“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 understandable.
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’s 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 going down, 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. 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 further.” He turned to his secretary. “Marsden, I’ll need you to enter the death in the log.”
Martinez walked with Mersenne 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 look at the lieutenant, and he had a feeling that Mersenne wasn’t looking at him either.
He came to the squadcom’s door, and without saying anything to Lord Mersenne, stopped 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 arrived a few minutes later, carrying her morning tea in a gold-rimmed cup with the Chen family crest. Martinez jumped from his chair and braced. The breath of air on his exposed throat gave him a sudden shiver.
“As you were,” 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 cut a throat that efficiently unless you practiced.
He imagined Fletcher alone in his cabin, drawing the knife over and over as he slashed an imaginary throat, the cold blue eyes glittering, the superior smile on his lips.
Michi’s gaze intensified. Her fingers drummed thoughtfully on the desktop. “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 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.
Michi considered this a moment. “Thank you, Captain,” she said finally. “I appreciate your informing me.”
There was a clear tone of dismissal in her words, and Martinez wanted to protest. He wanted Michi to ask him to stay so they could work out some kind of theory about what had just happened and why, and then decide on a course of action. But Michi left him no choice but to stand, brace, and make his way out.
Martinez had to pass Fletcher’s quarters on his way to his own. The captain’s door was closed. As he walked past, he strained his senses to detect anything that might be happening inside.
Like what?he thought.A burst of maniacal laughter? A pool of blood creeping from under the door?
There was nothing.
He entered his own office and left the door open in the event that someone might want to talk to him.
No one did.
NINE
The fourth edition ofResistance flew into the world on wings of electrons, carrying with it the announcement that Laurajean and his two colleagues had been killed as a result of the sentence of a tribunal of the secret government. Sula identified Laurajean’s two friends as well, having gotten the names from the death certificates filed electronically in the Records Office.
The tribunal has passed other sentences, and execution is now pending,Sula wrote.
That should put a scare into them.
The previous three editions had been sent out with the forged security heading claiming they’d originated at the broadcast node of the Naxid-occupied Hotel Spartex. Sula decided that the Spartex had probably suffered as much as it was likely to from the Naxid security services, so she looked through some of Rashtag’s mail, found the code for the broadcast node at the Fleet Commandery, and used that instead.
Now the Naxid security services would have to investigate the Naxid Fleet. The Fleet, she thought, was just going tolove that.
Sula munched a pastry filled with sweet red bean paste as she sent out the usual fifty thousand copies ofResistance, then licked her fingers, closed her connection to the Records Office computer, and turned to where Spence and Macnamara waited, playing a puzzle that Spence had just bought from a street vendor. It was an intricate tangle of wire, with beads that moved from one intersection to the next, and could sometimes jump from one connection to another.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the puzzle, Sula looked at it with her chin propped on her fists. “What’s the point of it, exactly?” she said.
Spence gave a puzzled frown. “I’m not sure. When the vendor demonstrated the thing, it all seemed pretty clear. But now…”
Sula moved a bead along the wire to the next intersection, but it failed to move any farther. She moved it in the other direction, and with a sudden clang the entire puzzle fell apart into a jangling snarl of wires and beads.
She drew back her finger and looked at the others. “Was thatsupposed to happen?” she asked.
Spence blinked. “I don’t think so.”
Sula stood up. “Maybe we should try something a little less challenging.”
Spence looked up at her. “Yes?”