“Have Sirkin report to my office,” she said to Kulkul, the watch officer.
The Sirkin who appeared seemed to be the bright-eyed, alert Sirkin she had first worked with, the young woman who should have had a successful career ahead of her.
“Yes, ma’am?” She was even smiling, and nothing in voice or manner suggested any concern about her own duties. Heris handed her the log.
“Can you explain that entry, Ms. Sirkin?” The formality wiped the smile from Sirkin’s face; she reached for the log with the first signs of uncertainty. As she read it, her face flushed.
“But I—it can’t be!”
“I assure you, Ms. Sirkin, that Mr. Vissisuan neither lies nor makes elementary mistakes. You signed off your shift; he found the open circuit. Those are facts; I asked for an explanation.”
Now Sirkin looked as miserable as she should. “I—I don’t . . . know how it happened, Captain. I didn’t—I swear I didn’t leave any circuits open, but I know Oblo wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t make it up. I—I don’t know—”
Heris picked up the log Sirkin had dropped. “Ms. Sirkin, my patience has run out. Whatever your problems, I don’t want them on my ship. You will be released from contract when we arrive at Golan. Until then, Mr. Vissisuan will serve as Nav First; you will perform such duties as Mr. Vissisuan and Mr. Guar can oversee. You can expect to have your work checked very carefully, and any more lapses will be reflected in my statements to any future employer. You have done good work in the past; I hate to handicap you with a bad reference, but I’m not going to risk lives . . . do you understand?”
Sirkin had gone so pale Heris was afraid she might faint. “Yes, ma’am,” she said in a voice empty of all emotion.
“You may go,” Heris said. “You’re offshift now; see if you can pull yourself together in time to be of some help to Issi Guar next shift.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sirkin left with the gait of someone who has just taken a bad wound and hasn’t felt it yet. Heris wanted to clobber the girl and cradle her at the same time. What a waste of talent! If she could only clear her head . . . but she’d learned early in her career that you could spend only so much time trying to rehabilitate losers. Get rid of them, and get on with the job—which, right now, meant getting Lady Cecelia and Mr. Smith safely to the Golan Republic.
She went back to the bridge. “Oblo, you’re now Nav First and Issi’s your second. I don’t want Sirkin standing any watches alone; she’s to back up Issi during the jumps next watch, and do any other routine work you and Issi can check.”
“Yes, Captain.” He looked angry, but she knew it was more with circumstances than either Sirkin or herself. He had liked Sirkin—they all had—and they all felt betrayed by her failures. Padoc Kulkul, who rarely said anything at all, spoke up.
“Good idea, Captain. I know you and Petris both liked her and I had nothing against her before . . . but we can’t risk anything now.”
“Meharry’s really mad,” Ginese said without turning around. “She thought a lot of the girl.”
“So did I. Now, with Sirkin off any solo watches, Nav’s going to be as short as the rest of you—” A general chuckle. Navigation/Communication had had three to the other sections’ two, but no one had minded. “If you need help up here, grab Skoterin from Haidar. She’s capable of watching a board for a few minutes.”
“And she’s Fleet,” Ginese said, this time looking at Heris. “We know we can trust Fleet—at least our old crew.”
“Right. Now—I think whatever’s wrong with Sirkin is psychological, personal, but there’s the smallest chance it’s not. We know her lover was killed by Compassionate Hand bravos. We know her lover may have been recruited by that woman you saw, Oblo—”
“That counselor—”
“Right. It’s just barely conceivable that Sirkin was recruited too—then or later, perhaps terrorized after Yrilan’s death—and if so, she could be working for the Benignity. I don’t want her near the communications—they’ll have a hard time finding one little yacht bouncing around jump after jump, but not if someone’s got us lighted up for them.”
“What about that course she laid out?” Oblo asked. “What if it’s wrong—takes us into C.H. space or something?”
“Check it. She said . . . let me think . . . that Skoterin brought her up-to-date chart data from the Stationmaster’s office. Let’s ask Skoterin.”
Skoterin, roused from her offshift sleep, arrived on the bridge looking only mildly puffy around the eyes, and answered Heris’s questions readily.
“Yes, ma’am; I did go over to the Stationmaster’s office for Ms. Sirkin. Made sense to me we didn’t want to use the Station voicecom without knowing if anyone could listen in. That other shuttle had come with the lawyers from Lady Cecelia’s competency hearing.”
“Ah—yes. Annie mentioned that you’d talked to one of them. What happened?”
Skoterin grinned. “One of ’em stopped me, and wanted to know what ship I was off of. Guess they’d noticed the Station employees’ uniform on the way down or something. I told ’em just what you had said was our story. ‘We’re the Harper Valley,’ I said, and told ’em we were an independent freighter picking up a load of frozen equine sperm and embryos. Wanted to know where we were bound next, and I said ‘Wherever the captain wants, I reckon. I’m just a mole.’ They didn’t know what that meant, and I told ’em environmental tech, and they said what was our captain’s name, and I said he was a sorry sonuvabitch named Livadhi, which was all I could think of at the time. They said did we work for Lord Thornbuckle, and I said I wished! and they said oh never mind, she doesn’t know anything we want to know, and I thought to myself, little you know, and they went off and so did I.”
“I wonder why they asked about Lord Thornbuckle,” Heris said. “Unless they’ve figured out that it was Brun who brought Lady Cecelia here. Good job, Vivi; they may find out that Livadhi is an R.S.S. captain but it won’t do them much good. Now—about the charts and things you picked up—”
“Yes, ma’am. Got those from the Stationmaster, and came back without running into any more of those people, and gave the data to Ms. Sirkin.” Heris noted that the formality in referring to Sirkin came easily to Skoterin.
“Is this what you gave her?” Heris asked, pointing to the data cube and hardcopy on Oblo’s desk.
Skoterin looked. “Yes, ma’am. ’Course, I don’t know what it means. Jump points and stuff, but not what.”
“That’s fine, then. Go on back to bed.” When Skoterin had left the bridge, Heris turned to Oblo.
“Check the course Sirkin laid in against those sheets, and make sure she actually used the current data. I don’t want us stumbling into Benignity space because of Sirkin’s carelessness.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Oblo went to work. Heris sat there, wishing she were back in bed with Petris, but knowing it was too late. It seemed their jinx had returned. Besides, something nagged at her. Skoterin’s story had been plausible—and Skoterin wasn’t the problem anyway—so what could Sirkin have been up to, besides getting current data? Had she known the lawyers were aboard the Station just then? Had she wanted Skoterin to be seen and questioned? If—somehow—she had managed to let them know that the ship in dock was Cecelia’s yacht, then getting Skoterin out there to be seen was one way of giving the enemy a complete crew list. They already knew about the others; she had counted on Skoterin going unrecognized—and now they knew about Skoterin, too.
That didn’t satisfy her either, but she could not reconcile the two Sirkins, the two possible explanations for sending Skoterin out.
Next mainshift, Cecelia sent for her. Heris came into Cecelia’s suite to find her sitting up in the hoverchair, an attendant with her.