliary Command. Lieutenant Kazakov correlated the data and informed Termaine that the enemy were to all appearances obeying Lady Michi's commands. The Naxids had been building no less than six warships on Termaine's ring, but none had been completed and all had been cast adrift.

  He watched the missile bursts blossom in the display, as the expanding, overlapping spheres of superheated plasma momentarily obscured Termaine and its ring. When the plasma cooled and dissipated, the ring was still there, presumably to the relief of everyone on the planet or its ring.

  Martinez watched the tactical situation crawl along for another half hour, then called Michi to ask for permission to secure from general quarters. This time he spoke to her personally.

  "Permission granted," she said.

  "How is Captain Fletcher?"

  "He's dead. I'll need you and Lieutenant Kazakov to meet in my office as soon as we secure from quarters."

  "Yes, my la
dy." He paused in hopes that Lady Michi would volunteer more information, but once again she remained silent.

  "May I ask how the captain died?" he said finally.

  He was prepared to wager that Fletcher had hanged himself.

  Michi's tone turned resentful. "Fell and hit his head on a corner of his desk, apparently. We don't know any more than that because we went to quarters soon after the body was discovered. Doctor Xi had the body moved to sick bay, and then had to go to quarters himself, so there hasn't been an examination."

  "Would you like me to make an announcement to the ship's crew?"

  "No. I'll do that myself. For now, I want to see you in my office."

  "Very good, my lady."

  Michi ended the communication, and Martinez shifted to the channel that enabled him to speak with others in Command.

  "Secure from general quarters," he ordered. "Well done, everyone."

  He took off his helmet and took a breath of air free of the smell of suit seals. As the tone to secure from quarters buzzed through the ship, he unwebbed and stood.

  "Who's normally standing watch at this hour?" he asked.

  Chandra pulled the helmet off her head and wiped a bit of sweat off her forehead with a gloved hand. "The premiere, lord captain," she said.

  "Lieutenant Kazakov is called elsewhere. If you're not too tired, Lieutenant Prasad, I'd be obliged if you'd take the premiere's watch."

  Chandra nodded. "Very good, my lord."

  "Lieutenant Prasad has the watch!" Martinez said, loud enough for anyone to hear.

  "I have the watch!" Chandra agreed, loudly.

  Martinez stalked out of the room. The horsebacked officers on the walls watched with unfriendly, calculating eyes.

  "I'm appointing you to command Illustrious," Michi said. "You're the only captain we've got."

  Martinez wished she had phrased it so that he didn't sound like so much like a desperate last resort, but the warm, exuberant pleasure of having a command again soon erased any discomfort.

  "Yes, my lady," he said, glowing.

  "Congratulations, my lord," said Fulvia Kazakov. She sat next to Martinez, across the desk from the squadcom. Her dark hair was knotted as usual behind her head, but she'd changed hurriedly after Illustrious secured from quarters, and hadn't had time to stick the usual pair of inlaid chopsticks through the knot.

  "Thank you," Martinez said, and then realized he should try not to beam quite so much. "A shame it had to happen after such a tragedy," he added.

  "Quite." Michi said. She touched her comm panel. "Is Garcia there yet?"

  "Yes, my lady." The voice of her orderly Vandervalk.

  "Send him in."

  Rigger First Class Garcia entered and braced. Under the loose supervision of the Military Constable Officer, Garcia was the head of the ship's constabulary, all three of them, and was a youngish man, a little plump, wearing a mustache. He had never been in the flag officer's office before, at least judging by the way his eyes kept turning to the ornamental fluted bronzed pillars, the bronze statues of naked Terran women holding baskets of fruit, and the murals filled with poised human figures sharing a landscape with fantastic beasts.

  "You've finished your investigation?" Michi said.

  "I've interviewed Captain Fletcher's staff," Garcia said. "I wasn't able to see them all personally, but I was able to speak to them through comm when we were at quarters."

  "Report, then."

  Garcia looked at his sleeve display, where he'd obviously stored the particulars. "The captain worked with Warrant Officer Marsden on ship's business till about 25:01 yesterday," he said. "His orderly, Narbonne, was the last person to see him. He helped the captain undress, took his uniform to be brushed and his shoes to be polished. That was about 25:26."

  Garcia gave a polite cough that indicated his willingness to be interrupted by a question, and when there was none continued.

  "Narbonne returned at 05:26 this morning to wake the captain, bring him his uniform and help him dress, but when he entered the captain's room he saw that the captain wasn't in his bed. He assumed Captain Fletcher was working in his office, so he put the uniform and the shoes on the rack, then returned to the orderly room and waited to be called.

  "A few minutes later the captain's cook, Baca, brought Captain Fletcher's breakfast into the dining room. The captain wasn't there, but that wasn't unusual, and Baca also withdrew."

  "Neither of them looked in the office?" Michi asked.

  "No. The captain doesn't-didn't-like to be disturbed when working."

  "Continue."

  "About 06:01 Baca returned and saw the captain's breakfast hadn't been touched. He knew we'd be going to quarters shortly, so he paged the Captain Fletcher to see if he'd be wanting anything at all to eat, and when there was no answer he went into the office and found the captain dead."

  Again Garcia coughed politely to provide a convenient break in his narrative, and this time Michi obliged him.

  "What did Baca do then?"

  "He paged Narbonne. Then he and Narbonne put their heads together and paged me."

  "You?" Martinez was startled. "Why did they page the constabulary? Did they suspect foul play?"

  Garcia seemed a little embarrassed. "I think they were afraid they might be blamed for the captain's death. They wanted me there so they could… assure me they weren't responsible."

  Martinez supposed that was plausible. He could understand their reluctance to call an officer when they were standing over the body of their captain.

  "I arrived on the scene at 06:14," Garcia continued. "The captain was cold and had clearly been dead for some time. I paged the doctor and a stretcher party, and then called Lady Michi." His eyes turned to the squadcom. "You ordered me to conduct an investigation. I told Narbonne and Baca to return to the orderly room, and then waited for the doctor. Once the doctor and stretcher party arrived, Doctor Xi pronounced the captain dead and took the body to sick bay. I looked over the office and, well, it was clear what happened."

  "And what happened was?" Michi prompted.

  "Captain Fletcher got out of bed some time during the night, went into his office, fell and hit his head. There was an obvious wound on his right temple, and the corner of his desk had some blood, hair, and a bit of skin adhering." For some reason Garcia had trouble pronouncing the word "adhering," but he managed it on the third try.

  "My suspicion is that the captain got caught off-balance during the course change early this morning. There was one at 03:46. There was a moment of weightlessness, and then when acceleration resumed he was caught wrong-footed. Or maybe he was floating weightless in the room, and resumption of gravity caught him by surprise. Doctor Xi might be able to confirm the timing."

  Michi saw Martinez' surprised look out of the corner of her eye. "Captain Martinez?" she said. "Did you have a question?"

  Martinez was startled. "No, my lady," he said quickly. "I just remembered that I woke during that course change. I wonder… if I heard something."

  He groped through his memory, but failed to grasp whatever it was that had brought him awake.

  "It was most likely the zero-gravity alarm that woke you up," Kazakov said.

  Martinez surrendered his quest through his memories. "Very possible, my lady."

  Michi returned her attention to Garcia. "Was the captain dressed?" she asked.

  "No, my lady. He wore pajamas, a dressing gown, and slippers."

  "I have no more questions," Michi said. She glanced at Martinez and Kazakov. "Is there anything else?"

  "I have a question," Martinez said. "Did you take any notice of what the captain was working on?"

  "Working?"

  "If he was in his office, I'd suppose he'd be working."

  "He wasn't working at anything. The display wasn't turned on, and there were no papers on the desk."

  "Where was his captain's key?"

  Garcia opened his mouth, closed it, and opened again. "I don't know, my lord."

&n
bsp; "Was it slotted into the desk?"

  "I don't think so."

  Martinez looked at Michi. "That's all," he said. "I think."

  Michi turned to the petty officer. "Thank you, Garcia," she said.

  He braced and made his way out. Michi gave Martinez a look. "That was good thinking, about the captain's key. It's got access to practically everything." She turned to her desk and began entering codes. "I'll cancel the key's privileges."

  This proved to be unnecessary, as the next person to report was Doctor Xi, who put Captain Fletcher's key on the desk in front of the squadron commander.

  "I found this on a cord around his neck," Xi said.

  Lord Yuntai Xi was a small man with a well-tended white beard, salt-and-pepper hair that hung over his collar, and a little pot belly. The Xi clan were clients of the Gombergs and he had known the captain from boyhood. He spoke in a steady tenor voice, but there was a deep sadness in his brown eyes.

  "Because we've spent most of the last hours at general quarters, I've been able to conduct only a superficial investigation. There is a substantial depression on the right side of the skull, and the skin is torn, and skull fracture is the obvious cause of death. There are no other wounds. I made a small incision under the ribs on the right side and inserted a thermometer into the liver, and from that I calculate that the time of death was 04:01, plus or minus half an hour."

  04:01 was only seven minutes after the change of course that might have caused the captain's stumble and death.

  "Thank you, lord doctor," Michi said. "I think in view of the questions that will inevitably be raised, I think an autopsy will be required."

  Xi closed his eyes and sighed. "Very well, my lady."

  After Xi left, Michi took up Fletcher's key and held the thin plastic strip thoughtfully in her hand.

  "Do you wish me to make an announcement to the ship's company?" Martinez asked.

  "No. I'll do it." She tossed the key into the rubbish. "That's a bad coincidence," she said.

  "Yes, my lady," said Kazakov. Her expression was thoughtful.

  "Coincidence?" Martinez repeated.

  "First Kosinic," Kazakov explained, "and then Captain Fletcher."