“Navigator?” he asked, and the woman coughed discreetly.
“Ship’s master,” the man facing Kazmer said, the one who’d made the remark about goods and documentation. “So think of me as Engineer. To my right, your left, transmission specialist. To my left, your right, cargo disposition manager.”
The fence, in so many words. The man who would be responsible for getting rid of stolen goods and paying them all off.
“And that’s just cargo management,” Fence emphasized, quietly, but with a solid sort of determination in his voice and his serious expression. “No wet goods. Or I’m not even playing. Anybody have any different ideas? There’ve been assurances given me, no squishy stuff.”
Kazmer felt a little offended. “Come on. These people don’t waste energy. It’s not going to be a problem, I’ve seen them in action. I wouldn’t touch a cargo with moisture on it.”
That wasn’t exactly true. He’d handled cargoes with blood on them before: just not life’s-blood. He’d been prudish or he’d been lucky, or possibly both, but he’d stayed clear of blood-guilt since he’d taken his pilot’s license, and he meant to keep it that way.
“You’ve been out of system, pilot,” the woman — Navigator — said. Suggested, explained? “You haven’t heard. The latest raid at Okidan, only one survivor.”
She was right. He hadn’t heard. Was there a problem? Kazmer tucked into his bowl of porridge, hoping to get most of it down before it congealed in the dish.
“I was promised different this time,” Engineer said. “But I won’t pretend it really matters. There’s a job. I need one. Someone’s going to do it, and I may as well collect the fee as any other man. Worth taking just to see how it’s being managed, to my mind.”
At least the engineer was honest. That didn’t mean Kazmer had to respect the man’s point of view. Still, he was curious about the logistics himself; and was there any sense in pretending to keep to high moral ground? Cargoes all came from someplace. People got in the way of live fire from time to time, without anyone meaning any harm. Accidents happened. Carrying contraband goods was against the law whether or not anyone had gotten hurt in the initial cargo-acquisition phase of the transaction.
But he’d never done more than economic harm to any man. He wasn’t about to start now, not even to help Langsariks. Not even to help Hilton.
“I’m not getting paid to risk a capital charge,” one of the crew said, her voice low enough to keep her words carefully within the limited area of the table without attracting attention by whispering. “They claimed you’d worked with this outfit before, pilot.”
And so he had. “Where are they, by the way? Does anybody know?” He could tell them where one of the members of the group that had hired them was, or near to it, at least. Hilton had to be somewhere close.
The navigator shook her head. “The man who contacted me said that any direct contact would be too risky for all of us, especially so soon after Okidan. Said you could answer any questions we might have. We disperse, we get a call, we load and leave.”
Oh, he’d disperse, all right. He’d disperse straight out to the Langsarik settlement to see Modice. The Langsariks were keeping a low profile? He’d be sure no one caught him on his way there or back. Hilton wouldn’t be able to accuse him of any underhanded subterfuge; he would merely be taking prudent measures to avoid attracting any attention to himself.
“Well, it’s true what they told you. About prior association,” Kazmer added hastily. Hilton had a wickedly dry sense of humor; there was no telling what he might have said to these people. “I’ve always found them to be efficient. Conservative. No unnecessary effort.” Meaning, by implication, no unnecessary violence. “I’d expect them to be especially careful to keep the noise level down. Frankly, I’m a little surprised they’re risking any noise at all.”
And maybe “they” weren’t. Maybe this whole setup wasn’t Langsariks at all, or at least not fully sanctioned. Maybe Hilton and some of his peers were just blowing off a little steam. It had to be hard on people like Hilton to settle down on dirt and look for mundane, lawful employment after having spent nearly sixteen years as a law unto themselves, answerable to none, taking what they needed when they needed it from wherever they could find it.
That could be.
The fence shrugged. “Who knows if what the authorities say about the other procurement is even true? Maybe there wasn’t any broken furniture.”
A good point, that, what with public propaganda being what it was. Maybe the events associated with this Okidan raid were being exaggerated for effect.
Just then something caught Kazmer’s eye for the second time this morning, and it was the same something, too. Hilton, in the entryway that led to the meal line, standing in the entrance with someone, discussing something. Hilton looked across the room, looked right at him, but gave no sign of recognition; and moved on.
Kazmer decided.
Accidents happened and people changed, and Hilton was a Langsarik pirate; but Hilton would not involve himself with murder. If this was a Langsarik gig, and Hilton was in on it, it was a straightforward grab-and-run operation. And Hilton was in on it; there could be no question. There was no other reasonable explanation for his presence here, for his behavior earlier.
“I’m in.” He’d had all the porridge he could stomach. Pushing the bowl away from him, he started to leave. “I’ll see you all later.”
The engineer nodded, and then the navigator. The fence stared at his hands, picking at the ragged cuticle of his left thumb, and finally nodded at the table in turn. “All right,” the fence said. “I’ll see you later, too.”
The others had apparently already decided. So they were a crew.
What had happened at Okidan?
It might call unwelcome attention to himself if he started asking questions. Maybe he’d hear some gossip in Port Charid. He could always get the details from the more well informed members of this crew, once they were safely on their way to wherever it was they were going.
So there would be plenty of time to hear all of the news, public, private, rumored, and invented. At the moment Modice Agenis was waiting to see him, though she didn’t know it yet.
###
Garol Vogel turned his shuttle over to the transport pool for maintenance and refueling. He never spent much time at Chilleau Judiciary’s administrative center; he didn’t intend to spend much time there now.
Chilleau Judiciary was within Garol’s orb of assignment, so he had an office in Chambers — along with Jils Ivers, and whoever else was on rotation this cycle. It was nice to have someplace to come back to, even if it was at an administrative center. Nice to have a corner to himself, dark and cool and quiet, where he could be sure that things would be where he had left them and nobody would have tried to tidy up.
People might have been in to have a look at what he was doing, yes, that was something that happened from time to time; but sensitive information was always either secured or otherwise protected, and people who were after information they had no business being interested in could, be relied upon to put things back carefully, as exactly as found as possible.
Garol walked through the great gates and into the administrative center of Chilleau Judiciary’s Chambers in the middle of the night. Traffic on campus was relatively light, the corridors comparatively empty. He let himself into his office — three levels down from the senior administrative complex, fully five floors down from the Second Judge’s personal quarters — and put his cloth pack down to one side of the door, pulling off the jacket he wore when he wasn’t being official. Old campaign jacket, and from a really obscure planetary fleet; the cut and color offered few clues as to the identity of the wearer.
No clues whatever, in fact. Any branch-of-service markers that might once have decorated that old worn jacket had long since eroded with wear to the point of indecipherability, and Garol liked it that way.
He locked the door and turned on the desk lights, starte
d some bean tea, sent the courtesy notifications to First Secretary Verlaine — the Second Judge’s senior administrative official — and another message down to the media watch in Intelligence Analysis asking for the current situation report from Port Charid.
There were dockets on his desk he hadn’t looked at, but he was in no hurry. He was here to brief the Second Judge about Port Charid and the Langsariks. Anything else Chilleau Judiciary got out of him this visit would be gravy for them, and since Jils had sent him a briefing packet on some of Verlaine’s recent moves, Garol was not in a particularly gravy-ladling mood.
Putting his feet up on the dockets stacked on the desk, Garol meditated over a cup of hot bean tea, waiting for the runner from Intelligence Analysis.
He was halfway through the cup of tea when the signal came, and he had to get up and open the door. He could have left it unlocked, he supposed, but he didn’t like being interrupted by well-wishers poking their heads in to attempt to cultivate his acquaintance.
Unlatching the door, Garol pulled it open. “Oh, hello. You’ve got the report I asked for? Thanks.”
He knew the Clerk of Court who’d brought the report down, though.
Mergau Noycannir.
The rabid Inquisitor-without-portfolio that Verlaine had made as an experiment in shifting control of Inquiry from Fleet to the Bench — an experiment which had failed with Noycannir. The whole point of Inquiry was the use of judicial torture as an instrument of statecraft, and for torture to have the looked-for deterrent effect, it had to be perceived as something to be afraid of, something that could be used to obtain evidence against one’s friends and family, something that could be used to render entire communities vulnerable to sanctions at the discretion of the Judge.
Noycannir just killed people.
That wasn’t an enjoyable experience, at least not from any near-miss accounts that Garol had heard and fully acknowledging the lack of any real firsthand recitation from the dead concerning their feelings about the whole thing. But a threat that only endangered one’s own self had nothing like the emotional impact of one that could be used to condemn one’s near and dear based on one’s own testimony.
Other Inquisitors could obtain incriminating evidence, and some of them actually found things out — Andrej Koscuisko, for one, the rash young Inquisitor who had cried Failure of Writ at the Domitt Prison, and set the wheels in motion of a scandal from which Chilleau Judiciary still reeled.
But not Noycannir.
Nor was she wearing the uniform of an Inquisitor, but the more plain and humble dress of a senior Clerk of Court; and she had come from Intelligence Analysis?
Garol took an almost involuntary step backward; he hadn’t been prepared for this apparition at all, let alone its mind-boggling implications.
It was a mistake.
Noycannir lowered her head and followed him, as though she’d been invited in.
“I’ve been reviewing this information since word came you were in, Specialist Vogel,” Noycannir said, and walked right past him to open the documents case she’d brought and lay it out flat on the desk surface. “You’ll find this interesting, I’m sure. Here. Have a look at these transport minutes.”
Garol could only stand and stare in genuine admiration. She had nerve. No longer functioning as an Inquisitor, that much was obvious, but playacting the role of the peer of a Bench intelligence specialist when not even an Inquisitor was that, presuming responsibility and influence that were no longer hers — had never been hers.
She was a piece of work, was Noycannir.
But he wasn’t interested in playing her game and declined her invitation to join her in review at his own desk. “I intend to do just that, but all in good time, Dame Noycannir.”
If she was a senior Clerk of Court, she could still claim the courtesy title she had demanded as hers by right when she had held the Writ to Inquire. Garol wondered what the formal status of that Writ was. It was probably more than Verlaine’s pride would allow actually to return the credentials to Fleet with an apology, or return them at all, though they could only be executed by Noycannir. No, he’d probably simply dispensed with Noycannir’s services, started to send his witness interrogations to a qualified Fleet practitioner, and given her something else to do.
Noycannir didn’t respond, standing at his desk with her back to him, leafing through the sections of the report he’d called for. “Taken together with the movement of goods through Sillume, I think you’ll agree that a very interesting pattern emerges. I’ve been looking forward to sharing this with you.”
But she wasn’t sharing anything with him, when she had brought the report he’d requested.
She was running an errand.
Verlaine had apparently put her off to one side in Intelligence Analysis, a secure job, a comfortable placement, where he could keep an eye on her. Intelligence Analysis was strictly support. They had no authority, made no recommendations, controlled no data.
He’d never liked Noycannir.
He had reasons, too.
And now — though he could fully sympathize with the keen sense of lost status that had to be behind her pathetically desperate pretense — he was getting annoyed.
He didn’t believe in gratuitous rudeness, but if she was going to ignore polite hints —
Garol opened his mouth to say something pointed, but a voice from the still-open doorway did the trick for him.
“Thank you, Mergau. Would you excuse us now, please.”
That was the voice of the First Secretary, deep and powerful and utterly implacable. Noycannir stiffened when she heard it, and closed up the documents case with almost fearful care.
“Of course, First Secretary. I’ll be at my post should you wish to call for a tertiary analysis, good-greeting.”
Bench Intelligence specialists did their own tertiary analyses, and they all knew it.
Noycannir left the room with her head meekly lowered, her eyes carefully fixed on the floor. Verlaine stood aside to let her pass, watching her as she went with an expression that spoke volumes to Garol of the First Secretary’s disappointment, disgust, and a guilty sort of forbearance. Well, the First Secretary had a reason to blame himself if Noycannir had failed. It had been his wish that she make the trial in the first place, and as much his failure as hers.
It couldn’t be pleasant for Verlaine to be reminded of his responsibility for the unfortunate experience Noycannir had had with her Writ, rendering it almost admirable on Verlaine’s part that he kept her close — protected her from the enemies she had made in plenty — and paid her salary, even if it was only that of a Clerk of Court.
Verlaine closed the door. “Excuse the intrusion, Bench specialist,” Verlaine said. “Can I have a few moments?”
If Verlaine had called Garol to his office, Garol would have gone; it was a concession on Verlaine’s part to come down to Garol instead — a concession, or a mark of the importance Verlaine put on the current health of the Langsarik settlement. Garol could respect that.
“Not at all, First Secretary. I’ve only just gotten in, though; I haven’t had a chance to review the intelligence reports. Have a seat?”
Verlaine was staring at the documents case that Noycannir had left on Garol’s desk; Garol didn’t think Verlaine was really listening. “But you’ve just come from Nisherre, talking to that survivor. The eyewitness. How bad is it? Can you tell me?”
Garol didn’t have to. In point of law a Bench intelligence specialist was answerable to the Bench, not to any administrative officer. But Garol respected the working relationships Verlaine maintained with the Second Judge, and he wanted to keep Verlaine on his side, if possible. For protection against Mergau Noycannir’s intrusions, among other things.
“Declines to state that Langsariks shot the crew. Declines to deny that they were Langsariks. My reasoned evaluation? They could have been Langsariks. Or at least Feraltz, that’s the survivor, believes they could have been. There is circumstantial evidence as wel
l.”
Not what Verlaine wanted to hear, but that was all right — it wasn’t what Garol wanted to tell him. Verlaine folded his arms across his chest and nodded, rolling his lower lip against his teeth. It gave him the appearance of an animal who was still deciding whether or not a physical attack would be required to assure his safety.
“I’m surprised at your acceptance, Specialist. The amnesty agreement was in large part a personal accomplishment on your part. A very significant one, at that.”
Garol sat down at his desk and tilted his chair back a bit. “I don’t like it, but I’m not going to ignore the trends. There could be mitigating factors. I don’t know. I came here to tell you that there appears to be a problem. You may wish to brief the Judge.”
A real problem, that was to say, and not the product of idle rumor or frivolous gossip. Verlaine nodded again. “Your approach then, Bench specialist?”
“I’m going back to Port Charid. If Langsariks are up to something, I’d like to see how it’s done, and the Flag Captain has a right to be given an opportunity to explain her perspective on things. I’ll take it from there.” He didn’t know what his approach was going to be. He wouldn’t know that until he got there. “Maybe it’s still salvageable. I don’t know.”
Verlaine unfolded his arms, turning to go. “Well. I don’t need to tell you how badly the Second Judge needs the Langsarik settlement to work. We’re under fire on all sides, it seems. But we can’t afford to shield any scofflaws either. The mercantile interests are very vocal. Anything else?”
Well, yes, as a matter of fact there was. “So long as you mention it. I heard about the assignment you arranged for Koscuisko. Can’t say I understand your motivations there particularly well, First Secretary.”
Jils had told him all about it. There was something about Koscuisko that interested her, the subtle tension between sanity and psychosis, perhaps. Verlaine blushed angrily, the red blossoming across his cheekbones visible even in the low light in Garol’s office. But Verlaine was exceptionally fair-skinned, like many red-haired people in his class of hominid.
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