Against the Odds

Chapter Twenty-Four

Commodore Admiral Minor Livadhi. Arash grimaced at his face in the mirror. He looked well enough—the same tall, trim figure, the same lean face . . . handsome, actually. The same red hair, only lightly silvered at the temples. Decades of service in the Regular Space Service . . . combat experience . . . decorations . . . a fine upstanding officer.

A fine upstanding fool. A fool whose folly was now on his heels, like a hound on the trail of a fox . . . like a hunter after his prey. He shook his head abruptly and glared at himself. Time to quit dithering, to quit making faces in the mirror and do something.

But to lose it all . . . it hurt. The years, the friendships, the trust.

The certainty of his fate if he didn’t do something.

It had gone already, gone before he’d realized it. It had gone the moment he went to Jules with his worries about Lepescu, gone irretrievably the first time he’d done Jules a favor that went over the line by so much as a hair.

He contemplated, as he had contemplated before, simply going off on his own. But with Fleet on a war footing, it was even less possible. Commodore Admiral Minor Livadhi, so well known, so distinctive in appearance, could not book a flight off this station without someone reporting it . . . he had to take that convoy out, knowing all the time that the hounds were on his trail, were closing in.

He had kept the contact code all these years, though he had never made contact himself. After the fiasco with the Crown Prince, he had never meant to . . . he had tried to forget. But now, in his need, his memory threw it up on his mind’s screen, as clear as the day he first saw it. Perhaps he was in truth what Jules had made him in law.

Or perhaps half his luck would be with him, and there would be no corresponding code on this station. Then he would have to be honorable, have to be the naive prey who does not hear the hounds until too late. He would have to endure the discovery, the disgrace, the ruin of a lifetime’s honest service for the sake of a youthful error. In a way, he wanted to be that innocent.

He called up the station’s database, looking for the number that he hoped would not be there.

But it was. And as it would have to be, the number’s owner was an unexceptionable business anyone might call or visit: Remembrances Gifts and Flowers. He placed the call, and spoke the words that would mean nothing without the knowledge in his head.

Then he had to wait for an answer, his nerves drawn tighter with every passing hour.

“I was afraid she’d faint,” Oblo said, holding out his mug for a refill. “Turned white as a sheet, she did.”

“You idiot, Oblo,” Meharry said. “She maybe hadn’t heard before—”

“She hadn’t, but I didn’t think of that. How’s I to know?” His tone of injured innocence sounded real, for once.

“You have a brain,” Meharry said shortly. “Wish I’d had time to talk to her.”

“What about?”

“Copper Mountain . . . I was wondering if she’d heard more than I have. I wish I could transfer over there. My brother—”

“Your brother is fine, Methlin. You heard that—”

“Mornin’ Oblo, Methlin,” Petris said. “What’s new about your brother?”

“Nothin’,” Oblo said. “Methlin just wants to go play big sister.”

“Transfer? I doubt they’d let you, right now.”

“I know.” Methlin bit into a sweet roll as if it were an enemy’s neck. “I did sort of ask. Got told no.”

“You’re not the only one,” Petris said. “I heard from the admiral’s clerk—Admiral Serrano’s, that is—that Commodore Livadhi asked if perhaps Heris’s old crew wouldn’t like to transfer, seeing as she’s so close. Relatively close.” He sipped his own mug of coffee.

“Wants to get rid of us, does he?” Oblo asked, scowling.

“I think it was courtesy,” Petris said. “He’s—sometimes he’s almost scrupulously polite. Working at it. The admiral said no, by the way.”

“She would,” Oblo said.

“Mind yourself,” Petris said, grinning. “She’s our Heris’s aunt, not just a mere admiral—”

“Mustang,” Meharry said, grinning back.

“So I am. With everything that implies. So, how are your sections shaping up for this next mission?”

“Better,” Meharry said. “It’s still not our—not what I’d’ve liked, all our own people. But the new ones aren’t bad, and that first cruise settled ’em.”

“Good. We may well see some trouble this time out, from what I hear.”

“Me, too,” said Oblo, who had sources known only to himself. “I heard some of the mutineers are trying to set up deals with free trader companies, and even the big consortia. Anyone who doesn’t sign up gets whacked on their next trip.”

“The commodore’s not bad,” Meharry said thoughtfully, stirring her coffee. “I hear he’s got good combat sense. Not up to Heris, of course, but—”

“We don’t know that, Methlin,” Petris said. “His record’s good. And Heris liked him, even when she didn’t completely trust him.”

“Came to our rescue that one time . . .” Oblo commented.

“Yeah . . . kind of odd he was there, but I don’t argue with good luck. Anyway, if it goes as smoothly as last time, we’ll be fine, as long as the crew does its job and nothing blindsides us.”

“Nothing’s going to blindside us with Koutsoudas up in scan,” Meharry said.

The convoy proceeded on its way, a string of transport and cargo vessels guarded by Vigilance and her gaggle of patrol and escort ships. The original plan, to have each convoy include two cruisers, had foundered on the shortage of cruisers. This made Rascal’s weapons upgrade particularly valuable, and Livadhi placed her at the tail of the line, where another cruiser would have been. They were held to the speed of the slowest ship, in this case two of the spherical hulls used by the Boros Consortium, loaded with ordnance for the border stations. Esmay’s relatively young crew had plenty of practice in adjusting jump point insertions and exits, in interpreting longscan. After the first two jump transitions, she began to feel less like a character playing a part and more like a real captain. Her crew was settling well; she could feel their confidence in her.

Koutsoudas found Methlin Meharry in the enlisted mess and sat down beside her. “Meharry—can I talk to you?”

She gave him one of her looks. “You have a voice, ’Steban. What’s up?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to go nuts if I don’t tell someone about it.”

“Mmm. Is this the best place?”

“Maybe not. Where?”

“You offshift or on?”

“Off.”

“Two hours, break room for weapons three. See you.” Meharry slapped the table and left without another word. She made her rounds, bumped into Oblo as usual, and suggested that he might want to meet her.

“We need Petris?” he asked.

“Doubt it,” Meharry said. “Likely someone’s just leaning on the kid about something and he’d like to blow off a bit. You’re insurance.”

“Got you.” They went their separate ways.

Twenty minutes before the two hours, Meharry ambled into the weapons three break room and leaned over the shoulders of the two corporals who were studying a wire model of the main beam supports. “Something needs polishing,” she said.

“Sir? What, sir?”

“Find it,” Meharry advised. “And polish it very well.”

The brighter of the two blinked again and said, “Sir, any idea how long we need to polish it?”

“An hour and a half should do it,” Meharry said. They left, and she went to work. In five minutes she had disabled the scan pickup that should have reported everything in the room. Oblo appeared eight minutes later, and checked her clearance before settling into one of the chairs. It creaked under him. A pivot with a mug of something started into the room, saw them, and backed out without a word.

The two of them chatted about inconsequential things until Koutsoudas appeared. He had his own gear bag with him, and produced one of his cylinders.

“You don’t trust us?” Oblo said, raising an eyebrow.

“Don’t talk to me about trust,” Koutsoudas said. Meharry couldn’t tell if he was angry or scared or both. Before she could say anything, he rushed on. “This is all slippery stuff, nothing solid. I don’t want there to be anything solid. But you need to know.”

“Can we have a noun?” Meharry asked in a low drawl. “A subject?”

Koutsoudas glanced at the open hatch as if he expected a killer to step through it. Then back at Meharry. “The bridge crew—is about to lose it.”

“Why? We haven’t had any action I didn’t know about, have we?”

“No. It’s—it’s Livadhi. The commodore. Something’s wrong—he’s not like he was.”

Meharry felt a sudden lurch in her midsection, followed by a feeling of satisfaction. So. Everyone had told her how wonderful he was, but despite no evidence at all she had never been able to like him. Her instincts were right.

“What’s he doing?” she asked, forestalling Oblo with a look.

“It’s hard to say. Mostly he’s—twitchy. Jumpy. Everything’s going fine, but he’s wound up tighter than I’ve ever seen him. I hate—I’ve known him for years, I was with him before he sent me to Commander Serrano—and I’ve never seen him like this. I don’t feel right telling you, but I don’t feel right about whatever’s wrong, either.”

“What’s Captain Burleson say?”

“He’s getting tense himself, the way Livadhi’s been jumping on everyone. We’re afraid to say anything but yes, sir and no, sir on the bridge, and we’d become pretty friendly. You know how it is . . .”

Meharry knew. All her instincts were standing up waving their arms at her. She looked at Oblo. His face showed nothing but his eyes—yes, his instincts too.

“Has he done anything—anything at all—outside what he should? Given any questionable orders?”

“No. I can’t believe I’m even thinking he would, but—if he’d been rejuved, I’d be worrying about rejuv failure.”

“What about communications?” Oblo asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Has he made any unusual communications? Outside the convoy, or to unusual destinations?”

“I’m not monitoring his communications,” Koutsoudas said quickly. Then, “I’ll find out. If you think it matters.”

“It might.”

“You’d better go,” Meharry said to Koutsoudas. “We’ll talk again.”

“All right. I just—I need someone.”

“We’re with you, ’Steban. We won’t let anything bad happen.”

After he’d gone, she turned to Oblo. “I was wrong. We do need Petris. If anything’s going on, if that bastard’s going sour on us—”

“He’s not going to lose Heris’s ship for her,” Oblo said.

Some days later, Koutsoudas passed Meharry a data cube with Livadhi’s complete inbound and outbound communications log. When she put it in the cube reader, she found that he’d made notations alongside the entries: this a tightbeam to one or another of the convoy ships, this a tightbeam to a Fleet ansible with destination codes indicating a report to Headquarters. Inbound from a Fleet ansible, origin codes Headquarters. So far so good. Then a civilian origination code . . . his wife, Koutsoudas had noted. Every few days, a message from his wife.

Meharry frowned. Livadhi married? Somehow she’d assumed him to be single. She glanced at the messages; they weren’t encrypted, and were about everyday things. His wife was having a new carpet installed; she was sure he’d like it: it was the same color as the old. The price of snailfish fin had gone through the roof; she supposed it was the effect of the mutiny. His uncle the retired admiral had dropped by and talked for an hour about the political situation; he was convinced that if the old king and Admiral Lepecsu had been in charge none of this would have happened. Her sister’s youngest child had won a music prize. She thanked him for sending a parting gift from Sector VII Headquarters, but didn’t he realize that the shipping charges had tripled the cost? She’d have been just as happy with the usual box of candy from the local confectioners’. The enameled box was pretty, but she didn’t understand the message on the paper inside, or was it just something the people in the shop had left in by mistake?

Meharry stopped and reread that message. Livadhi usually sent candy but this time sent a box? Well . . . maybe he’d thought his wife would like a change. Though any woman who would choose exactly the same shade of carpet to replace the old probably wouldn’t want a change in gifts, either. And surely Livadhi would know it—though Meharry had, in a long career, seen plenty of marriages founder on the shoals of ignorance. People didn’t really know each other better just because they were tied together with a common name. An incomprehensible message inside? Most likely, as his wife mentioned, just a mistake at the shop.

But why send an enameled box that far? Why that box? What was the incomprehensible message?

She glanced down the screen, and found it. Livadhi’s wife had included it, just in case it was his message and he cared to translate. A string of numbers and letters. It looked exactly like a jump point address and ansible access code. Koutsoudas’ annotation, cautious, said that such a jump point and ansible access code were in the files, but that he couldn’t confirm that the writer had meant the string to denote them.

Meharry scrolled on down the log. There—highlighted by Koutsoudas—the convoy had passed through a jump point with the same coordinates as in the message Livadhi’s wife had sent . . . and in that system, Livadhi had stripped a message from the ansible, using that code. The message, in clear, said, “Merchandise undeliverable; addressee unknown at that address. Refund waiting at next port of call.”

Harmless enough, but the numbers had been inside a box which was delivered. What merchandise was undeliverable? Not the box. Something else? Why had Livadhi suddenly bought presents for people at Sector VII HQ and shipped them all over the place? And no civilian should have had a list of the jump points the convoy would pass through, to send a message like this to intercept the convoy. Or have known what the next port of call was, to send a refund ahead.

She read through the rest. Nothing more that didn’t fit. Koutsoudas had noted, at the end of the list, that their next port of call would be Mindon Station. Meharry thought about that, retrieved the cube from the cube reader and put it in her pocket, then set off on a purposeful meander to find Oblo. She knew he and Petris had a regular sparring session in the gym.

She found him just as Petris came down the ladder a few meters away. “Joining us, Methlin?” Petris asked.

“You should,” Oblo said. “How long’s it been since you sparred with me?”

“Can’t,” Meharry said. “I’m on-shift. Just brought you an entertainment cube—the one you were asking about.”

Petris gave her a sharp look. “Not Bridge to the Moon?”

“No . . . didn’t find that one. This is Michelline-Hernandez’s A Traitor Reveal’d, with that good looking actor—Simon somebody—playing the general.” There was, of course, such an adventure drama. Meharry would not have stooped to anything less complete. She handed Petris the cube, and headed back to work, the lines of the play that were not on that cube echoing in her memory. It cannot be, that you, my general, have betrayed us.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Meharry muttered.

By the downjump into the system where Mindon Station’s complicated geometry sparkled with the frost of multiple vents, Petris and Oblo had both reviewed the data cube. Now, three days out from the station, they met with Koutsoudas in gym.

“What’s going on up there now, ’Steban?” Petris asked.

Koutsoudas looked down. “It’s . . . pretty tense. Rascal was five minutes late coming out of jump—well within limits, especially since those two Boros ships were three minutes late making insertion and Rascal was supposed to keep station behind ’em—and he chewed Captain Suiza out like she’d done something awful.”

“How’d she take it?” Oblo asked.

“What could she do? Said yes, sir, no, sir, sorry, sir, in the right places. Didn’t make excuses. Then six hours later he calls her up and makes nice. Would she like to go on the courtesy call he’s making to the station commander, an’ so on. She’s polite, gives him her ETA—’course, Rascal’s behind everyone, a good fourteen hours at least before she’d get to Station, and he says never mind, she can be the deep picket, like before.” Koutsoudas stopped. Petris waited. “It’s not like him, sir. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s always been tough and a bit finicky, yes. But to ream someone out unfairly and then wait six hours to say anything, and then make a dumb mistake like not knowing she’d be that far behind . . .”

“What if it wasn’t a mistake?” Meharry asked. “What if he never meant to have her along, and it was just a kind of lame apology?”

“It’s not like him,” Koutsoudas said. “Look—you know how I felt when he sent me to Commander Serrano. I’ve been Livadhi’s pet scan tech since I finished Basic and ended up on his ship. I didn’t want to leave him . . . but I came to recognize Commander Serrano as darn near his equal as a ship commander.” He glanced around and said sheepishly, “All right. A better ship commander, but not by much. I know Livadhi—the old Livadhi—the way you people can’t. And this is different.”

“So what do you expect us to do, ’Steban?”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” he said miserably. “Tell me I’m making it up, that there’s nothing wrong with him, that he can’t possibly be up to anything—”

“’Steban,” Meharry said, with unwonted gentleness. “We don’t doubt your loyalty. Any of your loyalties. But you have to face the facts you’re trying to avoid. If he’s changed, if there’s something wrong . . . we can’t ignore it. You can’t ignore it.”

“I know that,” he said, to the deck. “I just—I just hate it—especially since you didn’t know him before.”

“I knew him last cruise,” Petris said. “He was good enough then. Naturally I think Heris is better, but you’re right—not by much. I think he’s been a good officer. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Yes. I had to come to you—I trust you—but I can’t—I needed to know you didn’t just hate him because he was here instead of her.”

“Of course not,” Petris said. “Man, I may be Heris Serrano’s . . . friend, but I’m still a professional. A good officer is a good officer.”

“All right, then. What did you think of the communications log?”

“Damaging,” Meharry said, before Petris could.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I haven’t talked to any of the officers, but Sim, one of the commtechs, is worried about it too.”

“It could still be innocent,” Petris said, playing devil’s advocate for the moment. “I mean—suppose he did have—oh, a premonition or something—and decided to send special presents to everyone he knew, and one of them was undeliverable. Maybe the shop figured his wife would pass on the note in the box.”

“Without instructions? Just a list of numbers and letters?”

“Well, she did send it on. Maybe things like that had happened before . . .”

“Not on the last cruise,” Koutsoudas said. “I asked Sim.”

“How’s Captain Burleson taking all this?”

“He’s tense, too. He’s an old Livadhi hand, same as I am, and so is our second and third.”

“I wish we had Mackay aboard,” Petris said. “He knew us; we knew him . . . we’re in a ticklish spot here. The way we’re talking, we could be taken up for conspirators—”

“We’re not the ones making trouble,” Oblo said.

“Yes, we are. By regulation, anyway. In a time of war or mutiny, conversations critical of a commander like this . . . and the last thing this Fleet needs is another mutiny aboard a ship.”

“The last thing this Fleet needs is another ship going over to the mutiny,” Meharry said.

“Or somewhere else,” Koutsoudas said.

“What do you mean?”

“You know . . . I never talked to anyone about why Livadhi wanted me gone. I know he told Commander Serrano I’d gotten in some kind of trouble—”

“So?”

“So . . . I wouldn’t have thought of it, ’cept for this. Never meant to mention any of it—”

“’Steban, if you don’t spit it out, I’m going to squeeze you dry,” Oblo said.

“It was right after I came up with that scan extension, that lets me get a little lead on downjump scan. Suddenly Livadhi had us heading toward the Shaft, just like we were going to use that grav anomaly jump point to skew around it, but then we went into the Shaft instead. Turned out we were going in to rescue Commander Serrano and Sweet Delight—”

“What?”

“Yeah, that time you had the prince with you, remember?”

“I remember,” Petris said. He glanced at Oblo.

“Well, so after we kicked those Benignity ships—and believe me, we were sweatin’ that, attacking them in their own territory—I got to thinking about how Livadhi had known where to look.” He took a long breath. “I had a buddy in comm then, and we kicked it around a bit—trying to figure out how he knew, or if it was just luck. Then I said something to Livadhi himself one day, and he rounded on me, told me to be quiet if I valued my freedom. That he’d had secret orders, but no one was supposed to know. And maybe I’d better spend some time away from the ship while he tried to cover up my lapse. I don’t know what he told you—”

“He’d heard we’d had bad data from Rotterdam—”

“Nope. We never went near Rotterdam,” Koutsoudas said.

“So what you’re saying is—”

“I figured it was secret orders, back then. I had nothing else. But now . . .”

“Benignity,” said Oblo.

“I hope not,” Petris said, but a deep internal flutter told him that his instinct said it was. “What a stinking mess that would be.”

“Is,” said Oblo again. “Look at it, sir—”

“I am,” Petris said. The ramifications unfolded like a flowering bud to his inward eye. “ ‘Steban, when you caught up with us at Naverrn . . . did you have orders for that, too?”

“Of course,” Koutsoudas said. “The prince aboard—or at least one of the clones.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Not much, though. Petris ran through the names he knew. Arkady Ginese and Meharry both in Weapons, Oblo and Issigai Guar in Navigation, Koutsoudas in scan, his buddy Sim in communications, himself in Engineering . . . far from enough. Others, who had been in Heris’s crew, might trust them, second-hand trust, but how many? If Livadhi were turning traitor, what would he do?

“’Steban, we’re going to do nothing now but watch. We still have nothing provable. When he’s off the ship, on this courtesy visit, be sure we know.”

“Right, sir.” Koutsoudas looked more at ease, having transferred his problem to someone in charge. Petris wished again he had someone to hand off this mess to. When Koutsoudas left, Petris turned to Meharry.

“You tell Arkady and start thinking who you trust, and who trusts you. Oblo, you’ll talk to Issi, same thing. I’ll tackle Padoc. We ought to be able to swap watches around to cover, once we know who’s with us.” That would buy him time to think.

“I wonder what she’d say,” Meharry said. They all knew which she that was.

“So do I,” Petris said. He had never felt so alone.

“He’s gone,” Oblo murmured into his comunit. “I’m sittin’ first nav, Keller’s on the bridge. Burleson went with him.”

“Right. Who’s on the honor guard?”

“None of us.” Oblo read the roster. None of the old Heris crew, only one who had been hers at all.

“All right. Keep us up.”

Petris turned away from his comunit. “All right, folks, the admiral’s headed for the Station, courtesy call. You know the drill: insystem drive stays hot, we run diagnostics on the FTL. I’ve got the arrival report to write; you’ve got my code if you need me.”

“Right, sir.” Chief Coggins nodded.

Petris beeped Meharry. Neither she nor Ginese was on right now, which made it easier. He hoped.

They met in the Engineering break room. Petris flicked on the workstation, and started his report; Meharry dealt with the scan, though she suspected Oblo could have intercepted it on the bridge.

“Anything new?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Oblo and Sim got a datasuck off the Station communications nexus,” Koutsoudas said. “There’s a message for Livadhi. They can’t read it. It’s encrypted.”

“Originating?”

“Can’t tell for sure. This station automatically strips originating headers.”

Arash Livadhi met the Fleet representative—another admiral minor recently promoted—and the station’s civilian Stationmaster. The rituals of greeting, of exchanging courtesies, of being served light refreshment, grated on him as never before. The formal handing over of responsibility for the convoy, the necessary several hours of chatting about the news, the likelihood of militia action out here, the recent movement of civilian trade—down 47 percent, with resulting shortages in infant supplies, of all things—nearly drove him crazy. What did he care about infant supplies? People had lived for centuries, he was sure, before someone invented disposable diapers and bottles.

Admiral Minor Ksia invited him to dinner, and Stationmaster Corfoldi urged him to visit the station gardens. . . . “We’re very proud of our orchid collection, you’ll find it quite unique.” Livadhi accepted the invitation—it would have been strange if he had not—and agreed to stretch his legs in the gardens in the meantime.

“And I might just look for something for my wife.”

“But, Commodore, it’s as I said—with trade off so badly—”

“I’m sure I can find something,” Livadhi said. “She likes any little souvenir of a place I’ve been.”

At last he was out of their offices, strolling about a station that was, after all, much less crowded than most. Commander Burleson had gone back to the ship, quite properly. Livadhi considered asking his escort to let him go on alone, but that was irregular, and he could not afford irregularity.

The gardens were gloomy, to his way of thinking, but the orchids in bloom—airy cascades of white hanging down from branches, or weirdly spikey shapes of yellow on the ground beneath—held his attention briefly.

On the far side of the gardens, the shopping arcade was almost empty. Livadhi wandered into Mier’s Fine China, and poked aimlessly among the aisles. Behind a counter, a listless clerk watched him as if she knew he had no intention of buying. From there he went into Charlotte’s Confectionaries, and bought a kilo box of mixed truffles as a dinner courtesy gift. He needed only a quick glance to realize that every shop had its com number painted on the shop front . . . so he ambled along, in and out of almost every shop, until he spotted the number he wanted. Micasio’s, an art gallery. Perfect.

By this time, his escort was, he suspected, both footsore and bored. He turned to them. “I’m going to see if they have any old prints,” he said. “My wife’s crazy about Sid Grevaire, and sometimes these frontier galleries have old stuff that didn’t sell insystem. I’ll probably be an hour poking around in there—why don’t you get yourselves something to drink, and there’s a nice seating area—” He nodded across the walkway, where a cluster of benches and tables gave a good view of the gallery entrance.

“If you’re sure, Admiral—we don’t mind coming with you.”

“I think I can yell that far if I need you,” Livadhi said, forcing a grin. “And I have my emergency buzzer, after all.”

“Right, sir. Thanks.”

He waited until they were safely in place before moving deeper into the gallery, and giving his name to the man behind the counter.

This time the message waiting for him was long and detailed, and he felt a great cold cavern open in his mind and heart. He could not possibly—he could not possibly not . . .

Jules, you bastard, he thought. Jules had anticipated even his most urgent concerns, his remaining loyalties. He had removed, as well as words could, the last sticking point, Livadhi’s concern for his people.

He rummaged through the print bins, with the owner’s help, and emerged 45 minutes later with a wrapped package and a receipt for two Sid Grevaire drawings and a Muly Tyson gouache, unframed. Through dinner with Admiral Minor Ksia, he sustained a lively conversation about trends in modern art. Ksia, as he’d suspected, was an aesthetic nincompoop who completely failed to grasp the challenging theories that underlay Tyson’s curious perspectives.