The Service of the Sword

superdreadnought under their control. Gallanti did. Which made the situation deadly instead of simply pathetic. Under the circumstances, she was as dangerous as a maddened bear.

Gallanti finally took a breath, and Yuri began to speak. But before he managed to get a word out, Victor Cachat's audio-amplified voice filled the bridge.

As always, it was a cold voice. 'What took you so long, Assistant Special Investigator? I was beginning to wonder if you were slacking off again.'

Yuri suddenly realized that he'd advanced far enough onto the bridge to enter the field of the comm pickup and become visible to those on the other two ships. Even though Gallanti herself hadn't noticed him until that very moment.

God, he was tired of that arrogant young voice.

'Have a certain regard for natural law if nothing else, would you, Cachat?' He took an admittedly petty pleasure in neglecting all honorifics. 'I just got the news myself and got here as soon as I could.'

The fact that Cachat didn't seem to take any umbrage at the lack of honorifics—didn't even seem to notice, damn the man—just irritated Yuri still further.

'And if you don't mind'—making clear by his tone that he didn't care if he did—'I prefer the title 'people's commissioner.' I don't really see where there's anything left to investigate, anyway.'

Cachat stared at him. In the big display a capital ship could manage, the young fanatic seemed even larger than life.

Then, to Yuri's surprise, Cachat gave him a deep, slow nod. It had almost the sense of a ceremonial bow to it. And when his head lifted, for the first time since Yuri had met the man, Cachat's dark eyes seemed a warm brown instead of an iron black.

'Yes,' said Cachat. 'You have the right of it, Yuri Radamacher. Now do your duty, People's Commissioner.'

Gallanti was gawping at Yuri. Then, burst into the start of another tirade.

'What the hell are you doing here? I didn't give you permission—'

Yuri had no desire at all to listen to more of that screech. When he needed it, he could manage quite a loud voice himself.

'You are under arrest, Captain Gallanti. I am relieving you of your duties. You are unfit to command.' 

That cut off her off in mid-screech. Again, she gawped.

Yuri, at the end, tried one last time. He put on his most sympathetic smile and added: 'Jillian, please, there's no need for this. Just let it go and I'll give you my word I'll see to it—'

It was no use, and Yuri had a sick feeling that in his effort he'd simply condemned himself. Gallanti's hand was already grabbing the butt of her pulser—and, like a slack idiot, his own pulser still had the flap fastened.

'You fucking traitor!' Gallanti screamed. Her weapon was coming out of the holster and Yuri had no doubt at all she intended to fire. The woman had completely lost it. Out of the corner of one eye, as he scrabbled to get the flap of his holster open, Yuri saw the tac officer starting to rise from his chair. Ballon was reaching for his own sidearm.

Then—

Whackwhack. Whackwhack. 

Small holes appeared in the foreheads of both Gallanti and Ballon, and the entire backs of their skulls exploded in a gory spray of splintered bone and finely divided brain tissue.

Rallo's doing, Yuri realized dimly. He'd double-tapped both of them. Yuri hadn't known the StateSec sergeant was that quick and expert a shot.

Brrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! 

Before Gallanti's body could even begin to slump, Sergeant Pierce's short, lethally accurate three-round burst flung her five meters against a bulkhead, the deadly flechettes literally shredding the body along the way. No one else was standing there, thank God. Thank Pierce, actually; even in the shock of the moment Yuri understood that the experienced veteran had made sure he had a clean line of fire. Although at least three of the bridge's officers and ratings were frantically scraping bits and pieces of Gallanti off of them—now one of the ratings started vomiting—nobody else had actually gotten hurt.

'Ned,' Yuri heard Rolla complaining, 'can't you do anything neatly? What do you use when you go fishing? Missiles?'

'Hey, Jaime, I'm a Marine. This is what we do. You wanna transfer? I'll put in a good word for you—so will at least ten other guys I know. Probably even be able to keep the same rank.'

Rolla started to make one of his usual retorts about the mental deficiencies of Marines, but broke off before he got through the first four words. Then, after a moment's silence, said quietly: 'Yeah, actually, I probably do. I've got a feeling State Security is about to get seriously downsized.'

The StateSec sergeant had reholstered his pulser by now, there being clearly no other armed threat posed on the bridge. To Yuri's surprise, he pushed past him—not rudely, no; but firmly nonetheless—and came to stand at the center of the bridge staring at the figures in the display.

At Victor Cachat, to be precise.

'You tell me. Sir, or whatever else I'm supposed to call you. Who's running this show these days?'

Good question, thought Yuri.

'And what are we all supposed to do now?' Sergeant Rolla continued.

And that's an even better one. 

10

Cachat didn't even hesitate, and Yuri damned him again. All the unfairness of the universe, in that moment, seemed concentrated in the fact that a twenty-four-year-old fanatic—even now! —never seemed to have any doubts about anything.

'I think the situation is clear enough, Sergeant—ah?'

'Rolla, Sir. Jaime Rolla.'

'Sergeant Rolla. As for titles, I think we can all dispense with the curlicues.' Cachat's razor-thin smile appeared. 'I'll confess that I get tired myself of all those longwinded syllables. My standing rank in State Security is Captain, so I'll go with that. As for the rest—'

Cachat's eyes moved slowly across the people on the bridge of the Hector; then, briefly, at those he could see in his display on the sister SD; finally, at greater length, he looked at the naval officers standing next to him. Especially Admiral Chin.

Then he looked back at Rolla.

'Here's what I think. We have no real idea what's happened—or is happening—on Haven. The news brought by the merchant ship is simply too garbled. The only two things which seem clear at the moment are that Saint-Just is dead and Admiral Theismann holds effective power at the capital. But we still don't know what new government will emerge in its place—or upon what political principles that government will be based.'