The Serrano Connection (99 page)

A half hour later, Barin was on his way to the berth of the
Navarino
, his cousin Heris's ship. Heris was at home to family members—he had the distinct feeling that if he'd been an ensign named, perhaps, Livadhi or Hornan, he might have cooled his heels for an hour before getting in to see her.

"You want my scan techs sucking for you? What's wrong with yours? Escovar's always been able to pick good people."

Dockery had left it to him how much to tell, but this was family. Barin made it as short as he could, emphasizing that he had thought at first it was Heris's record Ferradi was after, in order to help Hornan wrest command of the task force from Admiral Serrano.

"Are you
involved
?" The emphasis clearly meant culpable as well.

"No, and yes," Barin said. "Lieutenant Ferradi also happens to see me as her ticket to the Serrano dynasty."

"Does she now?" Heris looked suddenly very dangerous indeed, as if a sleeping falcon had waked, and aimed its deadly gaze at a target. "And what do you think she's done, that you need Koutsoudas to discover?"

"Gone hunting in supposedly secure legal files, and possibly altered data, sir." That last was his own guess; Dockery hadn't been impressed by it, but he was sure that if Ferradi would lie verbally, she would not be above fudging the records. Why else risk tinkering with those files at all?

"Ah. Well . . . tell you what. You can have a couple of hours of Koutsoudas' time—but I get the whole story afterwards."

"Yes, sir."

"And your captain owes me dinner."

Now how was he going to explain
that
one? He returned thoughtfully to
Gyrfalcon
's berth, and reported his success to Dockery. "Koutsoudas will be along after lunch, sir," he said at last.

"Good. In the meantime, I want you to go destroy property and get yourself chewed out."

"Sir?"

"Go find Lieutenant Ferradi—which shouldn't be hard, as you say she's been adherent—and figure out some way to damage her datawand. I want her to have to initialize another. I don't care how you do it, as long as you don't damage the lieutenant—but I will mention that just dropping one in an alcoholic beverage is not sufficient. On the other hand, the application of sufficient point pressure is."

Barin set out on this mission with the uneasy feeling that Dockery's past might be more interesting than he had thought. When—and why—had Dockery discovered that dropping a datawand in alcohol wouldn't damage it?

Ferradi found him just as he was turning into the junior officers' mess and recreation area. "Lunch, Ensign?" she asked brightly.

"Oh—yes. Excuse me, Lieutenant—" He made a show of patting his pockets. "Drat!"

"What?"

"I was supposed to check on something for Commander Dockery, and then Major Carmody asked me something else, and—I forgot my datawand. It's back aboard. I'll have to go back—unless I could borrow yours, sir?"

"You should carry it with you all the time," Ferradi said, pulling out hers. "What did Dockery want?"

"Spares delivery schedule," Barin said promptly. "He says they've shorted on pre-dets the last four times. You probably know all about it."

"Oh—yeah. Everyone's complaining." She handed over the wand, and Barin looked around. The nearest high-speed dataport was out in the corridor.

"I'll just be moment," he said. "I heard they have Lassaferan snailfish chowder today—" Sure enough, she went on to the serving tables. Snailfish chowder was a rare treat.

Barin found the high-speed port and jammed the datawand in. Nothing happened; it lit up normally. He pulled it back out, looked around, and shoved it in as hard as he could. Its telltales came up normal again. He pulled it out and looked at the tip. Someone had designed it to withstand normal carelessness . . . and he realized that a high-speed dataport probably had internal cushions to protect the port side of the contact as well. Fine. Now what? She'd be looking for him any moment.

A thought occurred. He went back into the lounge, waved to Lieutenant Ferradi, who had found a seat at a small table facing the entrance, and pointed at the head, then strode quickly in that direction, as if in urgent need.

Heads were full of hard surfaces; Barin tried one after another, between flushes, until he'd produced a crumple at the datawand's tip by catching it between the door and its jamb, and then squashing it with the door as a lever. He'd had no idea datawands were that tough.

"Sorry, sir," he said to Lieutenant Ferradi, as he seated himself and handed her the wand. "Some kind of bug, I expect."

She had tucked it away without looking at it. "So—you're not having chowder?"

"No, sir. In fact, I think I'll just sit here, if that's all right."

"Of course." She gave him one of her looks from under long eyelashes. Despite his opinion of her, he felt a stir . . . and she knew it. He could have strangled her for that alone. He hoped very much he'd done enough damage to that datawand.

Esmay changed into her uniform aboard the ship that had brought her, and took the tram over to the Fleet side.

"Lieutenant Suiza," she said to the security posted at the entrance to the Fleet side of the station.

"Welcome home, Lieutenant." The greeting was merely ritual, but she felt welcomed nonetheless. Beyond the checkpoint, the corridors were busy. No one seemed to notice her—and no reason why they should.

She paused to check the status boards. The task force was still here; her ship was still docked at the station. She entered her name and codes, and found that she was still on the crewlist, though coded for "leave status: away." All other leaves had been cancelled.

"Well, if it isn't Lieutenant Suiza," came a voice from behind her. She turned, to find herself face to face with Admiral Hornan. He was looking at her with considerably less than pleasure. "I thought you had indefinite leave."

"I did, sir," she said. "But we got everything taken care of back home, and I came back at once."

"Couldn't leave it alone, could you? Think you'll have a chance to gloat over the Speaker's daughter, if we get her out?"

"No, sir." Esmay managed to keep her voice level. "Gloating was never my intention."

"You did
not
think she richly deserved what she got? That's not what I heard."

"Sir, I neither said, nor thought, that Brun deserved being kidnapped and raped."

"I see. You did, however, say that she wasn't worth going to war over."

"Sir, I said that no one makes war over one person, not that she wasn't worth it. That is what others have said, as well."

The admiral made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a growl. "That may be, Lieutenant, but the fact remains that what is on the record is your statement that she wasn't worth a war."

Before she could answer—if she could have thought of an answer—the admiral turned away. So much for making allies. She couldn't think of anything she might have said to change his mind.

Esmay had never really thought about the people who might be annoyed, or envious, because of her success. That first triumph had felt so fragile: she had not planned to be the senior survivor of a mutiny, and her struggle to bring her ship back to Xavier, and help Commander Serrano, had been a desperate struggle, one she did not expect—even at the last moment—to win. How could anyone resent it when it was clearly more luck than skill? As for the
Koskiusko
affair . . . again, it was pure luck that she had been there, that she had not been snatched, like Barin, by the Bloodhorde intruders.

But now, thinking about it, she realized that her peers were used to thinking of her as a nonentity, no threat to their own career plans. They had kept a closer eye on more credible rivals. The very suddenness of her success must have made her seem even more dangerous—to those inclined to think that way—than she really was. They would doubt her real ability, or fear it.

So she had . . . enemies, perhaps . . . in Fleet. Competitors, anyway. Some would want to frustrate her goals; others would want to ride her coattails to their own.

Once she'd thought of it, she felt stupid for not thinking of it before. Just as people had interacted with her without knowing what her internal thoughts and feelings were—seeing only the Lieutenant Suiza who was quiet, formal, unambitious—so she had interacted with the others without knowing, or caring much, what their internal motivations and goals were. She had been concerned what those senior to her thought of her performance, of course . . . she paused to consider that "of course," then set that aside for later. The problem was, until recently she had been just existing alongside others, unaware of them except where interaction was required. So she had no idea which of them thought of her as a rival, and which as a potential friend. Except for Barin.

She arrived at her assigned quarters still thinking this over. She had unpacked her duffel and was looking up references on the cube reader when the doorchime sounded. When she opened the door, she was facing an elderly woman she had never seen before in her life, a civilian woman who carried herself with the confidence of an admiral—or a very rich and powerful person.

"You don't look like a desperate schemer," the old woman said. Her night-black hair was streaked with silver, bushing out into a stormy mass, and with her brilliantly colored flowing clothes, she looked like a figure out of legend. Granna Owl, or the Moonborn Mage or something like that. "I'm Marta Katerina Saenz, by the way. My niece Raffaele went to school with Brun Meager. May I come in?"

"Of course." Esmay backed up a step, and the woman came in.

"You are, I presume, Lieutenant Esmay Suiza, just returned from leave on Altiplano?"

"Yes . . . Sera."

Marta Saenz looked her up and down, very much as her own great-grandmother had done. "You also don't look like a fool."

Esmay said nothing as the old woman stalked about the room, her full sleeves fluttering slightly. She came to rest with her back to the door, and cocked her head at Esmay.

"No answer? Indirect questions don't work? Then I'll ask outright—
are
you a heartless schemer, glad to make profit out of another woman's shame and misery?"

"No," Esmay said, with as little heat as she could manage. Then, belatedly, "No, Sera."

"You aren't glad the Speaker's daughter was captured?"

"Of course not," Esmay said. "I know that's what people think, but it's not true—"

The old woman had dark eyes, wise eyes. "When you have called someone—what was it? oh, yes—a 'stupid, selfish, sex-crazed hedonist with no more morals than a mare in heat,' people are going to get the idea you don't like her."

"I didn't
like
her," Esmay said. "But I didn't want this to happen to her." She wanted to say
What kind of person do you think I am?
but people had been thinking she was bad for so long she didn't dare.

"Ah. And did you think she was morally lacking?"

"Yes . . . though that still doesn't mean—"

"I honor your clear vision, young woman, which can so easily find where others are lacking. I wonder, have you ever turned that clear vision on yourself?"

Esmay took a deep breath. "I am stubborn, priggish, rigid, and about as tactful as a rock to the head."

"Um. So you're not casting yourself as the faultless saint in this drama?"

"Saint? No! Of course not!"

"Ah. So when you decided she was lacking in moral fiber, you were comparing her to an objective standard—?"

"Yes," Esmay said, more slowly. She wasn't even sure why she was answering this person. She had been over this so often, without convincing anyone.

The old woman nodded, as if to some unheard comment. "If I were simply going by Brun's past behavior, I'd say there's a man at the bottom of this."

Esmay felt her face heating. Was she really that transparent? The old woman nodded again.

"I thought as much. And who, pray tell, is the young man on whom Brun set her sights, and whom you think you love?"

"I do love—" got out before Esmay could stop it. She felt her face getting hotter. "Barin Serrano," she said, aware of being outmaneuvered, outgunned, and in all ways outclassed.

"Oh, my." That was all the old lady said, though she blinked and pursed her lips. Then she smiled. "I have known Brun since she was a cute spoiled toddler they called Bubbles—"

"Bubbles?" Esmay could not put that name with what she knew of Brun. "Her?"

"Stupid nickname—gave the girl a lot of trouble, because she thought she had to live up to it. But anyway, I've known her that long, and you are right that she was as badly spoiled as it's possible for a person of her abilities to be. My niece Raffaele was one of her close friends—and Raffa, like you, was one for getting other people out of scrapes. She got Brun out of a lot of them."