Ryswyck

by L D Inman

  “Ryswyck,” Speir whispered.

  “Yes,” Barklay said. “I’ve been accused for twenty years of fanciful heroism. In fact I have been neither fanciful nor heroic. There’s nothing heroic about a last-gasp attempt to save one’s own life.”

  He heard Douglas let out a long sigh.

  “I am telling you these things,” he said, turning now fully to face them, “because you have been mixed up in something very nasty, and you need the context in order to navigate it. And because,” he admitted heavily, “I do not want you to think worse of me than you necessarily must.”

  A silence fell as he waited for their response…for their judgment. Finally Douglas said: “Sir. What was the target of this breach, do you think? A public scandal?”

  Barklay shook his head. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to leave it to Selkirk to interrogate Jarrow, I think. But it’s not the most likely outcome. Consider all the things that might have happened. Speir might have destroyed the file and told no one. She might have done what she did do, which was consult her immediate superior; but she might also have showed the file to him. It was always likely that the breach would be brought to my attention, in which case I could either suppress it and say nothing, or bring in my own superiors. And finally, Speir could have knowingly or unknowingly transmitted the file to the whole school. With all of Ryswyck in the breach, it would have leaked further very quickly. There would be an outcry both within and without, and very probably the school would have to be closed.”

  Both of them looked grim at this. Barklay went on, “At whatever level the leak was stopped, damage would have been done, both to me and to the Academy. You once advised me, Lieutenant Speir,” he said, “that I should take care not to let my enemies wind up in the same arena as Ryswyck. It was good advice; and I fear I have failed in the attempt to follow it.”

  “It appears that way, sir,” Speir said. Her tears had subsided, and she was very calm.

  “I should have taken more care,” Barklay mused; Douglas sighed again. A small sigh, but an eloquent one. “Yes, Douglas, you were right. I acknowledge it.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Douglas said, wryly. “What do you want us to do now?”

  Barklay thought. “Resume your duties quietly. Don’t encourage any rumors about Jarrow as this goes on—if you see an opportunity to deflect them, take it, but I don’t expect you’ll get many. Come to me if anything concerns you. If you need…medical counsel, I can arrange it for you.” He returned Speir’s look of understanding and added, “If you would rather seek it for yourself, you have leave to do so. There are plenty of counselors versed in security protocols, now.” Now.

  “Above all, keep your heads down. I’ll be damned,” he said with sudden warmth, “if I allow you to become collateral damage in this.”

  He watched them absorb this. “Yes, sir,” Speir said.

  “Was there anything else?” Barklay asked them. Tell me all is well. But of course not; all is ill.

  An unreadable look passed briefly between Speir and Douglas. “No, sir,” Douglas said.

  “Then you are dismissed,” Barklay said.

  ~*~

  They said nothing until they had passed some distance from Barklay’s office. Then Douglas turned to her. “My quarters?”

  She nodded, and he took her hand as they continued out into the cloister. When they reached Douglas’s quarters, they sank down together on his bench and did not move or speak. Douglas had turned on his desk lamp to get dressed at Speir’s summons; its glow was the only light in the deep early-morning darkness, shed impersonally over the disturbed covers on his bunk and the cravat dangling from his desk chair.

  Speir’s thoughts were still catching up to the event. She now had a clear image of what her father had suffered at Berenian hands; and, terrible as it was, it put a floor under her imagination, and clinically-white walls around it. She understood now the context of some of his more cryptic remarks; she knew why Barklay shared her sorrow at every mention of him; the wider ground of her life as an officer at Ryswyck was now not a murky mystery but starkly revealed.

  Context. The context was of great value to her, which was just as well, for it was also very costly.

  For a brief moment she felt a flash of anger at her father for keeping her in the dark—but no, this would have been classified, she thought. He couldn’t have told me. He couldn’t have told her, but he had tried in his way to prepare her—and I didn’t listen, she thought. It was ridiculous for her to be angry with him for abandoning her just at this moment, lost to the inexorable dementia of his disease—but here was a thing she ached to talk to him about, and he wasn’t here.

  She would have to navigate, as Barklay said, this thing by herself.

  Speir glanced over at Douglas beside her. His profile showed as impassive as ever—had she ever seen him truly unguarded?—but she sensed that he was deeply shaken. For one thing, he had not yet let go of her hand; his silence was so abstracted that she doubted he was aware he still clasped her.

  At the touch of her gaze he stirred and looked at her. “You all right?” he asked her quietly.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m all right.” And it was true: disturbed and distressed as she was, the knowledge as it settled seemed to clarify more with each moment.

  He tilted his head, as if to assess her truthfulness, and evidently concluded she was sincere, for then he released her gently and coiled his hands together over his knees. He had shapely, strong hands, marked with old scars and calluses from his youth working on farms; for the moment they looked oddly bereft, as if Douglas were quietly longing for a tool or a weapon. He glanced up at the clock. “Not long till the shift is over,” he said.

  “No. I expect Barklay will want the com tower soon; probably it’d be better for one of us to be up there than Glenna.”

  “I’ll take the remainder of your shift,” Douglas said. “You were going to take your sleep after, right?” She nodded. “Then you do that; I’ll take Glenna’s morning shift and give him my evening. And I’ll leave a note for Traga to cover the morning briefings.”

  “All right.” She got up slowly, and Douglas rose with her.

  At the door she paused to look at him. “Do you think Jarrow acted alone?” she said.

  His lips compressed. “Do you know anyone else who hates both Barklay and Ryswyck enough to do this?”

  Well, now it seemed that anything was possible; but she took his point.

  “Come find me when you get up,” Douglas said. “I’ll fill you in on what happens.”

  ~*~

  When Barklay went out to the com tower he found that Douglas had relieved Glenna from his watch at Speir’s post, and had taken over the com-deck himself. “I see you have anticipated me,” he said.

  “Credit Speir for this,” Douglas said. “She would have been here herself if I hadn’t sent her to get her sleep shift.”

  Douglas’s tone was not unfriendly, and yet Barklay could feel the detachment in his voice, the space between them like a troubled synapse. He put the thought away from him and asked, “How is she?”

  “She seems all right,” Douglas said, even more briefly.

  Barklay nodded. “If you will allow me to command the tower for a time, I would be obliged. I hope it will be brief, so stay within call, please.”

  “Yes, sir.” Douglas saluted him briskly and disappeared down the rattling lift. The silence he left behind him drew from Barklay a long sigh.

  Barklay had brought the offending tablet with him. He set it down on the desk and coded himself into the com-deck.

  The personal verbal code he presented to Selkirk’s office did not excite the secretary-gatekeeper, but it had the desired effect; within five minutes Selkirk came up on the projection, freshly-shaven and wary.

  “General Barklay,” he said, and waited, with an unspoken air of This better be good.

  “I am sorry to interrupt your early-morning routine, my lord,” Barklay said, with a nip of sarcasm. “Only I
thought you might wish to be made personally aware of a serious security breach that was perpetrated upon my students just a few moments ago.”

  “Oh? What sort of security breach?” Some lower-order commander hostile to Ryswyck would have daggered in a little comment on military discipline at Barklay’s school, here: Selkirk had no need to waste the time and breath.

  “The sort of security breach in which someone deliberately cuts the heading from a highly classified and incendiary report and buries it in the all-points weekly dispatch intended for the entire student body of the Academy.”

  Selkirk sat up straight and his eyes darkened. “What?”

  “Fortunately it was caught by one of my most competent and level-headed lieutenants and brought to my attention immediately. Otherwise you would be spending your next twelve hours very unpleasantly indeed. I can see the news-scrolls now.”

  “Do I have to ask which file?” Selkirk said, wincing.

  Of course he didn’t have to ask. All at once Barklay was furious. He said in a low voice, “Was this your doing, Alban? Was this your perfect revenge?”

  “You flatter yourself, Barklay.” Selkirk’s voice was cold but his eyes snapped with answering fire. “Betray national security and embarrass my mother’s name, just to count coup on you and your project?”

  “You sent me your handpicked cartographer, and not only does he not deny being the author of this attempt at sabotage, he acts utterly smug and safe into the bargain. Pardon me if I take a moment to reassess the honor of your intentions.”

  Selkirk drew his breath in an angry hiss, but he gave Barklay a serious answer. “This is not my doing. Where’s Jarrow now?”

  “I refrained from rolling him up in reinforced tape and tossing him into the inlet. He’s confined to his quarters. I request your instructions what to do with him from here.”

  “I want to speak to him. Does he still have a com-deck in his quarters?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Barklay said evenly.

  “Then put me through to him.”

  “Certainly, my lord. High security?”

  “The highest,” Selkirk said, very dry.

  Barklay understood both the request and its dryness: that he wanted to speak to Jarrow privately, and that he knew Barklay would eavesdrop anyway. Barklay coded the open line to ping Jarrow’s com-deck, blanked his own input channel, and split the projection.

  Somewhat to Barklay’s relief, Jarrow’s face soon appeared in his half of the projection. He was clearly expecting a call from Barklay, for his face was ready with a sneer that melted off into dismay when he saw Selkirk’s face instead.

  “Are you responsible for this security breach, Commander?” Barklay knew that tone of Selkirk’s voice: simple and utterly deadly.

  Jarrow said nothing, merely drew himself up palely.

  “Did you send that altered dispatch anywhere else?” Selkirk pressed.

  “No, my lord,” Jarrow said.

  Selkirk shut his eyes briefly. Then said: “Well, why not? If you were aiming to shame and sabotage the Ilonian forces—why not send it everywhere?”

  As a prick to make Jarrow speak it was effective: Jarrow’s color changed and he said, “I was aiming for no such thing, my lord. There’s only one man I wish to shame.”

  “Ah. I see. So the whole of Ilonian national security should go by the board for that.”

  “It would never have come to that, my lord,” Jarrow said. “Lieutenant Speir would be sure to have caught it. And evidently she did catch it.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the point of the exercise,” Selkirk said mildly. Another Selkirkian strategy, letting people hang themselves with their own rope, Barklay thought.

  Jarrow’s sharp brows lowered. “I wanted at least one student at this place to know who it is they’re following so blindly,” he said. “The longer we go without exposing him, the more lives are ruined.”

  For a moment Selkirk didn’t answer, and Jarrow seemed to realize just how grave an accusation he had laid at the Lord High Commander’s door. After a brief falter, his scowl firmed again.

  “You seem to have thought this out in some detail,” Selkirk said finally. “Was this your plan from the beginning?”

  Jarrow fidgeted for a moment and then said, “I didn’t know how bad it would be, when I arrived.”

  “I see,” Selkirk said. “So then when you realized the gravity of the situation you did what?”

  Jarrow didn’t answer.

  “How did you acquire that file and get it into the dispatch?” Bland and deadly.

  “I had the file in my possession,” Jarrow admitted, reluctantly. “I wanted to know the truth about my cousin’s court-martial.”

  “You used your security clearance to pull the file,” Selkirk interpreted this. “You’ve had that clearance for almost two years, Commander.”

  Barklay was momentarily distracted. Jarrow’s cousin…suddenly Barklay’s recognition re-limned itself. He knew why Jarrow looked and acted familiar. He knew why Jarrow hated him personally. The only man who had suffered punishment for Solham Fray was Jarrow’s family. And this wasn’t news to Selkirk. Barklay stifled a noise of rage. What did Selkirk think was going to happen, sending the family of a disgraced veteran to serve with the man who had been responsible for him?

  Selkirk and Jarrow were now discussing Jarrow’s alteration of his access records. Selkirk was visibly refraining from pinching the bridge of his nose. “And how did the file get into the dispatch, Jarrow?”

  “I…arranged to have the dispatch sent to me ahead of time, and the channel left open so I could route it back to the queue for Ryswyck One.”

  “Using the low-security code?” A tiny smile began to play at Selkirk’s lips; this was getting worse and worse.

  “I used my own code to send it back,” Jarrow said, defensively.

  “And the regular code for the queue. Of course. Who was your man in the comms office?”

  Jarrow didn’t want to answer this, but under Selkirk’s glare he was forced to bring it out. “I asked Ensign Bright to go into the comms office with an excuse.” A long silence. “He didn’t know anything about it! I only told him I wanted to see the dispatch before anyone else at Ryswyck, and to control its position in the queue. He didn’t look at the dispatch himself—all he had to do was open the channel and watch it till I’d finished.”

  “How do you know he didn’t look at that altered dispatch, Commander?” Selkirk said. His voice had gone quiet with rage. “How do you know that nobody but the lieutenant on duty at Ryswyck One has seen it?” Jarrow prudently didn’t answer. “Do you realize how many people I’m going to have to interview and possibly demote because of that unsecure transmission? Did Ensign Bright know you were steering him straight into court-martial?”

  Jarrow went shocky-pale. “You don’t have to court-martial Bright, my lord. It’s truly not necessary. I never told him what I was doing. I swear he knew nothing of it!”

  “You swear,” Selkirk said. “You would like me to refrain from arresting your assistant, on your word. On the word of a man who openly admits to stealing classified information and transmitting it over air. You hadn’t thought about that, had you. Dear wisdom save me from the cleverness of fools!”

  “My lord, please.” Jarrow licked his lips and heaved a shaky breath. “I am the only one to blame for this. Let the punishment fall on me alone.”

  Selkirk’s gaze leveled. “You sacrificed your own career, and risked the careers of at least three others, just so you could expose General Barklay to one student. Why Lieutenant Speir, Jarrow?”

  “It wasn’t Speir I was aiming for, my lord. It was her superior in the duty rota. Lieutenant Douglas.”

  “All right, then. Why Douglas?”

  “He said…he said he didn’t know of anything for which Barklay deserved disgrace. I find that hard to believe, close to him as he is—but—”

  “All of this,” Selkirk said flatly, “all of it—throwing away the car
eers of good soldiers, jeopardizing the operations I trusted you to work on—is because you are galled that one of Barklay’s favorites is inclined to defend him.”

  “Nobody need lose their career but me,” Jarrow insisted.

  “Is that your decision to make, Commander?”

  “No! But I am asking. I’ll beg if I have to—”

  In fact, Barklay thought, you would bear the whole fault. A chasm so thin, between Jarrow and courtesy. And so deep. He gripped the desk, breathing down his anger.

  “And what,” Selkirk said, finally losing his composure, “am I to tell your comrades when you’re sent for closed court-martial, yourself? Lights above, Jarrow! Of all the stupid things to do. People were depending on you. I was depending on you. And you refused to trust me, and did this instead. Did you think about anything besides your own outrage?”

  “I’m not the only one wasting soldiers here at Ryswyck, my lord,” Jarrow said, his face working.

  “And your answer for that is treason.”

  “No, my lord!”

  “Jarrow, just what charge do you think it’s going to be?”

  “It doesn’t have to—You can avoid a court-martial, my lord.” Jarrow drew another hardy breath. “If I carry out the sentence myself.”

  Wearily, Selkirk rubbed his broad forehead. “We will finish this conversation,” he said finally, “in person. I am sending someone to pick you up and bring you back here, where we will have a full and free discussion. You will stay in your quarters till then, and if you really want the blowback to fall only on you, you will not do anything before we speak again. Am I understood, Commander?”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Jarrow, shakily.

  “Selkirk out.” But Selkirk did not actually cut the connection; he simply waited for Barklay to reappear. As soon as he saw Barklay’s face they both drew breath. Selkirk got there first.