The Serrano Connection (78 page)

But all Esmay could think about was the children, the helpless children. She turned the orange and blue toy over and over in her hands.

One by one, the rescue crews located and retrieved the bodies.

"We've got too many bodies," the team chief said. "How many were on the merchanter's crew?"

"So some raiders died," Solis said. "I'm not grieving."

"These men have been stripped—not like the others. Would the raiders have stripped and dumped their own dead?"

"Unlikely. Stripped, you say? Why these men?"

"Dunno, but there's no ID on them at all. We can take tissue samples, but you know what that's like—"

"No fingerprints, retinals?"

"Nope. All burned. After death, the medic says; they died of combat wounds."

Solis turned to Esmay. "Ideas, Lieutenant?"

"Unless we've stumbled into some local fighting ground . . . no, sir."

"The merchanters look like ordinary spacers," the medic said. "Light-boned, small body mass . . . merchanters nearly always run with low grav because it feels good. Varying ages—the cook was two years older than the captain, all the way down to the kid." The scrawny teenager who'd been in a fight before he was shot. "But these others . . . they could be Fleet, except that they don't have Fleet IDs. Look at the muscular development—and their bone mass indicates regular hard exercise in a substantial field, at least standard G. Even though the raiders burned off the fingerprints, we can see enough callus structure on the hands that's consistent with weapons use . . ."

"Assuming it was the raiders, why wouldn't the raiders want them identified? If their primary target was the merchanter—which seems obvious—and they left the crew identifiable, what was it about these?"

"Don't know. Military, not Fleet . . . a Benignity spyship, maybe? A probe from the Guernesi? But—why would the raiders care if we knew that? Unless they're from the same source—but that would imply that these are
their
people, and we've already said they probably aren't. About all we can be sure of is that they weren't merchanter crew."

"We can't do a genetic scan?"

"Well, we could—if we had one of the big sequencers. The forensic pathology lab at Sector would have one, but that still doesn't tell you much. Maybe a rough guess at which dozen planets the person came from, but the amount of travel going on these days, it's less and less accurate. I'm running the simpler tissue scales here . . . but I don't expect anything to come up. If someone reports missing persons, and has their genome on file, that would do it."

"We're finding less each sweep," Solis said. "Time to move on. This jump point has how many mapped outlets?"

"Five, sir."

"All right. We'll hop to Bezaire, where the merchanter was headed, and report to Boros on what we found. I don't expect to find any trace there—we'd have noticed it when we were there before—so we'll have to let HQ decide if they want us to check each of the other known outlets or send someone else. Prepare a draft report for Sector HQ, and we'll pop that onto the Bezaire ansible when we get there. Include a recommendation to interdict this route, and a request for surveillance of all the outlets . . . not that it will do any good."

Shrike
popped out in Bezaire's system, and Esmay oversaw the signal drop to Fleet Sector HQ. Scan reported no traces matching that of the
Elias Madero
 . . . no other ship of that mass had been through in over a hundred days, according to the Stationmaster.

"I told you that before."

"Yes, but we have to check."

"The Boros Consortium local agent wants to talk to you."

"No doubt." Solis looked grim. "I want to talk to Boros, as well. We'll need a real-time link."

Bezaire Station, Boros Consortium Offices

"Not . . .
all
of them?" The Boros agent paled.

"I'm sorry," Solis said. "Apparently the ship was captured—there is evidence under imminent threat of heavy weapons—and although the crew had been promised safe exit in a lifeboat, they were instead killed."

"The . . . children?"

"We don't know. We found no children's bodies, and we know the crew had concealed them in one or more core compartments."

"But—but who—?"

"We don't know yet. We've sent the data we have back to headquarters; someone will figure it out, I'm sure. Now, about the deceased—"

The agent drew herself up. "You will of course release the remains to Boros Consortium, for transmittal to the families—"

"I'm afraid we can't at this time. We have positively identified all adult crew personnel and one apprentice, but it's possible the bodies bear additional evidence of the perpetrators. We must continue to examine them."

"But—but that's outrageous."

"Ma'am, what was done to these people was outrageous. We must find out who did it, so that we don't have more of this—"

"What was done . . . what
was
done?"

"There was . . . mutilation, ma'am. And that's all I care to say until forensics is through with the remains. I can assure you that all due care will be taken to return remains to family members as soon as possible."

When the crew remains and the other debris had been transferred to the courier that would take it to sector HQ,
Shrike
went back out on patrol.

"We don't try to pursue?"

"No. Not our job. We can't tangle with three armed ships, and we have no idea where, besides Bezaire, that jump point leads. Someone's going to have to explore it blind. The trail's cold, and growing colder. We did what we could—we have hull signatures on the raiders, or close to, we know what happened to the crew—"

"But not if there were weapons aboard—"

"No. But I'd say it was a fair bet that there were. We'll just have to keep eyes and ears open." He looked at her with what might almost be approval. "You're asking good questions, though, Lieutenant Suiza."

Barin returned the sentry's salute as he came to the access area for the
Gyrfalcon
. At last, he was going aboard a real warship, to a proper assignment. Not that he would have missed the time on
Koskuisko
, and meeting Esmay. He quickly turned his mind from that painful thought—meeting her was one thing, but their relationship now was something he could have missed quite happily. But this—since he'd been out of the Academy, this was his first regular assignment, and he was more than happy to get it.

As he expected, when he reported aboard he was called to the captain's cabin. Captain Escovar . . . he had looked Simon Escovar up in the Captains' Lists. Escovar was a commander, with combat experience at Patchcock, Dortmuth, and Alvara; he had, besides an impressive array of combat decorations, the discreet jewels that denoted top rank in academic courses ranging from his cadet days at the Academy to the Senior Command and Staff Course.

"Ensign Serrano," he said, in response to Barin's formal greeting. "Always glad to have a Serrano aboard." The twinkle in his gray eyes suggested that he meant it. "I served under your . . . uncle or great-uncle, I suppose. There are too many of you Serranos to keep straight." Barin had heard that before. And the Escovars, though an old Fleet family, had never had as many on active service at one time as the Serranos. "You've had an unusual set of assignments so far, I see. I hope you won't find us too mundane."

"By no means, sir," Barin said. "I'm delighted to be here."

"Good. We have only three other command-track ensigns at the moment, all with a half-standard year on this ship." Which meant they already knew things he would have to scramble to learn. "My exec is Lieutenant Commander Dockery. He has all your initial assignments."

Lieutenant Commander Dockery spent five minutes dissecting Barin's past career and preparation, pointed out that he was a half year behind his peers, and then sent him on to Master Chief Zuckerman to get his shiptags, data cubes, and other necessities. Barin came out of Dockery's office wondering if Zuckerman was another step on the "cut the ensigns down to size" production line.

Master Chief Zuckerman nodded when Barin introduced himself. "I served with Admiral Vida Serrano on the
Delphine
. And you're her grandson, I understand?" Zuckerman was a big man, heavily built, who looked about forty. Rejuv, of course; no one made master chief by forty.

"That's right, Chief."

"Well. How may I help you, sir?" A lifetime's experience with the breed told Barin that the twinkle in Zuckerman's eye was genuine . . . for whatever mysterious reasons senior enlisted sometimes decided to like young officers, Zuckerman had decided to like him.

"Commander Dockery told me to acquaint myself with the starboard watch orders—"

"Yes, sir. Right here." Zuckerman fumbled a cube out of a file. "This has your schematics, your billeting list, your duty stations. Now you can either view it here, or check it out; if you check it out, it's a level-two security incident, and I'll require your signature on the paperwork."

"I'd better check it out," Barin said. "I'm on duty four shifts from now, and I'm supposed to know it by then."

"You'll do fine, sir," Zuckerman said. He rummaged a bit in a drawer and came up with an array of papers. "Captain likes hardcopy on all checkouts of secured documents, so it really is paperwork."

Barin signed on the designated line, initialled in the spaces. "When do I have to have it back?"

"Fourteen hundred tomorrow, sir."

Barin smiled at him. "Thanks, Chief."

"Good to have you aboard, sir."

There were worse ways to start ship duty than by having a master chief for a friend; Barin went off to put his duffel in his quarters considerably cheered. He knew Zuckerman would be as critical—perhaps more critical—than another man; he knew he would have to live up to Zuckerman's standards. But if a master chief took a youngster under his wing, then only a fool would ignore the chance to learn and prosper. It was probably due to his Serrano inheritance—but that worked both ways, and it was pleasant to have it working his way for once.

Young officers in command track were expected to know everything moderately well; ensigns rotated through various systems and sections of the cruiser, learning by doing—or, as often, by making mistakes less critical at their level than later on. The other three ensigns aboard had all started at the bottom—environmental—and completed their two-month rotation there, so Barin expected his first assignment: unaffectionately known as the "shit scrubber special."

"Your nose is unreliable," he was told by the environmental tech officer he reported to. "You think it stinks—and it does stink—but your nose gets used to it. Use your badges and readouts, and any time you're actually opening units, suit up. This stuff is deadly."

Barin wanted to ask why they weren't all dead then, but he knew better than to joke with someone like Jig Arendy. It was clear from her expression that she took sewage treatment very seriously, and—he suspected—spent every spare moment reading up on new technology.

She led him through the system he would help maintain, explaining every color-coded pipe, every label, every gauge and dial. Then she turned him over to Scrubber Team 3, and told him to do a practice inspection of the system from intake 14 to outputs 12 to 15. "And you can't use that old saw about flagpoles," she warned him. "This is my test team, and they'll do exactly what—and only what—you tell them."

Barin heaved an internal sigh, but started in. He remembered almost everything—he forgot to have them turn off the check-valve between primary feed and the intermediate scrubbers—and Arendy gave him a grudging thumbs-up. Then she spent ten minutes with the flow diagrams explaining exactly why that check-valve should be closed during routine inspections.

In a few days, Barin felt he was fitting in well. All four command-track ensigns bunked together; they were pleasant enough, and genuinely glad that someone else had the scrubber duty for the next two months. Meals in the junior wardroom enabled him to meet the other juniors—jigs and lieutenants—who were his immediate superiors. Jig Arendy, he discovered, could talk about something other than sewage; she turned out to be an avid follower of celebrity newsflashes. She and a handful of others discussed celebrities as if they were family members, endlessly poring over their clothes, their love affairs, their amusements. When she found he'd been at Copper Mountain with Brun Meager, she wanted to know all about it. Was she really as beautiful as her pictures? What kind of clothes did she wear? Had there been many newsflash shooters around?

Barin answered what he could, but luckily it did not occur to Arendy that he himself might have been a target of Brun's attention. When the wardroom discussions of Brun became uncomfortable, he took himself off. He would much rather listen to Zuckerman's tales of the old days in
Delphine
, with his grandmother. She'd never told him about the time a missile hung in the tube with a live warhead.