"Spoilsport," said Frost.
They left the bridge and took the express elevator down to the officers' quarters. They could tell when they were getting near. There were people milling in the corridors, including those from the last shift, woken by the sound of Stelmach's voice, shouting and swearing incoherently. Silence politely but firmly sent them back to their beds, assuring them he'd take care of everything. Frost hurried them on their way with an occasional glare. Finally the two of them rounded a corner to find half a dozen security men huddled together at the end of a corridor. They jumped half out of their skins when Silence addressed them from behind, and then relaxed a little from sheer relief when they saw who it was. They even looked glad to see the Investigator, which was probably a first.
There was a quick discussion among the six of them as to who was in charge, and then that one was pushed forward by the others. He started to explain what had happened, realized he hadn't saluted, tried to do that and apologize at the same time, and then started explaining all over again. The sound of something large but fragile smashing into hundreds of pieces came clearly from the open door to Stelmach's quarters, followed by more incoherent swearing. The security man swallowed hard and started again.
"Lieutenant Zhang reporting, sir. Security Officer Stelmach appears to be… unwell. We have attempted to ascertain what the problem might be, but he has declined to talk to us, and besides, he has a gun. Perhaps you would care to have a word with him, Captain. I'm sure he'd listen to you, and the Investigator."
"At ease, Lieutenant," said Silence. "We'll handle things from here. You and your people fall back out of sight around the corner. It might be your presence that's upsetting him so much. See that this corridor is blocked off at both ends; I don't want anyone else coming in here while we're talking to Stelmach. And, Lieutenant, we are not to be interrupted for anything less than a major emergency."
Zhang nodded quickly, gathered up the rest of his people with his eyes, and led them in a hurried but dignified retreat back around the corner. In his quarters, Stelmach was still shouting and breaking things. Silence admired the man's stamina. He'd had a few blind rages himself in his drinking days, and he knew from experience that rages were hard work to keep going. He turned to Frost, and then frowned at her.
"I said no guns, Investigator."
"He has one, Captain."
"But he hasn't used it yet. Let's not put any ideas into his head." He glared at Frost until she holstered her gun again, and then looked back down the corridor. Things had grown ominously quiet. "Is Stelmach a drinker, do you know? I haven't heard anything, but someone in his position would be under a lot of strain, and in a good position to get his hands on all kinds of booze, legal or otherwise."
"Or worse," said Frost. "He'd also have access to all kinds of drugs for use in his interrogations. Plus whatever illicit drugs his people might have discovered and confiscated. There's always something going around. There's nothing in his files about substance abuse of any kind, but he had access to the files. I can't say I know the man well. Not many do. Security Officer isn't a post to make you popular with people."
"But do they respect him?"
"Oh, I should think so. The fact that no one's rolled a fragmentation grenade into his room while he was sleeping is a pretty good sign the crew respects his authority. And that his people are on their toes."
Silence and Frost moved slowly and quietly down the empty corridor, stopping just short of the open door to Stelmach's quarters. Silence gestured to the Investigator, and they both placed their backs against the bulkhead wall next to the door. Technically speaking, all Silence had to do was show himself and order Stelmach to calm down and explain himself. The Security Officer would do this immediately or face a court-martial for insubordination. In practice, Silence had a strong feeling he might end up doing more ducking than talking. Assuming Stelmach really did have a gun. According to regulations, the use of energy weapons on board ship was strictly forbidden, except under the direst circumstances. On the other hand, Stelmach was the Dauntless's Security Officer, and if he wanted a gun there weren't many people on the ship with the authority to say no. Silence always carried a gun, as did the Investigator. They were required to do so, partly in case of situations like this. But in all his time as Captain, Silence had never drawn a gun on a member of his own crew, and he wasn't about to start now. And to hell with what the regulations said. It was still quiet in Stelmach's quarters. Silence raised his voice, keeping it calm and even and very assured.
"Stelmach, this is the Captain. I have the Investigator with me. We need to talk to you."
There was no reply. Silence strained his ears against the quiet and thought he could hear harsh, heavy breathing from inside the cabin. Maybe Stelmach had passed out, from drink or drugs or exhaustion. And just maybe he was waiting for some poor trusting fool to stick his head around the door, so he could shoot it off. Silence licked his dry lips and tried again.
"Stelmach, this is the Captain. Can you hear me?"
"Yes, Captain. I can hear you." The Security Officer's voice was a quiet rasp, a low painful sound, as though he'd injured his voice with shouting and screaming. "Go away, Silence. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to talk to anyone."
"We rather gathered that," said Silence. "But we're going to have to talk sooner or later; you know that. Now, are you going to invite me in for a little chat, or am I going to have to send the Investigator in to reason with you? My way will mean less damage to the fixtures and fittings. Look, whatever the problem is, I can't help you standing around out here. And you do need help, don't you?"
There was a long pause, and when Stelmach finally spoke again, his voice was tired and defeated, as though all the rage had just drained right out of him. "All right. Come in. Let's get this over with."
That particular choice of words had an ominous ring to it, but Silence decided he was going in anyway. There wasn't really anything else he could do. He turned to Frost and kept his voice low. "I'm going in first. You back me up. Keep your hands away from your weapons. We don't want to spook him."
"I should go in first," said Frost. "I'm more expendable than you."
"No offense, Investigator, but you do tend to make a rather… strong first impression. The state he's in, he might just take one look at you and open fire. Besides, I'm more of an authority figure as far as he's concerned. He's always responded well to authority figures in the past. And before you ask, no I'm not going to use a force shield, and neither are you. He might think we didn't trust him."
"Oh, we wouldn't want him to think that," said Frost. "Perish the thought. But if he makes one wrong move, I'm going to spatter him all over the bulkheads."
"Let's try and be calm about this, Investigator. I don't want him killed. He's a pain in the ass, but he's good at his job. Good Security Officers are hard to come by. He's also one of the few people with firsthand experience on how to control the Grendel aliens. I'll decide when and if violence is necessary. Now, put on a nice smile. We don't want to frighten him." Frost bared her teeth, and Silence winced. She looked as though she was about to bite him somewhere painful. "All right, forget the smile. It doesn't suit you. Leave all the talking to me and don't get touchy about anything he says. I want to know what's reduced Stelmach to a state like this."
Frost shrugged, but kept her hands ostentatiously away from her weapons. Silence decided to settle for that. He stepped forward into the corridor and walked through the open door to Stelmach's quarters. Frost stuck so close behind him he could feel her breath on the back of his neck. Silence smiled and nodded to Stelmach, who was sitting on the side of his bed, his head hanging down, his shoulders slumped in tiredness or defeat or both. His gun was lying on the floor, well out of his reach. Silence relaxed just a little and looked around.
The place was a mess. Everything that wasn't nailed down or an intrinsic part of the ship had been picked up and thrown at something else. The single table and chair had been over
turned, and the shattered fragments of his more fragile personal belongings covered the floor, along with pretty much everything else. The bed folded down from the cabin wall, and had survived intact, but the bedclothes had been torn apart and strewn all over the small cabin. Stelmach was sitting on the bare bed, looking anything but dangerous, but Silence decided he was going to take it slowly anyway. He could sense Frost behind him, like an attack dog straining against a short leash. He stepped forward, and Stelmach finally looked up. His face was tired and drawn, and he looked ten years older.
"Come in, Captain, Investigator. Excuse the mess. It's the maid's day off."
"I've seen worse," said Silence. "You've been very… busy, Stelmach. Any particular reason?"
"What does it matter?" said Stelmach. "I know the regulations. I belong in the brig. Go ahead and take me. I'm finished."
"I don't believe in sentencing someone until they've had a fair hearing," said Silence carefully. "Explain yourself. What brought this on?"
"It's private, Captain. Family business. I don't want to talk about it."
"Talk anyway. If I'm going to lose the best Security Officer I've ever had, I want to know why."
Stelmach looked past Silence's shoulder at Frost. "Does she have to be here?"
"She's concerned for my safety," said Silence. "But she can step out into the corridor if you'd like."
"No," said Stelmach. "I don't suppose it matters." He leaned back against the bulkhead his bed folded down from, and his voice was very tired. "I got a letter this morning. From my family. We've always been very close, ever since our father died when I was very young. There was a demonstration, some kind of political thing, and it turned ugly. Someone threw something, someone else opened fire, and my father the police officer was dead before he hit the ground. Mother brought us up, kept us together, did whatever was necessary to keep a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, food in our bellies. I was the youngest. Never wore new clothes in my life till I joined the Service. We were raised to revere my father as a saint and to have nothing at all to do with politics. She had all of us sign up for the Services, the moment we were old enough. There's always job security in the Services, whatever might be happening anywhere else.
"My sister Athena was the eldest. They took her away to become an Investigator when she was ten. We lost touch with her after that. My brothers Bold and Hero did well for themselves. Bold's a Major in the army, Hero's a Group leader in the Jesuit commandos. They write home regularly, send money when they can. I'm the only failure. My career's over. After the debacle on the Wolfling World I was lucky not to be executed, but I'll never be more than a Security Officer now, not even if I was officially exonerated. Even my work on controlling the Grendel aliens has been taken over by other people. As far as my family is concerned, I've disgraced them by being such a failure. My mother wrote to me, telling me not to come home again. She's expelled me from the family, disinherited me, and removed all references to me from the family history. She now tells everyone she only ever had two sons.
"I always did my best. Followed the regulations, did as I was told, tried hard to be a good soldier. Lived my live for the Empire. And what did it get me? A Security Officer's post on a ship passing time out on the Rim, going nowhere, doing nothing, or nothing that really matters. Do what you want to me. I don't care."
He looked up suddenly, glaring at Silence and Frost. There were bright spots of color on his pale cheeks, and his eyes were puffy from crying but still sharp. "I hate this ship. I hate you, too. Both of you. If I'd kept you under control like I was supposed to, things might have been different. But I let you reason with me, and the Investigator intimidate me, and it all went wrong. I hate my life, or what's left of it. And most of all I hate myself for being so weak. My mother said my father would spit on me if he could see what I've become, and I think she's right. He would have shown more courage, more… something. Sometimes he comes to me in my cabin, sits on the end of my bed in the early hours of the morning, and tells me he's ashamed of me. He looks young and sharp, just like in the holos taken before he was killed. I'm older now than he was then, but I'll always be a child to him. I can't stand these quarters anymore. I'm afraid to sleep. Put me in the brig. Or have the Investigator shoot me and put me out of my family's misery. She'd like that. I don't care. I don't care about anything anymore."
He finally wound down, his head lowering bit by bit till he was staring at the floor again. He wasn't crying. He was too tired for that. Silence didn't know what to say. He'd read up on Stelmach's background, to try and find out why anyone would name their child Valiant, but the bare facts hadn't really made any sense till now. He felt ashamed and embarrassed at being so bluntly confronted with someone else's private pain and shame. These were the kinds of things you normally only told to your friends or loved ones, but as a Security Officer, Stelmach had no friends—and now he had no family either. That was why he'd wrecked his cabin. It was his way of letting the anger out, as well as a reason to be punished.
Silence didn't know what to do. He couldn't just have the man arrested and thrown in the brig, even if that was technically the correct thing to do. He wasn't Stelmach's friend, didn't even like the man, but he was a part of the Dauntless's crew, and as his Captain, it was Silence's duty to look after him. He was responsible for the man's well-being, like a father for an errant son. The thought struck a strong chord in him.
"Valiant, listen to me. We're your family now. This ship, this crew. You belong to us. If anyone's going to decide you're a failure, it'll be me, and I haven't made my mind up yet. You've survived when a lot of others didn't. And you were the first man ever to yoke a Grendel. They can't take that away from you. You're not a failure till I say you are. I'm your family and I'm your father, and the first thing I have to say to you is… clean up your room, boy."
Stelmach looked at him, startled, and then burst into laughter. It was loud, healthy laughter, dispersing the gloom and doom that had filled the cabin, and Silence began to relax. He smiled at Frost, and though she didn't smile back, she seemed perhaps a little less cold and forbidding than she usually did. Stelmach's laughter began to die away, but before he could say anything, Silence's comm unit chimed in his ear. He gestured for Stelmach to wait a moment and opened a channel.
"This is Silence. It had better be important."
"I'm afraid it is. Captain," said the voice of his Second in Command. "I think you'd better get back to the bridge. We have a situation up here."
"What kind of situation?"
"Damned if I know, Captain. But I'll be a lot happier when you're back on the bridge. There's something… out there."
The comm channel closed abruptly, leaving only the faintest hiss of static in Silence's ear. He broke off the connection and scowled, uneasy for no reason he could define. There had been something in his Second's voice… the man had almost sounded scared. Silence's first thought was an alien ship, but if that had been the case the Second would have said so. Hell, he'd have sounded a Red Alert by now. Silence's frown deepened as he looked at Frost and Stelmach, who were studying him expectantly.
"Forget this mess," he said flatly. "We're needed on the bridge. Move it."
"Of course, Captain," said Stelmach, and led the way out of his cabin. They headed down the corridor together, three professional officers from the same great family, whose needs always came first.
Back on the bridge. Silence nodded quickly to his Second in Command and sank into his command chair again. Frost and Stelmach took up positions on either side of him, at hand if he needed them. The atmosphere on the bridge was so tense you could have sharpened a knife on it. Everyone was at their station, engrossed in their instruments, but they were too alert, too focused, almost as though they were afraid to look away. The main viewscreen showed the Dauntless's route had brought them right to the edge of the Rim. At a certain point, the stars and the light they cast just stopped abruptly, as though it had run into a wall, and beyond that there was onl
y the utter blackness of the Darkvoid, where no light shone. It was hard to look at, for any length of time, but your eyes kept creeping back to it. Silence glared at his Second in Command.
"Everything seems to be in order, Second. Nothing on the viewscreen, all instruments functioning. So what's the problem?"
The Second in Command shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "It was the Communications Officer, sir, who first brought it to my attention."
Silence turned to look at Cross, his frown deepening. "Well?"
"It's… difficult to put into words, Captain." Cross turned away from his station so he could look at Silence directly. "I've been… hearing things. Voices in the void, calling out to me. There are people talking out there in empty space, where there can't be any people. I've checked the sensors. There's no one here but us. But… it isn't just me."
He stopped and looked unhappily at Silence to see how he was taking it. Silence kept his voice carefully neutral. From the difficulty Cross was having in getting his words out, it was clear he took it very seriously. His dark face was drawn and tired, and there were beads of sweat on his high forehead. Without looking around, Silence could sense that other people on the bridge were waiting for his reaction. A while back, he would have thought they were just setting him up, seeing what they could get away with, but he didn't think so now. He could feel how seriously they were all taking it, and though they were trying to hide it, everyone on the bridge was scared. Silence felt a faint prickling on the back of his neck. These were battle-hardened veterans, and they didn't scare easily. He crossed his legs casually, but he could feel a growing tension in his gut. Strange things happened out on the Rim. Everyone knew that. He nodded curtly for Cross to continue.
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