The Service of the Sword

that bitch's ass is grass. You watch.'

The phrase she used made Yuri pause in midstep. Not 'the Citizen Assistant Special Investigator.' Just . . . 

The Citizen Commissioner. No. Simply the People's Commissioner. 

He found it all, then. All he needed for what had to be done. In that moment, for the first time in his life, he thought he understood that bizarre self-assuredness possessed by fanatics like Victor Cachat.

The People's Commissioner. 

Indeed, it was so. For ten years he had carried that title, and made it his own. He had absolutely no idea what the future was going to bring, either for himself or anyone else, except for one thing alone. Whatever else happened, he was quite certain that the title 'people's commissioner' was going to go down in history draped in the darkest of colors. As dark, he knew, as the term 'inquisitors.'

And rightly. Whatever the promise, the reality had turned it inside out. A post created to shield a republic from the possible depredations of its own military had been turned, not only against the military, but the republic itself. The old conundrum, reborn again. Who will guard the guardians?

Yet, he remembered reading of an inquisitor in the Basque country, in that ancient era when humanity had still lived on a single planet. Sent there by the Spanish Inquisition at the height of its power to investigate the truth behind a wave of accusations of witchcraft, the inquisitor had stopped the witch-burnings. Indeed, had insisted upon proper rules of evidence at all subsequent trials—and then released every supposed witch for lack of any such evidence.

Yuri had run across the anecdote in his voluminous reading. Years ago, that had been; but he'd taken a certain comfort from it ever since.

He even managed a chuckle, at that moment. Yuri Radamacher did not believe in an afterlife. Yet, if there was one, he was quite sure that at that very moment in Hell, some good-natured, round-faced, overweight, apprehensive little devil was being chewed out by Satan for 'slackness.'

It was time for the People's Commissioner to do his duty, then. The people of the republic needed protection against an officer run amok. Yuri advanced onto the bridge, with resolute steps.

The bridge was . . . quite a scene.

Citizen Captain Gallanti was standing in the center of it, glaring red-faced at a display split into two screens. One screen showed the bridge of Admiral Chin's flagship. Yuri could see Genevieve herself standing there, along with Commodore Ogilve and Commissioner Wilkins. At their center, seeming to be in the forefront, stood Victor Cachat.

Cachat, as always, was an imposing figure. Even through a holodisplay, the young man's intensity seemed to burn. But Yuri's eyes were immediately drawn to the other screen. Sharon Justice was in that screen, which was showing the bridge of the other StateSec SD, the Joseph Tilden. So he assumed, anyway, given that the SD's captain Vesey was standing next to her.

He was relieved to see that Sharon seemed in fine health. Even in good spirits, for that matter. Her facial expression was one of solemnity, but Yuri knew her quite well after all these years and could detect the underlying . . . 

Excitement? Maybe. It was hard to tell. But whatever else, she certainly didn't seem gloomy.

Captain Vesey, on the other hand, did look on the gloomy side. The words 'nervous, worried, and more than a little depressed' might capture the expression on his face a bit better.

One thing was clear, just from the body language of the two people alone. Whatever was happening on the Tilden, it was obvious that Sharon was calling the shots and not the superdreadnought's nominal commander.

That was good enough, for the moment. Yuri looked away from the screens and quickly examined the bridge of the Hector itself. All of the ratings and as many of the officers as could possibly manage it had their heads buried as far down as they could get them into their work stations. As long-beaten underlings will do, when their mistress is having another temper tantrum, trying their very best to be inconspicuous.

That was not possible, of course, for some of the officers. The nature of their duties required them to be directly attentive to the citizen captain.

The Hector Van Dragen's executive officer was standing not far from Gallanti, bestowing upon her his well-practiced look of fawning vacancy. The man's name was as comical in its own way as that of the long-suffering Diana Citizen. Kit Carson, no less. Fortunately for him, Yuri Radamacher was one of the few people in the task force who had the historical knowledge to understand how ridiculous the name was, given the man's nature.

Yuri dismissed him from consideration. Carson was a nonentity. Of the other top ship's officers on the bridge, most of his attention went to the tac officer, Edouard Ballon. Partly that was because of the nature of a tac officer's duties, since Ballon controlled the ship's armament. Mostly it was because Yuri knew that if there was going to be trouble from anyone other than Gallanti herself, it would come from Ballon.

The tac officer was not precisely a StateSec 'fanatic.' Certainly not one cut from the same cloth as Cachat. Ballon had no particularly strong ideological convictions. But he was the type of sour, nasty, mean-spirited person who tended to gravitate naturally to an organization like StateSec. Not a sadist, no. Just cut from the same cloth as the grim villagers who were always the first to raise the cry of 'witchcraft!'—and always took satisfaction in the punishment of others. As if that validated their place in the world.

Neither Gallanti nor Ballon was watching him. Neither of them, in fact, had even noticed Yuri coming onto the bridge, they were so fixated on the screen. Yuri took the opportunity to nod toward Ballon while giving both the sergeants standing behind him a meaningful look. Sergeant Rallo nodded back, relaxed; Ned Pierce just smiled thinly and hefted the flechette gun in his hands a centimeter or two higher.

It's time, then. Do it. 

Yuri turned back to face Gallanti. And suddenly—did life always have to be ridiculously awkward?—realized that the first obstacle he faced was simply the pedestrian problem of getting the damn woman to hear him. She was making enough of a racket herself to drown a bugler.

'—at's pure horseshit, Cachat! I don't give a flying fuck what fancy titles you carry around! I'm the captain of this ship and what I say goes! And if you think when there's treason all about I'm going to disarm a StateSec capital ship, you're out of your fucking mind! The impellers and the sidewalls stay up—and I'll tell you what else, wet-behind-the-ears errand boy. Your sugar daddy Saint-Just isn't around any longer to cover your ass. You're on your own now, punk. You try shooting me in the head with that piddly pulser of yours, I'll show you just what kind of hell on earth a superdreadnought can unleash! Go ahead, try me!'

Yuri saw Captain Vesey wince. To the man's credit, he tried to intervene. 'Jillian, please. Until we find out what's really happening on Haven—'

'Fuck off, you gutless bastard! What? Does that bitch Justice intimidate you? She doesn't intimidate me! Nobody does—and that includes you. That scow of yours may technically be a sister ship of mine, but command is what matters, don't think it doesn't. If the gloves come off here—and we're getting real close—I'll tear that thing down around your ears before I turn Chickenshit Chin's task force into so much dog food. You'll see an SD turned into a funeral pyre faster than you can believe!'

Yuri had always heard about Gallanti's temper tantrums, but this was the first time he'd ever personally witnessed one. How in the world had this woman ever been given command of a capital ship? Even State Security should have had enough sense to realize she was unfit for such responsibility. If he wanted to be charitable about it, Yuri would have likened Gallanti to a spoiled five-year-old child throwing a fit.

Unfortunately, five-year-old children, no matter how spoiled, never had the terrifying power of a