Logs (dread empire's fall)

by Walter Jon Williams

  "According to your log," Martinez said, "you've replaced the transformer under Main Access 8-14. Open the access, please."

  Not looking the least bit pleased, Strode tapped codes into the access locks and the floor panel rose on its pneumatics. An electric hum shivered up through the deck. The scent of grease and ozone rose from the utility compartment, and lights came on automatically.

  Martinez turned to Lord Phillips. "My lord," he said, "would you be so kind as to go into the compartment and read me the serial number on the transformer."

  Without offering a word Phillips took the deck access and slid his feet beneath. Crouched in the narrow space, Phillips found the serial number and read it off.

  The number wasn't the same as that in Strode's 77-12.

  "Thank you, lord lieutenant," Martinez said, staring hard into Strode's fixed, angry face. "You can come up now."

  Phillips rose and brushed grime off his dress trousers. "Close the access, please," Martinez said. Strode did so.

  "Strode," Martinez said, "you are reprimanded for yarning your log. I will check the 77-12s, and from this point forward I will check yours in particular."

  Sullen anger still burned in Strode's eyes. "My lord," he said. "The serial number was… provisional. I hadn't had the chance to check the correct number."

  "See your logs are less provisional in the future," Martinez said. "I'd rather have no information at all than information that's misleading. You are dismissed."

  He walked off while Marsden was still noting the reprimand on his datapad. Phillips followed.

  "You'll have to check those logs yourself, lieutenant," Martinez told him. "Those forms are going to be full of yarns otherwise."

  "Yes, my lord," Phillips murmured. Martinez couldn't tell if his voice was so soft because he was chagrined by the situation, intimidated by the presence of a senior officer, or if that was his normal voice.

  "Come to my office for coffee," Martinez said.

  The coffee break was not a success. Martinez knew that Phillips was one of Fletcher's protegs, that the Phillips clan were clients to the Gombergs and that Phillips, like Fletcher, had been born on Sandama, though like the captain he'd spent most of his life on Zanshaa. Martinez hoped to discuss Fletcher, but Phillips' responses were barely audible, and so terse and monosyllabic that Martinez gave up the task as hopeless and sent Phillips about his business.

  He would have to be satisfied with sending a pair of signals, the first to the petty officers that he was serious about the 77-12s, the second to the lieutenants that they had better supervise the department heads very closely.

  Dinner with the warrant officers was much more cheerful, and the table was well provided, thanks to Warrant Officer/First Toutou, who headed the commissary. The warrant officers were specialists, pilots or navigators, supply officers or sensor technicians or the commissary, and didn't run large departments like the senior petty officers. Their own 77-12s would be much easier to complete.

  Some didn't have to fill 77-12s at all, as was attested by Toutou's broad smile and laughing demeanor.

  The mess orderly was pouring little glasses of a sweet trellin-berry liqueur at the end of the meal when Martinez' sleeve display gave a chime. He answered.

  "Captain, I need you in my office." Michi's voice told him that she would brook no delay.

  "Right away, my lady," Martinez said. He rose from his chair, and before he could stop them the others rose, too.

  "Be seated," he told them. "And many thanks for your hospitality. I'll return it some day."

  Doctor Xi waited with Michi in her office. Martinez looked for Garcia and didn't find him.

  "Tell him," Michi said, without bothering to tell Martinez to relax his salute.

  Xi turned his mild eyes to Martinez. "When I was looking through my references for methods of lifting fingerprints, it mentioned that prints left on skin can fluoresce under laser light. So I asked Machinist Strode to provide a suitable laser, and he had one of his minions assemble one for me."

  Martinez, still braced with his chin lifted, looked at Xi from the corner of his eye.

  "You found fingerprints on the captain?" he asked.

  Michi looked up, and an expression of annoyance crossed her face. "For all's sake, Martinez," she said, "relax and have a seat, will you?"

  "Yes, my lady."

  Xi politely waited for Martinez to take a chair, and then continued as if there had been no interruption.

  "There were fingerprints on the captain, yes. Mine, and Garcia's, and those of my orderlies. No others that I could find."

  Martinez had no reply to this, and made none.

  "I then got Lieutenant Kosinic's body out of the cooler, and I put a sensor net over his head and got a three-dimensional map of his injuries. He died from a single blow to the head, perfectly consistent with his losing his balance, falling, and hitting his head on the rim of the hatch."

  One fewer murder, anyway, Martinez thought.

  "When I looked for fingerprints with the laser," Xi continued, "I found my own, and my assistants'. And I also found one large thumbprint on the underside of the jaw on the right side." He pressed his own thumb to the point. "Right where a thumb might sit if a person were grabbing Kosinic's head and slamming it into the hatch rim."

  He gave a little grin. "It was quite a job to read that print properly," he said. "I couldn't use a normal print reader, and so I had to take several close-up photographs while the print was fluorescing, and then convert the format to-"

  "Skip that part," Michi instructed.

  Xi seemed a trifle disappointed that he was not getting the chance to fully reveal the scope of his cleverness. He licked his lips and went on.

  "The thumbprint was that of Master Engineer Thuc," he said.

  Martinez realized his mouth was open, and he closed it.

  "I'll be damned," he said.

  Thuc was enormous and covered with muscle, Martinez thought, and certainly strong enough to smash Kosinic' head on the first try. He looked at Michi.

  "So Thuc killed Kosinic," he said. "And Fletcher found out about it somehow and executed Thuc."

  She nodded. "That seems likely."

  "He said he killed Thuc for the honor of the ship. He was very sensitive on points of rank and dignity, and maybe he thought it would be an affront to his own pride to order a formal inquiry to reveal the fact that one of his enlisted personnel killed an officer, and so he decided to handle it himself."

  Michi nodded again. "Go on."

  "But if that's true," Martinez said, "then who the hell killed Fletcher?"

  Michi gave him an odd, searching look. "Who benefits?" she said.

  Irritation rasped along Martinez' nerves. "If you're expecting me to break down and confess," he said, "you're going to be disappointed."

  "Others may benefit besides you," Michi pointed out. "For example someone who knew that Fletcher would never favor her ambitions, but who thought you might."

  Martinez suspected that Michi's choice of pronoun was not accidental.

  "Thuc might have had an accomplice," he suggested. "An accomplice who thought he was next on Fletcher's list."

  "Did you know," Michi said, "that Lieutenant Prasad excelled in Torminel-style wrestling at the Doria Academy?"

  "No," Martinez said, "I didn't. I haven't had time to review her file."

  Even if Torminel wrestling didn't quite allow bashing an opponent's head in, Martinez knew it was an aggressive style that included strangulation and all sorts of unpleasant, painful joint manipulation and pressure point attacks. He could now see Chandra immobilizing Fletcher long enough to hustle him to his desk and slam his head against its sharp edge, in the process leaving her fingerprints on the underlip.

  "I also see," Michi said, "that you and Lieutenant Prasad shared a communications course some years ago."

  "That's true. While she was there, she didn't murder anyone that I know of."

  Michi's lips twitched into a grim smile. "I'l
l take your enthusiastic character reference under advisement. Did you notice that Captain Fletcher gave Prasad a venomous efficiency report?"

  "I saw that, yes. But I know of no evidence that she was aware of it."

  "Perhaps she wanted to prevent it from being written, but was too late." Michi tapped her fingers on her desk top. "I'd like you to inquire, as discreetly as possible, about Prasad's movements during the watch that Captain Fletcher was killed."

  "I can't possibly be discreet with such an inquiry," Martinez said. "And besides, Garcia already accounted for everyone on the ship."

  "Garcia is an enlisted man and experiences a natural diffidence when interrogating officers. An officer is best for these things."

  Martinez decided he might as well concede. When he thought about it, he no longer knew why he was defending Chandra in any case.

  "Well," he said, "I'm interviewing the lieutenants one by one anyway. I'll ask them about that night, but I don't think any will give me a story different from anything they've already told Garcia."

  "I mess in the wardroom," Xi said. "I could make a few inquiries as well."

  "We must find an answer," Michi said.

  On his way to his office Martinez contemplated Michi's choice of words: she had said an answer, not the answer.

  He wondered if Michi was willing to sacrifice the answer-the real answer-in favor of any answer. An answer that would end the doubts and questions on the ship, that would help to unify Illustrious under its new captain, that would put the entire incident to bed and let Illustrious, and the entire squadron, get on with their job of fighting Naxids.

  It was a solution that would sacrifice an officer, that was true, but an officer who was an outsider, a provincial Peer from a provincial clan, isolated from the others who had all been hand-picked by Fletcher. An officer who no one seemed to like very much anyway.

  An officer who was very much like the officer Martinez had been just a year ago.

  He didn't like Michi's solution on these grounds, and on others as well. There had been three deaths, and Martinez thought Michi was too quick to consider the first two solved. He had a sense that the deaths all had to be related some way, even though he couldn't guess at anything that might connect them.

  In his office he found Marsden waiting patiently with the day's reports. Martinez called for a pot of coffee and worked steadily for an hour, until a knock on the door interrupted him. He looked up and saw Chandra in the doorway.

  He tried not to envision a target symbol pinned to her chest as she stepped into the room and braced.

  "Yes, lieutenant?" he said.

  "It was unfortunate that we couldn't discuss…" Her eyes cut to Marsden, whose bald head was bent over his datapad. "That matter we wanted to talk about at dinner today."

  "We can talk about it tomorrow," Martinez said.

  "It would be a little late." Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. "The lady squadcom had asked me to conduct my experiment tomorrow."

  She wants to find out how much you're worth before deciding on your arrest. The bitter thought rose in Martinez' mind before he could stop it.

  He sighed. "I don't know how I can help you, lieutenant." She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. "In order for this to be what you want, it can't be anything standard. Either my standard or their standard, if you see what I mean. It has to be something that's completely yours, and something that hadn't been done before, or at least not recently."

  Her hands clenched into fists, and this time did not unclench. "I understand, my lord." From the sound, her teeth were clenched, too.

  "It's not easy, I know." Martinez made a conciliatory gesture. "I'm sorry, but I have no useful ideas for you." He mentally reviewed the last few days. "I don't have useful ideas for anyone, it seems."

  Her fists still clenched, Chandra braced, executed a military turn, and marched away.

  Martinez looked after her, and a morbid part of his mind wondered if Chandra was angry enough to kill him.

  Martinez was killed the next morning, during Chandra's maneuver. Martinez spent the time passing command of the ship to Kazakov in Auxiliary Command, so that his crew in Command could devote themselves entirely to the maneuver.

  "The experiment assumes that we are six hours into the Osser system."

  Osser again, Martinez thought. It was almost as if Chandra were repeating Martinez' last maneuver, not a good sign if she wanted to impress Squadron Commander Chen.

  "Chenforce has entered hot, and we've been able to search the system a little more than three light-hours out. No enemy force has been detected. Are there any questions?"

  Apparently there were none, because Chandra went on. "The exercise will commence on my mark. Three, two, one, mark."

  A new system blossomed on the navigation displays.

  "My lord," said Warrant Officer Pan, one of the sensor operators, "we're being painted by a tracking laser."

  "Where?"

  "Dead ahead, more or less. A rather weak signal-I don't think it's anywhere near-My lord! Missiles!" Pan's voice jumped half an octave in pitch.

  "Power all point-defense lasers!" Martinez said. "Power antiproton beams!"

  But by that point they were all dead, and within seconds Chenforce was a glowing cloud of radioactive parties spreading itself into the cold infinity of space, and Martinez' heart was thumping to a belated charge of adrenaline.

  Naxid missiles, Martinez realized, accelerated to relativistic velocities outside the system, then fired through the wormhole along the route they knew Chenforce had to take. The reflection of a tracking laser fired from somewhere in the system provided last-instant course corrections.

  Through his shock he managed a grim laugh. Chandra had impressed the squadcom, all right.

  Michi's voice came into Martinez' headphones. "I'll want all officers in my quarters for dinner at fifteen and one."

  The mood at dinner was sober. The officers looked as if they'd been beaten flat by hours of high-gravity acceleration.

  The meals that had been prepared in the wardroom, and in the captain's and squadcom's kitchens, were combined-casseroles mostly, that could cook quietly away in the ovens while everyone was at quarters. Michi had several bottles of wine opened and shoved them across the table at her guests, as if she expected the depressed company simply to swill them down.

  "I should like the tactical officer," she said, "to comment on this morning's experiment."

  The tactical officer. Triumph glimmered in Chandra's long eyes as she rose. "The attack was something I'd been worried about all along. I know that we were following standard Fleet doctrine for a squadron in enemy territory, but I wondered how useful that doctrine was in reality." She shrugged. "I guess we found out."

  She turned on the wall display and revealed that in her simulation she'd launched thirty missiles from Arkhan-Dohg, the next system after Osser.

  "It was possible to make a reasonable calculation of when we'd enter the Osser system. Since our course would be straight from Wormhole One to Wormhole Two, the missiles' track was obvious. Our course and acceleration could be checked by wormhole relay stations and any necessary corrections sent to the missiles en route. All the Naxids would need would be a targeting laser or a radar signal to give the missiles' own guidance systems last-second course corrections." She shrugged. "And if our course and speed are very predictable they won't need even that."

  "Obviously," Michi said, "we need to make our course and acceleration less predictable." She looked at the assembled officers. "My lords, if you have any other suggestions, please offer them now."

  "Keep the antimissile defenses powered at all times," Husayn said.

  "My lady," Chandra said, "I had thought we might keep our own targeting lasers sweeping dead ahead and between the squadron and any wormholes. If they pick up anything incoming, we might gain a few extra seconds."

  "Decoys," Martinez said. "Have a squadron of decoys flying ahead of us. The missiles mig
ht target them instead of us, particularly since they'll have only a few seconds to pick their targets."

  Decoys were missiles that could be fired from the squadron's ordinary missile tubes, but were configured to give as large a radar signature as a warship. They were less convincing the longer an observer had to view them, but with a relativistic missile having only a second or two to make up its mind, that was hardly a problem.

  Michi seemed dubious. "How large a cloud of decoys are we going to need?"

  Martinez tried to make a mental calculation and failed. "As many as it takes," he said finally.

  Michi turned to Chandra. "I want you to try all these tactics in simulation."

  "Yes, my lady."

  "Give me regular reports."

  "Of course, my lady." Chandra turned to at the others. "The danger signal will be entering a system where the radars are still operating, or where we're painted by a targeting laser from what will probably be a distant source. That's how we'll know we're running into danger."

  Ever since Chenforce had plunged into enemy space, the Naxids had been turning off all radars and other navigation aids in any system the loyalists had entered. Chandra was perfectly right to say that radar would be a danger signal.

  Michi poured a glass of amber wine and contemplated it while she tapped her fingers on the tabletop. "The best way to prevent this kind of attack is to blow up every wormhole station we come across," she said. "That way they can't relay course corrections to any incoming missiles. I'd hate to blow those stations; it's uncivilized. But to preserve my command I'll kill anything on the enemy side of the line if I have to."

  She reached out a hand and picked up her glass of wine.

  "Isn't anyone drinking but me?" she asked.

  Martinez poured himself a glass of wine and raised it in silent toast to Chandra.

  He thought she had just made herself too valuable to be blamed for Fletcher's death.

  Chandra and Martinez finally had their long-postponed dinner the following day. Even though Martinez thought it was probably no longer necessary, he instructed Alikhan not to leave them alone for too long a space of time.