Logs (dread empire's fall)

by Walter Jon Williams

  All that was true enough-Fletcher could have traded a favor with someone. That was how the high-caste Peers kept everything in their small circle.

  "Bastard wants me to stay in my place," Chandra said fiercely as she paced. "Well, I won't. I just won't."

  "I didn't understand how you got together with Fletcher in the first place."

  Chandra stopped her pacing. Her eyes gazed into her own past, a gaze thick with contempt. "I'm the only officer on the ship who wasn't Fletcher's choice," she said. "He had someone else picked for my place but he didn't get to Harzapid before the war happened. When the squadron shipped out I got sent aboard. I didn't know anyone and-" She shrugged. "I tried to make myself agreeable to my captain." Her mouth drew up in a sneer. "I'd never met anyone like him. I thought he had an interesting mind." She barked out a laugh. "Interesting mind! He's as dull as a rusty spoon."

  They looked at each other for a few brief seconds. Then Chandra took a half-step closer to Martinez' desk, her fingertips drifting over the black surface, cutting through the holographic display of the hyper-tourney game.

  "I could really use your help, Gare," she said.

  "I can't promote you, either. You know that."

  An intense fire burned in Chandra's eyes. "But your relatives can," she said. "Your father-in-law is on the Fleet Control Board and Michi Chen is his sister. Between the two of them they should be able to work an overdue promotion for a lieutenant."

  "I've told you before," Martinez said. "I can't do anything out here."

  She looked at him levelly. "Some day," she said, "you're going to need a friend in the service, and I'm going to be that friend. I'm going to be the best and most loyal friend an officer ever had."

  Martinez had his doubts: Chandra's friendship seemed to come at a very high price. Though, professionally speaking, could think of no reason why Chandra shouldn't be promoted.

  Other than the erratic and impulsive behavior, of course, and the chaotic love life.

  But how bad was that, really? he asked himself. Compared with some of the captains he'd known, Chandra was practically a paragon.

  Chandra, misunderstanding his silence, leaned forward and took his hand. Her fingers were warm in his palm. The hologram gleamed on her tunic.

  "Please, Gareth," she said. "I really need you now."

  "I'll speak to Lady Michi," Martinez said. "I don't know how much credit I've got with her, but I'll try."

  "Thank you, Gareth." She rested her hip on the desk and leaned across to kiss his cheek. Her scent flared in his senses. He stood, and dropped her hand.

  "That won't be necessary, lieutenant," he said.

  She looked at him for a moment out of her long eyes, and her look hardened. She straightened and regained her feet.

  "As you wish, captain," she said. She braced, her pointed chin held high. "With the captain's permission?"

  "You are dismissed," Martinez said. His mouth was dry.

  She went to the door and slid it open.

  "I meant what I said," she said, "about being your friend."

  She was gone, leaving the door behind her. Someone walked past-Lord Shane Coen, Michi's red-haired signals lieutenant-and Coen cast a curious glance into the room.

  Martinez nodded at him in what he hoped was a brisk, military fashion, and sat down behind the game of hyper-tourney.

  It was a while before he could get his mind on the game.

  Three watches ticked by, with nothing for Martinez to do but sleep, spend his time at hyper-tourney, check the tactical display to see if anything had changed, and stare at Terza's picture in the surface of his desk. No one invited Martinez to dine. He considered asking the lieutenants to an informal cocktail party, an alternative to the full-dress dinners Fletcher had imposed on the cruiser, but he then reflected that he'd have to invite Chandra, and decided against it.

  Martinez glanced up at the sound of purposeful footsteps, and looked up to see Captain Lord Gomberg Fletcher standing in the door of his office. Fletcher wore his full dress uniform, with white gloves and the ceremonial sickle-shaped knife at his waist.

  Martinez jumped to his feet and braced. "Lord captain!" he said.

  Fletcher looked at him from his deep-set eyes. "I'd be obliged if you'd join me, Captain Martinez."

  "Certainly, my lord." Martinez began to walk around the desk, then hesitated. "Should I change into full dress, my lord?"

  "That won't be necessary, lord captain. Please come along, if you please."

  Martinez left his office and joined the captain, who was accompanied also by Lord Sabir Mersenne, the fourth lieutenant, and Marsden, the captain's short, bald secretary, both also in full dress. Without another word, Fletcher turned and began walking down the corridor, the others following. Martinez wondered if he should have worn full dress when eating breakfast by himself, or at least should be embarrassed that he hadn't.

  Fletcher's silver-embossed scabbard clanked faintly on the end of its chain. Martinez had never seen the captain wear his knife, but then he'd never accompanied Fletcher on an inspection before. Perhaps the extreme formality was a part of the captain's style.

  The party went down two decks, leaving behind officers' country and the haunts of the enlisted. The captain marched to a hatch and knocked with a gloved hand. It was the hatch, Martinez knew, that led to the engine spaces.

  The hatch was opened by Master Engineer Thuc, whose towering figure nearly filled the doorway before he stepped back to reveal the engine control room. Behind the line of acceleration cages, beneath murals showing strong-thewed characters working with huge levers and winches on some impossibly antique machinery, the control room crew were lined up, braced, and spotlessly turned out.

  Apparently Captain Fletcher had asked Martinez to accompany him on one of his frequent inspections.

  The captain was a demon for inspections and musters, and usually inspected some part of the ship every day that Illustrious wasn't engaged in crucial military business. Today was the engine division's turn, but Martinez could imagine no reason why he had been invited along. He wasn't a line officer, but staff, and not in Fletcher's chain of command-the state of Illustrious' engines was really none of his business.

  So while he watched Fletcher and his two subordinates crawl over the engine control room, passing white-gloved fingers over the glossy surfaces, Martinez wondered why he had been summoned to observe this ritual, and paranoia soon began to scuttle through his mind on chitinous insect legs. Surely this had to do with Chandra Prasad. Surely Fletcher suspected Martinez of being her lover, and the inspection was part of an elaborate revenge plot.

  The captain found flaws-a suspicious creak in an acceleration cage that indicated a worn part, a scratch on the transparent cover of a gauge, an emergency radiation suit carelessly stowed-and then the party went on to look at the engine department's storage lockers, at the heavily shielded antihydrogen compartments, and-after donning ear protection-at the massive reactor that powered the ship, and the huge turbopumps that operated the thermal exchange system.

  The experience of the chamber was odd. Martinez knew that the noise was hellish, but his earphones automatically pulsed out sound waves that canceled that of the pumps, and all he heard in his ears was a distant white noise. But his body reacted to the sound: he could feel the vibration in his bones and in his soft organs, and when he touched a wall or pipe.

  Fletcher stroked the pumps with white-gloved fingers, found them clean, and then returned to the engine control room so that his questions might be heard. Thuc followed the captain in docile silence, his muscular body looming over Fletcher's shoulder except when he darted forward to open a hatch or a locker door.

  "You've changed the filters on the main pump recently?"

  "Just after Protipanu, my lord," Thuc said. "We aren't due for another change for two months."

  "Very good. And the pump itself?"

  "We'll swap it out in another…" Thuc considered his answers, his eyes focused somewhere ab
ove his left shoulder "…thirty-eight days, my lord."

  "Very well." The captain tugged his white gloves over his wrists and smoothed the fine kidskin over his fingers. "I'll just inspect your crew, then."

  He marched down the line of engine crew, stopping to make an occasional comment about dress or deportment. At the end of the line he encountered Thuc again, and nodded.

  "Very good, Thuc," he said. "Excellent marks, as always."

  "Thank you, lord captain." An hint of a smile touched his lips.

  When Fletcher moved it was so fast that Martinez failed to see it properly and could only reconstruct the action later, out of fragments of memory. The sickle-shaped blade sang from the sheath, whistled through the air, and buried itself in Thuc's throat. A crescent of arterial blood splattered the mural behind Thuc's head.

  Thuc was too large a man to fall all at once. First his shoulders dropped, and then his knees gave way. His barrel chest sank, then his stomach sagged, and then-as Fletcher's knife cleared his throat-Thuc's head lolled down. It was only then that Thuc fell like a tower of wooden blocks kicked by a careless child.

  Martinez' heart began to beat again, a roaring in his ears. He looked at Fletcher in shock.

  Fletcher looked expressionlessly at the body with his ice-blue eyes, and took a step away from the spreading pool of red. He flicked scarlet from his blade with a movement of his wrist.

  The smell of blood hit Martinez' senses, and he bit down hard on the stomach that was trying to quease its way past his throat.

  "Marsden," Fletcher said, "call the doctor to examine the body, and have him bring a stretcher party to carry it away. Cho," to a staring petty officer, "you are now in charge of the engineering department. Once the doctor is done, call the off-duty watch to help you police this… untidiness. In the meantime, I'd appreciate a cleaning cloth."

  Cho nearly ran to one of the storage lockers, returned with a cloth, and handed it with quaking fingers to the captain. Fletcher used it to clean the knife blade and mop some of the blood on his tunic, then threw the cloth to the deck.

  A pale-faced young recruit swayed, then toppled to the floor in a dead faint. Fletcher ignored him, and turned again to Cho.

  "Cho," he said, "I trust you will maintain Engineer Thuc's high standards." He nodded to the control room crew, then turned and made his way out.

  Martinez followed, his nerves leaping. He wanted to flee Fletcher's company, to barricade himself in his quarters with a pistol and several bottles of brandy, the first for protection and the second for comfort.

  He looked left and right at Marsdan and Mersenne, and saw that their expressions were mirrors of his own thoughts.

  "Captain Martinez," Fletcher said. The words made Martinez start.

  "Yes, lord captain?" He was moderately surprised that he managed three whole words without stumbling, screaming, or falling into dumb silence.

  Fletcher reached the companionway that led to the deck above, and he turned to Martinez.

  "Do you know why I invited you along this morning?"

  "No, my lord."

  Martinez had managed another three words. He was making real progress. Soon he might be walking on his own and tying his own shoelaces.

  He found himself very aware of the captain's right hand, the hand that would reach across his body to draw the knife. He found his own hands ready to lunch forward and seize Fletcher's forearm if the hand approached the hilt.

  He hoped that Fletcher was not aware that Martinez was so focused of Fletcher's right hand. He tried not to stare at it.

  "I asked you along so that you could report to Squadron Commander Chen," Fletcher said, "and tell her exactly what just occurred."

  "Yes, lord captain."

  "I don't want her hearing a rumor, or getting a distorted version."

  Distorted version. As if there was a version that would make this at all comprehensible.

  Martinez searched his numbed mind and found a question, but the question required more than three words and he took a second or two to organize his thoughts.

  "My lord," he asked, "do you wish me to give Lady Michi the reason for your, your action?"

  The captain straightened slightly. A superior smile touched his lips.

  "Only that it was my privilege," he said.

  A chill shimmered up Martinez' spine.

  "Very good, lord captain," he said.

  Fletcher turned and led up the companionway. At the top he met the ship's doctor, Lord Yuntai Xi, who was followed by his assistant carrying his bag.

  "The engine control room, lord doctor," Fletcher said. "A fatality."

  The doctor gave him a curious look, and nodded.

  "Thank you, lord captain. Can you tell me-?"

  "Best you see for yourself, lord doctor. I won't detain you."

  Xi stroked his little white beard, then nodded and began his descent of the companion. Fletcher led the party up three decks, to the deck he shared with the squadron commander, then turned to face the two lieutenants. "Thank you, my lords," he said. "I won't be needing you any farther." He turned to his secretary. "Marsden, I'll need you to enter the death in the log."

  Martinez walked with Marsenne to the squadcom's door. He felt a tingling in his back, as if he were expecting the captain to draw his knife and lunge at him. He didn't quite dare to look at the other lieutenant, and he had a feeling that Marsenne wasn't looking at him, either.

  He came to the squadcom's door, and without saying anything to Lieutenant Mersenne he stopped at the door and knocked.

  Lady Michi's orderly, Vandervalk, opened the door, and Martinez asked to see the squadcom. Vandervalk said she'd check and left him waiting, then returned a few minutes later to say that the lady squadcom would meet Martinez in her office.

  Lady Michi came into her office a few minutes later, carrying her morning tea in a delicate gold-rimmed cup on which glowed the Chen family crest.

  Martinez braced. The sensation of air on his exposed throat gave him a sudden shiver.

  "Have a seat," Michi said. Her tone was abstracted, her gaze focused on papers that waited on her desk. She sat in her straight-backed chair.

  "How can I help you, captain?"

  "Lord Captain Fletcher," Martinez began, and then his voice failed him. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Lord Captain Fletcher asked that I inform you that he's just executed Master Engineer Thuc."

  Suddenly he had the squadcom's full attention. She placed her cup very carefully on a felt coaster, then looked up. "Executed? How?"

  "With his top-trimmer. During an inspection. It was… very sudden."

  He realized now that Fletcher must have rehearsed the move. You couldn't just cut a throat that efficiently unless you had practiced.

  He imagined Fletcher alone in his cabin, drawing the knife over and over as he slashed imaginary throat. The cold blue eyes glittering, the superior smile on his lips.

  Michi's gaze intensified. "Did Captain Fletcher give a reason?"

  "No, my lady. He said only that it was his privilege."

  Michi softly drew in her breath. "I see," she said.

  Fletcher was technically correct: any officer had the authority to execute any subordinate at any time, for any reason. There were practical reasons why this didn't happen very often, including lawsuits in civil court from the victim's patron clan; and usually when such a thing happened, the officer produced an elaborate justification.

  Fletcher very simply stood on his privilege. That had to be very, very rare.

  Michi turned her eyes deliberately away and took a very deliberate sip of her tea.

  "Do you have anything to add?" she said.

  "Just that the captain planned it in advance. He wanted me there to witness it and to report to you."

  "Nothing in the inspection could have provoked it?"

  "No, my lady. The captain complimented Thuc on his department before killing him."

  Again Michi drew in her breath. Her eyes grew thoughtful.
>
  "You can think of no reason?"

  Martinez hesitated. "The captain and Lieutenant Prasad… ended

  … their relationship yesterday. But if he was going to kill anyone over it, I don't know why it would be Thuc."

  Maybe Thuc was handy, he thought.

  That night Martinez wore a virtual headset and projected the starscape from outside Illustrious into his mind, hoping it would aid his sleeping mind in achieving a tranquility that had eluded him all day. It seemed to work, until he came awake with his heart pounding and, in his mind, the black emptiness of space turned the color of blood.

  Breakfast was a meal eaten without noticing the contents of his plate. He dreaded hearing the businesslike sound of heels on the deck, Fletcher and Marsden and Mersenne, marching to his door to summon Martinez to another inspection.

  Even though he half expected the sound his nerves gave a surprised, jangled leap as he heard it. Martinez was on his feet and already half-braced when Fletcher appeared in his open door, wearing full dress, white gloves, and the knife in its curved, gleaming scabbard..

  "Captain Martinez, I'd be obliged if you'd join us."

  Cold dread settled over Martinez like a rain-saturated cloak.

  "Yes, my lord," he said.

  As he walked to the door he felt lightheaded, possessed by the notion that everything from this point was predestined, that he was fated to be a witness to another inexplicable tragedy without being able to intervene, that within an hour or two he would again be reporting to Michi Chen while somewhere in the ship crew scrubbed blood from the deck..

  Once again Fletcher wanted him as a witness. He wished Fletcher had just brought a camera instead.

  Again Fletcher's party consisted of himself and two others. One was Madsden the secretary, but Mersenne had been replaced by Lord Ahmad Husayn, the weapons officer. That told Martinez where the party was headed, and he wasn't surprised when Fletcher took a turn two bulkheads down, and headed through a hatch into Missile Battery Three.