The Devil and Deep Space

by Susan R. Matthews

  She didn’t know how the Ragnarok’s Bonds were taking things. That was only part of the point. The larger part of the point was that a ship traveling under appeal put any assigned Bonds on Safe. Therefore she would put the Ragnarok’s Bonds on Safe: to confirm that the Ragnarok was traveling as a ship under appeal. A ship with a protected legal status. A very visible ship, one which could not be quietly shunted off to one side and consumed piece by piece, ship and crew.

  “I understand,” Admiral Brecinn said. Nobody had asked her. She did understand, Jils was sure of it; and was doing what she could to change her future. “You may rely on my discretion with absolute confidence, Bench specialist.”

  That wasn’t going to be necessary.

  “I agree to sanitary quarantine for Admiral Brecinn and her people,” Auditor Ormbach said. “And to release the Safes, though I meant the Ragnarok to come here for them. But in light of your evidence, it is crucial that the ship not be permitted to remain in possession of a battle cannon. If their motivations are unworrisome, they should have no objection to surrendering the contraband item to be placed into Evidence.”

  This was unpleasantly unexpected, but not in the least remarkable. Unfortunately. “I have no personal knowledge of the existence of such a piece of contraband,” Jils said, carefully. She had been told that the evidence against Pesadie Training Command included a black–market, main battle cannon, and its munitions load on top of it. She had not actually seen the cannon, however. “Consider your request, please, Auditor.”

  If the contraband that the Auditor demanded existed only in Brecinn’s imagination, the Ragnarok could only prove that by submitting to an intrusive and time–consuming search by Taisheki Station resources. Jils couldn’t wait. Nor could she afford to leave the Ragnarok vulnerable here, lest Koscuisko play his trump to protect his ship.

  And if the Ragnarok surrendered a contraband cannon, by the time it all came to explanations who knew what the audit trail would look like?

  “Questions have been raised as to the motivation and loyalty of the Ragnarok’s chain of command, Specialist Ivers, and an officer of the Court at Chilleau Judiciary has by your report attempted to kill one of the Ragnarok’s officers. If the ship is armed, I cannot let it leave here. I’m sorry. I see no alternative that would not be grossly irresponsible.”

  Well, Auditor Ormbach was right. As long as there was a main battle cannon unaccounted for, it would be criminal negligence on Auditor Ormbach’s part to permit a potentially compromised warship with an understandably aggrieved senior officer to leave the system.

  Unless.

  “Safes, Senior Auditor. I will take them with me as a token of goodwill on your part, and convey your instructions to the Ragnarok’s Command and General Staff.” She’d get the Safes. She’d have Brecinn and Brecinn’s team sequestered under strict quarantine, not an uncomfortable imprisonment by any means, but bound to be boring.

  She had to get to Chilleau Judiciary, and the Ragnarok with her, so that she could get space between Fleet and Jennet ap Rhiannon, so that the First Secretary could offer Koscuisko his personal assurances and discuss mutual concerns. “As you say, Bench specialist,” Auditor Ormbach agreed. “And we will in the mean time initiate appropriate precautions.”

  And she had to hold the secret of the forged Record, if she could, until after the Selection. It was not a very closely kept secret. Everyone who had been there in the great hall of Chelatring Side was in a position to know, but the Malcontent could do the damage control there. She had to trust the Malcontent for that. Bench specialists didn’t like having to trust anything or anybody, but there was no help for that now.

  After the Selection they could expose the fraudulent Record under Bench seal, and cancel any charges outstanding against those troops for whose sake Jennet ap Rhiannon had dared so much. She would log Koscuisko’s documents then. He would be relieved of Writ. She would find a way to make it all come out right — once the Selection had been safely completed.

  ###

  Stildyne helped Andrej up onto the upper tier in the little room, letting him down gently onto the slatted bench as Andrej grunted in reluctant discomfort. Andrej didn’t think it was the wound in his shoulder. That was healing nicely now, from the inside out as desired; and the tissue itself was carefully protected by a therapeutic breathable membrane — one that would have to be exchanged soon, which was the only reason that Narion had allowed him into the sauna at all. And then only with strict conditions about heat and humidity.

  “All right, sir?” Stildyne asked, with his hand at the back of Andrej’s neck to keep his head from knocking up against the wall before Stildyne had had a chance to pad the point of contact with a folded towel. It was perhaps not absolutely necessary for Stildyne to be handling him so carefully, but Andrej couldn’t begrudge it.

  Stoshik had been right. He had wronged Stildyne. He was not going to make it right, either, because he couldn’t imagine such a thing as that; but he could try to accept care more gracefully than he had in the past, with more self–awareness in his acceptance of courtesies that he had become dangerously close to taking for granted.

  “Thank you, Brachi, it is fine.” It wasn’t the wound. It was his entire body. Strapped into a stasis–mover and scarcely conscious for all of that time, his arms ached and his back hurt, his neck was stiff, the muscles in his belly sore, his legs uncomfortable. They had done him good service at Chelatring Side. But he had unquestionably annoyed them. “I am more travel-sore than convalescent. It is why I so particularly wanted a sauna.”

  Turning away without replying Stildyne crossed to the other side of the room to settle himself on the lower bench. It wasn’t far across the room, since it was a sauna. Stildyne’s choice of the lower bench was the only way Andrej could look Stildyne in the eye at that small distance, what with the difference of height between them.

  At eye level, the impact of the rest of Stildyne’s all but naked body was manageable. Andrej had been taking saunas with Stildyne for years; he was accustomed to the experience, but it was still a sometimes stressful one. Stildyne’s body was scarred as well as Stildyne’s face, and if the scars were not as disfiguring, they were spread over a much larger canvas. Who was to say whether the cumulative impact was more or less awful accordingly?

  “You’ll have noticed that things are a little different on board since we got back,” Stildyne suggested. Andrej closed his eyes and let his body drink in the grateful heat of the sauna. He could feel his muscles relax. He had not lied to Narion; it was simple therapy. The fact that he liked sauna was a side benefit only, and the fact that sauna was one of the few places on board the Ragnarok where a man could be almost alone was also beside the point.

  “Our Command Branch officers are out of their minds. Yes. I had noticed.” Lieutenant ap Rhiannon was a piece of work if he’d ever seen one, and it was hard for him to take her solemn assumption of her duties with a straight face. Except that the other officers seemed to have no such difficulty. Andrej hadn’t decided yet whether they were perhaps playing an elaborate practical joke on him. “I think I like Command Branch better that way.”

  “Problem, though, Andrej.” Stildyne’s voice was grave and considered, and Andrej thought his name sounded very odd in Stildyne’s mouth. Because it sounded just like “Excellency” sounded, when Stildyne said it to him rather than First Officer. “I’ve been talking to people. If ap Rhiannon doesn’t like what she hears when Specialist Ivers gets back from Taisheki Station, she’s leaving.”

  Andrej thought about this. Stildyne was right to be concerned, of course. Based on her actions since he had left, there seemed little doubt that the woman had become desperate. Did he not know what madwomen were capable of? Had he not the hole in his shoulder to prove it?

  “I’m not sure what she might think she could accomplish by defying the entire Jurisdiction, Fleet and Bench alike.” Wait, he couldn’t say that. That was precisely what he meant to do. “I’m not about to leave m
y Infirmary at the mercy of a maniac. We have had quite enough of that already. Where the ship goes, I will go also.”

  He was in for the duration, now. He could not in honor leave until the issue of the forged Record had been resolved to his satisfaction, if only by placing it into Evidence. As long as it was an undisclosed forgery, it threatened his people.

  And yet Specialist Ivers had been right: if he valued the Second Judge’s plans for a change in the system of Inquiry, he could not afford to place so destructive a weapon as the forged Record in the hands of Chilleau Judiciary’s political enemies. So long as the Record lay undisclosed, he had to keep with it; and for so long as that, he could not have the relief of Writ completed.

  “I’m glad to hear that. Sir. So will your people be.”

  The outer door into the changing room had opened. Andrej saw movement through the window in the door. Stildyne fell silent. Stildyne was up to something. After a moment, the inner door came open; and the First Officer came into the sauna. Andrej stared. He had never seen First Officer in a sauna.

  He had never seen First Officer out of uniform that he could remember, and there was no rank on the towel that Mendez held in one hand. Stepping carefully past Stildyne’s scarred knees Mendez took a position beside Stildyne, close to the back wall, and laid his towel across his lap.

  “Good–greeting,” Mendez said. “Warm enough for you? I don’t know how you breathe in here, Andrej.”

  Andrej didn’t know what to say. He was too surprised. He had grasped that Stildyne had a plot in motion; but he had to process the apparition of Ralph Mendez, third of three so named, in a sauna before he could begin to parse the meaning of it out.

  “Just getting to the good part, First Officer,” Stildyne said.

  Mendez nodded. “What’s he say, then, Brachi?”

  “Means to stick it out. At least at first mention. But I haven’t explained the problem to him yet.”

  Andrej caught his breath. “Speak to me,” he said. “Explain. What problem? I do not tolerate to be ambushed, Brachi. Confess yourself at once, and with completeness.”

  Stildyne looked startled; Andrej considered that he had perhaps not yet quite readjusted to the Standard–speaking world. It was true that such language could be taken as referring to formal Inquiry, here — rather than a simple demand for an explanation.

  “Easy as this, Andrej,” Mendez said, but considerately, as if aware of how strange what he had to say would sound. “Unprecedented circumstances make new rules. And we’re glad to have you back, we’re used to you, your Infirmary missed you. But. There’s two parts to it. Only half is that you want to stay. The other half is if we’re going to let you.”

  What was this we? “I don’t understand.”

  “Captain knows you haven’t had much time to think things through. You’ve come on board wounded, for one. And of all the people here on Ragnarok you’ve got the most to lose. She isn’t sure she means to let you.”

  Staggering. Andrej sat and concentrated on taking a deep breath, calming himself, thinking this thing through.

  “I could tell you a thing that would convince you, Ralph.” He could. He could explain that it had not been Garol Vogel who had murdered Captain Lowden in Burkhayden, and Mendez would realize that Andrej had nothing to lose by staying with the Ragnarok, that Andrej was in danger — real, if of unquantifiable likelihood — of being called to give accounting for that crime. “If I have to, I will. I came back to this ship because I am more indebted to its crew than my blood kin. To suggest I go away to secure my privileges insults me.”

  Someone else. The door was opening again. Wheatfields, in the name of all Saints, and if there was a very great deal of Stildyne when he took off his clothing there was altogether too much of Wheatfields to be tolerated.

  “I appreciate that, Andrej.” First Officer took no special notice of Wheatfields, who sat down next to Andrej himself on the bench — well toward the wall, to minimize proximity. The lower bench, and he was still taller than Andrej was. It was a setup. He would have a word to say to Stildyne when this was all over. “But we need more of a commitment from you than that. We need your support. You have to believe that ap Rhiannon is your Captain, Andrej, or it isn’t going to work. Serge. Explain.”

  Wheatfields had closed his eyes, his head tilted back to the ceiling. He made Andrej nervous, sitting so close. “It’s still a dirty secret,” Wheatfields said. There was something in his voice that Andrej could not understand — humor? “Or at least no one has taken official notice, yet. But it’s true, that rumor of Admiral Brecinn’s. We are mutinous. You’d better be sure of what you decide, Koscuisko, because once you commit to this there’s no going back.”

  Didn’t they think he knew?

  “For this reason you should agree that I must be here,” Andrej said. Considering whether he should perhaps be furious. “Because so long as I am here, it will be that much more difficult to notice. Have I come from my home for those days in a stasis–mover to have my motivation questioned? What do you wish for me to do?”

  All right, he was furious. Yes. During the time that Andrej had been assigned to this ship, Wheatfields had told him many things about himself — his character, his sexuality, a wide range of issues relevant to his personal value and right to breathe the same air as decent souls.

  But never had it been suggested that he’d run from threat and leave his people to face hazard alone. Not until now. In all of this time, not even Wheatfields had called him a coward. It was possibly the only thing that Wheatfields had not called him, once “noble and beneficent” was ruled off the list.

  “You’ve got people at home as well, Andrej,” First Officer pointed out. “You’ve got that boy. Your Cousin Ferinc says he’s a beautiful little man, and that your wife is waiting for you to come back and warm her sheets; I’ve talked to him. Bonds are Bonds, Andrej. That child is your son. Are you suggesting you care more about troops than your own child?”

  It was a dirty question. Had it been Wheatfields who had asked it, Andrej would have struck him. But First Officer was out of reach.

  “He is a beautiful child. Much more than I deserve. And I would deserve such a wife and such a child even less if I could turn my back on the Ragnarok, just when I might be able to help save the ship simply by staying here. It has not been Marana who has kept me from the abyss all these years, First Officer. It has been Robert. Lek. Pyotr. Stildyne. All Saints forbid I should say Wheatfields, even.”

  Again with the movement in the anteroom. Again with the opening of the door. Andrej closed his eyes tightly in horror. There were only two other officers with rank to match or to exceed his own on board the Ragnarok. And Two scuttled when she walked. What would Two even look like, in a towel?

  Jennet ap Rhiannon stepped up to the upper tier opposite Wheatfields, and met Andrej’s horrified gaze with a level stare. She was not Dolgorukij; and her towel was in her lap. She could not know what it was to show her shoulders. And yet she was to be his commanding officer —

  “Yes?” ap Rhiannon asked. She was crèche–bred, there was that. The habit of command was easier for her than it might have been for Seascape, for instance. If Andrej concentrated on being angry, on how sore his muscles were, he might be able to ignore her shoulders. Her bare shoulders. Holy Mother. This was beyond reason.

  “I think he means it, your Excellency,” First Officer replied. “Respectfully suggest you let him tell you.”

  Captain. Captain ap Rhiannon. Shoulders or no shoulders. Yes. That was the way to do it. “Your Excellency,” Andrej said. “I had not realized that there might be a question. This is my ship, and I am under so much obligation to its crew that I cannot explain. It’s true that I have better to look forward to once out of Service than the most of us, but that makes me more difficult to kill, either by accident or by Judicial mandate. I am the chief medical officer on the Ragnarok. Respectfully request I be permitted to perform as such.”

  Petitioning, and petiti
oning this little Lieutenant, of all people. This little Lieutenant had gotten Mendez and Wheatfields to accept her, though, and the rest of the officers and crew as well. If he respected his own medical staff, he could not disregard that judgment.

  “Wheatfields wants Secured Medical for storage,” ap Rhiannon said. “Any problems?”

  No. None whatever. Why, did she think he’d come back to the Ragnarok for that? “I have no difficulty in surrendering Secured Medical for any purpose, your Excellency. To the contrary, rather.” They’d have to find some place to keep the Record. Or maybe they would just leave it there. It would still be a properly secured place, after all, whether used for storage or for torture.

  “Very well. If First Officer agrees. Resume your duties, Doctor Koscuisko. It’s good to have you back. And I’m leaving now. It’s too hot in here. No, don’t get up.”

  He hadn’t thought about it, but the others had. He could tell that he had some adjusting to do. There was silence in the sauna for some moments as the Lieutenant — as the Captain dressed. When the outer door of the changing room opened and closed again, Wheatfields stood up.

  “Later,” Wheatfields said, to the First Officer. “And no, I don’t think we should do staff here. Don’t get any ideas, Koscuisko. Nothing is changed, but a ship needs its Chief Medical.”

  That was a welcome home, Andrej supposed. Wheatfields let another gust of cooler air into the sauna on his way out; all of this traffic was annoying, not relaxing. Mendez yawned, and leaned back against the wall.

  “Well, I don’t know, it wouldn’t be so bad. If it were dry heat. You’re not off the hook for information, Andrej. If we need it, we still need it, and you’ll still be our best man for the job.”