Conventions of War (17 page)

In spite of the deaths, in spite of Narayanguru hanging on his tree and the unexplained deaths and the unknown killer stalking the ship, he couldn't help but smile.

A
fter breakfast Martinez put on his full dress uniform with the silver braid and the tall collar, now without the red staff tabs that Alikhan had removed overnight. He drew on his white gloves and called for Marsden and Fulvia Kazakov to join him. While waiting, he had Alikhan fetch the Golden Orb from its case.

He hadn't even considered strapping on the curved ceremonial knife. The situation would be tense enough without that.

Marsden and Kazakov arrived, each wearing full dress. “My lady,” Martinez said to the premiere, “please let Master Machinist Gawbyan know that we are about to inspect his department.”

Kazakov made the call as Martinez led the procession to the machine shop, where Gawbyan, breathless because he'd rushed from the petty officers' mess just ahead of them, braced at the door.

Martinez gave the machine shop a thorough inspection, questioned the machinists on their work, and made note of carelessness in the matter of waste disposal. If the ship had to make a course change, cease acceleration, or otherwise go weightless, the trash would float all over the shop.

Gawbyan, his theatrical mustachios quivering, accepted the criticism with a grim set to his fleshy features that suggested that he was going to fall on one of his recruits like an avalanche the second Martinez was out of the room.

When the inspection was over, Martinez found that he'd taken up very little of his morning, and so he called a second inspection, this time of Missile Battery 2. This review lasted longer, with time spent examining missile loaders and watching damage control robots maneuver under the command of their operators. Despite the presence of officers and the stress of the inspection, the mood of the crew was nearly cheerful, and Martinez couldn't help but compare it with the foreboding and terror that drenched the atmosphere during Fletcher's inspection two days earlier.

Seeing their sunny spirits, he wondered if the crew might be taking him too lightly. He wanted them to view him seriously, and if they weren't, he was prepared to become a complete bastard until they did. Intuition suggested, however, that this wasn't necessary. The holejumpers just seemed pleased to have him in charge.

He was a winner, after all. He'd masterminded both of the Fleet's victories over the Naxids. The crew understood a winner better than they understood whatever Fletcher was.

“I'd like to see the lieutenants after supper,” Martinez told Kazakov as they left the battery. “We'll have an informal meeting in
Daffodil
. Please arrange for a qualified warrant officer or cadet to take the watch.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Feel free to move into your old quarters. I thank your hospitality, involuntary though it was.”

She returned his smile. “Yes, my lord.”

He went into his old office, opened the safe, removed its contents, and left the door of the safe open for Kazakov. He cast a farewell glance over the
putti,
hoping he would never see their sweet faces again, and then went into the captain's office—
his
office—and looked at the statues, still stolid and arrogant in their armor, and the display cabinets, and the murals of elegant figures writing with quills or reading aloud from open scrolls to a rapt audience. Martinez opened his new safe, changed the combination, and put his papers in it along with Fletcher's book and the little statue of the woman dancing on the skull.

In the sleeping cabin he found a welcome change. The gruesome Narayanguru was gone, as was the pieta, the snarling beast, and the bathing woman. The blue-skinned flute player remained, though he'd been shifted to a brighter-lit area. Next to him a seascape showed a ground-effect vehicle thundering over a white-topped swell in a blast of spume. Over the dressing table was a landscape, snow-topped mountains standing over a village of shaggy Yormaks and their shaggier cattle.

Pride of place went to a dark old picture that showed mostly murky empty space. The composition was unusual: a sort of frame had been painted around the edges; or perhaps it was meant to be the proscenium of a stage, since a painted curtain rod stretched over the whole scene, with a painted red curtain pulled open to the right. Against the darkness on the left were the small figures of a young mother and the infant she had just taken from her cradle. The woman's dress, though hardly contemporary, nevertheless gave the impression of being comfortably middle-class. The infant wore red pajamas. Neither were paying much attention to the little cat that squatted next to a small open fire at the center of the picture. The cat bore a sullen expression and was looking at a red bowl, which had something in it that didn't seem to please him.

Martinez was struck by the contrast between the elaborate presentation, the painted frame and red curtain, with the ordinary domesticity of the scene. The red curtain, the red bowl, the red pajamas. The young mother's round face. The sulky cat with its ears pinned back. The odd little fire in the middle of the room, presumably on an earthen floor. He kept looking at the picture while wondering why it seemed so worth looking at.

There was a movement in the corner of his eye, and he turned to see Perry in the door.

“Your dinner's ready, my lord,” he said, “whenever you're ready.”

“I'll eat now,” Martinez said, and with a last glance at the painting, made his way to the dining room, where he ate alone at Fletcher's grand table with its golden centerpiece and its long double row of empty places.

 

A
fter dinner he reported to Michi for a report on the status of the investigation. Kazakov was there already, still in full dress, sitting next to Xi, who looked even more rumpled and abstracted in comparison. Garcia arrived a few minutes later with a datapad and his notes.

Xi began with a report on the fingerprints found in Fletcher's office. “Most belonged to the captain,” he said. “The rest were those of Marsden, the secretary, and the captain's servants Narbonne and Buckle, who had cleaned and tidied the room the previous day. Three prints belonged to Constable Garcia and were presumably left in the course of his investigation.”

Xi's face screwed into an expression that probably intended to express wry amusement.

“Five stray prints belonged to me. And four prints, the fingers of the left hand, were found pressed under the rim of the desktop at the front of the desk.” He made a movement with his hand, palm up, in the direction of Michi's desk to show how this could happen.

“The prints belonged to Lieutenant Prasad. Of course they could have been left at any time, since the servants wouldn't necessarily polish daily under the rim of the desk.”

Or,
Martinez thought,
the prints could have been made when Chandra held onto the desk with her left hand while slamming Captain Fletcher's head into it with her right.

Michi betrayed no evidence that this idea might have occurred to her. “Make anything of the hair or fiber evidence?”

“I haven't had time, but it's not going to prove anything unless we already have a suspect.”

Michi turned to Garcia. “Any information on the movements of the crew?”

Garcia consulted his datapad, an unnecessary gesture considering the contents of his report. “My lady, aside from the few on watch, most of the crew were asleep. Those on watch in Command or Engineering vouch for each other. Of those in bed, the only people who admit moving at all say they were visiting the toilet.”

“No reports of anyone moving outside the crew compartments? None at all?”

“No, my lady.” Garcia's tongue flicked anxiously over his lips. “Of course, we only have their word for it, and that's all we're going to get…” He cleared his throat. “…unless we find an informant.”

Michi's eyes hardened. Her fingers drummed on the desktop. She turned to Kazakov. “Lieutenant?”

Kazakov's tone was faintly apologetic. “It's the same situation with the lieutenants and warrant officers, my lady. Those on duty vouch for one another, and those asleep were”—Kazakov began to shrug, then stopped herself—“asleep. I have no information that contradicts their stories.”

“
Damn!
” Michi's right hand made a petulant clawing motion in the air. She glared at each of them in turn. “We can't leave it at this,” she said. “There's got to be something else we can do.” She gave a snarl. “What would Dr. An-ku do?” She didn't mean it as a joke.

“We can search the ship,” Martinez said. “And search the crew.”

Michi frowned at him.

“There was a little blood,” Martinez continued. “Not much, but some. It just occurred to me that the killer might have got some on a shirt cuff or a trouser leg. Or he might have wiped blood off his hands with a handkerchief. He might have used a weapon on the captain and only slammed the captain's head into the desk afterward, and the weapon might be found. Or the killer might have taken a souvenir from the captain's room and hidden it.”

“The captain might have fought,” Garcia said, “at least a little. He might have marked someone.”

“Alert the people in the laundry,” Kazakov said. “They need to check every item.”

Michi stood very suddenly. She looked at the others as if surprised to find them still in their seats.

“What are we waiting for?” she said. “We should have done this yesterday.”

 

S
earching
Illustrious
and its crew was the work of a long afternoon. Martinez and Kazakov called all off-duty crew into their sleeping quarters, organized the officers and petty officers into gangs, and subjected everyone to a meticulous inspection. Lockers and storage areas were searched for anything that might have been taken from the captain's quarters. Lastly, the officers were searched, by each other. Martinez stood in the corridor outside the wardroom with Lady Michi and waited for the results.

Michi had been growing more irritable as the afternoon progressed and the hoped-for evidence failed to appear. She stood with her hands clenching into fists and a scowl on her face, rising on her toes quickly and then dropping, over and over again.

Martinez decided to distract her before the jerky movement drove him mad.

“This is going to upset the crew,” he said. “We should settle them down as soon as possible. Perhaps tomorrow we could schedule the maneuver that was postponed today.”

Her heels stayed on the floor as she gave him a thoughtful look. “Very good. We'll do it.” Another thought struck her, and she frowned. “What am I going to do for a new tactical officer?”

“You don't want to use Coen or Li?”

She shook her head. “Not seasoned enough. All their experience is in communications.”

A vague sense of obligation compelled Martinez to make a suggestion. “There's Chandra Prasad.”

Michi looked at him suspiciously. “Why Prasad?”

“Because she's the senior lieutenant after Kazakov, and I can't spare Kazakov. Not now.”

Which certainly sounded better than,
She wrung a promise out of me to help her,
and much, much better than,
If she
did
kill Fletcher, we could try being very nice to her and hope she doesn't kill
us.

Michi frowned. “I'll ask her to design one experiment. I'll ask the other lieutenants too. We'll see if any of them have a talent for it.”

When Kazakov and Husayn came to report that no evidence had been found in the wardroom or the lieutenants' quarters, Michi accepted the news without comment and then turned to Martinez.

“You're next, Lord Captain.”

“Next?” Martinez said through his surprise.

“You're a suspect, after all,” Michi said. “You're the one who benefited most from Fletcher's death.”

He hadn't looked at the situation in that light. He supposed that, objectively, she had a point.

“I wasn't even aboard when Kosinic died,” he pointed out.

“I know,” Michi said. “What difference does that make?”

None, apparently. Martinez submitted without protest as a committee of male officers—Husayn, Mersenne, and Lord Phillips—searched his quarters and his belongings. Alikhan watched the inspection from the doorway, his body stiffened in outrage, watching every movement with glowering eyes as if he suspected the three Peers might pocket valuable items in the course of their search.

The long, useless afternoon delayed supper, and consequently Martinez's meeting with the lieutenants in the informal circumstances of
Daffodil,
the requisitioned luxury yacht that had brought him to his new assignment as Michi's tactical officer.

The party wasn't a success. Everyone was tired after having spent the day pawing so uselessly through others' belongings, and also the officers didn't quite know how the new relationship with Martinez was supposed to work. During previous get-togethers on
Daffodil,
Martinez had been a staff officer playing host to the line officers in a setting more congenial than the starchy dinners and receptions given by the captain. Though Martinez had outranked them, he wasn't in their chain of command, and the lieutenants had felt far less inhibited than they would have been in the company of a direct superior. But now the relationship had changed, and they were more on their guard. Martinez was generous with liquor, but for most of the officers the alcohol seemed only to act as a depressant.

The one exception was Chandra Prasad, who chattered and laughed all evening in loud, high spirits, oblivious to how much it irritated the others. Perhaps, he thought, she felt she had no reason to feel on guard around him because they shared a special relationship.

Martinez hoped she was wrong.

Finally he called an end to the dismal evening, and by way of good-night told everyone there would be a maneuver during the forenoon watch.