The curiously-worded first sentence managed to insert the word "incompetence" without justifying its inclusion, and the rest was pure poison. Martinez stared at this for a long moment, then looked at the log to check the date at which Fletcher had last accessed the file. He found that Fletcher had last looked at Chandra's file at 27:21 hours the previous evening, a mere six hours before he was killed.
His mouth went dry. Chandra had ripped apart her relationship with Fletcher, and after thinking about it for two days, Fletcher fired a rocket at Chandra with every intention of blowing up her career.
After which, some hours later, Fletcher was killed.
Martinez thought the sequence through carefully. For this to be anything other than a coincidence, Chandra would have had to have known that Fletcher had put a bomb in her efficiency report. He checked Fletcher's comm logs for the evening, and found that he'd made only one call, to Command, possibly for a situation report before going to bed. Martinez checked the watch list and found that it hadn't been Chandra on watch at the time, but the sixth lieutenant, Lady Juliette Corbigny.
So there was no evidence that Chandra would have known the contents of her efficiency report. Not unless Fletcher had made a point of looking for her and telling her in person.
Or unless Chandra had some kind of access to documents sealed under Fletcher's key. She was the signals officer, and she was clever.
Martinez decided that this theory had too much whisky and wine in it to make any sense, and he failed in any case to successfully imagine Chandra wrestling the fully-grown Fletcher to his knees and then banging his head repeatedly on his desk.
Martinez rose and stretched, then looked at the chronometer. 27:21. At this exact time, Fletcher had made his last cold-blooded alterations to Chandra's fitness report.
The coincidence chilled him. He left his office and took a brief march along the decks, circling back to his own door. He passed the door of the captain's cabin, which was closed, and then found himself turning back to it. It opened to his key. He stepped in and called for light.
Fletcher's office had been returned to its pristine state, the fingerprint powder dusted away, the desk dark and gleaming. There was a scent of furniture polish. The bronze statues were impassive in their armor.
The safe sat silvery and silent in its niche. Apparently Gawbyan had repaired it after his break-in.
Martinez passed into the sleeping cabin and stared at the bloody porcelain figure with its unnaturally broad eyes. He looked at the pictures on the wall and saw a long-haired Terran with blue skin playing a flute, a man dead or swooning in the arms of a blue-clad woman. a monstrous being-or possibly it was a Torminel with unnaturally orange fur-snarling out of the frame, its extended tongue pierced by a jagged spear.
Lovely stuff to see at bedtime, he thought. The only picture of any interest showed a young woman bathing, but what might have been an attractive scene was spoiled by the creepy fact of elderly men in turbans who watched her from concealment.
"Comm," he said, "page Montemar Jukes to the captain's office."
Fletcher's pet artist ambled into the office wearing non-regulation coveralls and braced half-heartedly, in a way that would have earned a ferocious rebuke from any petty officer. To judge from Jukes and Xi, Fletcher was willing to tolerate a certain amount of slackness among his personal following.
Jukes was a stocky man with disordered gray hair and rheumy blue eyes. His cheeks were unnaturally ruddy, and his breath smelled of sherry. Martinez gave him what he intended to be a disapproving scowl, then turned to lead into Fletcher's bedroom.
"Come with me, Mister Jukes."
Jukes followed in silence, then stopped in the doorway, leaning back slightly to contemplate the great porcelain figure strapped to the tree.
"What is this, Mister Jukes?"
"Narayanguru," Jukes said. "The Shaa tied him to a tree and tortured him to death. He's all-seeing, that's why his eyes wrap around like that."
"All-seeing? Funny he didn't see what the Shaa were going to do to him."
Jukes showed yellow teeth. "Yes," he said. "Funny."
"Why's he here?"
"You mean why did Captain Fletcher put Narayanguru in his sleeping cabin?" Jukes shrugged. "I don't know. He collected cult art, and he couldn't show it to the public. Maybe this is the only place he could put it"
"Was Captain Fletcher a cultist?"
Jukes was taken aback by the question. "Possibly," he said, "but which cult?" He walked into the room and pointed at the snarling beast. "That's Tranomakoi, a personification of their storm spirit." He indicated the blue-skinned man. "That's Krishna, who I believe is a Hindu diety." His hand drifted across the scarred paneling to indicate the swooning man. "That's a pieta, that's Christian. Another god killed in some picturesque way by the Shaa."
"Christian?" Martinez was intrigued. "We have Christians on Laredo-on my home world. On certain days of the year they dress in white robes and pointed hoods, don chains, and flog each other."
Jukes was startled. "Why do they do that?"
"I have no idea. It's said they sometimes pick one of their number to be their god and nail him to a cross."
Jukes scratched his scalp in wonderment. "A jolly sort of cult, isn't it?"
"It's a great honor. Most of them live."
"And the authorities don't do anything?"
Martinez shrugged. "The cultists only hurt each other. And Laredo is very far from Zanshaa."
"Apparently."
Martinez looked at Narayanguru with his bloody translucent flesh. "In any case," he said, "I'm neither a cultist nor an aesthete, and I have no intention of sleeping beneath that gory object for a single night."
The other man grinned. "I don't blame you."
Martinez turned to Jukes. "Can you… rearrange… the captain's collection?" he asked. "Store Narayanguru where he won't disturb anyone's sleep, and put something more pleasant in his place?"
"Yes, my lord. I've got an inventory of what items of his collection Fletcher brought aboard, and I'll peruse it tonight."
Martinez was amused by the word peruse. "Very good, Mister Jukes. You're dismissed."
"Yes, my lord." This time Jukes managed a halfway creditable salute, and marched away. Martinez left Fletcher's quarters and locked the door behind him.
The interview had cheered him. He went to his own cabin and was startled to find that one of his servants, Rigger Espinosa, had laid cushions on the floor of his office and had stretched out on them fully clothed.
"What are you doing there?" Martinez asked.
Espinosa jumped to his feet and braced. He was a young man, muscular and trim, with heavy-knuckled hands that hung by his side.
"Mister Alikhan sent me, my lord," he said.
Martinez stared at him. "But why?"
Espinosa's face was frank. "Someone's killing captains, my lord. I'm to keep that from happening again."
Killing captains. Martinez hadn't thought of it that way.
"Very well," Martinez said. "As you were."
Martinez went into his sleeping cabin, where Alikhan had laid out his night things. He picked up his toothbrush, moistened it in his sink, and looked at himself in the mirror.
Captain of the Illustrious, he thought.
In spite of the deaths, in spite of Narayanguru hanging on his tree and the unexplained deaths and the unknown killer stalking the ship, he couldn't help but smile.
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. Martinez 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. The empire's highest military decoration was a baton topped by a transparent sphere filled with a golden fluid that, when disturbed, swirled and eddied like the clouds surrounding a gas giant. It was a magnificent award, and Martinez was the first to be awarded the decoration in hundreds of years.