Ten days later, Seabolt was in her office again. Heris noticed that he looked pale and uncomfortable.
“What is it, Commander?” she asked.
“I’d like to request a transfer, sir.”
“A transfer? In the middle of a war?”
“I know, sir—it’s most inappropriate, but—I think I’m losing my mind.”
“Seabolt, if this is some kind of joke—”
“No, sir; I swear it’s not. It’s—I just can’t keep up—she always has something else, every second—”
A glimmer crossed Heris’s mind. “She?”
“The admiral—Admiral de Marktos.”
“She’s bothering you?”
“Not bothering—not exactly. But she’s on me every second, question after question, and you know, Captain, when we got this ship we didn’t have time to check it out completely. My stomach’s burning, my eyes—”
“Go down to sickbay and get some antacid, Commander. You have your stresses in this war and I have mine.”
“But sir—”
“Tell you what, Commander; if you want off the ship at the next station, I’ll find a way to reassign you. But all I can do now is ask the admiral to let up on you a little. And if I do that, she’ll be down on me. I have a flotilla to command and mutineers to find. I’m afraid you’ll just have to stick it out.”
“Yes, sir.” Seabolt, Heris noticed, wasn’t nearly as knife-edged as he had been.
“You might ask the admiral if she has time to see me,” Heris added as he went out the door.
“You are a wicked woman,” Heris said to Cecelia, handing her a cup of tea.
“Yes,” Cecelia said. “I believe I am. But it’s keeping him out of your hair, isn’t it?”
“Just don’t drive him into a heart attack,” Heris said. “That would be another set of forms to fill out.”
“I’ll give him time to work out in the gym,” Cecelia said. “But I’ll want real stars at the end of this.”
“If we all survive, I’ll come to your promotion party,” Heris said.
Chapter Fourteen
Barin had never seen anything like the bleak dark rock that jutted from an angry green sea. It was almost enough—almost—to make him want to be back in space. The craft settled onto the landing space with a soft bump.
The wind was icy; Barin pulled the hood of his PPU up and sealed it around his face. The prison buildings looked as grim as the rock itself. Had people really lived here? Been confined here?
“I thought it was bad before,” Corporal Meharry said. “But this is ridiculous. I want back in space.”
“How’d you get assigned here, anyway?” Barin asked.
“I asked for it, fool that I am. You know my sister was here once. Lepescu put her in. I wanted to know what it was like, what she’d been through.” He shivered, and Barin suspected it was from more than the cold wind. “Better get set up, sir, if you’ll excuse me.”
As the one person who had served here, Meharry knew where everything was, and went with forensics to find them quarters that wouldn’t interfere with the investigation. Barin had the others unload their supplies off the transport; the scientists would fly on to the weapons research station in the same craft. Margiu, he’d noticed, was with them, and a bearded fat man talked to her the whole trip. When the transport had left, he looked around the courtyard. It looked like a nightmare setting: the cold, dark, stone walls, the barred gates to the prisoner block.
He’d heard about the massacre of the prisoners who didn’t mutiny, and wondered which dark streaks on the rocks might be blood.
Meharry came back out and spoke to the other troops, who started carrying the supplies inside. Barin followed. Inside the staff block, dark stone walls gave way to ordinary paint and plaster. “They’re keeping us out of the officers’ quarters, sir,” Meharry said. “But we can use the kitchen over here; it’s a better size for this small a group.” Barin avoided the warning tape the forensic team were already stretching.
Organizing the outpost and making sure support ran smoothly occupied him for the first few days. The forensic team went about their business, whatever it was—Barin saw them collecting scrapings from various parts of the courtyard, and assumed that they were doing the same in cells and other buildings. Meharry disappeared for hours at a time, coming back white-faced and tense. Barin didn’t want to add to his discomfort by asking more questions, and tried to find solvable problems for Meharry to work on. He ventured into the prisoners’ block once himself, and came out more shaken than he wanted to admit. He’d imagined things like that in the Benignity, not here in the Familias. Not in his Fleet. He couldn’t imagine anyone in his family putting people in those holes, no matter what they’d done.
Then Corporal Meharry asked if he’d come along while Meharry pointed out details of his escape for the forensic team.
“They threw me off from up there—” Meharry pointed. “It’s a guardpost, with a good view of the inner exercise yard, and also out to sea.”
“I don’t know how you survived a fall like that into icewater,” Barin said.
“I wasn’t worried about the water,” Meharry said. “Not that much, anyway. The rocks, now . . . that and the surge. But you see, sir, I knew something was coming. I’d been telling myself, if they push, jump. Use their help, get out as far as possible. I had the PPU on, y’see.”
The forensic team wanted Meharry to reenact everything but that last leap. Barin felt almost sick just sitting in the first guardpost. The whole island seemed to shrink below him, leaving him teetering on a tiny pinhead. Meharry pointed out the rough path to the one from which he’d been thrown, scarcely protected from the seawind by a low row of stones on the seaward side. Despite his previous experience, Meharry started down the path as if he’d known it all his life. Barin forced himself up and followed, more slowly. He felt exposed and unbalanced, as if the great open space to his right and below were pulling at him, tugging him away from the safe path.
He slid into the lower guardpost with relief, and hoped it didn’t show too much. One of the forensic team had come with him; the others were back at the high post with the recorders.
“And this is where you’d seen someone down?”
“Yes—over there.” Meharry sounded a little breathless, but that could be the icy wind. Barin hoped no one would ask him a question.
“And the drop is—” The forensic tech leaned out, stiffened, and jerked back. “My God . . . it’s . . . there are rocks sticking out down there. You could’ve been killed—”
“That was the idea,” Meharry said; Barin glanced at him, and caught a flash of satisfaction on his face. He was not entirely displeased that the other man had reacted so strongly.
“Yes, but—I guess I’d better record it—” The other man brought his recorder up to his eye.
“We’d better hang on,” Meharry said. “Just in case of a wind gust.” He glanced at Barin. Barin did not want to get up and hold on to someone who might overbalance and drag him along. He knew that wasn’t likely, intellectually, but his body—
“Good idea, Corporal,” he heard himself say. He got up and took a good handful of the other man’s PPU. Meharry, beside him, did the same on the other side. Sure enough, the man leaned out, shooting downward. Wind whipped at him, shaking him; Barin and Meharry leaned back. Meharry, Barin saw, was as white as he himself felt. He was the one with the right to have the shakes here, and he was doing his job.
From there, they went back to the high post, and then back across the courtyard to the main building. Down the elevator, into the storage levels. Meharry pointed out to the forensic team where he’d hidden his own supplies, where the entrance to the lava tubes was. They clambered over the broken shards of black rock, now lit by a string of lights. It looked depressing and dangerous, but after the guardposts, Barin felt much safer inside the rock than precariously balanced on its surface.