The Naxid force disappeared from the display as the missile burst screened them from the sensors on the Antopone ring. More missiles hurled themselves into the gap between the racing squadrons, and the plasma screen broadened and thickened.
Eventually the Home Fleet flew into the screen, and vanished as if an invisible hand had wiped it from existence.
“Damn,” Pezzini said, rather clinically.
No one else spoke. Even Tork could find no words.
Then the plasma screen began to cool and disperse, and gradually—winking into existence on the holographic display like a distant flight of fluorescent insects—the Home Fleet reappeared, one ship after another, their torches now pointed away from the planet, decelerating.
One,Lord Chen counted to himself,two, three…five. Eight! Ten!
Ten survivors of the Home Fleet were now narrowing their dispersed formation as they approached the wormhole that would take them in the direction of Zarafan.
Of the Naxids there was no sign.
“We wiped them out!” Lord Chen blurted. “It’s a victory!”
“Damn Kangas!” Tork said. “Damn him! He’s lost two ships!”
It was only a short time later that Squadron Commander Do-faq’s report reachedGalactic. The Home Fleet had wiped out eight enemy ships and lost two of their own.
And one of the casualties was the flagship. Lord Eino Kangas had died in the act of giving the Home Fleet its one and only victory.
Invitations went out in the morning, sent to all the senior petty officers. An invitation for drinks with their new captain, set for an hour before supper, was not something the customs of the service would let them decline, and decline they did not. The last affirmative reply came within minutes of the invitations being sent out.
The touchstone dramatical, Martinez thought. The scene climactic.
The petty officers entered the dining room more or less in a clump: round-faced Gawbyan with his spectacular mustachios, Strode with his bowl haircut, burly Francis, thin, nervous Cho. Some of them were surprised to find the ship’s secretary Marsden waiting with his datapad in his hands.
The guests sorted themselves out in order of seniority, with the highest-ranked standing near Martinez at the head of the table. Gulik was on his right, across from Master Cook Yau, with Gawbyan and Strode the next pair down, one grand set of mustachios confronting another; and then Zhang and Nyamugali. Near the bottom of the table was the demoted Francis.
Martinez looked at them all as they stood by their chairs. Francis seemed thoughtful and preoccupied, and her eyes looked anywhere but at him. Yau looked as if he had left his kitchens only reluctantly. Strode seemed determined, as if he had a clear but not entirely pleasant duty before him; and Gulik, who had been so nervous during inspections, was now almost cheerful.
Martinez picked up his glass and raised it. Pale green wine trembled in Captain Fletcher’s leaded crystal, reflecting beads of peridot-colored light over the company.
“To the Praxis,” he said.
“The Praxis,” they echoed, and drank.
Martinez took a gulp of his wine and sat. The others followed suit, including Marsden, who sat by himself to the side of the room and set his datapad to record. He picked up a stylus and stood ready to correct the datapad’s transcription of the conversation.
“You may as well keep the wine in circulation,” Martinez said, nodding to the crystal decanters set on the table. “We’ll be here for a while, and I don’t want you to go dry.”
There were murmurs of appreciation from those farther down the table, and hands reached for the bottles.
“The reason this meeting may take some time,” Martinez said, “is because like the last meeting, this is about record-keeping.”
There was a collective pause from his guests, and then a resigned, collective sigh.
“You can blame it on Captain Fletcher, if you want to,” Martinez said. “He ranIllustrious in a highly personal and distinctive way. He’d ask questions during inspections and he’d expect you to know the answers, but he never asked for any documentation. He never checked the 77-12s, and never had any of his officers do it.”
Martinez looked at his wineglass and nudged it slightly with his thumb and forefinger, putting it in alignment with some imaginary dividing line running through the room.
“The problem with a lack of documentation, though,” he said, keeping his eyes on the wineglass, “is that to a certain cast of mind, it meansprofit .” He sensed Yau stiffen on his left, and Gulik gave a little start.
“Because,” Martinez continued, picking carefully through his thoughts, “in the end Captain Fletcher only knew what you told him. If it looked all right, and what he was told was plausible, then how would he ever find out if he’d been yarned or not?
“Particularly because Fleet standards require that equipment exceed all performance criteria. Politicians have complained for centuries that it’s a waste of money, but the Control Board has always required that our ships be overbuilt, and I think the Control Board’s been right.
“But whatthat meant,” he said, “is that department heads could, with a little extra maintenance, keep our equipment going far longer than performance specs required.” He looked up for the first time, and saw Strode watching him with a kind of thoughtful surprise, as if recalculating every conclusion about Martinez that he’d ever reached. Francis was staring straight ahead of her, her graying hair partly concealing her face. Cho seemed angry.
Gulik was pale. Martinez could see the pulse beating in his throat. When he saw Martinez studying him, he reached for his glass and took a large gulp of the wine.
“If you keep the old equipment going,” Martinez said, “and if you know where to go, you can sell the replacement gear for a lot of money. Things like blowers and coolers and pumps can bring a nice profit. Everyonelikes Fleet equipment, it’s so reliable and forgiving and overbuilt. And they were gettingthis stuff new, right out of the box.”
He looked at Francis’s scowling profile. “I checked the turbopump that failed at Arkhan-Dohg—using thecorrect serial number, not the number that Rigger Francis tried to yarn me with—and I found out the pump was supposed to have been retired three years ago. Someone had been keeping it going long after it should have been sold as scrap.”
Martinez turned to Gulik. Sweat was pouring down the weaponer’s face. He looked as deadly sick as he had been on the morning of Fletcher’s last inspection, as the captain stalked toward him with the knife dangling at his waist.
“I also checked the serial number of the antiproton gun that failed in the same battle, and that was supposed to have been retired thirteen months ago. I hope that whoever sold the replacement wasn’t selling it to someone intending to use it as a weapon.”
“It wasn’t me,” Gulik croaked. He wiped sweat from his upper lip. “I don’t know anything about this.”
“Whoever did it,” Martinez said, “didn’t intend to endanger the ship. We weren’t at war.Illustrious had been docked in Harzapid for three years without so much as shifting its berth. The heavy equipment was moving on and off the ship all the time, moving through the locked storage room where substitutions could be made without anyone being the wiser.”
Martinez turned to look down the line of petty officers. “In order to work this scheme,” he said, “you’d need that storage room. You’d also need the services of a first-rate machinist, with access to a complete machine shop, so that the old equipment could be rehabilitated before it was reinstalled.”
Strode turned to look thoughtfully at the master machinist. Gawbyan’s lips had thinned to a tight line across his fleshy face. His mustachios were brandished like tusks. One large, fat-fingered hand had closed into a fist around the stem of his wineglass.
“So far, so good,” Martinez said. “Our happy band of felons were making a profit. But then they took on some partners. And the partners were Naxids.”
That surprised some of them. Yau and Cho stared. Strode’s mouth dropped open.
“Specifically,” Martinez said, “the Naxid frigateQuest, which was berthed next toIllustrious on the ring station.
