“So . . . he is a mutineer.”
“Might be. I suppose pirates might take ears, too. But I wish we’d gotten his name.”
“We have some of his ID, anyway,” Basil said. He could have laughed at the shock on Goonar’s face.
“How? He didn’t come all the way in, or sit down.”
“No—but he did put his hands on the doorframe, and I don’t think he was wearing gloves. And—since he conveniently stood in one place—I was able to reconfigure the office scans to pick him up. If you’re thinking of making points with the Stationmaster, we can call up—”
“Not the Stationmaster,” Goonar said. “Fleet. But do something, Bas, to protect those prints on the door . . . that fellow just might come back and smear them himself, if he thinks of it.”
“Right.” Basil moved to the door and glanced out. There he was again, headed their way, but stopping short when Basil appeared. Basil lounged there, putting his own hand on the doorframe, but a handspan higher than the other man’s, and stared him down. This was fun. This was almost as much fun as rearranging the man’s face, which he hoped to have the chance for later. If he was smashing up a mutineer, no one could object too much. Finally the man shrugged, and turned away, ducking into one of the little shopping arcades that opened onto the main concourse.
“Call now,” Basil said over his shoulder to Goonar. “Your instincts were right; he was on his way back.”
“I’m assuming you didn’t put your hand in the same place,” Goonar said.
“Not me. I’ve been in enough rows to know better.”
“Trust you to know . . . I wonder if it fooled him. I’m putting on full security,” Goonar added, and then nothing more. Basil assumed he was on the com, talking to Fleet, but no sound came through the security screen. Basil busied himself in the little waiting area outside the office, bustling in and out, carrying and stacking cartons. Assuming he was under surveillance, he managed to bump or touch the doorframe repeatedly, each time avoiding the area where the other man’s hands had—he hoped—left their prints.
He was running out of ways to rearrange the same few cartons, when someone hailed him from outside the line. “Terakian Fortune!”
“Yes?” Basil said, turning around. Two men in Fleet uniform. Great. Now the mysterious stranger would know they’d snitched.
“Did you transport a former Fleet officer named Esmay Suiza?” the taller of the two asked loudly.
“Suiza? Why?” asked Basil, feeling as surly as he sounded.
“We’re trying to find her,” the man said. “I’m Commander Tavard. You know there’s a mutiny on?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Fleet’s recalling all former officers, and offering them commissions again. Anyway—we were told Esmay Suiza was a passenger of yours—is that right?”
“Suiza of Altiplano?” That from a dockside idler. “The hero of Xavier?”
Commander Tavard’s eyes rolled, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “The very same,” he said. Then, to Basil, “Could we come aboard and talk to your captain? Or Suiza, if she’s here?”
“She’s not here at the moment, but our captain is. He may know where she’s gone. Follow me.” Basil flicked on the perimeter security, which wasn’t by any means as good as that in the office, but would foil the idlers.
“Anything we shouldn’t touch?” Commander Tavard asked, in a quieter voice.
Basil grinned to himself. So this wasn’t about Esmay . . . it was the answer to Goonar’s call. “Right through here,” he said, opening the office door with an extravagant gesture and waving them in—the waving arm happening to protect the side of the doorframe with the prints.
“Captain,” Basil said, though Goonar was already on his feet, alert. “This is Commander Tavard, come to ask us about Esmay Suiza. He says they want her back in Fleet.”
“Glad to meet you, Commander,” Goonar said. Basil noticed at once that the office security screen was off, and raised an eyebrow at Goonar, who shook his head. “Sera Suiza’s a fine young woman; it beat me why she was discharged.”
“A misunderstanding,” Commander Tavard said. He nodded to the other man, without introducing him, and the man opened his case and removed the sort of equipment Basil had seen Station security use to gather evidence. “It should never have happened. But we couldn’t trace her, at first. I know you listed her on your departure manifest, but quite frankly no one thought to check the manifests for general cargo vessels. The local command was sure she’d rented a yacht under an assumed name, or something.”
Basil watched the shorter man apply a strip of some translucent material to the entire doorpost on the correct side, without revealing anything that could be seen from dockside. He himself stood where he could see through the narrow opening he’d left. He had to admire the cover story the commander had come up with. When the second man had peeled the strip away, sprayed it with a fixative, and coiled it neatly into an evidence pouch, Basil handed him the data cube that Goonar pointed out—a copy, no doubt, of their original scan data.
“I can understand why you’d want her back,” Goonar said, “But she’s not here.”
“Is she coming back? Did she leave any luggage?”
“No—she told us she was going downside, to Fleet Headquarters on Castle Rock itself. I think she was hoping to get back in, somehow.”
“If so, they haven’t informed us yet. But I’ll make a few calls and see. Oh, by the way, you might want to be on your guard for mutineers trying to make contact with civilian ships; we’ve had some reports of attacks that might be piracy or might be mutineer activity. You’ll be getting a Fleet advisory in the next day or so, when we’ve refined the data, but I strongly advise you to stick to only green routes, even if you normally use a few yellows to save time. And if anyone approaches you, wanting a fast or secret passage, I hope you’ll let us know.”
“Of course,” Goonar said, grinning at the commander. “But—I don’t suppose there’s a reward in it . . . ?”
“No,” the commander, grinning back, managed to sound prim and disapproving anyway. “I would think your own self-interest would lead you to do the right thing. If these mutineers start robbing ships because of information they get from you civilian captains, you’ll wish you hadn’t been so greedy.”
Goonar nodded his appreciation of that speech and launched into a suitable reply. “I don’t call it greedy,” he said. “I call it making a decent profit from risk, which you people don’t have to worry about, with all your expenses paid for you, by taxes on me.”
“I’m not going to argue with you,” the commander said. “I just hope you’ll do the right thing . . . or you’ll regret it someday.”
The two men left, trailed by Basil and Goonar; the commander turned at dockside. “If you see Suiza, please let us know. And remember what I said—”
“I’ll remember,” Goonar said. “You take care of your precious Fleet, and let us get on with our trading.” When the two men had walked out of sight, he turned to Basil. “What a lot of pompous twits they are,” he said. “As if I didn’t know how to spot troublemakers myself.” He led the way back into the office, and Basil followed, wondering who had been in the audience for that little playlet, and how they’d taken it.
“Sorry to be so secretive,” Brun said. “But this second assassination has every conspiracy theorist going crazy. Even though the Benignity’s claimed responsibility—”
“They have?”
“Oh, yes. Very formally, in the Grand Council. Apparently they inserted an assassin by having him impersonate a fencing instructor.”
“A fencing instructor?” Esmay’s mind raced, wondering why the head of the Grand Council would have wanted to learn how to build fences.