The Service of the Sword

Saunders scowled. 'Look, I'll talk to him. Get him to keep it under cover. Yuri, you know damn good and well there's always going to be an illegal still operating somewhere on a warship this size. Especially one that's been kept from having any shore leave for so long. At least we don't have to worry about Gottlieb selling dangerous hooch. He knows a lot about chemistry, too—don't ask me how or where he learned, I don't want to know. He's not a stupid kid who doesn't know the difference between ethanol and methanol.'

'His stuff's pretty damn tasty, in fact,' chimed in Ned Pierce, who was lounging in another armchair in Yuri's large office.

Yuri turned the mild-mannered gaze his way. The citizen sergeant was trying to project a degree of cherubic innocence which fit poorly with his dark-skinned, battered, altogether piratical-looking face. 'That's what I hear, anyway,' Pierce added.

Yuri snorted. 'I need something, people,' he pointed out. 'Cachat'll be back any time now. I've got a fair number of screw-ups and goofballs on display in the brig, sure. But that's pretty much old stuff by now. About a third of them have almost served their time. And I'm telling you: nothing will soothe the savage inquisitor like being able to show him a freshly nabbed, still-trembling sinner.'

'Aw, c'mon, Yuri, the SI's not that bad.'

From the tight expression on his face, Citizen Lieutenant Commander Saunders did not agree with the citizen sergeant's assessment of Cachat's degree of severity. Not in the least.

Yuri wasn't surprised. Saunders had been present in the gym when Cachat personally shot six fellow officers of the Hector Van Dragen in the head. So had Ned, of course. But Pierce was a Marine, and a combat veteran. Personal, in-your-face mayhem was no stranger to him. Had Saunders been in the regular Navy, he might have encountered the kind of battering which capital ships often took in fleet encounters, where it was not uncommon for bodies to be shredded. But StateSec capital ships were there to enforce discipline over the Navy, not to fight the Navy's battles. That was undoubtedly the first time Saunders had seen blood and brains splattered all over the trousers of his uniform.

Citizen Major Lafitte cleared his throat. He and his counterpart, a StateSec citizen major by the name of Diana Citizen—her real name, that; not something she'd made up to curry favor with the regime—were sitting side by side on a couch angled next to Yuri's armchair. The two of them, along with Ned Pierce and his counterpart, StateSec Citizen Sergeant Jaime Rolla, constituted the informal little group which Yuri relied on to handle disciplinary matters on the superdreadnought. The SD's executive officer knew about it and had been looking the other way for weeks. The man was incompetent at everything except knowing which way the political winds were blowing. He'd quickly sized up the new situation and—wisely—decided that he'd be a nut crushed between Radamacher's skills and Captain Gallanti's temper if he tried to assert the traditional prerogatives and authority of a warship's XO.

Citizen Major Diana Citizen cleared her throat. 'I've got a sacrificial lamb, if you need one.' Her thin, rather pretty face grew a little pinched. 'Except calling him a 'lamb' is an insult to baa-baas. He's a pig and a thug and I'd be delighted to see him slammed as hard as you can. Assuming you can figure out a charge that would stick. Unfortunately, he's slicker than your average shipboard bully. Keeps his ass covered. Name's Henri Alouette; he's a rating—'

'That fuckhead!' snarled Ned. 'Me and him damn near came to it, once, in the mess room. Woulda, too, if the bastard hadn't backed off at the last minute. Too bad, I woulda—'

'Citizen Sergeant Pierce.' Yuri's tone was as pleasant and relaxed as ever, but the unusual formality was enough in itself to draw the citizen sergeant up short. Normally, in this inner circle devoted to handling the nitty- gritty business of a warship's 'dirty laundry,' informality was the rule. Over the weeks, rank differences aside—even the traditional mutual hostility of StateSec and regular military aside—the five people involved had gotten onto very good personal terms. As usually happened with teams assembled by Yuri Radamacher and overseen by him.

'I will remind you that I've stressed—any number of times—the critical importance of keeping tensions between the regular military stationed on this ship and its StateSec complement to a bare minimum.' He smiled easily. 'Which I dare say having a Marine citizen sergeant pound a StateSec rating into a pulp—yes, Ned, I'm sure you woulda and coulda—might cut against.'

'Don't count on it,' piped up StateSec Citizen Sergeant Rolla. 'Alouette's notorious all over the ship, Yuri. I'd give you three-to-one odds all the StateSec ratings in that mess room would have been cheering Ned on.'

'You'd 'a won the bet,' gruffed Ned. 'Two of 'em offered to hold my coat. Another asked the fuckhead what blood type he was so he could make sure to tell the doctors in the ship's hospital.'

Radamacher eyed Pierce for a moment. He'd been on such friendly personal terms with the big citizen sergeant for so long that Yuri tended to forget what a truly ferocious specimen of humanity the man was. Jesting aside, he didn't have much doubt at all that anyone who'd apparently angered Pierce that much would be needing transfusions after the brawl was over.

'Still.' Yuri swiveled his chair around and began working at the keyboard of his computer. 'We've gotten morale to such a good point on the Hector that I'd just as soon avoid any possible interservice problems.' He glanced over his shoulder, still smiling. 'I'm sure I can find a better way to nail Alouette than have Ned here try to frame him up on a brawling charge. Not even Special Investigator Cachat would believe for a minute that somebody deliberately picked a fight with him.'

He turned back, letting the easy laughter fill the room while he worked.

It didn't take long. Less than five minutes.

'I must be slipping,' he muttered. 'How'd I possibly miss this?'

'Working eighteen hours a day at everything else?' Major Lafitte chuckled. 'What'd you find, Yuri?'

Radamacher jabbed a stiff finger at the screen. 'How in the hell did Alouette pass his required annual spacesuit proficiency test when there's no record he's even been in a spacesuit once in the past three years? And how in the hell did he manage that —when he's rated as a gravitic sensor tech? Isn't external inspection and repair of the arrays sort of part of that specialization?'

He swiveled back around. 'Well?'

The two Marines in the room had bland, blank none-of-my-business expressions on their faces. The sort of expressions which polite people assume when another family's skeletons are spilling out of an opened closet.

Radamacher approved. This was StateSec's dirty laundry. As was obvious from the scowls on the faces of the two StateSec officers and—even fiercer—on the face of StateSec Citizen Sergeant Rolla.

'That rotten SOB,' Rolla hissed. 'Give you three-to-one—no, make it five-to-one—that Alouette's been intimidating his mates and the section chief. Probably threatened the rating recording the test results, too.'

Citizen Major Citizen looked uncomfortable. 'Yeah, that's probably it. I hate to say it, seeing as how I sure didn't shed any tears over those bums that the SI blew away, but their absence did hurt us a lot in security. It left holes all through my department, which I still haven't been able to get filled up all the way. Especially since I had to start from scratch coming over from the fleet.'

'Nobody's blaming you, Diana,' Yuri assured her smoothly. 'Isolated little tumors like this are bound to turn up, now and then, when a ship's security department was in the hands of human cancer cells for years. Which is about the most polite way I can think of to describe Jamka's cronies.'

He rubbed the back of his neck. 'To be perfectly honest about it—cold-blooded, too—this is damn near perfect. Cachat'll rub his hands with glee over a bust like this one. Beats a penny-ante bootlegging case hands down. Inquisitors, you know, thrive on real sin.'

'Aw, c'mon, Yuri—' Ned started again. 'The SI's not—'

The sudden burst of laughter from everyone else in the room caused a look of grievance to come over the citizen sergeant's face. 'Well, he's not that bad,' he insisted.

Radamacher didn't argue the point. At the moment, he was in such a good mood that he was even willing to grant that Special Investigator Victor Cachat probably didn't really match up to Torquemada. His understudy, maybe.

He looked to Citizen Major Citizen. 'You'll handle this, Diana? Mind you, I want a good, solid, rock-hard case against Alouette. Nothing flimsy.'

She nodded. 'Won't be hard. Assuming we're right, everybody in the section will fall all over themselves spilling the beans—as long as they're sure that Alouette will get put away for a long time. Somewhere he can't retaliate against them.'