Here he paused as if inviting her to comment, but Kris sat still, holding to her bland expression.
After a lapse of some seconds, Hoste finished his introduction. “I shall not be present, but it has been decided that, in view of the exceptional nature of this meeting, Commander Buthelezi may remain in the character of an advocate, should you wish it. Do you wish it?”
“No, sir,” Kris answered, a shade mechanically. “I’m fine—that is, I don’t think that’s necessary.”
The Commandant looked as though he’d expected that response and rose from behind his deck. “In that case, Gentlemen, Cadet—the commander and I shall retire. Please take whatever time you need. Good day.”
A chorus of low-voiced replies wished the Commandant Good day in turn, and as he stepped out, Commander Buthelezi followed, giving Kris a look that might have been simple encouragement or license to ‘Give ‘em hell,’ or something of both. As the door closed, the tenor in the room changed, at once less stiff but somehow more awkward.
Commander Tilletson, now the senior party present, turned to Matheson and invited him to open the proceedings. Matheson, folding his hands in front of him, shifted forward in his chair and began by saying that they had a few ‘simple and straightforward’ questions for her. Then he talked for the better part of five minutes: a jumbled discourse full of clauses, qualifiers and interlocking parentheses that didn’t always come out. Kris was in no shape to follow it all, and his peculiar delivery, punctuated by occasionally twitching his elbows, was distracting to say the least, but it was clear that he was laboring under the impression that slavers were organized into some sort of hierarchy or could, at a minimum, be assigned to tidy little boxes that were related to each other in equally tidy ways. He seemed to think she could explain all this and tell them which of these boxes (and their supposed occupants) were of potential interest, from an intelligence standpoint, and how to go about identifying them. When he finished, he sat there with his hands still neatly folded and looked at her expectantly with that narrow rabbity smile.
“I’m afraid I don’t really get what you’re asking, sir,” Kris replied in a halting voice.
Huron looked across at Matheson, who seemed to be struggling with the notion that his ‘simple and straightforward’ questions had turned out to be neither. Commander Tilletson had withdrawn into a look of studied vacuity, so Huron finally said, “Ms. Kennakris, perhaps you could expand on what it is that we failed to make clear?”
“Expand, sir?” Kris looked beseechingly at Huron, hoping he was throwing her a rope, not a noose. They’d always been friendly before—almost always, anyway—but that was back on Nedaema. She hadn’t been a cadet then, and while she liked Rafe Huron pretty well (when he wasn’t making her nuts), Lieutenant Commander Huron was someone she’d just met.
Maybe he had some sense of that too, because he smiled with a hint of his old warmth and said, “Just tell us what you’re thinking.”
“Okay, sir.” That seemed a tall order, but Kris drew a breath and launched into it. “You see, sir, it all depends. Everyone does things their own way—you gotta know who you’re dealing with. Um . . .”
Huron nodded encouragement.
“Well—take the big Bannerman syndicates. They like to keep things in-house. They’ve got their own fleets, their own captains, crews they hire permanently. And of course, they have Feds on their side, so they don’t need havens or bundlers or sutlers—”
“Excuse me, Ms. Kennakris,” Matheson broke in. “Sutlers?”
“Ah . . . victualers? Y’know—food? O2? And stuff,” Kris offered with a nervous twist of her lips while Huron scowled at him.
“Yes, of course,” Matheson mumbled, and Kris groped for her lost thread. “Anyway, they don’t need any of that. They move their trade along all their own vectors, and they have their regular customers and territories and they don’t poach a lot. Y’see?”
Whether they did or not, the three men nodded.
“But then you’ve got the Tyrsenians—they don’t deal much. They take for themselves. I mean, if they have overstock they’ll wholesale it, and sometimes the clans will gang up for a spec raid, but that’s pretty rare, I think—these days. Um . . . except the Lemnos clans. They deal, at least . . .”
Here Kris faltered, afraid she was about to overreach what she actually knew. Like the Bannermans, the Tyrsenian Alliance was a remnant of the slave federations that had grown up in the chaos that followed the Formation Wars. They were much more loosely organized, however, lacking a central government and instead mostly just collaborating to form raiding fleets that operated out of their core systems of Lemnos, Abydos and Tiryns. She knew about the Lemnos clans because Trench dealt with them a lot—he’d enjoyed excellent relations with several of the clan leaders. It cut his margins quite a bit, but it was a lot less risky and it sped up fulfillment too, so it was worth it. But that wasn’t to say other captains didn’t have similar arrangements with some of the Abydos clans—probably not the Tiryns chiefs, though. They didn’t get along with anybody . . .
“And, um—” Kris blinked, trying to recover gist of the point she’d been about make. “They’re Grade-A muscle too, so they get a lot of play for—um, special . . . ops. Stuff like that.” It was a lame finish to her point and she glanced at her audience anxiously.
“So . . .” Matheson began in a careful voice. “The Tyrsenians. Who is it they wholesale to? Not the Bannermans, if I understood correctly.”
“No, sir,” Kris said, embarrassed at the gaping hole she’d left. “The freelancers. The Andaman guilds all deal with freelancers.”
That caused a visible stir, and Matheson actually held up a hand to interrupt her again. “Ms. Kennakris, you’re saying that the Sultanate actually has slaver guilds?”
“Sure. I mean, yes. Sir.” As if the CID man had just questioned the law of gravity.
“And you are entirely confident—that is, there can be no mistake.”
Kris blinked. “No, sir. They—ah . . . I mean, the guilds are all based on Nicobar and they don’t deal out of there. Their trade mostly goes through Winnecke IV—the Emir’s people handle it—”
“The Emir of Ivoria,” Matheson clarified.
“That’s right, sir. But what I was saying is that they don’t deal local. They’ve got factors in most of the major ports. Y’know—Solon, Pyramus. Mantua and Cathcar in the Hydra, of course. They even had guild reps in Little North Bear for a while. They’re not big lot buyers. They mostly deal in paid picks and special—ah . . . special talents. What freelancers handle. It gives ‘em ploz—um—” Dammit! What was that phrase Trench liked to use?
“Plausible deniability?” Huron suggested helpfully.
“Yes, sir. That’s it. Plausible deniability. Since they don’t have official Fed cover or anything.”
“Quite,” Matheson murmured. He seemed to be wrestling with Kris’s infodump. Admittedly, it was a lot to wrestle with. Then louder: “So, you are saying this is a very large, complex, even organic or one might say ad hoc . . . society?”
Kris had no firm idea what ad hoc meant but it seemed clear from context. She nodded agreeably. “Yes, sir. But you gotta understand I’m only talking about top-rail captains here—the guys who swing heavy. There are tons of bottom-feeders too—they’ll deal with anybody.”
“I see.”
Kris wasn’t at all sure that Matheson did. For one thing, she was acutely aware of ignoring Halith entirely. She knew that a lot of Halith colonial labor—what they called guest labor—was really slave labor, but since Trench never dealt directly with Halith buyers (no freelancer could handle the volumes they needed), she knew next to nothing about them. For another thing, he seemed to be missing the point. Their lack of comprehension of some of the most basic things about slavers confused and puzzled her—Hoste had introduced Matheson as an intel type. Weren’t they supposed to have a read on all sorts of spooky shit?
She backed up and tried again. “But the thing
is, say you net some guy. Unless you drop on a Bannerman boat, how you gonna know if he’s top-rail or not? They pretty much all smell the same.”
Something like a collective sigh went through the room and Matheson looked appealingly at Huron. Tilletson continued to do an excellent impression of a nonentity. Kris couldn’t figure out why he was here—or Matheson, for that matter. Only Huron seemed to not have his head up his ass. She hungered to know what this was really all about; her guess about Mankho seemed to be wide of the mark.
Huron made no response to the appeal and Matheson scratched his ear. “Yes. Most enlightening, Ms. Kennakris. You clearly know a great deal about the subject.” He folded his hands again, looking studious. “Tell me: what would be your assessment—or rather let me say, were we to interview other, ah, detainees, would they be able to provide a similar level of insight into, shall we say, issues of interest?”
The question took Kris squarely aback. “Oh hel—um, sorry. No, sir.”
“No?” Matheson ridged his narrow forehead.
“No, sir. Transportees don’t know anything. They’re on the holding deck all the time or in pens or they get stashed in a haven if there’s problems with the delivery or a deal gets 86’d. And they’re only around for a couple of months—three, maybe four at the outside. Slavers don’t hold stock. Costs too much.”
“But you yourself—”
“I mean, if you wanted to get anything useful,” Kris interrupted out of exasperation, “you’d have to talk to the goldfish. But goldfish don’t talk.”
It was profoundly true that goldfish, in the sense of Asian carp, Carassius auratus, were absolutely speechless, as the three men in the room readily acknowledged. What Kris was alluding to, however, they found particularly obscure. Matheson again appealed mutely to Huron, who accepted the invitation this time.
“We don’t quite grasp what is meant by goldfish, I’m afraid.”
Huron’s comment brought home to Kris just how liberal she’d been with slaver jargon and her cheeks flamed. “I’m—I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to—”
“No worries. Just, if you could—”
“Yes, sir.” Kris took another calming breath. “Goldfish is what they call long-term slaves. Ones that have been held for two, three years or more. It’s cuz, well . . . once you’ve been in a goldfish bowl long enough, you’re not really good for much else.”
Huron tensed his jaw and even Commander Tilletson was startled out of his vacant expression.
“And that’s why they won’t talk,” Huron said.
“That’s right, sir. That is, not normally.”
The three men shared a significant look. “Thank you, Ms. Kennakris,” Huron said after a pause Kris found profoundly uncomfortable. “That concludes our questions, for the time being. Would you be willing to wait outside for a few minutes?”
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
She stood up. Huron stood up as well and conducted her to the door, which he opened for her. “This shouldn’t take long, but if you’d rather, feel free to wait in the canteen. It’s just around that corner and down the hall to the right.”
“Thank you, sir.” And saluted—in spite of herself.
He smiled, an oddly tight expression, and acknowledged her salute, and the door closed behind her with a decided click.
“The Andamans have slaver guilds?” Matheson said as the door latched. “Seems scarcely believable. We have evidence of their involvement, of course—nothing actionable—but guilds?”
“Goldfish?” muttered Commander Tilletson. “Good lord.”
“If half of what she says is credible—” Matheson continued.
“I don’t think there’s any question about that,” Huron cut him off.
“But where does that leave us?” Tilletson demanded. “We’ve never interrogated slavers, and from what she just told us, that’s a fine thing—their value as exploitable assets is damn near nil.”
“I don’t think that was quite the point she was making, sir,” Huron demurred, more willing to be polite to a senior naval officer than to a middle manager from CID.
“We still lack a reliable means of triage,” Tilletson complained. “And we can’t haul every one of them we sweep up back here for interrogation—that would take months.”
“I don’t suppose the cadet could provide a matrix of indicators, or something,” Matheson suggested.
Both Huron and Tilletson glared at him.
The commander turned back to Huron. “I don’t know what to make of this. Seemed like an innovative approach, but we just don’t have the proper assets.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that, sir,” Huron countered. “We appear to have one.”
“You mean Cadet Kennakris?” Matheson broke in. “She’s a cadet. She can’t serve on active duty.”
“She could be rated midshipman.”
“We haven’t rated a midshipman in over twenty years,” Commander Tilletson added, frankly dubious. “She’s not even an upperclassman.”
Huron failed to see the relevance for either of those observations. “She does have extensive, detailed and personal knowledge, sir. She’s capable of performing triage and she may have additional insights we’re not yet aware of.”
“Would she even consent?” Matheson asked with a peevish frown; that doubled-barreled glare was still stinging. “It’s highly irregular. She’s not under orders. And she’s . . . quite young.”
Huron ruthlessly suppressed a scathing retort. “If we want the answer to that,” he said more calmly than he felt, “I suppose we’d have to ask her.”
Commander Tilletson made a discontented huffing sound. “Well, if you can convince the Admiral to rate her midshipman, you’ve got my blessing. But what to make of all this, I’m sure I don’t know.”
“It’s highly irregular,” Matheson reiterated. “I can’t see a role for CID in this.”
Thank god, Huron thought with a great inward sigh of relief.
“Of course, if anything actionable should turn up—”
You’ll be happy to share the credit.
“Keep my office advised,” Matheson finished.
“Then are we concluded here, gentlemen?” Commander Tilletson looked from one to the other.
Huron nodded.
“I have nothing to add,” Matheson said, sealing a folio and standing.
Now that’s an understatement. But Huron just smiled as he got to his feet.
Huron found Kris not in the canteen but outside it, a few meters farther up the hall. She was leaning against the wall, looking grim and tapping the heel of her boot against the beige plasticrete surface. On entering the canteen, she’d been hit with a vinegary smell, slightly sweet, and while it was not strong, her stomach gave a dangerous lurch and she beat a hasty retreat upwind. The pangs of nausea had soured her mood as well as her stomach, and her glance was less than friendly as Huron approached.
“Immunocytes?” He recognized the look and the general demeanor.
Kris dropped her eyes back to the floor with a slow, careful nod.
“Landed me flat on my ass for a week when I got my first implants,” he commented offhandedly. Pausing as he passed the canteen’s entrance, he caught a whiff of three-bean salad—probably the last aroma someone in Kris’s state would want to encounter. “How are you doing?”
Kris covered a watery belch with her hand. “M’Okay.”
“Right.” He glanced up and down the corridor. “Let’s find another venue, shall we?”
“Sure.”
The other venue presented itself around two corners and down an anonymous stretch of hallway, next to what appeared to be a utility access panel. It was a blank metal door glazed to match the walls and innocent of knobs, locks, handles or any markings but an ‘L34’ deeply embossed in the middle. Huron regarded it with satisfaction.
“This’ll do.”
He took out a set of card keys and applied them to the right-hand side of the door where a lock would be expecte
d to be until, with a hydraulic-sounding hiss, the door popped out about a centimeter.
“Handy things to have,” Huron remarked as he levered the door open and the interior lights came on. “After you.”
“You’re kidding.” Alane Hotchkiss pulled her head back behind the corner. “That’s just not right.”
“You believe me now?” Minx asked, sweetly triumphant.
“Not if I hadn’t seen it.” Hotchkiss took out her wallet. “Twenty-five?”
“And dinner.”
“Nyoutaisushi again?” Stroking the money into Minx’s account with a mild scowl.
“I’ll let you pick.” Minx gave her girlfriend a strategic squeeze. “We can save sushi for later.”
“So,” Huron said, settling comfortably on a pallet of cleaning supplies, “I expect you’re experiencing nine kinds of what the hell? just about now.”
“Sorta.” Kris was sitting on what she took to be a big coil of fiber-optic cable. The rest of the cramped space was untidily stuffed with drums and some bales wrapped in black plastic and shelves with random parts strewn on them, tools she could not identify and a trio of wicked-looking cleaners crammed into a corner. She assumed they were deactivated.
“The song and dance was necessary, I’m afraid. Ritual is important, as I’m sure you’ve figured out.”
“Uh huh. Who were those guys, anyway?”
“You might call them the Gods of the Copybook Headings. They’re useful and even necessary but they can still be a pain in the ass. You have to throw them a bone now and then, and sometimes you have to take them with a grain of salt, too.”
“Uh huh.” Kris had a feeling that was all the answer she was going to get. “So . . . ah—”
“Why are we sitting here in the maintenance locker?”
“Yeah.”
“Because your previous contributions have not been forgotten, and the Admiral—and a select group of others—thinks it might be time for an encore.”
“You mean the Inner Trifid thing?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
Kris rubbed the spot on her temple that was starting to ache again. “So this op you guys wanna pull off in the Hydra—you’re looking for something like that? I don’t know the Hydra.”
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