Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  Kazakov reached for her wine and took a sip. “And then of course the mutiny happened, and Kosinic got wounded. I think perhaps the head injury changed his personality a little, because he became sullen and angry. Sometimes he’d just be sitting in a chair and you’d look up and see him in a complete fury—his jaw would be working and his neck muscles all taut like cables and his eyes on fire. It was a little frightening. This is extremely good wine, my lord.”

  “I’m glad you like it. Do you have any idea what made Kosinic angry?”

  “No, my lord. I don’t think the wardroom conversation was any more inane than usual.” She smiled at her own joke, and then the smile faded. “I always thought getting blown up by the Naxids was reason enough for anger. But whatever the cause, Kosinic became a lot less sociable after he was wounded, and he spent most of his time in his cabin or in the Flag Officer Station, working.”

  Martinez sipped his own wine. He thought he understood Kosinic fairly well.

  He himself was a Peer, and blessed with a large allowance from his wealthy family. But he was a provincial, and marked as a provincial by his accent. He knew very well the way high-caste Peers could condescend to their inferiors, or deliberately humiliate them, or treat them as servants, or simply ignore them. Even if the other officers intended no disparagement, a sensitive, intelligent commoner might well detect slights where none existed.

  “Do you happen to know how Lady Michi came to take Kosinic on her staff?” Martinez asked.

  “I believe Kosinic served as a cadet in a previous command. He impressed her and she took him along when he passed his lieutenant exams.”

  Which was unusually broad-minded of Michi, Martinez thought. She could as easily have associated herself only with her own clients and the clients of powerful families with whom she wished to curry favor, as had Fletcher. Instead, though she came from a clan at least as ancient and noble as the Gombergs or Fletchers, she’d chosen to give one of her valuable staff jobs to a poor commoner.

  Though it had to be admitted, in retrospect, that Michi’s experiment in social mobility hadn’t been very successful.

  “Was Kosinic a good tactical officer?” Martinez asked.

  “Yes. Absolutely. Of course, he didn’t bring in a new tactical system, the way you did.”

  Martinez sipped his wine again. In spite of Kazakov’s praise, it still tasted vinegary to him. “And the warrant officers?” he asked.

  Kazakov explained that Fletcher had his pick of warrant and petty officers, and had chosen only the most experienced. The number of trainees was kept to a minimum, and the result was a hard core of professionals in charge of all the ship’s departments, all of whom were of exemplary efficiency.

  “But Captain Fletcher,” Martinez said, “chose to execute one of those professionals he had personally chosen.”

  Kazakov’s expression turned guarded. “Yes, my lord.”

  “Do you have any idea why?”

  Kazakov shook her head. “No, my lord. Engineer Thuc was one of the most efficient department heads on the ship.”

  “Captain Fletcher had never in your hearing expressed any…violent intentions?”

  She seemed startled by the question. “No. Not at all, my lord.” Her brows knit. “Though you might ask…” She shook her head. “No, that’s ridiculous.”

  “Tell me.”

  The guarded look had returned to her face. “You might ask Lieutenant Prasad.” She spoke quickly, as if she wanted to speed through the distasteful topic as quickly as she could. “As you probably heard, she and the captain were intimates. He may have said things to her that he wouldn’t have…” She sighed, having finally gotten through it. “…to any of the rest of us.”

  “Thank you,” Martinez said. “I’ll interview each of the lieutenants in turn.”

  Though he couldn’t imagine Fletcher murmuring plans for homicide along with his endearments, assuming he was the sort of man who murmured endearments at all. Neither could he imagine Chandra keeping such an announcement secret, especially in those furious moments after she and Fletcher had their final quarrel.

  “Thank you for your candor,” Martinez said, though he knew perfectly well that Kazakov hadn’t been candid throughout. On the whole he approved of the moments when she’d chosen to be discreet, and he thought he could work with her very well.

  They ended the interview discussing Kazakov’s plans for her future. Her career had been planned to minimize any possible intervention by fortune: in another one of those trades so common among Peers, a friend of her family would have given her command of the frigate Storm Fury, a plan that had been detailed when both the friend and the frigate were captured by the Naxids on the first day of the mutiny.

  “Well,” Martinez said, “if I’m ever in a position to do something for you, I’ll do my best.”

  Kazakov brightened. “Thank you, my lord.”

  The Kazakovs seemed a useful sort of clan to have in one’s debt.

  After the premiere left, Martinez stoppered the wine bottle and gulped whatever was left in his glass. With his captain’s key, he opened the personnel files, intending to look at the lieutenants’ records. Then the idea struck him that Fletcher might have made a note in Thuc’s file explaining why the engineer had been executed, and Martinez went straight to Thuc’s file and opened it.

  There was nothing. Thuc had been in the Fleet for twenty-two years, had passed the exam for Master Engineer eight years ago, and was aboard Illustrious for five of those years. Fletcher’s comments in Thuc’s efficiency report were brief but favorable.

  Martinez read the files of the other senior petty officers and then went on to the lieutenants, looking through the files more or less at random. Kazakov, he discovered, had been fairly accurate in describing their accomplishments. What she hadn’t known, of course, were the contents of the efficiency reports Fletcher had made personally. For the most part they were dry, terse, and favorable, as if Fletcher was too grand to dole out much praise, but instead dribbled it out tastefully, like a rich sauce over dessert. About Kazakov he had written, “This officer has served as an efficient executive officer and has demonstrated proficiency in every technical aspect of her profession. There is nothing that stands in the way of her further promotion and command of a ship in the Fleet.”

  A note that “nothing stands in the way” was not quite the same as Fletcher’s endorsement that Kazakov would be a credit to the service or would do a fine job in command of her own ship; but carefully guarded enthusiasm seemed to be Fletcher’s consistent style. Perhaps he hadn’t thought that praise was necessary, given that his officers were so well-connected that their steps to command had been arranged ahead of time.

  After the dry asperity of Fletcher’s views of the other officers, Chandra’s report came like a thunderbolt. “Though this officer has not demonstrated any technical incompetence that has reached her captain’s attention, her chaotic and impulsive behavior has thoroughly befouled the atmosphere of the ship. Her level of emotional maturity is not in any way consistent with the high standards of the Fleet. Promotion is not indicated.”

  The curiously worded first sentence managed to insert the word “incompetence” without justifying its inclusion, and the rest was pure poison. Martinez stared at this for a long moment, then looked at the log to check the date at which Fletcher had last accessed the file. It had been at 2721 hours the previous evening, a mere six hours before he was killed.

  His mouth went dry. Chandra had ripped apart her relationship with Fletcher, and after thinking about it for two days, Fletcher fired a rocket at Chandra with every intention of blowing up her career.

  After which, some hours later, Fletcher was killed.

  Martinez thought the sequence through carefully. For this to be anything other than a coincidence, Chandra would have had to know that Fletcher put a bomb in her efficiency report. He checked Fletcher’s comm logs for the evening and found that he’d made only one call, to Command, possibly for a s
ituation report before going to bed. Martinez checked the watch list and discovered that it hadn’t been Chandra on watch at the time, but the sixth lieutenant, Lady Juliette Corbigny.

  So there was no evidence that Chandra would have known the contents of her efficiency report. Not unless Fletcher had made a point of looking for her and telling her in person.

  Or unless Chandra had some kind of access to documents sealed under Fletcher’s key. She was the signals officer, after all, and she was clever.

  Martinez decided that this theory had too much whisky and wine in it to make any sense, and he failed in any case to successfully imagine Chandra wrestling the fully grown Fletcher to his knees and then banging his head repeatedly on his desk.

  He rose and stretched, then looked at the chronometer: 2721. At this exact time, Fletcher had made his last cold-blooded alterations to Chandra’s fitness report.

  The coincidence chilled him. He left his office and took a brief march along the decks, circling back to his own door. He passed the door of the captain’s cabin, which was closed, then found himself turning back to it. It opened to his key. He stepped in and called for light.

  Fletcher’s office had been returned to its pristine state, the fingerprint powder dusted away, the desk dark and gleaming. There was a scent of furniture polish. The bronze statues were impassive in their armor.

  The safe sat silvery in its niche. Apparently, Gawbyan had repaired it after his break-in.

  Martinez passed into the sleeping cabin and stared at the bloody porcelain figure with its unnaturally broad eyes. He looked at the pictures on the wall and saw a long-haired Terran with blue skin playing a flute, a bearded man dead or swooning in the arms of a blue-clad woman, a monstrous being—or possibly it was a Torminel with unnaturally orange fur—snarling out of the frame, its extended tongue pierced by a jagged spear.

  Lovely stuff to see at bedtime, he thought. The view dismaying.

  The only picture of any interest showed a young woman bathing, but what might have been an attractive scene was spoiled by the creepy presence of elderly men in turbans who watched her from concealment.

  “Comm,” he said, “page Montemar Jukes to the captain’s office.”

  Fletcher’s pet artist ambled into the office wearing nonregulation coveralls and braced halfheartedly, in a way that would have earned a ferocious rebuke from any petty officer. To judge from Jukes and Xi, Fletcher was willing to tolerate a certain amount of unmilitary slackness among his personal following.

  Jukes was a stocky man with disordered gray hair and rheumy blue eyes. His cheeks were unnaturally ruddy and his breath smelled of sherry. Martinez gave him what he intended to be a disapproving scowl, then turned to lead into Fletcher’s bedroom.

  “Come with me, Mr. Jukes.”

  Jukes followed in silence, then stopped in the doorway, leaning back slightly to contemplate the great porcelain figure strapped to the tree.

  “What is this, Mr. Jukes?”

  “Narayanguru,” Jukes said. “The Shaa tied him to a tree and tortured him to death. He’s all-seeing, that’s why his eyes wrap around like that.”

  “All-seeing? Funny he didn’t see what the Shaa were going to do to him.”

  Jukes showed yellow teeth. “Yes,” he said. “Funny.”

  “Why’s he here?”

  “You mean why did Captain Fletcher hang Narayanguru in his sleeping cabin?” Jukes shrugged. “I don’t know. He collected cult art, and he couldn’t show it to the public. Maybe this is the only place he could put it.”

  “Was Captain Fletcher a cultist?”

  Jukes was taken aback by the question. “Possibly,” he said, “but which cult?” He walked into the room and pointed at the snarling beast. “That’s Tranomakoi, a personification of their storm spirit.” He indicated the blue-skinned man. “That’s Krishna, who I believe is a Hindu deity.” His hand drifted across the scarred paneling to indicate the swooning man. “That’s a pieta, that’s Christian. Another god killed in some picturesque way by the Shaa.”

  “Christian?” Martinez was intrigued. “We have Christians on Laredo—on my home world. On certain days of the year they dress in white robes and pointed hoods, don chains, and flog each other.”

  Jukes was startled. “Why do they do that?”

  “I have no idea. It’s said they sometimes pick one of their number to be their god and nail him to a cross.”

  Jukes scratched his scalp in wonderment. “Jolly sort of cult, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a great honor. Most of them live.”

  “And the authorities don’t do anything?”

  Martinez shrugged. “The cultists only hurt each other. And Laredo is very far from Zanshaa.”

  “Apparently.”

  Martinez looked at Narayanguru with his bloody translucent flesh. “In any case,” he said, “I’m neither a cultist nor an aesthete, and I have no intention of sleeping beneath that gory object for a single night.”

  The other man grinned. “I don’t blame you.”

  Martinez turned to Jukes. “Can you…rearrange…the captain’s collection?” he asked. “Store Narayanguru where he won’t disturb anyone’s sleep, and put something more pleasant in his place?”

  “Yes, my lord.” Jukes gave him an appraising look. “Or perhaps you’d like me to create something for you? I can print something off and frame it easily enough, if you’ll tell me the sort of thing you’d like.”

  Martinez had never been asked the sort of art he’d liked before and had no ready answer, so he asked, “Are you looking for a new patron, Mr. Jukes?”

  “Always,” Jukes said with his yellow-toothed smile. “Bear in mind that you’ll probably retain command of Illustrious for years, Fletcher’s collection will go to his family, and you don’t want to keep the original tiles and murals on the walls. This is a warship, not a haunted palace.”

  Martinez looked at him. “Didn’t you create all the designs on the ship? You don’t mind if I rip out all the tiles and paint over the murals?”

  A sherry-tinged jauntiness floated from Jukes. “Not at all. The designs are all safe in my computer, and quite frankly it’s not my best work anyway.”

  Martinez frowned. “Wasn’t Fletcher paying for your best?”

  “The work’s all his taste, not mine. All balanced and classical and dull. I’ve done a lot better work in the past, much more interesting, but no one’s paying for it, and so…” He shrugged. “Here I am, on a warship. It’s not what I expected when I first started working with a graphics program, believe me.”

  Martinez found himself amused. “What did Fletcher rate you, anyway?”

  “Rigger First Class.”

  “You don’t know anything about a rigger’s duties, do you?”

  The artist shook his head. “Not a damn thing, my lord. That’s why I need a new patron.”

  “Well.” Martinez looked at the blue-skinned flute player. “Start by removing all this gloomy stuff and putting something more cheerful in its place. We can talk about any…commissions later.”

  Jukes brightened. “Shall I start now, my lord?”

  “After breakfast will be fine.”

  Jukes brightened still further. “Very good, my lord. I’ve got an inventory of what items of his collection Fletcher brought aboard, and I’ll peruse it tonight.”

  Martinez was amused by the word “peruse.” “Very good, Mr. Jukes. You’re dismissed.”

  “Yes, my lord.” This time Jukes managed a halfway creditable salute, and marched away. Martinez left Fletcher’s quarters and locked the door behind him.

  The interview had cheered him. He went to his own cabin and was startled to find that one of his servants, Rigger Espinosa, had laid cushions on the floor of his office and was stretched out on them fully clothed.

  “What are you doing there?” Martinez asked.

  Espinosa jumped to his feet and braced. He was a young man, muscular and trim, with heavy-knuckled hands that hung by his sides.
/>   “Mr. Alikhan sent me, my lord,” he said.

  Martinez stared at him. “But why?”

  Espinosa’s face was frank. “Someone’s killing captains, my lord. I’m to keep that from happening again.”

  Killing captains. He hadn’t thought of it that way.

  “Very well,” Martinez said. “As you were.”

  He went into his sleeping cabin, where Alikhan had laid out his night things. He picked up his toothbrush, moistened it in his sink, and looked at himself in the mirror.

  Captain of the Illustrious, he thought.

  In spite of the deaths, in spite of Narayanguru hanging on his tree and the unexplained deaths and the unknown killer stalking the ship, he couldn’t help but smile.

  TWELVE

  After breakfast Martinez put on his full dress uniform with the silver braid and the tall collar, now without the red staff tabs that Alikhan had removed overnight. He drew on his white gloves and called for Marsden and Fulvia Kazakov to join him. While waiting, he had Alikhan fetch the Golden Orb from its case.

  He hadn’t even considered strapping on the curved ceremonial knife. The situation would be tense enough without that.

  Marsden and Kazakov arrived, each wearing full dress. “My lady,” Martinez said to the premiere, “please let Master Machinist Gawbyan know that we are about to inspect his department.”

  Kazakov made the call as Martinez led the procession to the machine shop, where Gawbyan, breathless because he’d rushed from the petty officers’ mess just ahead of them, braced at the door.