Most of the officers and ratings had been arrested for routine corruption. Theft and embezzlement, mostly. Those Cachat slammed with the maximum penalties allowable under the official rules for shipboard discipline short of court-martial. But the others had been implicated in Jamka's activities. Clearly so in the case of the officer. The evidence had been fuzzier for the crew members. From what Radamacher could determine, the hapless ratings had been mainly guilty of being too closely identified as "Jamka's people."
No matter. They were all shot. By a firing squad this time, selected from StateSec members brought over from the fleet, not by Cachat himself.
Radamacher wondered how much of Cachat's ruthlessness was dictated by typical StateSec empire-building. Guilty or not, the net effect of the purge was to completely shatter any residual Jamka network, and to intimidate anyone else from forming a different informal network. Or, at the very least, to keep it well under cover. By the end of his first week in La Martine Sector, Victor Cachat had established himself as The Boss, and nobody doubted it.
As cynical as he tried to be about the matter, however, Yuri didn't really think much if any of Cachat's behavior was motivated by personal ambitions. He noted, for instance, that although Cachat had ordered and personally overseen the beatings—okay, call them "interrogations"—of half a dozen of the top ranked StateSec officers attached directly to the task force, he had left it at that after pronouncing them all innocent. The Special Investigator had made no attempt to break up their own informal network, even though he was surely aware of its existence. As long as they were careful to mind their p's and q's—which all of them were doing scrupulously, now—he seemed willing to look the other way.
And thank God for that. Yuri still resented his bruises, and his broken nose and missing teeth. And he resented the bruises he saw on Sharon even more—which was every day, now, since they were both still on the SD and had cabins not too far apart. Still...
Any danger of being accused of being a McQueen conspirator was growing more distant as each day passed. Not just for Yuri himself, but for anyone in the task force. By hammering into a pulp the StateSec officers overseeing Admiral Chin's task force—and then declaring them all innocent of any crime—Cachat had effectively sealed the whole matter. Just as, by using task force Marines to do the blood work, he had effectively cleared them of any suspicion also; and, by implication, the naval officers in overall command of the task force. Neither Admiral Chin nor Commodore Ogilve had been subjected to anything worse than a rigorous but non-violent interrogation.
Granted, Saint-Just's regime didn't recognize the principle of double jeopardy, so any charges could theoretically be raised again at any time. But even Saint-Just's regime was subject to the inevitable dynamics of human affairs. Inertia worked in that field as surely as it did anywhere else. No one could question the rigor of Cachat's investigation—not with blood and bruises and dead bodies everywhere—and the matter was settled. Reopening it would be an uphill struggle, especially when the regime had a thousand critical problems to deal with in the wake of Rob Pierre's death.
Besides, whatever faint evidence there might once have been had surely vanished. By now, Yuri was quite certain that everyone in the task force who'd had any possible connection to McQueen had done the electronic equivalent of wiping off the fingerprints. Unwittingly—the young fanatic still had a lot to learn about intelligence work, Yuri reflected wryly—Cachat's week-long preoccupation with terrorizing the personnel of the two superdreadnoughts had bought time for the task force. Time to catch their breath, relax a bit, eliminate any traces of evidence, and get all their stories straight.
Radamacher was also aware that Cachat had made no move against either of the two captains commanding the SDs, even though Citizen Captain Gallanti in particular had made no secret of her hostility toward the young Special Investigator. Neither of the captains had been touched by Jamka's unsavory activities, and neither could be shown to be corrupt. So, punctiliously, Cachat had left them in their positions and did not even seem to be going out of his way to build any case against them—despite the fact that Radamacher was quite sure Cachat understood that the SD commanders would remain a possible threat to him.
When he mentioned that to Ned—he and Pierce had become quite friendly by the end of the week—the burly citizen sergeant grinned and shook his head.
"Don't underestimate him, Yuri. He might be leaving Gallanti and Vesey alone, but he's gutting their crews."
Radamacher cocked an eyebrow.
"Figuratively speaking, I mean," Pierce qualified. "You haven't heard yet, I take it, of what Cachat's calling the 'salubrious personnel retraining and transfer'?"
Yuri tried to wrap his brain around the clumsy phrase. Somehow, the florid words didn't seem to fit what he'd seen of Cachat's personality.
The sergeant's grin widened. "We lowly Marines just call it SPRAT. So does the Special Investigator. In fact, he says he got the idea from the nursery rhyme."
That jogged Yuri's memory. From childhood, he dredged up the ancient doggerel.
"Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean. And so betwixt the two of them, They licked the platter clean."
"Yup, that's it," chortled Pierce. "Except the Special Investigator says it's time to do a role switch. So he's transferring about five hundred people from the SDs over to the fleet, and about twice that number from the fleet over here. Even some Marines, believe it or not. A company's worth on each ship. I'm one of them, in fact."
"Marines? On a StateSec superdreadnought? That's... not done."
Pierce shrugged. "That's what Captain Gallanti said to him when he told her. She wasn't any too polite about it, neither. I know; I was there. The SI always keeps two or three of us Marines around him wherever he goes." Half-apologetically: "Along with the same number of StateSec guards, of course. But they're okay types."
Radamacher stared at him. "Okay types." He knew perfectly well that a Marine definition of that term would hardly match Saint-Just's.
His mind was almost reeling. Cachat was a lunatic! To be sure, an SI's authority in a remote sector could be stretched a long ways. But it didn't really include decisions over personnel—well... unless severe problems of discipline and/or loyalty were concerned... and Cachat had just littered an SD's gym with dead bodies to prove that it was...
Still. It just wasn't done.
He must have muttered the words aloud. The citizen sergeant shrugged and said: "Yeah, that's what Gallanti said. But, as you mighta figured, the SI's a regular walking encyclopedia of StateSec rules, regulations and precedents. So he immediately rattled off half a dozen instances where Marines had been stationed on StateSec capital ships. Two of the instances at the order of none other than Eloise Pritchard, Saint-Just's—ah, the Citizen Chairman's—fair-haired girl."
Yuri's face tightened. He knew Pritchard himself, as it happened. Not well, no. But he'd been close to the Aprilists in his days as a youthful oppositionist, and she'd been one of the leaders he'd respected and admired. But since the revolution, she'd turned into what he detested most. Another fanatic like Cachat, who'd drown the world in blood for the sake of abstract principles. Her harshness as a People's Commissioner was a legend in State Security.
However, it was indeed true that Pritchard was, as the sergeant said, Saint-Just's "fair-haired girl." So if Cachat was right—and he'd hardly fabricate something like that—he might get away with it.