The Devil and Deep Space

by Susan R. Matthews

  “How are we to hope to manage, Chief?”

  Stildyne was up to something, behind Andrej. Andrej could hear the little chime of metal against fine Berrick ceramic ware, the seething of liquid coming to a boil. Trust Stildyne to have found rhyti, Andrej thought, gratefully .

  “Well, you’re not helping, your Excellency. It’s not a problem so far. But if you’re paying too much attention to Lek he’ll start to wonder.”

  Stildyne was right. Of course. Andrej smelled the rising fragrance of top-quality leaf, and smiled almost in spite of himself. He was going home. It was only for a visit, and he had a very great deal that would have to be accomplished; but he was going home. He had not been home in more than nine years. He was going to meet his son at last.

  “I can explain, Chief. Lek is Sarvaw. I will have a quiet talk with him. You may not appreciate quite what it is to be a Sarvaw, and be borne deep into the heart of enemy territory.” It wasn’t that Stildyne hadn’t heard about the peculiar relationship between Sarvaw and other Dolgorukij, over the years. Yet how could any outlander really understand?

  Stildyne had come to stand behind Andrej now; holding out a cup of rhyti. Beautiful stuff. Very hot, and milky, and smelling every bit as sweet as Andrej liked it. Stildyne was good to him. “We may need to lean on that, your Excellency, but first things first. We’ll clear the vector. Then you should probably go talk to people. I’ll leave you to your rhyti.”

  And sober up. Stildyne didn’t have to say it. After more than four years together they understood each other better than that. It wasn’t the norm for relationships between officers of assignment and Chief Warrant Officers, no, but had it not been for Stildyne’s willingness to exceed the normal parameters of his assigned duties Andrej was very sure that he would not have survived Captain Lowden.

  “Very good, Mister Stildyne. Thank you.”

  Andrej had enough to get through at home, if he was to hope to leave Azanry prepared to seek the unknown enemy who wanted him dead — someone with the Judicial influence to have obtained a Bench warrant for his assassination, one that Garol Vogel had declined to execute almost as an afterthought, months ago, at Port Burkhayden.

  He didn’t know when he would find the time and strength and courage to address the thing that had gone wrong from the beginning between himself and Security Chief Stildyne.

  ###

  Jennet ap Rhiannon sat in the Captain’s office with Ship’s Primes around her, watching the monitors.

  She wasn’t sitting behind the Captain’s desk; the kill was not confirmed. It would be premature. This office had the access they all needed to be sure they were on top of what Pesadie might be up to, however, so there was no choice but to gather here, whether or not the issue of the captaincy was unresolved.

  Wheatfields didn’t fit very comfortably into the chair in the conference area. But Wheatfields was oversized. There was no way around it. The Chigan ship’s engineer was a full head taller than the late, and by and large unlamented, Captain Lowden had been; and Lowden himself had been toward the upper limit of the Jurisdiction standard.

  “There’s no room for misinterpretation in the ship’s comps. Not as though that ever stopped Fleet,” Wheatfields was saying, his eyes fixed on a monitor. “We were firing training rounds, even though they were live, so the explosive payload was reduced. That last target was destroyed well in advance of the explosion on the observation station. Whatever set the remote station off, it wasn’t one of our rounds.”

  They were tracking the courier ship on its way to the vector. Three hours had elapsed since its launch; the exit vector security had yet to go on alert. Another half an hour and the courier would be on vector, functionally out of reach for days, at minimum. Out of Pesadie’s reach forever, if she had anything to say about it.

  First Officer took a drink of bean tea and grimaced.

  “This stuff gets nastier every day. We ought to press for resupply while we’re here, now that we’re going to have to wait an investigation out. What’s the Admiral up to, Two?”

  Jennet shared Mendez’s sentiments about the bean tea. The Ragnarok had always had a certain degree of difficulty breaking stores away from Fleet depots — as an experimental ship it had always taken second best. Things had begun to deteriorate at a discouraging rate after Lowden’s death, though. Lowden had been as corrupt as imaginable in some ways, his personal misuse of interrogation records among them. But he had at least had the political influence required to keep the Ragnarok well stocked.

  “No official communication.” Two had to stand in her chair; she didn’t sit at all in any conventional sense. Since she was fully two-thirds of Jennet’s own height she was unnaturally tall amongst the assembled officers as they sat, but the Captain’s office had no provision for Two’s preferred mode — which was hanging upside down from the ceiling. “Traffic suggests a full–scale inventory on all observation stations and several warehouses besides. We have some eights in which to decide what to do. Perhaps as much as two days.”

  Two’s voice was mostly out of range of Jennet’s hearing. The translator that Two wore gave her an oddly accented dialect, but at least it was female, like Two herself.

  The translator always took longer to process than it took Two to speak. Two sat there solemnly with her black eyes seemingly fixed on Jennet’s face, waiting for the translator to catch up. It was an illusion, that fixed regard. Two didn’t actually see any farther than the first flange of her wings’ extent — an arm’s–length, more or less.

  “I’m still not sure what it is, exactly, that you mean to accomplish, your Excellency.”

  Ship’s First Officer had always been very straight with her. There was no disrespect in his tone of voice; there was no particular change in his demeanor. Jennet could understand that. These people were all senior. She was the third person to be acting Captain of the Ragnarok in a year. And Mendez had never paid as much attention to rank and protocol as others in his grade class: that was the only reason he hadn’t been drafted into Command Branch himself, long since.

  “I’m making it up as I go along.” There wasn’t any sense in pretending to be smarter than Ship’s Primes. She needed their agreement to do anything, rank or no rank. When it came down to it rank only existed so long as everybody agreed that it was there. “The best way I could think of to keep these crew out of Fleet’s hands was to get them out of the area. If Pesadie can’t get started on them, they can’t begin to touch the rest of the crew. They’ll have to try something else. A real investigation, maybe.”

  “All they have to do is wait till the crew comes back.” Wheatfields was calm, dispassionate — uncaring. She’d learned that about Wheatfields. There was very little that aroused his interest, and practically nothing outside of Engineering. “What does this give us? Apart from irritating Pesadie, and I don’t care, it’s your neck anyway, Lieutenant.”

  In the months she had been assigned to the Ragnarok, the number of times Wheatfields had spoken to her could be reckoned up on the fingers on her hands. Or even on the fingers of Wheatfields’s hands, and he had only the four fingers and the thumb to her five, since he was Chigan and not Versanjer.

  To Jennet’s surprise it was Two who answered for her. “Pesadie must provide some suitable answers to questions from Fleet while they wait for the crew. Or even while they send for the crew. Pesadie maybe cannot wait. They’ll have to start some alternate investigation. It will only show that the Ragnarok’s fighter could not have fired on the observer.”

  Well, not that that particular issue would be a problem in and of itself. There were too many copies of the record, surely. At least three copies of training records were maintained by Fleet protocols; one of these was on the Ragnarok, and not under Pesadie’s direct control accordingly. If Pesadie wanted to tamper with that, Pesadie would have to get past Wheatfields to do it.

  But the easy answer was that the round that the Wolnadi fighter was to have deployed had been exchanged for a more lethal w
eapon intended to destabilize the containment barrier, communicating sufficient disruptive energy to cause the station to explode — killing the Ragnarok’s Captain by design.

  It would be easy to prove out by confession once Pesadie got their hands on the Wolnadi’s crew. Not every Inquisitor with custody of a Writ to Inquire had Koscuisko’s delicacy of feeling where truth and confession were concerned.

  People could be made to say anything, under sufficient duress — unless they were fortunate enough to die before they could compromise themselves. Their crewmates, other Security, Engineering, the entire crew of the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok, up to and including — she realized with a start — its acting Captain, ap Rhiannon, already unpopular in some Fleet circles for having taken an uncompromising approach to black–market weapons dealing in the recent past.

  Mendez was watching the monitor, drinking his bean tea absentmindedly. The on–screen track that represented Koscuisko’s courier had closed on the entry vector, and was gone. “Well, that’s put one of however many parts behind us,” Mendez said. “Koscuisko’s away. So now we’ll all find out. Not that I’m arguing the abstract point, Lieutenant, your Excellency. If you can make this work, we’ll all be just as happy about it. With respect.”

  “We’ll get formal notification from Pesadie Training Command about Cowil Brem.” There were things they needed to see to in the time they had left before an audit team came on board. “We’ll take it from there. Wheatfields will sanitize the Wolnadi line. Let them try to figure out how we’re supposed to have done it. Two will be listening to Pesadie while they think about it.”

  She stood up. And, somewhat surprisingly, Wheatfields and Mendez stood up as well, while Two hopped down out of her chair, bracing herself against the floor with the second joints of her great folded wings. Respect of rank. It was an encouraging sign.

  She didn’t really care if they gave her the formal signs of subordinate rank relationship or not, though. All that mattered was that they came together to protect the Ragnarok and its crew. Somebody at Pesadie had been storing something on that observer that they oughtn’t have; it was the only explanation she could see for the explosion.

  And it was her duty to the Ragnarok to ensure that nobody made a scapegoat out of its crew to cover an administrative irregularity: not with lives at stake.

  ###

  “We have the Pesadie vector, your Excellency.” Turning away from the station as he spoke, Lek stood up and bowed to his officer of assignment. Koscuisko could see perfectly well for himself. The publication of the fact was a mere formula, but ritual was important, especially in the lives of bond–involuntaries. “Three days, Standard, to the Dasidar exit vector, Azanry space.”

  Koscuisko nodded briskly in appreciation. “Thank you, Lek, ably piloted. Now. Let us all to the main cabin repair, so that I may put you on notice, the ordeal which you face when we are at home on my native world.”

  Koscuisko was considerably relaxed, from a few hours ago; but not for the otherwise obvious reason, because Koscuisko didn’t look or sound as though he’d been drinking. Recovered a bit from his going–away party, then. Lek followed his fellows, taking advantage of his position to linger for just a moment in the wheelhouse.

  It was a pretty little courier, and it spoke his language. Or at least it spoke a language he had learned as a small child, before his trouble with the Bench, before his Bond. He’d understood why Koscuisko had selected Security 5.3 to take home with him on holiday, given that Koscuisko could take only one team; Koscuisko had tried to get as many of his Bonds in one basket as he could, and there was nothing personal about Lek’s situational exclusion from the privileged party.

  But none of the others were Combine folk. It made Lek so homesick to be talking to Koscuisko’s courier that he wished he was back on the Ragnarok, rather than going with Koscuisko to Azanry. So close to home. So far away from his own people.

  Distracted for a moment by the strangely painful familiarity of the courier’s accent, Lek lingered a bit longer than he had intended. Someone stood in the doorway between the wheelhouse and the rest of the ship; someone big and solid and silent, patiently waiting. Stildyne.

  “Sorry, Chief.” It wasn’t Stildyne’s fault that Lek was Sarvaw, after all. “Daydreaming. Coming directly.”

  Stildyne could easily have made a point about it, but he simply turned and left the room. Stildyne had mellowed since Koscuisko had come on board; he’d been considerably rougher to deal with when Lek had first met him — though he’d never been abusive. He’d taken some of the customary advantages from time to time, true enough, but he’d always been a reasonable man, and fair. Koscuisko was too hard on Stildyne. Koscuisko didn’t understand how much worse than Stildyne warrant officers could be, when you put some of them in charge of bond–involuntaries.

  Glancing around quickly to make sure that everything was in order Lek followed his Chief out of the wheelhouse and into the main cabin, where the officer of assignment was sitting on a table at the far end of the cabin, swinging his feet. He’d changed his dress boots for padding–socks, Lek noticed.

  The rest of the crew were seated in array in front of Koscuisko, except for Stildyne standing in the doorway. Lek found a place at Smish’s left; Koscuisko nodded at Lek and began to speak.

  “We have not had a chance to talk, gentles, because we were in such a hurry to be gone before someone could change their minds again, and send me away with people of Wheatfields, from whom all Saints preserve me.”

  That was by way of a joke. Ship’s Engineer was a moody and difficult man with very particular reasons to detest Ship’s Inquisitors; Koscuisko was a proud and self–assured officer who was accustomed to having his own way. The personalities had not blended well on board the Ragnarok. Over the years a species of truce had gradually evolved between them, but it was still a fragile sort of detente.

  “We are to be on holiday, gentles, and yet the environment into which I bring you is not one in which we can all equally be comfortable.” Koscuisko didn’t look at Lek when he said it. Koscuisko didn’t need to. They both knew who Koscuisko’s thrice–great–grandfather had been. Koscuisko didn’t need to know the details of Lek’s family background to understand that he led Lek into the presence of his enemies.

  On the other hand, though Koscuisko was the living descendant of Chuvishka Kospodar, he was not Lek’s enemy. Koscuisko had earned Lek’s trust over the years they’d been together on the Ragnarok, and in so doing had made Lek more free, even under Bond, than Lek had ever hoped to be until the Day when it expired at last — if he lived that long.

  “We go first to a place that is called the Matredonat. It is my place. My mother’s family made of it the present when my father cut my cheek, what would that be, when I was held up to the world as his inheriting son.”

  The details of Aznir blood–rites were arcane and not widely published, but Koscuisko’s general meaning was clear enough. “Living at this place you will meet my friend Marana, and my son. I also will be meeting my son, for the first time, as you are. He is eight years old. His name is Anton Andreievitch, because I am Andrej his father.”

  Lek knew by the eager tension in Smish’s body beside him how interested she was in this news. They were all interested. There had been guarded talk among them, but Robert St. Clare — who knew more about Koscuisko than anyone on board, including Stildyne — had either been unclear on the details or too reticent to gossip about them. Koscuisko’s friend Marana, Koscuisko had said. It seemed an odd way to describe the mother of his son, even given that Koscuisko was Aznir and Aznir were peculiar.

  “This place of mine, the Matredonat, is in the farmland, but there are hills behind. There is riding. One may swim in the river if one does not mind the fish. They are very large fish. And that brings to mind a point.”

  If Koscuisko’s estate was in the grain–lands Koscuisko would be talking about the old ones, the huge, old, wise, green–and–gold fish with their solemn express
ions and their faces that were like the private member of a man. His fish. The old ones were as long and sometimes longer than a man was tall, and the roe that the females carried was worth its weight in hallucinogenic drugs. Lek wondered if the others knew that when a man like Koscuisko spoke of his place, he meant an estate the size of a respectable city, or larger.

  “Lek and I have blood in common, in a way. He will be able to explain much when I am not with you.” Koscuisko’s reference startled Lek out of his meditation; Koscuisko was being very frank indeed, to admit to genetic ties between Aznir and Sarvaw. “Among these things about which it may be necessary to explain are requirements of hospitality. You are to be lodged each of you apart in guest quarters, because you are my Security. The household will wish to ensure that you lack for nothing that will increase your comfort under the roof of the Matredonat.”

  This was going to be awkward. Stildyne did have women, from time to time, but women were not his preference. Maybe Koscuisko’s people would make allowances for the fact that Stildyne was an outlander, Lek decided. Maybe they’d call for a Malcontent. If they did that, Stildyne was in for an interesting experience . . .

  “The difficulty here is this, Miss Smath.” Why Smish? She tensed beside Lek, when Koscuisko said her name. “There is no tradition in my house of a woman warrior. To Security is to be offered the hospitality of the house.”

  Suddenly Lek realized how long he had been away from home. How thoroughly he’d learned to think in Standard. He had not even thought about it. Koscuisko was right.