Logs (dread empire's fall)

by Walter Jon Williams

  "I'll need your tunic, belt, shoes, and your lieutenant's key," Martinez said when he came to the brig. "Empty your pockets here, on the table." He had been Military Constabulary Officer on the Corona, and he knew the drill.

  The stainless steel table rang as Phillips emptied his pockets. He rolled an elastic off his wrist, one that had his lieutenant's key on it, and handed that to Martinez.

  The sense that this was all a horrible mistake continued to hang over Martinez' head like a dense grey cloud. He couldn't imagine shy, tiny Phillips committing a crime as serious as stealing a candy bar, let alone killing his captain.

  But it had been Martinez' idea that the deaths were cult related, and that cult symbols would mark the killers. He had begun this. Now Fate would finish it.

  "All your jewelry, please," Martinez said.

  Phillips took off his academy ring with some effort, then opened his tunic and reached for the chain with both hands. He looked at Martinez.

  "May I ask what this is about?"

  "Two people wearing that medallion have died," Martinez said.

  Phillips gaped at him. "Two?" he said.

  Martinez' sleeve comm chimed. Martinez answered and saw Marsden's frozen face resolve on his sleeve's chameleon weave.

  "The lady squadcom was wondering where you went," he said.

  "I'm in the brig, and I'm about to report to her. Have there been any developments?"

  "None. We're about to finish here."

  "Tell Lady Michi that I'll be right there."

  Martinez ended the conversation, and looked at Phillips to see bewilderment still on his face.

  "I don't understand," Phillips said.

  "Your jewelry, lieutenant."

  Phillips slowly took the chain from around his neck and handed it to Martinez. Martinez issued him a pair of the soft slippers worn by prisoners and showed him to his narrow cell. The metal-walls were covered with many thick layers of green paint, and the single light was in a cage overhead. The room was almost filled with the toilet, the small sink, and the acceleration couch used for a bed.

  Martinez closed the heavy hatch with its spy hole and told Espinosa to remain on guard. He put the ayaca pendant in a clear plastic evidence box and returned to the petty officers' quarters. The cabins had all been searched, and the search party had gone on to the body search, women searching women in the petty officers' mess while men searched men in the corridor.

  Nothing was found. Martinez approached Michi and handed her the box with the ayaca pendant inside. She looked up at him in silent query.

  "Lord Phillips," he said.

  At first Michi was surprised, and then her expression hardened. "Too bad Fletcher didn't get him first," she said.

  Michi's expression didn't soften throughout the rest of the search, and Martinez could tell she was thinking hard, particularly after the search of the enlisted, and those on duty in Command and Engine Control, produced no cult symbols, no murder weapons, and no suspects.

  "Page Doctor Xi to the brig," Michi told her sleeve display. She looked up at Martinez. "Time to interrogate Phillips," she said.

  "I don't think he killed Fletcher," Martinez said.

  "I don't, either, but he knows who did. He knows who the other members of the cult are." Her lips drew back from her teeth in a kind of snarl. "I'm going to have the lord doctor use truth drugs to get those names out of him."

  Martinez suppressed a shiver. "Truth drugs don't always produce the truth," he said. "They lower a person's defenses, but they can confuse a prisoner as well. Phillips could just babble names at random for all we know."

  "I'll know," Michi said. "Maybe not this first interrogation, but we'll keep up the interrogations day after day, and in the end I'll know. The truth always comes out in the end."

  "Let's hope so," Martinez said.

  "Get Corbigny here as well. I'll take her to the brig with me. You and-" With a look at Marsden. "-your secretary can get back to running the ship."

  Martinez was startled. "I-" he began. "Phillips is my officer, and-"

  I want to watch as you use chemicals to strip away his dignity and his every last secret. Because it's my fault you're putting him through this.

  "He's not your officer any more," Michi said flatly. "He's a walking dead man. And frankly I don't think he's going to welcome your presence." She looked at him, and her look softened. "You have a ship to run, captain."

  "Yes, my lady." Martinez braced.

  He and Marsden spent the rest of the day in his office dealing with the minutiae of command. Marsden was silent and hostile, and Martinez' mind kept running into blind alleys instead of concentrating on his work.

  He supped alone, drank half a bottle of wine, and went in search of the doctor.

  As he approached the pharmacy he encountered Lady Juliette Corbigny leaving. She was pale and her eyes were wider than ever.

  "Beg pardon, lord captain," she said, and sped away, almost in flight. Martinez looked after her, then walked into the pharmacy, where he found Xi slumped over a table, his chin on one fist as he contemplated a beaker half-filled with a clear liquid. The sharp scent of grain alcohol was heavy on his breath.

  "I'm afraid Lieutenant Corbigny isn't well," Xi said. "I had to give her something to settle her tummy. Part way into the interrogation she threw up all over the floor." He raised the beaker and looked at it solemnly. "I fear she isn't cut out for police work."

  Savage, pointless anger roiled in Martinez. "Did anything go well?" he asked.

  "The interrogation wasn't a success, particularly," Xi said. "Phillips said he hadn't killed the captain, and didn't know who did. He said he doesn't belong to a cult. He said the ayaca pendant was given to him by his sweet old nurse when he was a child, and by the way the story can't be confirmed because she's dead. He said he had no idea that the ayaca had any significance other than being a pretty tree that a lot of people put in their gardens."

  Xi slumped over his table, and took a drink from the beaker.

  "When the drug hit him he kept to his story until his mind got the addles, and then he started to chant. Garcia and the squadcom and Corbigny, when she wasn't spewing, tried to keep him on the subject of the captain's death, but he kept going back to the same chant. Or maybe there were different chants. It was hard to tell."

  "What was he chanting?"

  "I don't know. It was in some old language that nobody recognized, but we heard the word Narayanguru all right, so it's a cult ritual language and when the Investigative Service hears the recording they'll find someone to identify it, and that will be the end of Lord Phillips, and if the IS is on speaking terms with the Legion that week and passes the information, the Legion will probably arrest half the Phillips clan and that will be the end of them, because the Legion have many more methods of interrogation than are available to us here, and doctors who are far more bad than I am, and who are very proud that their confession rate is nearly one hundred percent." He looked at the beaker again, and then raised his head to look at Martinez.

  "Captain, I have been remiss. I am a bad doctor and a bad host. Will you share my beverage of consolation?"

  "No thanks, I've had enough already. And you're going to have a hell of a hangover."

  Xi gave a weary grin. "No, I'm not. A dose of this, a dose of that, and I will rise a new man." His face fell. "And then the squadcom will turn me into a bad doctor again, and have me shoot chemicals into the carotid of a harmless little man who didn't hurt anybody, if you ask me-which nobody did-but who's going to die anyway, and I wish I'd kept my damn mouth shut about the captain's injuries." He poured more alcohol into his beaker. "I thought I was going to be a brilliant detective, tracking clues like the police in the videos, and instead I find myself involved in something soiled and disgusting and sordid, and frankly I wish I could throw up like Corbigny."

  "Keep this up and you will," Martinez said.

  "I shall do my best," Xi said, and raised his glass. "Bottoms up."

&nbs
p; The taste of defeat soured Martinez' tongue. As he left the pharmacy, he swore that the next time he had a brainstorm, he'd keep it to himself.

  A call from Garcia brought Martinez out of bed and running to the brig while still buttoning his undress tunic over his pajamas. "There was a guard here all night, lord captain," Garcia said in a rapid voice as soon as Martinez entered the room. "There's no way anyone could have got to him."

  Martinez walked to Lord Phillips' cell and looked inside and wished he hadn't.

  Sometime over the course of the night Phillips had torn open the acceleration couch that served as his bed, pulled out fistfuls of the foam padding, and then filled his mouth with the foam and kept packing it in until he choked.

  Choked to death. Phillips was half off the couch and his mouth was still full of foam and his face was black. His eyes were open and gazed overhead at the light in its cage. Bits of the foam floated over the room like motes of dust.

  Doctor Xi knelt by him. He eyes were red-rimmed and his hands trembled as he made a cursory examination.

  "He knew he'd crack," Michi said after she arrived. "He knew he'd give us the names sooner or later. He decided to die first to protect his friends." She shook her head. "I wouldn't have thought he had the nerve for it."

  Martinez turned to her, rage poised on his tongue, and then he turned away.

  "We're still no better off than we were!" Michi cried, and slammed her fist into the metal door.

  Later that morning Martinez conducted vicious, mean-spirited inspections of Missile Battery One and the riggers' stores, but it didn't make him feel any better.

  "General quarters! General quarters! This is not a drill!"

  From the panic that clawed at the amplified voice of Cadet Qing, Martinez knew this wasn't a drill from the first word. By the time the message began to repeat he had already vaulted clean over his desk and was sprinting for the companion that led to Command, leaving Marsden sitting in his chair staring after him.

  Martinez sprang for the companion just as the gravity went away. The distant engine rumble ceased, leaving the corridor silent except for the sound of Martinez' heart, which was thundering louder than the general quarters alarm. Martinez had no weight but he still had plenty of inertia, and he hit the companion with knees and elbows. Pain rocketed through his limbs despite the padding on the stair risers. He bounced away from the companion like an oversized rubber eraser, but he managed to check his momentum with a grab to the rail.

  His feet began to swing out into the corridor, and that meant Illustrious was changing its heading. He had to get up the companion and into Command before the engines fired again. His big hand tightened on the rail and he began to swing himself back to the steep stair so that he could kick off and jump to the next deck.

  No good. The engines fired without warning and suddenly Martinez had weight again. His arm couldn't support his entire mass and folded under him, and the rail caught him a stunning blow across the shoulder. He flopped onto his back on the stair. Risers sliced into his back.

  Martinez tried to rise but the gravities were already beginning to pile on. (Two gravities. Three…) Pain lanced through his wrist as he seized the rail to try to haul himself upright. The stair risers were cutting into him like knives. (Four gravities at least…) He gasped for breath. Eventually Martinez realized he wasn't going to be able to climb.

  He realized other things as well. He was on a hard surface. He hadn't taken any of the drugs that would help him survive heavy gravity. He could die if he didn't get off this companion, cut by the stairs like cheese by a slicer.

  A sort of crabbing motion of his arms and legs brought him bumping down the stairs, each step a club to his back and mastoid, but once his buttocks thumped on the deck it was harder to move, and the risers were still digging into his spine. (Five gravities…) His vision was beginning to go dark.

  Martinez crabbed with his arms and legs and managed to thump down another stair. Comets flared in his skull as his head hit the tread. He clenched his jaw muscles to force blood to his brain and dropped down another step.

  It was Chandra's nightmare, he realized. Relativistic missiles were inbound and he needed to get to Command. It would be the height of stupidity to die here, vaporized by a missile or with his neck broken by the sharp edge of a stair.

  Martinez thumped down another stair, and that left only his head still on the companion, tilted at an angle that cramped his windpipe and strained his spine. (Six gravities…) His vision was totally gone. He couldn't seem to breathe. Without the drugs Terrans could only rarely stay conscious past six and a half gravities. He had to get off the stair or his neck was going to be broken by the weight of his head.

  With a frantic effort he tried to roll, his palms and heels fighting for traction against the tile, fighting the dead weight that was pinning him like a silver needle pinning an insect to corkboard. Vertigo swam through his skull. He fought to bring air into his lungs. He gave a heave, every muscle in his body straining.

  With a crack his head fell off the stair and banged onto the tile. Despite the pain and the stars that shot through the blackness of his vision he felt a surge of triumph.

  Gravity increased. Martinez fought for consciousness.

  And lost.

  When Martinez woke he saw before him a window, and beyond the window was a green countryside. Two ladies in transparent gowns gazed at the poised figure of a nearly naked man who seemed to be hovering in a startlingly blue sky. Above the man flew a superior-looking eagle, and on the grass below the two ladies were a pair of animals, a dog and a small furry creature with long ears, both of whom seemed to find the floating man interesting.

  It occurred to Martinez that the man in the sky wasn't alone, that he, Martinez, was also floating.

  His heart was going like a triphammer. Sharp pains shot through his head and body. He blinked and wiped sweat from the sockets of his eyes.

  The man still floated before him, serene and eerily calm, as if he floated every day.

  It was only gradually that Martinez realized that he was looking at a piece of artifice, at one of the trompe l'oeil paintings that Montemar Jukes had placed at intervals in Illustrious' corridors.

  The engines had shut down again. Now weightless, Martinez had drifted gently from the deck to a place before the painting.

  He gave a start and looked frantically in all directions. The companion leading to Command was two body-lengths away. So far as he knew the emergency, the battle or whatever it was, had not ended.

  He swam with his arms to reorient himself, and kicked with one foot at the floating man to shoot himself across the corridor. Striking the wall he absorbed momentum with his arms-pain shot through his right wrist-and then he did a kind of handspring in the direction of the companion.

  He struck the companionway feet-first and folded into a crouch, which enabled him to spring again, this time through the hatch atop the companion.

  From there it was a short distance to the heavy hatch to Command. The door was armored against blast and radiation and would have been locked down at the beginning of the emergency. Martinez hovered before the hatch, his left hand clutching at the hand grip inset into the door frame, his right stabbing at the comm panel.

  "This is the captain!" he said. "Open the door!"

  "Stand by," came Mersenne's voice.

  Stand by? Martinez was outraged. Who did the fourth lieutenant think Martinez was, some snotty cadet?

  "Let me into Command!" Martinez barked.

  "Stand by." The irritating words were spoken in an abstract tone, as if Mersenne had many more important things on his mind than obeying his captain's orders.

  Well, Martinez thought, perhaps he did. Perhaps the emergency was occupying his full attention.

  But how much attention did it take to open a damn hatch?

  Martinez ground his teeth while he waited, fist clamped white-knuckled around the hand grip. Lieutenant Husayn floated up the companion and joined him. Blood
floated in perfect round spheres from Husayn's nose, some of them catching on his little mustache; and there was a cut on his lip.

  There hadn't been the regulation warning tone sounded for high gee-or for no gee, for that matter. Probably there hadn't been time to give the order. Martinez wondered how many injuries Doctor Xi was coping with.

  With a soft hiss, the door slid open after Martinez had been waiting nearly a minute. He heaved on the hand grip and gave himself impetus for the command cage.

  "I have command!" he shouted.

  "Captain Martinez has command!" Mersenne agreed. He sounded relieved. He was already drifting free of the command cage, heading toward his usual station at the engines display.

  Martinez glanced around the room as he floated toward his acceleration cage. The watch were staring at their displays as if each expected something with claws to come bounding out of them.

  "Missile attack, my lord," Mersenne said. as he caught his acceleration cage. The cage swung with him, and he jacknifed, then inserted his feet and legs inside. "At least thirty. I'm sorry I didn't let you into Command, but I didn't want to unseal the door until I was certain the missiles had all been dealt with-didn't want to irradiate the entire command crew."

  It grated, but Martinez had to admit Mersenne was right.

  "Any losses?" Martinez asked.

  "No, my lord." Mersenne floated to a couch next to the warrant officer who had been handling the engines board, then webbed himself in and locked the engine displays in front of him. "We starburst as soon as we saw the missiles incoming, but when we hit eight gravities when there was an engine trip."

  Martinez, in the act of webbing himself onto his couch, stopped and stared.

  "Engine trip?" he said.

  "Number one engine. Automated safety procedures tripped the other two before I could override them. I'll try to get engines two and three back online, and then work out what happened to engine one."

  So now Martinez knew why he'd suddenly found himself floating. The engines had quit, apparently on their own, and in the middle of a battle.