access hatch on one of the lower decks. Do you happen to remember which one?”
Mersenne blinked in utter surprise. “I haven’t thought about that in months,” he said. “Let me think, my lord.”
Martinez let him think, which Mersenne accomplished while pinching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger.
“That would be Deck Eight,” Mersenne said finally. “Access Four, across from the riggers’ stores.”
“Very good,” Martinez said. “That will be all.”
As Mersenne, still puzzled, rose to his feet and braced, Martinez added, “I’d be obliged if you mention my interest in this to no one.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Tomorrow, Martinez thought, he would announce an inspection on Deck 8, and there would be plenty of witnesses to anything he might find.
After breakfast, Martinez staged an inspection in which Access 4 on Deck 8 was opened. The steady rumble of ventilation blowers rose from beneath the deckplates. He descended with Marsden’s datapad, squeezed between the blowers and a coolant pipe wrapped in bright yellow insulation material, and checked the serial numbers on the blowers against the numbers on the 77-12 that had been supplied by Rigger/First Rao.
The numbers matched.
Martinez crouched in the confined space and checked the numbers again. Again they matched.
He straightened, his head and shoulders coming above deck level, and looked at Rao, who looked at him with anxious interest.
“When were these blowers last replaced?”
“Just before the war started, my lord. They’re not due for replacement for another four months.”
So these were the same blowers that Kosinic had seen when he’d gone down the same access. If it wasn’t the serial numbers, Martinez thought, what had Kosinic been looking for?
Martinez ducked down the access again and ran his hands along the pipes, the ductwork, the electric conduit, just in case something had been left here, a mysterious message or an ominous warning. He found nothing but the dust that filled his throat and left him coughing.
Perhaps Mersenne had been wrong about where he’d seen Kosinic. Martinez had several of the nearby access plates raised, and he descended into each to find again that everything was in order.
Frustration bubbled in his blood as he complimented Rao on his record-keeping, and it kept bubbling as he marched away.
Hours later, while he was eating a late supper—a ham sandwich made of leftovers from the meal he’d given Michi—a memory burst on his mind.
With Francis it’s always about money.
That had been Alikhan’s comment on the cruiser’s former master rigger, and now, days after they’d been spoken, it came back to Martinez.
Gambling,he thought.
He carried his plate from the dining room to his desk, where he called up the display, then used the authority of his captain’s key to access the commissary records and check the files of the commissary bank.
Actual cash wasn’t handed to the crew during the voyage: accounts were kept electronically in the commissary bank, which was technically, a branch of the Imperial Bank, which issued the money in the first place. Crew would pay electronically for anything purchased from the commissary, and any gambling losses would be handled by direct transfer from one account to another.
The crew were paid every twenty days. Martinez looked at the account of Rigger Francis and saw that it totaled nearly nine thousand zeniths, enough to buy an estate on nearly any planet in the empire.
And this was only the money that Francis had inthis account . She could have more in accounts in other banks, in investments, in property.
Martinez called for Alikhan. His orderly came into the dining room first, was surprised to find Martinez in his office, and approached.
“Would you like me to take your plate, my lord?”
Martinez looked in surprise at the plate he’d brought with him from the dining room. “Yes,” he said. “No. Never mind that now.”
Alikhan looked at him. “Yes, my lord.”
“Some time ago,” Martinez said, “you took an advance on your salary in order to pay a gambling debt.”
Alikhan gave a cautious nod. “Yes, my lord.”
“I would like to know who you were gamblingwith .”
Alikhan hesitated. “My lord, I shouldn’t like to—”
“Do they cheat?” Martinez asked.
Alikhan considered his answer for a long moment before speaking.
“I don’t think so, my lord. I think they’re very experienced players, and at least some of the time they play in concert.”
“But they gamble with recruits, don’t they?”
Martinez thought he saw an angry tightening of Alikhan’s lips before the answer came.
“Yes, my lord. In the mess, every night.”
It’s always about money. Again Alikhan’s words echoed in his head.
Gambling was of course against Fleet regulations, but such regulations were applied with a degree of discretion. Action was rarely taken if the petty officers played cards in their lounge, or the lieutenants wanted to play tingo in the wardroom, or the recruits rolled dice in the engine spaces. It was a minor vice, and nearly impossible to stop. Gambling games and gambling scams were almost universal in the Fleet.
But the gambling could become dangerous when it crossed lines of caste. When petty officers gambled with recruits, serious issues of abuse of power came into play. A superior officer could enforce a vicious payment schedule, and could punish recruits with extra duties or even assault. A recruit who owed money to his superior could not only lose whatever pay he happened to possess at the time, but could lose future salary either in direct losses or interest payments. The recruit might be forced to pay in other ways: gifts, sexual favors, performing the petty officers’ duties, or even being forced to steal on behalf of his superior.
It had been months since Chenforce left Harzapid, and it would be months more beforeIllustrious would stop in a Fleet dockyard. A recruit in the grips of a gambling ring could lose his pay for the entire journey, possibly the entire commission.
“Who’s taking part in this?” Martinez asked.
“Well, my lord,” Alikhan said, “I’d rather not get anyone in trouble.”
“You’re not getting them in trouble,” Martinez said. “They’realready in trouble. But you can exclude those who aren’t a part of it by naming those who are.”
This logic took a few seconds to work its way through Alikhan’s mind, but in the end he nodded.
“Very well, my lord,” he said. “Francis, Gawbyan, and Gulik organize the games. And Thuc was a part of it, but he’s dead.”
“Very good,” Martinez said. He turned to his desk, then looked back at Alikhan. “I don’t want you mentioning this conversation to anyone.”
“Of course n—”
“Dismissed.”
Martinez was already racing on to the next problem. He called up the accounts of Francis, Gawbyan, Gulik, and Thuc, and saw that they jumped on every payday, far more than if they were being paid their salary. Nearly two-thirds of their income seemed to come in the form of direct transfers from other crew. Martinez backtracked the transfers and found no less than nine recruits who regularly transferred their entire pay to the senior petty officers. They’d been doing it for months. Others were paying less regularly, but still paying.
Anger simmered in Martinez.You people like playing with recruits so much, he thought,maybe you should berecruits.
He would break them. And he’d confiscate the money too, and turn it over to the ship’s entertainment fund, or perhaps to Fleet Relief to aid distressed crew.
