“You’re dismissed from duty until Doc says you’ve recovered. And Simco or one of his men will stay with you at all times.”
That was not what Max wanted, not at all. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Petoskey nodded, dismissing him.
Max began to wish that whoever had attacked him had done a better job.
He went to the secure radio room and all three of the intelligence officers stopped talking and turned toward the doorway. It’s the Political Officer Effect, thought Max.
“What happened to your face?” Lukinov asked.
“I fought the law and the law won,” Max answered impulsively.
Burdick burst out laughing. Even Lukinov smiled. “Why does that sound so damned familiar?” he asked.
“Judas’s Chariot,” answered Burdick. “The vid. It was one of Barabbas’s lines.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember that one now. It had Oliver Whatshisname in it. I got to meet him once, at a party, when he did that public information vid. Good man.” He twisted around. The smell of his cologne nearly choked Max. “Seriously, Max, what happened? Why has the captain put a guard on one of my men?”
“Someone tried to kill me.” Max was disappointed with the surprise in Lukinov’s expression. In all of their expressions. Intelligence was supposed to know everything. “Captain suspects the ensign here.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Lukinov rolled his eyes. Anger flashed across Reedy’s face.
“It wasn’t my suggestion,” Max replied. “But if you don’t mind my asking, which one of you is just coming on shift?”
“I am, sir,” Reedy answered immediately.
“And where were you?”
“In her quarters sleeping,” interjected Lukinov. “Where else would she have been?”
“You were there with her?” No one wanted to answer that accusation, so Max slid past it. “You two usually work one shift together, and Burdick takes the other, right?”
The senior officer hesitated. “I doubled shifted with Burdick because of the information we were getting.”
So. Reedy had been alone. Not that Max suspected her of the attack. But now he’d have to. Maybe he’d misestimated her in the first place. “What information is that?”
“The other Outback ship is doing some kind of military research defending the wormhole. Based on what we’re overhearing from observers in the shuttles. We’ve got a name on the second ship. It’s the Jiang Qing, same class as the other one.” He paused. “You aren’t going to try to tell me that Jiang Qing was one of Napoleon’s generals too, are you, Max?”
“Why not?” asked Max flatly. “Historically, Earth has had women generals for centuries. Jesusalem was the only planet without a mixed service.”
Lukinov’s lip curled. “We finally tracked down Deng Xiaopeng. He and this Jiang Qing woman were both part of the Chinese revolution. Reedy found the information.”
“The Chinese communist revolution,” clarified the ensign. “They were minor figures, associated with Mao. Both were charged with crimes though they helped bring about important political changes that led to the second revolution.”
“Ah,” said Max. A wave of pain shot through him. If his legs had been supporting his weight, they would surely have buckled. “Please cooperate with Sergeant Simco until we can get this straightened out. Now, if you will excuse me.”
He didn’t wait for their response, but turned back to the hall. Simco waited at parade rest, his hands behind his back. Another trooper stood beside him.
“I’m going to return to my cabin now,” Max said.
“I’ve detailed Rambaud here to watch you while I begin my investigation,” Simco replied. Rambaud was a smaller but equally muscled version of his superior officer. “I’ll be rotating all my men through this duty until we find the culprit.”
“Keeping them sharp?” Max said.
Simco nodded. “A knife can’t cut if you don’t keep it sharp.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Max barely noticed the other man shadowing him through the narrow maze of corridors. When he reached his room, he took a double dose of the doctor’s painkillers, added one from his own stock, and washed them all down with a gulp of warm, flat water. He looked in the bathroom mirror at his damaged eye. That was when he started to shake. He had the ludicrous sensation that he was going to fall down, so he grabbed hold of the sink and tried to steady himself. Eventually it passed, but not before his breath came out in ragged gasps.
He’d come too close to dying this time. And why?
The rumor of the suicide mission still bothered him, and so did the problem of Reedy. When he drifted off to sleep, he dreamed that he was wandering an empty vessel searching for someone who was no longer aboard, through corridors that were kinked and slicked like the intestines of some animal. They started shrinking, squeezing the crates and boxes that filled them into a solid mass, as Max tried to find his way out. The last section dead-ended in a mirror, and when he paused to look into its silver surface he saw a bloody eye above a pyramid.
He woke up shivering and nauseous. According to the clock, he’d slept nearly four and a half hours, but he didn’t believe it. He wasn’t inclined to believe anything right now.
He rose and dressed himself. He needed better luck. If it wouldn’t come looking for him, he’d have to go looking for it.
Down in the very bottom of the ship rested an observation chamber that contained the only naked ports in the entire vessel. Max went down there to think, dutifully followed by Simco’s watchdog.
Max paused outside the airlock. “You can wait here.”
“I’m supposed to stay with you, sir.”
“The lights are off, it’s empty,” said Max, realizing as soon as the words were out of his mouth what had happened the last time he went into a dark room alone. “If someone’s waiting in there to kill me, then you’ve got them trapped. You’ll get a commendation.”
Rambaud relented. Max entered the room, closing the hatch behind him. It sealed automatically, reminding Max of the sound of a prison cell door shutting.
Outside the round windows stretched the infinite expanse of space. The sun was a small, cold ember in a charcoal-colored sky dominated by the vast and ominous bulk of Big Brother. They were close enough that Max could see crimson storms raging on its surface, swirling hurricanes larger than Jesusalem itself. He counted three moons spinning around the planet, and great rings of dust, as if everything in space was drawn into satellites around the self-consuming fire of its mass.
A quiet cough came from the rear of the compartment.
Max pirouetted, and saw another man floating cross-legged in the air. As he unfolded and came to attention, light glinted off the jack that sat lodged in his forehead like a third eye. It was the spongediver, the ship’s pilot, Patchett.
“At ease, Patchett,” said Max.
Patchett nodded toward the port as he clasped his hands behind his back. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It’s no place for a human being to live,” Max said. “Give me a little blue marble of a planet any day instead.”
The pilot smiled. “That figures.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the political officer, and politics is always about the place we live, how we live together.” He gestured at the sweep of the illuminated rings. “But this is why I joined the service-to explore, to see space.”
“Has it been worth it?”
“Too much waiting, too much doing nothing.” Patchett shifted his position, rotating a quarter circle. “The diving makes it worthwhile.”
“Good,” murmured Max, looking away.
“You and I are alike that way. We both are the most useless men on the ship except for that one moment when we’re the only one qualified to do the job.” He stared out the port. “What happened to you, that was wrong, sir.”
Max gazed out the window also, saying nothing.
“I’d guess,” Patchett said, “that I’ve been in the service as long as you have. Nearly twenty years.”
“Just past thirty years now,” Max replied. It wasn’t all in the official records, but thirty years total. A very long time. Patchett clearly wanted to say something more. “What is it?” asked Max. “Speak freely.”