accompany him on a brief tour to a lower deck. He paused by one of the deck access panels, marked by a trompe l’oeil niche on the wall, with Jukes’s painting of a graceful one-handled vase. Martinez looked again at the annotation in the 77-12.
“According to your log,” Martinez said, “you’ve replaced the transformer under Main Access 8-14. Open the access, please.”
Not looking the least bit pleased, Strode tapped codes into the access locks and the floor panel rose on its pneumatics. An electric hum shivered up through the deck. The scent of grease and ozone rose from the utility compartment, and lights came on automatically.
Martinez turned to Lord Phillips. “My lord,” he said, “would you be so kind as to go into the compartment and read me the serial number on the transformer.”
Without offering a word, Phillips slid through the deck access. Crouched in the narrow space, he found the serial number and read it off.
The number wasn’t the same as in Strode’s 77-12.
“Thank you, Lord Lieutenant,” Martinez said, staring hard into Strode’s fixed, angry face. “You can come up now.”
Phillips rose and brushed grime off his dress trousers.
“Close the access, please,” Martinez said.
Strode did so.
“Strode,” Martinez said, “you are reprimanded for yarning your log. Iwill check the 77-12s, and from this point forward I will check yours in particular.”
Sullen anger still burned in Strode’s eyes. “My lord,” he said, “the serial number was…provisional. I hadn’t had the chance to check the correct number.”
“See that your logs are less provisional in the future,” Martinez said. “I’d rather have no information at all than information that’s misleading. You are dismissed.”
He walked off while Marsden was still noting the reprimand on his datapad. Phillips followed.
“You’ll have to check those logs yourself, Lieutenant,” Martinez told him. “Those forms are going to be full of yarns otherwise.”
“Yes, my lord,” Phillips murmured.
“Come to my office for coffee,” Martinez said.
The coffee break was not a success. Martinez knew that Phillips was one of Fletcher’s proteges, that the Phillips clan were clients to the Gombergs, and that Phillips, like Fletcher, had been born on Sandama, though like the captain, he’d spent most of his life on Zanshaa. Martinez hoped to discuss Fletcher, but Phillips’s responses were barely audible, and so terse and monosyllabic that Martinez gave up the task as hopeless and sent Phillips about his business.
He would have to be satisfied with sending a pair of signals, the first to the petty officers, that he was serious about the 77-12s, the second to the lieutenants, that they had better supervise the department heads very closely.
Dinner with the warrant officers was much more cheerful, and the table was well provided, thanks to Warrant Officer/First Toutou, who headed the commissary. The warrant officers were specialists, pilots or navigators, supply officers or sensor technicians, or the commissary, and didn’t run large departments like the senior petty officers. Their own 77-12s would be much easier to complete.
Some didn’t have to fill 77-12s at all, as was attested by Toutou’s broad smile and laughing demeanor.
The mess orderly was pouring little glasses of a sweet trellinberry liqueur at the end of the meal when Martinez’s sleeve display gave a chime. He answered.
“Captain, I need you in my office.” Michi’s voice told him that she would brook no delay.
“Right away, my lady,” Martinez said. He rose from his chair, and before he could stop them, the others rose too.
“Be seated,” he told them. “And many thanks for your hospitality. I’ll return it someday.”
Dr. Xi waited with Michi in her office. Martinez looked for Garcia and didn’t find him.
“Tell him,” Michi said, without bothering to tell Martinez to relax his salute.
Xi turned his mild eyes to Martinez. “When I was looking through my references for methods of lifting fingerprints, it mentioned that prints left on skin can fluoresce under laser light. So I asked Machinist Strode to provide a suitable laser, and he had one of his minions assemble one for me.”
Martinez, still braced with his chin lifted, looked at Xi from the corner of his eye. “You found fingerprints on the captain?” he asked.
Michi looked up, and an expression of annoyance crossed her face. “For all’s sake, Martinez,” she said, “relax and have a seat, will you?”
“Yes, my lady.”
Xi politely waited for Martinez to take a chair, then continued as if there had been no interruption. “There were fingerprints on the captain, yes. Mine, and Garcia’s, and those of my orderlies. No others that I could find.”
Martinez had no reply to this.
“I then got Lieutenant Kosinic’s body out of the cooler, and I put a sensor net over his head and got a three- dimensional map of his injuries. He died from a single blow to the head, perfectly consistent with losing his balance, falling, and hitting his head on the rim of the hatch.”
One fewer murder, anyway,Martinez thought.
“When I looked for fingerprints with the laser,” Xi continued, “I found my own and my assistants‘. And I also found one large thumbprint on the underside of the jaw on the right side.” He pressed his own thumb to the point. “Right where a thumb might rest if a person were grabbing Kosinic’s head and slamming it into the hatch rim.”
He gave a little grin. “It was quite a job to read that print properly,” he said. “I couldn’t use a normal print reader, and so I had to take several close-up photographs while the print was fluorescing, and then convert the format to—”
“Skip that part,” Michi instructed.
Xi seemed disappointed that he was not getting the chance to fully reveal the scope of his cleverness. He licked his lips and went on.
“The thumbprint was that of Master Engineer Thuc,” he said.
Martinez realized his mouth was open, and he closed it. “I’ll be damned,” he said.
Thuc was enormous and covered with muscle, and certainly strong enough to smash Kosinic’s head on the first try. He looked at Michi.
“So Thuc killed Kosinic,” he said. “And Fletcher found out about it somehow and executed Thuc.”
She nodded. “That seems likely.”
“He said he killed Thuc for the honor of the ship,” Martinez said. “He was very sensitive on points of rank and dignity, and maybe he thought it would be an affront to his own pride to order a formal inquiry to reveal the fact that one of his enlisted personnel killed an officer, and so he decided to handle it himself.”
Michi nodded again. “Go on.”
“But if that’s true,” Martinez said, “then who the hell killedFletcher ?”
Michi gave him an odd, searching look. “Who benefits?” she said.
Irritation rasped along Martinez’s nerves. “If you’re expecting me to break down and confess,” he said, “you’re going to be disappointed.”
“Others may benefit besides you,” Michi pointed out. “For example, someone who knew that Fletcher would never favor her ambitions, but who thought you might.”
Martinez suspected that Michi’s choice of pronoun was not accidental. “Thuc might have had an accomplice,” he suggested. “An accomplice who thought he was next on Fletcher’s list.”
“Did you know,” Michi said, “that Lieutenant Prasad excelled in Torminel-style wrestling at the Doria Academy?”
“No,” Martinez said, “I didn’t. I haven’t had time to review her file.”
Even if Torminel wrestling didn’t quite allow bashing an opponent’s head in, Martinez knew it was an aggressive style that included strangulation and all sorts of unpleasant, painful joint manipulation and pressure
