The Serrano Succession (108 page)

Then he had to wait for an answer, his nerves drawn tighter with every passing hour.

"I was afraid she'd faint," Oblo said, holding out his mug for a refill. "Turned white as a sheet, she did."

"You idiot, Oblo," Meharry said. "She maybe hadn't heard before—"

"She hadn't, but I didn't think of that. How's I to know?" His tone of injured innocence sounded real, for once.

"You have a brain," Meharry said shortly. "Wish I'd had time to talk to her."

"What about?"

"Copper Mountain . . . I was wondering if she'd heard more than I have. I wish I could transfer over there. My brother—"

"Your brother is fine, Methlin. You heard that—"

"Mornin' Oblo, Methlin," Petris said. "What's new about your brother?"

"Nothin'," Oblo said. "Methlin just wants to go play big sister."

"Transfer? I doubt they'd let you, right now."

"I know." Methlin bit into a sweet roll as if it were an enemy's neck. "I did sort of ask. Got told no."

"You're not the only one," Petris said. "I heard from the admiral's clerk—Admiral Serrano's, that is—that Commodore Livadhi asked if perhaps Heris's old crew wouldn't like to transfer, seeing as she's so close. Relatively close." He sipped his own mug of coffee.

"Wants to get rid of us, does he?" Oblo asked, scowling.

"I think it was courtesy," Petris said. "He's—sometimes he's almost scrupulously polite. Working at it. The admiral said no, by the way."

"She would," Oblo said.

"Mind yourself," Petris said, grinning. "She's our Heris's aunt, not just a mere admiral—"

"Mustang," Meharry said, grinning back.

"So I am. With everything that implies. So, how are your sections shaping up for this next mission?"

"Better," Meharry said. "It's still not our—not what I'd've liked, all our own people. But the new ones aren't bad, and that first cruise settled 'em."

"Good. We may well see some trouble this time out, from what I hear."

"Me, too," said Oblo, who had sources known only to himself. "I heard some of the mutineers are trying to set up deals with free trader companies, and even the big consortia. Anyone who doesn't sign up gets whacked on their next trip."

"The commodore's not bad," Meharry said thoughtfully, stirring her coffee. "I hear he's got good combat sense. Not up to Heris, of course, but—"

"We don't know that, Methlin," Petris said. "His record's good. And Heris liked him, even when she didn't completely trust him."

"Came to our rescue that one time . . ." Oblo commented.

"Yeah . . . kind of odd he was there, but I don't argue with good luck. Anyway, if it goes as smoothly as last time, we'll be fine, as long as the crew does its job and nothing blindsides us."

"Nothing's going to blindside us with Koutsoudas up in scan," Meharry said.

The convoy proceeded on its way, a string of transport and cargo vessels guarded by
Vigilance
and her gaggle of patrol and escort ships. The original plan, to have each convoy include two cruisers, had foundered on the shortage of cruisers. This made
Rascal
's weapons upgrade particularly valuable, and Livadhi placed her at the tail of the line, where another cruiser would have been. They were held to the speed of the slowest ship, in this case two of the spherical hulls used by the Boros Consortium, loaded with ordnance for the border stations. Esmay's relatively young crew had plenty of practice in adjusting jump point insertions and exits, in interpreting longscan. After the first two jump transitions, she began to feel less like a character playing a part and more like a real captain. Her crew was settling well; she could feel their confidence in her.

Koutsoudas found Methlin Meharry in the enlisted mess and sat down beside her. "Meharry—can I talk to you?"

She gave him one of her looks. "You have a voice, 'Steban. What's up?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to go nuts if I don't tell someone about it."

"Mmm. Is this the best place?"

"Maybe not. Where?"

"You offshift or on?"

"Off."

"Two hours, break room for weapons three. See you." Meharry slapped the table and left without another word. She made her rounds, bumped into Oblo as usual, and suggested that he might want to meet her.

"We need Petris?" he asked.

"Doubt it," Meharry said. "Likely someone's just leaning on the kid about something and he'd like to blow off a bit. You're insurance."

"Got you." They went their separate ways.

Twenty minutes before the two hours, Meharry ambled into the weapons three break room and leaned over the shoulders of the two corporals who were studying a wire model of the main beam supports. "Something needs polishing," she said.

"Sir? What, sir?"

"Find it," Meharry advised. "And polish it very well."

The brighter of the two blinked again and said, "Sir, any idea how long we need to polish it?"

"An hour and a half should do it," Meharry said. They left, and she went to work. In five minutes she had disabled the scan pickup that should have reported everything in the room. Oblo appeared eight minutes later, and checked her clearance before settling into one of the chairs. It creaked under him. A pivot with a mug of something started into the room, saw them, and backed out without a word.

The two of them chatted about inconsequential things until Koutsoudas appeared. He had his own gear bag with him, and produced one of his cylinders.

"You don't trust us?" Oblo said, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't talk to me about trust," Koutsoudas said. Meharry couldn't tell if he was angry or scared or both. Before she could say anything, he rushed on. "This is all slippery stuff, nothing solid. I don't want there to be anything solid. But you need to know."

"Can we have a noun?" Meharry asked in a low drawl. "A subject?"

Koutsoudas glanced at the open hatch as if he expected a killer to step through it. Then back at Meharry. "The bridge crew—is about to lose it."

"Why? We haven't had any action I didn't know about, have we?"

"No. It's—it's Livadhi. The commodore. Something's wrong—he's not like he was."

Meharry felt a sudden lurch in her midsection, followed by a feeling of satisfaction. So. Everyone had told her how wonderful he was, but despite no evidence at all she had never been able to like him. Her instincts were right.

"What's he doing?" she asked, forestalling Oblo with a look.

"It's hard to say. Mostly he's—twitchy. Jumpy. Everything's going fine, but he's wound up tighter than I've ever seen him. I hate—I've known him for years, I was with him before he sent me to Commander Serrano—and I've never seen him like this. I don't feel right telling you, but I don't feel right about whatever's wrong, either."

"What's Captain Burleson say?"

"He's getting tense himself, the way Livadhi's been jumping on everyone. We're afraid to say anything but yes, sir and no, sir on the bridge, and we'd become pretty friendly. You know how it is . . ."

Meharry knew. All her instincts were standing up waving their arms at her. She looked at Oblo. His face showed nothing but his eyes—yes, his instincts too.

"Has he done anything—anything at all—outside what he should? Given any questionable orders?"

"No. I can't believe I'm even thinking he would, but—if he'd been rejuved, I'd be worrying about rejuv failure."

"What about communications?" Oblo asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Has he made any unusual communications? Outside the convoy, or to unusual destinations?"

"I'm not monitoring his communications," Koutsoudas said quickly. Then, "I'll find out. If you think it matters."

"It might."

"You'd better go," Meharry said to Koutsoudas. "We'll talk again."

"All right. I just—I need someone."

"We're with you, 'Steban. We won't let anything bad happen."

After he'd gone, she turned to Oblo. "I was wrong. We do need Petris. If anything's going on, if that bastard's going sour on us—"

"He's not going to lose Heris's ship for her," Oblo said.

Some days later, Koutsoudas passed Meharry a data cube with Livadhi's complete inbound and outbound communications log. When she put it in the cube reader, she found that he'd made notations alongside the entries: this a tightbeam to one or another of the convoy ships, this a tightbeam to a Fleet ansible with destination codes indicating a report to Headquarters. Inbound from a Fleet ansible, origin codes Headquarters. So far so good. Then a civilian origination code . . . his wife, Koutsoudas had noted. Every few days, a message from his wife.

Meharry frowned. Livadhi married? Somehow she'd assumed him to be single. She glanced at the messages; they weren't encrypted, and were about everyday things. His wife was having a new carpet installed; she was sure he'd like it: it was the same color as the old. The price of snailfish fin had gone through the roof; she supposed it was the effect of the mutiny. His uncle the retired admiral had dropped by and talked for an hour about the political situation; he was convinced that if the old king and Admiral Lepecsu had been in charge none of this would have happened. Her sister's youngest child had won a music prize. She thanked him for sending a parting gift from Sector VII Headquarters, but didn't he realize that the shipping charges had tripled the cost? She'd have been just as happy with the usual box of candy from the local confectioners'. The enameled box was pretty, but she didn't understand the message on the paper inside, or was it just something the people in the shop had left in by mistake?

Meharry stopped and reread that message. Livadhi usually sent candy but this time sent a box? Well . . . maybe he'd thought his wife would like a change. Though any woman who would choose exactly the same shade of carpet to replace the old probably wouldn't want a change in gifts, either. And surely Livadhi would know it—though Meharry had, in a long career, seen plenty of marriages founder on the shoals of ignorance. People didn't really know each other better just because they were tied together with a common name. An incomprehensible message inside? Most likely, as his wife mentioned, just a mistake at the shop.

But why send an enameled box that far? Why that box? What was the incomprehensible message?

She glanced down the screen, and found it. Livadhi's wife had included it, just in case it was his message and he cared to translate. A string of numbers and letters. It looked exactly like a jump point address and ansible access code. Koutsoudas' annotation, cautious, said that such a jump point and ansible access code were in the files, but that he couldn't confirm that the writer had meant the string to denote them.

Meharry scrolled on down the log. There—highlighted by Koutsoudas—the convoy had passed through a jump point with the same coordinates as in the message Livadhi's wife had sent . . . and in that system, Livadhi had stripped a message from the ansible, using that code. The message, in clear, said, "Merchandise undeliverable; addressee unknown at that address. Refund waiting at next port of call."

Harmless enough, but the numbers had been inside a box which
was
delivered. What merchandise was undeliverable? Not the box. Something else? Why had Livadhi suddenly bought presents for people at Sector VII HQ and shipped them all over the place? And no civilian should have had a list of the jump points the convoy would pass through, to send a message like this to intercept the convoy. Or have known what the next port of call was, to send a refund ahead.

She read through the rest. Nothing more that didn't fit. Koutsoudas had noted, at the end of the list, that their next port of call would be Mindon Station. Meharry thought about that, retrieved the cube from the cube reader and put it in her pocket, then set off on a purposeful meander to find Oblo. She knew he and Petris had a regular sparring session in the gym.

She found him just as Petris came down the ladder a few meters away. "Joining us, Methlin?" Petris asked.

"You should," Oblo said. "How long's it been since you sparred with me?"

"Can't," Meharry said. "I'm on-shift. Just brought you an entertainment cube—the one you were asking about."

Petris gave her a sharp look. "Not
Bridge to the Moon
?"

"No . . . didn't find that one. This is Michelline-Hernandez's
A Traitor Reveal'd
, with that good looking actor—Simon somebody—playing the general." There was, of course, such an adventure drama. Meharry would not have stooped to anything less complete. She handed Petris the cube, and headed back to work, the lines of the play that were not on that cube echoing in her memory.
It cannot be, that you, my general, have betrayed us
.