Conventions of War

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.

Martinez gave the machine shop a thorough inspection, questioned the machinists on their work, and made note of carelessness in the matter of waste disposal. If the ship had to make a course change, cease acceleration, or otherwise go weightless, the trash would float all over the shop.

Gawbyan, his theatrical mustachios quivering, accepted the criticism with a grim set to his fleshy features that suggested that he was going to fall on one of his recruits like an avalanche the second Martinez was out of the room.

When the inspection was over, Martinez found that he’d taken up very little of his morning, and so he called a second inspection, this time of Missile Battery 2. This review lasted longer, with time spent examining missile loaders and watching damage control robots maneuver under the command of their operators. Despite the presence of officers and the stress of the inspection, the mood of the crew was nearly cheerful, and Martinez couldn’t help but compare it with the foreboding and terror that drenched the atmosphere during Fletcher’s inspection two days earlier.

Seeing their sunny spirits, he wondered if the crew might be taking him too lightly. He wanted them to view him seriously, and if they weren’t, he was prepared to become a complete bastard until they did. Intuition suggested, however, that this wasn’t necessary. The holejumpers just seemed pleased to have him in charge.

He was a winner, after all. He’d masterminded both of the Fleet’s victories over the Naxids. The crew understood a winner better than they understood whatever Fletcher was.

“I’d like to see the lieutenants after supper,” Martinez told Kazakov as they left the battery. “We’ll have an informal meeting inDaffodil. Please arrange for a qualified warrant officer or cadet to take the watch.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Feel free to move into your old quarters. I thank your hospitality, involuntary though it was.”

She returned his smile. “Yes, my lord.”

He went into his old office, opened the safe, removed its contents, and left the door of the safe open for Kazakov. He cast a farewell glance over theputti, hoping he would never see their sweet faces again, and then went into the captain’s office-hisoffice-and looked at the statues, still stolid and arrogant in their armor, and the display cabinets, and the murals of elegant figures writing with quills or reading aloud from open scrolls to a rapt audience. Martinez opened his new safe, changed the combination, and put his papers in it along with Fletcher’s book and the little statue of the woman dancing on the skull.

In the sleeping cabin he found a welcome change. The gruesome Narayanguru was gone, as was the pieta, the snarling beast, and the bathing woman. The blue-skinned flute player remained, though he’d been shifted to a brighter-lit area. Next to him a seascape showed a ground-effect vehicle thundering over a white-topped swell in a blast of spume. Over the dressing table was a landscape, snow-topped mountains standing over a village of shaggy Yormaks and their shaggier cattle.

Pride of place went to a dark old picture that showed mostly murky empty space. The composition was unusual: a sort of frame had been painted around the edges; or perhaps it was meant to be the proscenium of a stage, since a painted curtain rod stretched over the whole scene, with a painted red curtain pulled open to the right. Against the darkness on the left were the small figures of a young mother and the infant she had just taken from her cradle. The woman’s dress, though hardly contemporary, nevertheless gave the impression of being comfortably middle-class. The infant wore red pajamas. Neither were paying much attention to the little cat that squatted next to a small open fire at the center of the picture. The cat bore a sullen expression and was looking at a red bowl, which had something in it that didn’t seem to please him.

Martinez was struck by the contrast between the elaborate presentation, the painted frame and red curtain, with the ordinary domesticity of the scene. The red curtain, the red bowl, the red pajamas. The young mother’s round face. The sulky cat with its ears pinned back. The odd little fire in the middle of the room, presumably on an earthen floor. He kept looking at the picture while wondering why it seemed so worth looking at.

There was a movement in the corner of his eye, and he turned to see Perry in the door.

“Your dinner’s ready, my lord,” he said, “whenever you’re ready.”

“I’ll eat now,” Martinez said, and with a last glance at the painting, made his way to the dining room, where he ate alone at Fletcher’s grand table with its golden centerpiece and its long double row of empty places.

After dinner he reported to Michi for a report on the status of the investigation. Kazakov was there already, still in full dress, sitting next to Xi, who looked even more rumpled and abstracted in comparison. Garcia arrived a few minutes later with a datapad and his notes.

Xi began with a report on the fingerprints found in Fletcher’s office. “Most belonged to the captain,” he said. “The rest were those of Marsden, the secretary, and the captain’s servants Narbonne and Buckle, who had cleaned and tidied the room the previous day. Three prints belonged to Constable Garcia and were presumably left in the course of his investigation.”

Xi’s face screwed into an expression that probably intended to express wry amusement.

“Five stray prints belonged to me. And four prints, the fingers of the left hand, were found pressed under the rim of the desktop at the front of the desk.” He made a movement with his hand, palm up, in the direction of Michi’s desk to show how this could happen.

“The prints belonged to Lieutenant Prasad. Of course they could have been left at any time, since the servants wouldn’t necessarily polish daily under the rim of the desk.”

Or,Martinez thought,the prints could have been made when Chandra held onto the desk with her left hand while slamming Captain Fletcher’s head into it with her right.

Michi betrayed no evidence that this idea might have occurred to her. “Make anything of the hair or fiber evidence?”

“I haven’t had time, but it’s not going to prove anything unless we already have a suspect.”

Michi turned to Garcia. “Any information on the movements of the crew?”

Garcia consulted his datapad, an unnecessary gesture considering the contents of his report. “My lady, aside from the few on watch, most of the crew were asleep. Those on watch in Command or Engineering vouch for each other. Of those in bed, the only people who admit moving at all say they were visiting the toilet.”

“No reports of anyone moving outside the crew compartments? None at all?”

“No, my lady.” Garcia’s tongue flicked anxiously over his lips. “Of course, we only have their word for it, and that’s all we’re going to get…” He cleared his throat. “…unless we find an informant.”

Michi’s eyes hardened. Her fingers drummed on the desktop. She turned to Kazakov. “Lieutenant?”

Kazakov’s tone was faintly apologetic. “It’s the same situation with the lieutenants and warrant officers, my lady. Those on duty vouch for one another, and those asleep were”-Kazakov began to shrug, then stopped herself-“asleep. I have no information that contradicts their stories.”

“Damn!” Michi’s right hand made a petulant clawing motion in the air. She glared at each of them in turn. “We can’t leave it at this,” she said. “There’s got to be something else we can do.” She gave a snarl. “What would Dr. An-ku do?” She didn’t mean it as a joke.

“We can search the ship,” Martinez said. “And search the crew.”

Michi frowned at him.

“There was a little blood,” Martinez continued. “Not much, but some. It just occurred to me that the killer might have got some on a shirt cuff or a trouser leg. Or he might have wiped blood off his hands with a handkerchief. He might have used a weapon on the captain and only slammed the captain’s head into the desk afterward, and the weapon might be found. Or the killer might have taken a souvenir from the captain’s room and hidden it.”

“The captain might have fought,” Garcia said, “at least a little. He might have marked someone.”

“Alert the people in the laundry,” Kazakov said. “They need to check every item.”

Michi stood very suddenly. She looked at the others as if surprised to find them still in their seats.

“What are we waiting for?” she said. “We should have done this yesterday.”

SearchingIllustrious and its crew was the work of a long afternoon. Martinez and Kazakov called all off-duty crew into their sleeping quarters, organized the officers and petty officers into gangs, and subjected everyone to a meticulous inspection. Lockers and storage areas were searched for anything that might have been taken from the captain’s quarters. Lastly, the officers were searched, by each other. Martinez stood in the corridor outside the wardroom with Lady Michi and waited for the results.

Michi had been growing more irritable as the afternoon progressed and the hoped-for evidence failed to appear. She stood with her hands clenching into fists and a scowl on her face, rising on her toes quickly and then dropping, over and over again.

Martinez decided to distract her before the jerky movement drove him mad.

“This is going to upset the crew,” he said. “We should settle them down as soon as possible. Perhaps tomorrow we could schedule the maneuver that was postponed today.”

Her heels stayed on the floor as she gave him a thoughtful look. “Very good. We’ll do it.” Another thought struck her, and she frowned. “What am I going to do for a new tactical officer?”

“You don’t want to use Coen or Li?”

She shook her head. “Not seasoned enough. All their experience is in communications.”

A vague sense of obligation compelled Martinez to make a suggestion. “There’s Chandra Prasad.”

Michi looked at him suspiciously. “Why Prasad?”

“Because she’s the senior lieutenant after Kazakov, and I can’t spare Kazakov. Not now.”

Which certainly sounded better than,She wrung a promise out of me to help her, and much, much better than,If she didkill Fletcher, we could try being very nice to her and hope she doesn’t kill us.

Michi frowned. “I’ll ask her to design one experiment. I’ll ask the other lieutenants too. We’ll see if any of them have a talent for it.”

When Kazakov and Husayn came to report that no evidence had been found in the wardroom or the lieutenants’ quarters, Michi accepted the news without comment and then turned to Martinez.

“You’re next, Lord Captain.”

“Next?” Martinez said through his surprise.

“You’re a suspect, after all,” Michi said. “You’re the one who benefited most from Fletcher’s death.”

He hadn’t looked at the situation in that light. He supposed that, objectively, she had a point.

“I wasn’t even aboard when Kosinic died,” he pointed out.

“I know,” Michi said. “What difference does that make?”

None, apparently. Martinez submitted without protest as a committee of male officers-Husayn, Mersenne, and Lord Phillips-searched his quarters and his belongings. Alikhan watched the inspection from the doorway, his body stiffened in outrage, watching every movement with glowering eyes as if he suspected the three Peers might pocket valuable items in the course of their search.

The long, useless afternoon delayed supper, and consequently Martinez’s meeting with the lieutenants in the informal circumstances ofDaffodil, the requisitioned luxury yacht that had brought him to his new assignment as Michi’s tactical officer.

The party wasn’t a success. Everyone was tired after having spent the day pawing so uselessly through others’ belongings, and also the officers didn’t quite know how the new relationship with Martinez was supposed to work. During previous get-togethers onDaffodil, Martinez had been a staff officer playing host to the line officers in a setting more congenial than the starchy dinners and receptions given by the captain. Though Martinez had outranked them, he wasn’t in their chain of command, and the lieutenants had felt far less inhibited than they would have been in the company of a direct superior. But now the relationship had changed, and they were more on their guard. Martinez was generous with liquor, but for most of the officers the alcohol seemed only to act as a depressant.

The one exception was Chandra Prasad, who chattered and laughed all evening in loud, high spirits, oblivious to how much it irritated the others. Perhaps, he thought, she felt she had no reason to feel on guard around him because they shared a special relationship.

Martinez hoped she was wrong.

Finally he called an end to the dismal evening, and by way of good-night told everyone there would be a maneuver during the forenoon watch.

Alikhan was waiting in his cabin to take his trousers, shoes, and uniform tunic for their nightly rehabilitation. “What are they saying in the petty officers’ lounge?” Martinez asked.

“Well, my lord,” Alikhan said, with a kind of finality, “they’re saying you’ll do.”

Martinez suppressed a grin. “What are they saying about Fletcher?”

“They aren’t saying anything at all about the late captain.”

Martinez felt irritation. “I wish they were.” He handed Alikhan his tunic. “You don’t think they know more than they’re saying?”

Alikhan spoke with the utmost complacency. “They’re long-serving petty officers, my lord. Theyalways know more than they tell.”

Martinez sourly parted the seals on his shoes, removed them, and handed them to Alikhan. “You’ll tell me if they say anything vital? Such as who killed the captain?”

Alikhan dropped the shoes into their little carrying bag. “I’ll do my best to keep you informed, my lord,” he said. He sealed the bag and looked up. “By the way, my lord. There is the matter of Captain Fletcher’s servants.”

“Ah.”

Each officer of captain’s rank was allowed four servants, whom he could take with him from one posting to the next. Martinez had his four, and so had Fletcher; but now with only one captain remaining, that left four servants too many.

“Are Fletcher’s people good for anything?” Martinez asked. “Anything besides being servants, I mean?”

Alikhan’s lip curled slightly, the long-serving Fleet professional passing judgment on his inferiors.

“Narbonne was a valet in civilian life,” he said. “Baca a chef. Jukes is an artist, and Buckle is a hairdresser, manicurist, and cosmetologist.”

“Well,” Martinez said dubiously, “I suppose Baca could be sent to the enlisted mess.”

“Not if Master Cook Yau has anything to say about it,” said Alikhan. “He won’t want that fat pudding of a man taking up space in his kitchen and fussing with his sauces.”

“Alikhan.” Martinez examined himself in the mirror over his sink. “Do you think I need a cosmetologist?”

Alikhan curled his lip again. “You’re too young, my lord.”

Martinez smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Alikhan draped trousers over his arm, and then the jacket over the trousers. Martinez nodded in the direction of the door that led to his office.

“Do you have someone sleeping out there again?” he asked.

“Ayutano, my lord.”

“Right. If the killers come by way of the dining room instead, I’ll try to shout and let him know.”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate it, my lord.” Deftly, with the hand that wasn’t holding Martinez’s clothing, Alikhan opened a silver vacuum flask of hot cocoa and poured.

“Thank you, Alikhan. Sleep well.”

“And yourself, my lord.”

Alikhan left through the door that led to the dining room. Martinez changed into pajamas and sat on his bed while he drank the cocoa and looked at the old dark painting. The young mother held her infant and the little fire glowed and the cat crouched with his ears pinned back, and it all took place inside a painted frame or maybe a stage.

He kept seeing the painting for a long time after he turned out the light.

In the morning Martinez printed a series of supper invitations on Fletcher’s special bond paper, and sent them via Alikhan to all the senior petty officers. He didn’t know whether Fletcher would have invited the enlisted to supper-he suspected not-and he was certain Fletcher wouldn’t have used the fancy bond invitations.

He didn’t care. It wasn’t his bond paper anyway.

The experiment began shortly afterward. The ships of Chenforce were linked by communications laser into a virtual environment, and while the ships themselves continued on their way, a virtual Chenforce maneuvered against a virtual enemy squadron of superior force, a squadron that was meeting them head-on at Osser, the system into which Chenforce would pass after Termaine. The system was largely uninhabited, with a pair of wormhole relay stations and some small mining colonies on some mineral-rich moons, but nothing else, nothing that would complicate an engagement between two forces.

Chenforce deployed the dispersed tactics that had been created by Martinez and Caroline Sula and the officers of Martinez’s old frigate,Corona. The ships were widely separated, maneuvering in ways that seemed absolutely random but were in fact dictated by a complex mathematical formula devised by Sula, the ships riding along the convex hull of a chaotic dynamical system.

The opposing force utilized the classic, formal tactics of the empire, tactics in which the ships were shepherded in a rigid formation so their commander could retain control of them till the last possible moment.

Tungsten-jacketed antimatter missiles exploded between the converging squadrons in glowing fireballs and hellish blasts of radiation. Lasers and antiproton beams lanced out to destroy incoming missiles, and the missiles jinked and dodged to avoid destruction. Ships died under waves of fast neutrons and blasts of heat.

Chenforce didn’t come through the battle unscathed: out of seven ships, three were destroyed and one severely damaged. Of the Naxid force, all ten were wiped out.

For the first time, Martinez commanded a heavy cruiser in combat, albeit a combat that took place only in simulation. The crew in Command were disciplined and well-trained, long practiced at their jobs and at working with one another, and they obeyed his orders with perfect understanding and efficiency.

Martinez ended the experiment pleased with himself and with his ship. The pleased feeling lasted until he returned to his office, where Marsden presented him with a vast number of documents, all requiring his attention, or his judgment, or at the very least his signature.

He ate his dinner at his desk while he worked his way through the documents, and sent Marsden to his own meal.

Chandra Prasad arrived half a minute after his dinner, as if she were waiting for him to be alone. He looked up at her knock, lowered his stylus to the desk and told her to come in. As she approached, he wondered in a curiously offhand way whether she’d come to murder him, but decided against it. The sunny smile on her face would have been too incongruous.

“Lieutenant?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“The lady squadcom just told me that I was the new tactical officer,” Chandra said. “I guessed you had something to do with that, so I thought I’d come by and thank you.”

“I mentioned your name,” Martinez said. “But last I heard it was a temporary appointment. I think she’s going to try a series of people.”

“But I’ll be first,” Chandra said. “If I impress her, she won’t need the others.”

Martinez smiled encouragingly. “Good luck.”

“I’ll need more than luck.” Chandra bit her lower lip. “Can you give me a hint about how best to impress the squadcom?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Martinez said. “I don’t think I’ve managed it lately.”

She looked at him with narrowed eyes, as if trying to decide whether to get angry.

He picked up his stylus and said, “Come to dinner tomorrow. We’ll discuss your ambitions then.”

Calculation entered her long eyes. “Very good, Captain.”

She braced, and he sent her away and went back to reviewing his paperwork, and nibbling on his dinner in between paragraphs. He had no sooner finished both papers and the meal when Kazakov arrived with a new series of documents that, as executive officer, she was passing to him for review.

It was mid-afternoon before he finished all that, and went into the personnel files to acquaint himself with the petty officers he would be having to supper. They were as Kazakov had said: long-serving professionals, with high scores on their masters’ exams and good efficiency reports from past superiors. All received high marks from Fletcher-including Thuc, the man he’d executed.

Martinez then checked the documentary evidence that should have corroborated Fletcher’s good opinions, and almost immediately found something that appalled him.

His supper, he thought darkly, would be more than social.

He opened the supper with the traditional toast to the Praxis, then gave a preamble to the effect that he was counting on his guests to maintain continuity in a ship that had just suffered a series of shocks, and he knew from their records and their efficiency reports that they were all more than capable of giving all that was required.

He looked from one of the eight department heads to the next-from round-faced Gawbyan to rat-faced Gulik, from Master Rigger Francis with her brawny arms and formidable jowls to Cho, Thuc’s gangly replacement-and he saw pleased satisfaction in their faces.

The satisfaction stayed there for the entire supper, as Perry brought in each course and as Martinez questioned each of his guests about the state of their department. From Master Data Specialist Amelia Zhang he learned the condition and the capacities of the ship’s computers. From Master Rigger Francis he received myriad details, from the stowage of the holds to the state of the air scrubbers. From Master Signaler Nyamugali he had an informative discussion on the new military ciphers introduced since the beginning of the war, a critical task since both sides had started with the same ciphers and the same coding programs.

It was a pleasurable, instructive meal, and the satisfaction on the faces of the department heads had only increased by the time Perry brought in the coffee.

“In the last days I’ve come to see how well-managed a ship we have inIllustrious, ” Martinez said as the scent of the coffee wafted to his nostrils. “And I had no doubt that much of that excellent management was due to the quality of the senior petty officers here on the ship.”

He took a slow, deliberate sip of coffee, then put his cup down in the saucer. “That’s what I thought, anyway,” he added, “at least until I saw the state of the 77-12s.”

The satisfaction on the petty officers’ faces took a long, astounded moment to fade.

“Well, my lord…” Gawbyan began.

“Well,” said Gulik.

“The 77-12s aren’t even remotely current,” Martinez said. “I don’t see a single department that can give me the information I need in order to know the status of my ship.”

The department heads looked across the long table at one another. Martinez read chagrin, exasperation, embarrassment.

And well they should be mortified,he thought.

The 77-12s were maintenance logs supposed to be kept by every department. The petty officers and their crews were supposed to make note of all routine maintenance, cleaning, replacing, lubricating, checking the status of filters, seals, fluids, the airtight gaskets in the bulkheads and airlocks, and the stocks of replacement parts. Every item onIllustrious was designed to a certain tolerance-overdesigned, some would have thought-and each was supposed to be replaced or maintained well before that tolerance was ever reached. Every part inspection, every replacement, every routine maintenance, was supposed to be recorded in a department’s 77–12.

Keeping the records current was an enormous inconvenience for those responsible, and they all hated it and tried to avoid the duty whenever possible. But the 77-12s, properly maintained, were the most effective way for a superior to know the condition of his ship, and to a newly appointed captain, they were a necessity. If a piece of equipment failed, the 77–12 could tell the captain whether the failure had been due to inadequate maintenance, human error, or some other cause. Without the record, the cause of a failure would be anyone’s guess, and finding out the correct reason would take time and could distract an entire department.

In wartime, Martinez felt thatIllustrious couldn’t afford the time and distraction of tracking the cause of any failure of a critical piece of equipment, not when lives were potentially in the balance. And he simplydetested not knowing the condition of his command.

“Well, my lord…” Gulik began again. There was a nervous look in his sad eyes, and Martinez remembered the sweat on his upper lip as he stood at the end of the line of weaponers, all passing under Fletcher’s gaze. “Well, it all has to do with the way Captain Fletcher ran the ship.”

“It’s all the inspections, my lord,” said Master Rigger Francis. She was a brawny woman, with broken veins in her cheeks and hair that had once been red. “You saw how thoroughly Captain Fletcher conducted an inspection. He’d pick a piece of equipment and ask about its maintenance, and we’d have to know the answers. We wouldn’t have a chance to look it up in the records, we’d have toknow it.”

Master Cook Yau leaned his thin arms on the table and peered around Francis’s broad body. “We don’t have to write the information down, my lord, because we had it all in our heads.”

“I understand.” Martinez gave a grave nod. “If you have it all in your heads,” he added, “then it should be no trouble to put it all in the 77-12s. You should be able to give me a complete report in, say-two days?”

Martinez found himself delighted by the bleak and downcast looks the department heads gave one another.Yes, he thought,yes, it’s absolutely time you found out I was a bastard.

“So what’s today, then?” he asked cheerfully. “The nineteenth? Have the 77-12s to me by the morning of the twenty-second.”

He’d have to continue the inspections, he thought, because he’d have to check everything against the 77-12s to make sure the forms weren’t pure fiction. “Yarning the logs,” as it was called, was another time-honored custom of the service.

One way or another, Martinez swore he would learnIllustrious and its workings, human and machine both.

He let them drink their coffee in the sudden somber silence, bade them farewell, and went to his sleeping cabin intending to sleep the sleep of the just.

“How did I do, Alikhan?” he asked in the morning, as his orderly brought in his full dress uniform.

“The petty officers who aren’t cursing your name are frightened,” Alikhan reported. “Some were up half the night working on their 77-12s, and kept recruits running from one compartment to the next confirming what they thought they remembered.”

Martinez grinned. “Do they still think I’ll do?” he asked.

Alikhan looked at him with a tight little smile beneath his curling mustachios. “Ithink you’ll do, my lord,” he said.

As Martinez was eating breakfast, he received a written invitation from the warrant officer’s mess for dinner. He read the invitation and smiled. The warrant officers had learned something from the petty officers. They weren’t going to wait for their invitation to dine with him and find out all the things he thought were wrong with them, they were going to bring him onto their home ground and then take it on the chin if they had to.

Good for them.

He accepted with pleasure, then sent a message to Chandra saying he would have to postpone their dinner for a day. He knew the message would not make her happy. He followed this with a message that none of the lieutenants would find to their liking: his request that all up-to-date 77-12s be filed in two days.

He then called for Marsden and the fifth lieutenant, whose title was Lord Phillips and whose personal name was Palermo.

Sub-Lieutenant Palermo, Lord Phillips was a tiny man whose head didn’t even reach Martinez’s shoulder. His arms and legs were thin, his body slender, almost frail. His small hands were beautifully proportioned and his face was pale, darkened slightly by a feeble mustache. His voice was a quiet murmur.

Phillips commanded the division that embraced the ship’s electronics, from the power cables and generators to the computers that navigated the ship and controlled its engines, so Martinez started by inspecting the workshop of Master Data Specialist Zhang. The shadowy little room with its glowing screens was kept in immaculate order. Martinez asked Zhang if she had made any progress at her 77–12, and she showed him the work she’d managed since the previous evening. He checked two items randomly and found that they’d been logged correctly.

“Excellent work, Zhang,” he said, and marched with his party to the domain of Master Electrician Strode.

Strode was a little below average height but broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, with symbols of his sexual prowess tattooed on his biceps. His hair was brown and cut in a bowl haircut, with his nape shaved and pale hairless patches around the ears. His mustachios were impressive but not nearly as sensational as Gawbyan’s. Martinez expected to find his department in spotless condition, since Strode would have had warning that the captain was on the prowl since he’d arrived in Zhang’s domain. He wasn’t disappointed.

“Have you made any progress with your 77–12?” Martinez asked.

“I have, my lord.”

Strode called up the log on one of his displays. Martinez copied it to his sleeve display and asked Strode to accompany him on a brief tour to a lower deck. He paused by one of the deck access panels, marked by a trompe l’oeil niche on the wall, with Jukes’s painting of a graceful one-handled vase. Martinez looked again at the annotation in the 77–12.

“According to your log,” Martinez said, “you’ve replaced the transformer under Main Access 8-14. Open the access, please.”

Not looking the least bit pleased, Strode tapped codes into the access locks and the floor panel rose on its pneumatics. An electric hum shivered up through the deck. The scent of grease and ozone rose from the utility compartment, and lights came on automatically.

Martinez turned to Lord Phillips. “My lord,” he said, “would you be so kind as to go into the compartment and read me the serial number on the transformer.”

Without offering a word, Phillips slid through the deck access. Crouched in the narrow space, he found the serial number and read it off.

The number wasn’t the same as in Strode’s 77–12.

“Thank you, Lord Lieutenant,” Martinez said, staring hard into Strode’s fixed, angry face. “You can come up now.”

Phillips rose and brushed grime off his dress trousers.

“Close the access, please,” Martinez said.

Strode did so.

“Strode,” Martinez said, “you are reprimanded for yarning your log. Iwill check the 77-12s, and from this point forward I will check yours in particular.”

Sullen anger still burned in Strode’s eyes. “My lord,” he said, “the serial number was…provisional. I hadn’t had the chance to check the correct number.”

“See that your logs are less provisional in the future,” Martinez said. “I’d rather have no information at all than information that’s misleading. You are dismissed.”

He walked off while Marsden was still noting the reprimand on his datapad. Phillips followed.

“You’ll have to check those logs yourself, Lieutenant,” Martinez told him. “Those forms are going to be full of yarns otherwise.”

“Yes, my lord,” Phillips murmured.

“Come to my office for coffee,” Martinez said.

The coffee break was not a success. Martinez knew that Phillips was one of Fletcher’s proteges, that the Phillips clan were clients to the Gombergs, and that Phillips, like Fletcher, had been born on Sandama, though like the captain, he’d spent most of his life on Zanshaa. Martinez hoped to discuss Fletcher, but Phillips’s responses were barely audible, and so terse and monosyllabic that Martinez gave up the task as hopeless and sent Phillips about his business.

He would have to be satisfied with sending a pair of signals, the first to the petty officers, that he was serious about the 77-12s, the second to the lieutenants, that they had better supervise the department heads very closely.

Dinner with the warrant officers was much more cheerful, and the table was well provided, thanks to Warrant Officer/First Toutou, who headed the commissary. The warrant officers were specialists, pilots or navigators, supply officers or sensor technicians, or the commissary, and didn’t run large departments like the senior petty officers. Their own 77-12s would be much easier to complete.

Some didn’t have to fill 77-12s at all, as was attested by Toutou’s broad smile and laughing demeanor.

The mess orderly was pouring little glasses of a sweet trellinberry liqueur at the end of the meal when Martinez’s sleeve display gave a chime. He answered.

“Captain, I need you in my office.” Michi’s voice told him that she would brook no delay.

“Right away, my lady,” Martinez said. He rose from his chair, and before he could stop them, the others rose too.

“Be seated,” he told them. “And many thanks for your hospitality. I’ll return it someday.”

Dr. Xi waited with Michi in her office. Martinez looked for Garcia and didn’t find him.

“Tell him,” Michi said, without bothering to tell Martinez to relax his salute.

Xi turned his mild eyes to Martinez. “When I was looking through my references for methods of lifting fingerprints, it mentioned that prints left on skin can fluoresce under laser light. So I asked Machinist Strode to provide a suitable laser, and he had one of his minions assemble one for me.”

Martinez, still braced with his chin lifted, looked at Xi from the corner of his eye. “You found fingerprints on the captain?” he asked.

Michi looked up, and an expression of annoyance crossed her face. “For all’s sake, Martinez,” she said, “relax and have a seat, will you?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Xi politely waited for Martinez to take a chair, then continued as if there had been no interruption. “There were fingerprints on the captain, yes. Mine, and Garcia’s, and those of my orderlies. No others that I could find.”

Martinez had no reply to this.

“I then got Lieutenant Kosinic’s body out of the cooler, and I put a sensor net over his head and got a three-dimensional map of his injuries. He died from a single blow to the head, perfectly consistent with losing his balance, falling, and hitting his head on the rim of the hatch.”

One fewer murder, anyway,Martinez thought.

“When I looked for fingerprints with the laser,” Xi continued, “I found my own and my assistants‘. And I also found one large thumbprint on the underside of the jaw on the right side.” He pressed his own thumb to the point. “Right where a thumb might rest if a person were grabbing Kosinic’s head and slamming it into the hatch rim.”

He gave a little grin. “It was quite a job to read that print properly,” he said. “I couldn’t use a normal print reader, and so I had to take several close-up photographs while the print was fluorescing, and then convert the format to-”

“Skip that part,” Michi instructed.

Xi seemed disappointed that he was not getting the chance to fully reveal the scope of his cleverness. He licked his lips and went on.

“The thumbprint was that of Master Engineer Thuc,” he said.

Martinez realized his mouth was open, and he closed it. “I’ll be damned,” he said.

Thuc was enormous and covered with muscle, and certainly strong enough to smash Kosinic’s head on the first try. He looked at Michi.

“So Thuc killed Kosinic,” he said. “And Fletcher found out about it somehow and executed Thuc.”

She nodded. “That seems likely.”

“He said he killed Thuc for the honor of the ship,” Martinez said. “He was very sensitive on points of rank and dignity, and maybe he thought it would be an affront to his own pride to order a formal inquiry to reveal the fact that one of his enlisted personnel killed an officer, and so he decided to handle it himself.”

Michi nodded again. “Go on.”

“But if that’s true,” Martinez said, “then who the hell killedFletcher?”

Michi gave him an odd, searching look. “Who benefits?” she said.

Irritation rasped along Martinez’s nerves. “If you’re expecting me to break down and confess,” he said, “you’re going to be disappointed.”

“Others may benefit besides you,” Michi pointed out. “For example, someone who knew that Fletcher would never favor her ambitions, but who thought you might.”

Martinez suspected that Michi’s choice of pronoun was not accidental. “Thuc might have had an accomplice,” he suggested. “An accomplice who thought he was next on Fletcher’s list.”

“Did you know,” Michi said, “that Lieutenant Prasad excelled in Torminel-style wrestling at the Doria Academy?”

“No,” Martinez said, “I didn’t. I haven’t had time to review her file.”

Even if Torminel wrestling didn’t quite allow bashing an opponent’s head in, Martinez knew it was an aggressive style that included strangulation and all sorts of unpleasant, painful joint manipulation and pressure point attacks. He could now see Chandra immobilizing Fletcher long enough to hustle him to his desk and slam his head against its sharp edge, in the process leaving her fingerprints on the underlip.

“I also see,” Michi said, “that you and Lieutenant Prasad shared a communications course some years ago.”

“That’s true. While she was there, she didn’t murder anyone that I know of.”

Michi’s lips twitched in a grim smile. “I’ll take your enthusiastic character reference under advisement. Did you notice that Captain Fletcher gave Prasad a venomous efficiency report?”

“I saw that, yes. But I know of no evidence that she was aware of it.”

“Perhaps she wanted to prevent it from being written, but was too late.” Michi tapped her fingers on her desktop. “I’d like you to inquire, as discreetly as possible, about Prasad’s movements during the watch in which Captain Fletcher was killed.”

“I can’t possibly be discreet with such an inquiry,” Martinez said. “And besides, Garcia already accounted for everyone on the ship.”

“Garcia is an enlisted man and experiences a natural diffidence when interrogating officers. An officer is best for these things.”

Martinez decided he might as well concede. He no longer knew why he was defending Chandra in any case.

“Well,” he said, “I’m interviewing the lieutenants one by one anyway. I’ll ask them about that night, but I don’t think any will give me a story different from anything they’ve already told Garcia.”

“I mess in the wardroom,” Xi said. “I could make a few inquiries as well.”

“Wemust find an answer,” Michi said.

On his way to his office, Martinez contemplated Michi’s choice of words: she had saidan answer, notthe answer.

He wondered if Michi was willing to sacrificethe answer-thereal answer-in favor ofany answer. An answer that would end the doubts and questions on the ship, that would help to unifyIllustrious under its new captain, that would put the entire incident to bed and letIllustrious, and the entire squadron, get on with their job of fighting Naxids.

It was a solution that would sacrifice an officer, that was true, but an officer who was an outsider, a provincial Peer from a provincial clan, isolated from the others who had all been handpicked by Fletcher. An officer who no one seemed to like very much anyway.

An officer who was very much like the officer he himself had been just a year ago.

He didn’t like Michi’s solution on these grounds, and on others as well. There had been three deaths, and he thought Michi was too quick to consider the first two solved. He had a sense that the deaths all had to be related in some way, though he couldn’t guess at what might connect them.

In his office he found Marsden waiting patiently with the day’s reports. Martinez called for a pot of coffee and worked steadily for an hour, until a knock on the door interrupted him. He looked up and saw Chandra in the doorway.

He tried not to envision a target symbol pinned to her chest as she stepped into the room and braced.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he said.

“It was unfortunate that we couldn’t discuss…” Her eyes cut to Marsden, whose bald head was bent over his datapad. “…that matter we wanted to talk about at dinner today.”

“We can talk about it tomorrow,” Martinez said.

“It would be a little late.” Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. “The lady squadcom had asked me to conduct my experiment tomorrow.”

She wants to find out how much you’re worth before deciding on your arrest.The bitter thought rose in Martinez’s mind before he could stop it.

He sighed. “I don’t know how I can help you, Lieutenant.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. “In order for this to be what you want, it can’t be anything standard. Eithermy standard ortheir standard, if you see what I mean. It has to be something that’s completely yours, and something that hadn’t been done before, or at least not recently.”

Her hands clenched into fists, and this time did not unclench. “I understand, my lord.” From the sound, her teeth were clenched too.

“It’s not easy, I know.” Martinez made a conciliatory gesture. “I’m sorry, but I have no useful ideas for you.” He mentally reviewed the last few days. “I don’t have useful ideas for anyone, it seems.”

Her fists still clenched, Chandra braced, executed a military turn, and marched away.

Martinez looked after her, and in a morbid part of his mind he wondered if Chandra was angry enough to kill him.