by Sales, Ian
At this point in the proceedings, the Judge Advocate would normally allow the court—his four companions on the bench—to confer and determine innocence or guilt. Instead, Grubasz immediately began the sentencing: “Your present rank is forfeit, and you will lose all privileges and responsibilities associated with it and dependent upon it. You will be entered on the Navy Lists at the rank of lieutenant, with no time served, and a record of this proceeding will be entered permanently into your record. Further, you will be assigned to the frigate Tinapon Archipelago, ordered to depart for the Boundary Fleet as soon as she has finished reprovisioning.”
This was not justice. Rinharte’s guilt had already been decided. Not, she had to admit, that she could have claimed innocence. She had indeed mutinied and had known the consequences when she did so. But some small part of her had hoped the Admiral would protect the officers of her fleet.
All those naval officers, many of them among the best in the Imperial Navy. The Boundary Fleet was going to be significantly over-strength and over-staffed for many years to come. Most of the Admiral’s ships, she imagined, would be attached directly to the fleet. Empress Glorina could not be—she had no captain and whoever took over her would not want the Admiral’s crew.
“You are dismissed,” said Grubasz. He sat back heavily.
Rinharte felt a surge of hatred for the man. She despised him; she despised his florid features, his corpulence, his tremulous lips, his wet eyes, the thin powdered hair which had escaped from beneath his wig of office, his fat fingers and hairy wrists. She loathed the Judge Advocate as she had loathed no other man and she felt soiled for doing so.
She carefully placed her kepi on her head and positioned the bill at the regulation angle. She knew she was doing a poor job of hiding her contempt and she knew too that it would go on her record. While Grubasz remained a Lord of the Admiralty, Rinharte’s career was effectively stalled. She spun about and marched from the courtroom.
If she could have done so legally, she would have called him out. Even with her middling swordsmanship, she could defeat that fat reptile. The exertion of meeting her attack would likely give him a fatal heart attack.
Her marine escort joined her in the hall outside the courtroom. They marched her to the elevator, rode down to the foyer with her and marched her to the exit.
As Rinharte approached the doors, a staff-captain stepped forward from where she had been waiting to one side. She sketched a brief bow and proffered a folded sheaf of documents.
“Your orders, lieutenant,” she said.
That was a cruel blow, to be addressed by her new rank so quickly after the verdict. She had not even left the Fort.
“Captain.” Rinharte took the orders and unfolded them. Here was her transfer to Tinapon Archipelago, under Captain Sharazhka, as… signals lieutenant. She was no longer in Intelligence. Grubasz was even more cruel than she had guessed.
“You have a day to put your affairs in order, lieutenant,” the staff-captain said. “A batman has been assigned to you, as have temporary quarters in the Navy facility at Kukoi. You may not return to Empress Glorina. Your belongings have already been moved to your new quarters.”
The staff-captain gave another short bow and marched away, heading for the elevators.
Rinharte gazed down at the papers in her hand. This was it. This was her reward for six years of loyal service, for following the Admiral into mutiny. A day in a barracks block and then exiled to the Boundary Fleet. She let out a low growl. Her captain was on the Imperial Throne—or shortly would be—while those who had mutinied with her were being shipped as far away from Shuto as was astrographically possible.
Her orders clutched in her hand, Rinharte strode forward, through the doors and across to the staff car which awaited her.
Small mercies, thought Rinharte, were all she had to console her now. She glanced across at Maganda, no longer acting mate but back to midshipman, who stood beside her. They had both been assigned to the same frigate in the Boundary Fleet, although Maganda would be working in the Chart Room.
Behind her stood another familiar face: Komornik. He had been Ormuz’s valet aboard both Vengeful and Empress Glorina, but he was hers now. She had never been the type to insist on a personal servant—what she could not do for herself, she entrusted to whichever valet or batman was available at that time. It was perhaps perverse that now she’d been reduced in rank to lieutenant, a junior officer, now she should have a personal servant for the first time in her career.
They were on the apron at Kukoi, near the line of boats destroyed by Ahasz’s forces at the start of his siege. It was a bright cold day and the sky was empty. It should not have been—Tinapon Archipelago’s boat was expected. It was late, in fact. Rinharte looked back over her shoulder at the half-dozen rateds and petty officers also assigned to the frigate. For a few, Tinapon Archipelago was clearly their first posting. The others must have been from the Admiral’s fleet, but Rinharte did not recognise them.
A vehicle approaching across the apron caught her attention. It was a black car, with the sword of the Office of the Procurator Imperial on its side. The only Oppie she knew was Inspector Finesz and she did not know her well, certainly not well enough for the inspector to come see her departure.
The staff car drew to a halt and sat bobbing on its chargers. All of those waiting for Tinapon Archipelago’s boat turned to regard it. The rear door swung open and a figure clambered out. Rinharte smiled.
Casimir Ormuz.
Behind him, a second figure, a tall pale-haired woman in the black of the OPI, exited the car and stood by its open door.
Ormuz strode across to Rinharte. The rateds parted to let him through. She held out her hands and he took them in his.
“Casimir,” she said.
“I heard what they did to you,” he said. “It’s criminal.”
“No.” She shook her head. “What we did was criminal. We mutinied, Casimir. We knew we’d be punished for it.” She smiled wryly. “Although I had not expected it to be so severe.”
He glanced across at Maganda and said, “Romi.”
To Rinharte, he continued, “She should have protected you. She’s on the Throne now, she has the power to do so.”
“She has to maintain the rule of law. Justice must be served, it must be seen to be served.” She did not add that she’d hoped the Admiral would intercede to reduce their sentences. On reflection, she wondered if the Admiral had done so. Reduction in rank and remote posting as punishment for six years of mutiny and commerce raiding?
“Yet she isn’t punished,” replied Ormuz.
“Who would punish the Empress?”
“She wouldn’t be Empress if it for weren’t you and the others in her fleet.”
“And you too, Casimir.” She squeezed his hands, then let go. “You were the one who persuaded her to gather her fleet, you were the one who saved her when Vengeful was crippled.”
And now look at you, she wanted to say. Maganda had told her that he’d walked out on the Admiral and his clothes showed that he had stayed away. He was not clad in the fine garments he had worn aboard Vengeful and Empress Glorina, but in the utilitarian clothing of a prole.
“But what about you?” asked Rinharte. “According to Romi, you’re living in a pub?”
He nodded. “For the time-being. I need to look for a job, though. I can’t keep taking Sliva’s money, or living on Inni’s charity.”
Maganda had explained this to Rinharte. Once, Rinharte had hoped Ormuz and Maganda might form an attachment. But then he and the Admiral had begun a relationship; which had apparently foundered after the Battle of Geneza. At least, Ormuz had sought Maganda’s company regularly during the journey to Shuto. Now, however, he was living with some prole woman he’d met the same day he’d walked away from the Imperial Palace.
“Is this really what you want?” she asked. “You deserve better. Casimir, you’re a hero, they should be putting up statues of
you.”
He shrugged. “All of us who survived were heroes, Rizbeka. But we’re not the ones writing the history books.” Shoving his hands into his trouser pockets, he turned away to gaze at the destroyed boats to their left—charred and broken-backed skeletons, the detritus of war and an incongruous sight here on Kukoi’s apron. “I made a stand for what I believed in. I’m not going to compromise that by begging for the Admiral’s forgiveness.”
“But to give up so much!”
“I never really had it.”
He glanced at her and she saw bemusement on his face. She knew she could not be so equanimous in the same situation.
“Besides,” he added, “you’ve given up a lot. Your career is pretty much dead.”
“Thank you,” she said dryly, “for explaining that. It’s not the same, anyway. When I chose to follow the Admiral six years ago, I didn’t know what the consequences would be, I gave no thought to what I might lose. I did what I did because it was right.”
“And so did I, Rizbeka, so did I.”
She felt a touch on her arm and turned to see Maganda. “Ma’am?” said the midshipman, and pointed off high to her right.
Rinharte turned and gazed up at the sky. A boat was approaching. She saw it arrowing towards them, a sliver of darkness in the clear sky. As she watched, it banked to the left, still descending, swung about after some two hundred feet and came about. Now the rumble of its drive-tubes faded away and the roar of its gas-rockets rose in volume.
“This is yours?” Ormuz asked, raising his voice above the noise of the boat.
“I think so, yes,” Rinharte replied.
“We may never see each other again, Riz,” he said.
She glanced at him—and was abruptly reminded of their first meeting. She had infiltrated Ophavon with Marine-Lieutenant Kordelasz—Garrin, the incorrigible, who had died in the fighting on Geneza—and pretended to be an acquaintance of Divine Providence’s pilot, Lexander Lotsman.
Lotsman… Another casualty of the Battle of Geneza. She had been powerfully attracted to him, even though he was a prole. And then she had learnt he was a man-at-arms in the Order of the Left Hand and their enemy.
Except the knights sinister had not really been their enemy after all.
“No,” she said to Ormuz, “we may never meet again.”
The boat swooped in for a landing, coming to an abrupt halt some fifty feet above the apron and then descending in a hover to touch ground some twenty feet in front of Rinharte and the others.
She put a hand to her kepi to prevent the blast of the gas-rockets from sending it flying. “Somehow,” she shouted—the noise was near-deafening. “Somehow, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of each other.”
Ormuz turned from watching the boat land and looked up at Rinharte. His only reply was a smile and a gesture which said, who knows?
A rated led Rinharte from the frigate’s boat-bay along the supply passage and into officer country. Tinapon Archipelago was an Island class frigate and Rinharte had not served aboard her class before. Most frigate classes were similar in deckplan, however, and given their small size she did not think it would take her long to learn her way around.
Somehow Komornik had beaten her to her cabin. She opened the door and he was inside. Her trunk sat open on the cot, and he was busy removing items from it and putting them away in stowage. “Um, carry on,” she said.
She noticed the glass on the cabin’s desk was lit and filled with what appeared to be text. Drawing near, she saw it was a message, addressed to her. It was from Captain Aksander demar Sharazhka. He welcomed her aboard and asked her to report to him immediately on arrival. He could be found in the Pilothouse.
Rinharte removed her scabbarded sword from her belt and laid it on the bunk. There was no need to wear it aboard. Her kepi too she left on the bunk. From her cabin, she made her way aft. She knew she was on the upper deck and that access to the ship’s superstructure and conning-tower could usually be found at the aft end of the deck. The gangway ended at the officer’s mess—this frigate had only one, it seemed—and, beside its hatch, a ramp climbed to the deck above. She took the ramp. At its head, a scuttle told her she was now in the superstructure, below and just aft of the conning-tower. According to a label painted above the sturdy hatch now confronting her, she was outside Fire Control. She unlatched the battens and pulled open the hatch. The chamber within was deserted, although a computational engine to starboard clattered quietly to itself. There was a ladder up to a hatch in the ceiling at the forward end of the compartment. An arrow painted on the bulkhead beside the ladder pointed in that direction and was annotated, “Signals Distribution Centre”.
That was Rinharte’s department.
She ascended the ladder. At its top, she looked about the compartment she now commanded. She saw two banks of communication-consoles facing for’ard, and against the aft bulkhead the complex fascia of the exchange mechanism. Nothing was unfamiliar, it was only… smaller than she was used to. Three figures were bent over one of the communication-consoles. Rinharte ignored them, crossed to ladder leading up to the next deck and began to climb.
The frigate’s conning-tower was little more than a series of rooms, stacked one upon the other. Given that Tinapon Archipelago was currently station-keeping in orbit about Shuto, it came as no surprise to find the conning-tower’s decks were either deserted, or occupied only by one or two rateds. In due course, she passed upwards through Registrations and Acquisitions, the Chart Room and into the Pilothouse. One last ladder led up to a hatch in the ceiling—the Gun Director’s platform was above the Pilothouse.
But this compartment was where Rinharte had been told to appear. It was wedge-shaped and some fifteen feet long and ten feet wide at its widest point, and contained four people. One held the ship’s wheel, two occupied station-keeping rangefinders to port and starboard, while the fourth stood at the forward bulkhead, hands clasped behind his back, gazing through the scuttles at the world of Shuto below.
Rinharte said, “Lieutenant Rinharte reporting for duty, sir,” and, once Sharazhka had turned about, she bowed to him. One week ago, she had been this man’s senior—although captain of Tinapon Archipelago, he carried the rank of lieutenant-commander and he’d not held the rank as long as Rinharte had.
Sharazhka looked her up and down, his face expressionless. He was, Rinharte was gratified to note, neither a dandy nor a martinet. His uniform had not been improved by a tailor, he did not wear a sword and his demeanour suggested competence rather than discipline. His features were stern, but otherwise unremarkable: skin darker than her own, a heavy nose, square jaw and undisciplined eyebrows.
“I did not want you aboard my ship,” he said. His voice was rough and coloured by an accent Rinharte could not place. “I was happy with my previous signals lieutenant and I certainly had no desire to take on any of Captain Shutan’s mutineers.”
Rinharte said nothing. The three rateds in the Pilothouse kept their expressions studiously neutral.
“You were her lieutenant of intelligence I understand. You are fortunate I have a good petty officer in the Signals House. She will see you are brought up to speed. At the very least you must be competent, or you would not have been aboard Imperial Respite. But I will not have your damned politics on this ship and you will forget everything you did before coming aboard her. Am I clear?”
“Sir,” said Rinharte.
“Good.” He gave a terse nod. “We will not be departing until the morrow. You have a day to get your department in order. Dismissed.”
She gave another bow and turned about to descend the ladder.
“Oh, Lieutenant Rinharte, it is the practice aboard this ship for the department heads to join me in my cabin each day at noon for lunch. It is not a social event. I expect you to have something to tell me about the running of the Signals Distribution Centre.”
As the captain spoke, Rinharte stared through the hatch to the deck below.
She could see little, just the corner of a plotting table. She felt dismay. Sharazhka had just given her two hours to learn the ins and outs of her department.
“Sir,” she said again.
“You may go.”
She clambered down the ladder, increasing her pace with each deck until she reached the Signals Distribution Centre. This time, she halted. She saw a petty officer and a pair of rateds. She approached the petty officer.
“Petty Officer Shingo, ma’am,” the woman identified herself.
Looking at Shingo, Rinharte was reminded of Mahzan, the artificer aboard Tempest who had found, and operated, the troop-transport’s hidden main gun. Shingo was more than a decade older than Rinharte, dark-skinned, weather-beaten and extremely thin. She was as tall as Rinharte herself. Her hair was cut close to a narrow skull which seemed strangely sleeker than normal. There was no physical resemblance between the Tempest artificer and this woman, but Shingo had the same air of unassuming ability and dependability that Mahzan had possessed.
“Ms Shingo,” said Rinharte, with what she hoped was the right degree of command, lightened by approachability, “what do I need to know for the captain’s lunch? If you could give me a quick tour, it would be most appreciated. Afterwards, I’d like to go through the personnel dockets of all the members of the department. And if you could get me those of the other department heads, I’d be most grateful. Oh, and I’ll need a copy of the signals log too, if you please, going back to the day Tinapon Archipelago arrived in orbit.”
Shingo’s expression did not change.
“Now then,” said Rinharte, “let’s get started.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
The lunchtime crowd had left and only a handful of drinkers remained in the pub. They’d probably remain there all afternoon. Azeel’s father shooed her from behind the bar, telling her gruffly to go and make something to eat for herself and Ormuz.
After placing the empty glasses he carried on the bar-top, Ormuz followed Azeel up the stairs to the flat. His duties were limited to collecting empty glasses and cleaning.