Warring States Read online

  “And yet that is my firm determination, Lek, and you may as well resign yourself to it.” He meant to steal all of them. “Perhaps you will be the first to hear the saga with which he has so often threatened us. What is it, Robert? That of the exceptionally wayward flock, and the male animal of unusual endowment?”

  But you’re the first one. Andrej hoped Lek could find the meaning in his words, because he himself was not much good at finger-code.

  “I’m insulted,” Robert grumbled, picking himself up off the floor. “My tender feelings are cruelly bruised, your Excellency. Just for that I’m going to wait. Some day. When we’re all together. Then I’ll have a tale to tell.”

  “Later, then, Robert,” Andrej agreed.

  This is too much, Lek said, finger to flesh, Andrej’s hand held in his own. Can’t believe it. Why?

  “Perhaps once we have reached Emandis Station, and you are all to come with me to visit Joslire’s grave-place.” Where they would be, temporarily, not under threat of random surveillance, in a burial yard. A funeral orchard. Whatever. “Then we will all have cause to mourn together, and his spirit will be appeased.”

  Joslire had preferred to die and be free of his governor than live as a Security slave. Even when Andrej had told him that there was an official petition to free him and the others whose quick action had saved the Scylla from sabotage, even then Joslire had been fixed in his mind on freedom and had embraced his own death with joy.

  Whether Joslire would have approved of what Andrej was doing Andrej was not sure; it was theft, after all, in a way. But Joslire had been dead for more than six years, and was therefore unlikely to interfere in any material fashion.

  Lek nodded. We’ll talk about it when we can. Very well, sir. The fury had gone out of him; face to face with the enormity of what Andrej had done to him Lek staggered, and fell back against Robert who stood ready there to steady him. “Holy Mother,” Lek said, in a voice whose sincerity resounded clear and pure and true. “Begging the officer’s pardon, your Excellency. My head. Herds of — herds — trampling — ”

  It was not the surgery itself that was giving Lek a headache. It was the realization that the grim enforcer with which he had lived in intimate contact for years was gone. Robert passed him a dose over Lek’s shoulder, and Andrej put it through.

  “Rest and be still,” Andrej ordered Lek. “I will be by to check on you again later.”

  Lek nodded, clearly beginning to feel the action of the drug. Robert took charge, herding Lek over to the cradle-chair to lie down as he had been ordered. Andrej left Lek in Robert’s capable hands — hoping with great fervency that Robert would not attempt to sing — and let himself out of the room to go and see whether the Ragnarok had dropped vector at Connaught, where Stoshi was to meet them with letters from home and word on the progress of a plan to steal the Bench’s property.

  ###

  The room was dark, the air warm and still. When her talk-alert went off Vaal woke with a start that shook her whole body, and she slapped at the respond with vehement force.

  “What do you want?”

  Her lights came up in response to her activity. Yes. Same room. Nothing had changed. She was still at the Connaught Vector Authority. None of the problems with which she had been wrestling had gone away, and the only thing that an emergency call during her sleep-shift could possibly mean were more problems, even juicier ones than she had already. A five-ship civil mercantile fleet outbound for Emandisan space, but Fleet wanted everybody stopped and searched and interrogated over any irregularities, and something horrible had happened in Port Ghan. She didn’t have facilities for interrogation. She was going to have to call on Fleet.

  Jalmers was on the duty boards; he sounded nervous, very nervous. “Sorry to intrude, ma’am. Ship off vector not responding to hail.”

  Ridiculous. “So web it out and wait, or what aren’t you telling me?” Standard procedure. Ships came off vector without responding to hail, you locked their navs with a seizer. Few ships were willing to hit a vector with their navs off-line, especially the Connaught vector, which was a little less tolerant than most.

  “Um. Shielded navs, ma’am. Respectfully suggest the situation requires your presence.”

  Shielded navs? Well, there were other ways to stop a ship. Technically speaking shielded navs were slightly illegal, though nobody worried too much about little things like that with all of Jurisdiction in an uproar over the still-undecided issue of who was to be the next First Judge. If she’d been a terrorist, though, fleeing from an attack on the great granaries in the Narim asteroid belt or the water treatment facilities at Lucis, she would certainly be tempted to shield her navs so that tracing her to the scene of the crime would be more difficult. That commercial fleet they’d stopped earlier today had had respectfully naked navs, but it would do them no good when the Fleet sent an Inquisitor to find out the truth about who they were and where they were going. Vaal sighed.

  “Takame eight. Away, here.” By the marks on the chrono she’d just barely gotten to sleep, too. She was having a bad day. A bad year. All of Jurisdiction was having a bad year. But she was the one who was going to have to place those people in the hands of professional torturers.

  She pulled her boots back on — cold and clammy from the shift’s sweat — and went out of her small room in quarters into the narrow hallways of the station. Vector Control was an administrative station, small, out of the way, of little interest to anybody. Vaal had enough armed escort craft to control five more ships, but that was about the limit of her power. Fleet had planned to expand the Connaught Vector Authority — there was a station under development near the vector, residential facilities, recreation, schools, a clinic — but plans for the future of the station were on hold. There was no First Judge. There was no unified central authority. People still paid their taxes and Fleet still regulated trade, but it was not the time to call for any special levies that might not be supported. That was just asking for trouble.

  When she reached her command station she found her crew tense, white-faced, and unhappy; and as she moved toward her seat — looking to the main screens at a visual of the problem — she could understand why. “Give me hailing,” she said, hoping that the hails were not already open because it was so embarrassing when that happened. “Unidentified ship. I can see that you’re a cruiser-killer. Please respond.”

  It was huge, onscreen. It was huge in actual fact, Vaal knew that. She’d toured a cruiser-killer class battlewagon as a part of her orientation, only three years ago. Battlewagons were serious business. She hated the idea of getting in one’s way, and yet she had no choice. If her duty required her to stop that mercantile fleet outbound for Emandis space, it certainly required her to confront any resource of this size trying to use the vector for which she was responsible without so much as logging its idents.

  “Look — ” somebody whispered, loudly enough for Vaal to overhear. The belly of the ship on screen was still hulled over from its vector transit. The panels that covered the maintenance atmosphere — the great glossy expanse of the carapace above — weren’t really black, technically speaking, but it was black hull technology.

  It had been all over the research braids, when she’d been a child. Black hull technology, the enlightened investment of the First Judge at Fontailloe, the enormous outlay required to integrate a new propulsion and navigation and communication paradigm onto the only test bed that could truly test its promise, a Jurisdiction Fleet Ship of the top class deployed but never commissioned. Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok.

  There was a clear-tone, and an answering feed came through. It was not reassuring. “You’re mistaken,” the comm said. It was a man’s voice, calm, even soothing. “You don’t see anything of the sort. Why? Because we’re invisible, that’s why. And everybody will be much better off if it’s left that way.”

  The on-screen cleared. Vaal knew that the man was an Engineer, because he was on the Engineering bridge — which she recogniz
ed from her orientation. She knew he was Chigan by his height and the calm serenity of his expression. And she knew he was Serge of Wheatfields because that was the name of the Ragnarok’s Ship’s Engineer. Vaal fought the temptation to close her eyes in pain. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to try to tell a senior Fleet officer that he was blowing smoke, and especially she didn’t want to have anything to do with the Ragnarok, because where the Ragnarok went, trouble followed.

  “I have an assigned duty to see you.” The on-screen Engineer relaxed back in his seat with an expression of amused pity on his face. She had to go on, regardless. “And to survey your whereabouts over the past eighty shifts, by executive order. You will unshield your navs, please, your Excellency.”

  Now her people were staring at her as though she had taken leave of her senses. It was a Fleet ship. She could see that it was a Fleet ship. She would never dare challenge a Fleet ship, but without verification and validation orders, did she know it was really what it appeared to be?

  “Not likely,” the Ragnarok’s engineer said. “I’d suggest you take our word for it. Or not. Since we’re invisible. We’ll be a few days to make a rendezvous at Connaught Yards and then we’ll be out of your way. Nobody wants any trouble, needless to say.”

  She was supposed to stop ships that would not verify. She was supposed to close the vector and send an emergency call to Fleet. How could she send an emergency call to Fleet over a Fleet ship? She could close the vector by activating its defensive fortifications. Jurisdiction Fleet Audit Appeals Authority had tried to stop the Ragnarok with a mine field at Taisheki Station, a year ago. It hadn’t worked. Taisheki had only lost its mine field, and those things were expensive.

  “Reluctantly unable to authorize docking and use of facilities.” What she could do? The Ragnarok could still get what it wanted at Connaught, though — whatever it wanted. If it couldn’t dock it could board. There was a Security force at Connaught Yards but it was not a big one.

  If she went into lock-down, the Ragnarok would have to blow the yards to pieces to get at supply, and who was to say that the Ragnarok wouldn’t do just that? Rumor had it that the Ragnarok had mutinied. Or not. Rumor failed to agree, and there was no official Bench position on the issue because without a First Judge the Bench was not in order.

  The engineer on screen sighed, and shook his head. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” he said. “But I’m going to have to tell my Captain on you. How long have you been at Connaught Station? Not counting tomorrow?”

  There wasn’t room for the Ragnarok at Connaught Station. She didn’t have facilities. She had five merchant ships on impound, there, harmless traders by every indication, waiting for Fleet to send an Inquisitor to find out who they were and where they were going. They said they’d come from Wahken, but that had to be by way of Ghan, and there had been murder done there, and atrocity. She could not release those ships without legal verification of their route and identities. She had an idea. “With respect, your Excellency.”

  He had been about to cut his transmission and stand up, by the looks of things; he let his weight back down with an expression of mild surprise on his face that he kept politely clear of any petty gratification. No. She couldn’t let him go to his Captain. She didn’t know what she would do if she was faced with the acting Captain of a possibly mutinous ship attempting to give her a legal order. She would have to call for Fleet convoy. That was expensive and would probably not arrive until after the Ragnarok had gone wherever it was going and would only annoy everybody.

  “Let me explain.”

  The Ragnarok had more notoriety than just that gained by the rash actions of a brevet Captain. Before Jennet ap Rhiannon the Ragnarok had been commanded by Griers Verigson Lowden, a thoroughly unpleasant man with thoroughly unpleasant manners. Lowden had in turn commanded the Ragnarok’s Inquisitor, and the Ragnarok’s Inquisitor was just the man she wanted for the job — if his services could be had.

  “I’m holding ships in quarantine. I can’t release them without official clearance. There’s someone on board of your ship who could help.”

  Andrej Koscuisko, the Ragnarok’s Chief Medical Officer — ship’s surgeon, Ship’s Inquisitor. There was not a more fearful name in the entire inventory, but there was something about Koscuisko, about his reputation. One of those ships had come from Rudistal. Koscuisko had history there. It could work.

  Maybe she was going to be able to get those people away from here before Fleet sent Inquisitors, after all.

  ###

  Dierryk Rukota was an artilleryman, on board the Ragnarok by accident — more or less — but remaining of his own free will. They’d tried to get rid of him; they’d tried to get rid of Koscuisko, come to that, once Koscuisko had returned to his ship from home leave in a hurry with an explosive piece of evidence in his possession.

  Koscuisko had stubbornly declined to go, even when the ship’s status had trended slowly and almost irreversibly from unhappy to mutinous. He had more to lose than anyone on board, at least in material terms. As for Rukota he had nothing to fear for his family, and little to lose that he had not already given away for the sake of his duty and his honor.

  The First Secretary with whom his spectacularly beautiful wife had so intimate an understanding had not been Sindha Verlaine and was consequently not dead, but still fully capable of protecting both dear friend and her children.

  Rukota’s career had been all but over when he’d arrived here, the victim of one too many self-inflicted wounds. What future he might have been able to salvage in Fleet had disappeared the moment he had decided not to accompany the rest of Admiral Sandri Brecinn’s corrupt audit team back to Taisheki Station.

  There was therefore no reason why he should not remain on the Ragnarok, unlike Koscuisko who had property and position and who was worried about his new-made wife and his son. The truth of the matter, however, the real reason Rukota stayed, was simpler even than that; he was having fun. He was having more fun than he could remember having for a long, long time.

  This ship had a humorless crèche-bred maniac for a captain, a First Officer with no sense of political expediency, a chief medical officer widely understood to be a flaming psychotic, and an Engineer with a disconcerting but honestly-earned reputation for making pretzels out of Fleet bureaucrats who looked cross-wise at him; the Intelligence officer was a bat. A girl bat.

  An old bat, he had been given to understand, but one whose personality was so cheerfully idiosyncratic that after these few months on board Rukota was beginning to forget that he had always been uncomfortable around Desmodontae. It was nothing personal. Something to do with the gleaming canine teeth in the smiling black muzzle and the fact that Desmodontae in their native system farmed hominids for cattle.

  He had no business being here. This was a Jurisdiction battle-wagon, a cruiser-killer class warship; he was an artilleryman. His expertise was in artillery platforms and mine fields and even old-fashioned terrestrial field pieces, because sometimes there was just no substitute for a good old-fashioned siege piece. Or two. Or three. But the Ragnarok was short of Command Branch officers, and he was one; the ship had never been armed, it was an experimental test bed, so they needed him to talk about cannon. The main battle cannon. Was a ship of war all of that different from an artiplat? It moved a great deal more than an artiplat in geosync was supposed to do, but Rukota wasn’t sure that really made much difference, for his purposes.

  He’d been ap Rhiannon’s commanding officer once upon a time, and had been marked for life, not to say traumatized, accordingly. Now she was the brevet captain of the Ragnarok by default — the most senior of the total of two Command Branch officers left assigned — and that made her the boss. That didn’t bother Rukota. He could still pull rank if he had to, within the context of military courtesy of course, but so long as she didn’t try to take him to bed he foresaw no problem.

  He spent most of his time with Engineering and
Security working on the ship’s manifest. Infirmary — the generic term covered all of the Ragnarok’s medical facilities — was less familiar to him; but he knew how to interpret the quickly smoothed-over frowns, the quick glimpses of boots and smocks’ tails disappearing around corners. The staff was unhappy. They knew why he was coming — and they meant to be sure that Koscuisko was forewarned, or he missed his guess.

  It cheered Rukota enormously to be conspired against, in this manner. In the increasingly ugly, competitive, each-for-his-own world of Fleet, a unit that remembered how to come together was as good as a cold drink on a hot day: refreshing.

  Turning a corner — he’d made sure to get a schematic from Intelligence, he knew where he was going — Rukota heard footsteps behind him, but declined to rise to the bait and turn around. Someone had been detailed to slow him down and divert him, so much was clear. Now, who would it be, and what kind of story would they try to sell him?

  Whoever it was behind him broke into a sort of a jog-trot to close the distance. Rukota knew that signal: Security. That was a Security pace, suitable for situations where one wished to move quickly but not so quickly that anyone got left behind an obstacle. His first real acquaintance on board the Ragnarok, if it could be so described, had been made with Koscuisko’s bond-involuntary Security, the ones Koscuisko had meant to take home with him on leave and been obliged to leave behind at the last minute. That substitution had turned out to be fortunate, and the saving of several lives at least.

  “Good-greeting, General Rukota,” the Security troop said, slowing to a respectfully matched pace half-a-step behind Rukota and to his left. He was right-hand dominant; most hominids were. Koscuisko was left-handed, and it was only one of the many perverse things about the man, but that was not the troop’s fault. Robert St. Clare. Nurail. There’d been a problem with St. Clare’s governor at Port Burkhayden, Rukota understood; his governor had died on him, and St. Clare had been lucky that he hadn’t died with it.