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.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Meharry muttered.
By the downjump into the system where Mindon Station’s complicated geometry sparkled with the frost of multiple vents, Petris and Oblo had both reviewed the data cube. Now, three days out from the station, they met with Koutsoudas in gym.
“What’s going on up there now, ’Steban?” Petris asked.
Koutsoudas looked down. “It’s . . . pretty tense. Rascal was five minutes late coming out of jump—well within limits, especially since those two Boros ships were three minutes late making insertion and Rascal was supposed to keep station behind ’em—and he chewed Captain Suiza out like she’d done something awful.”
“How’d she take it?” Oblo asked.
“What could she do? Said yes, sir, no, sir, sorry, sir, in the right places. Didn’t make excuses. Then six hours later he calls her up and makes nice. Would she like to go on the courtesy call he’s making to the station commander, an’ so on. She’s polite, gives him her ETA—’course, Rascal’s behind everyone, a good fourteen hours at least before she’d get to Station, and he says never mind, she can be the deep picket, like before.” Koutsoudas stopped. Petris waited. “It’s not like him, sir. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s always been tough and a bit finicky, yes. But to ream someone out unfairly and then wait six hours to say anything, and then make a dumb mistake like not knowing she’d be that far behind . . .”
“What if it wasn’t a mistake?” Meharry asked. “What if he never meant to have her along, and it was just a kind of lame apology?”
“It’s not like him,” Koutsoudas said. “Look—you know how I felt when he sent me to Commander Serrano. I’ve been Livadhi’s pet scan tech since I finished Basic and ended up on his ship. I didn’t want to leave him . . . but I came to recognize Commander Serrano as darn near his equal as a ship commander.” He glanced around and said sheepishly, “All right. A better ship commander, but not by much. I know Livadhi—the old Livadhi—the way you people can’t. And this is different.”
“So what do you expect us to do, ’Steban?”
“Tell me I’m wrong,” he said miserably. “Tell me I’m making it up, that there’s nothing wrong with him, that he can’t possibly be up to anything—”
“’Steban,” Meharry said, with unwonted gentleness. “We don’t doubt your loyalty. Any of your loyalties. But you have to face the facts you’re trying to avoid. If he’s changed, if there’s something wrong . . . we can’t ignore it. You can’t ignore it.”
“I know that,” he said, to the deck. “I just—I just hate it—especially since you didn’t know him before.”
“I knew him last cruise,” Petris said. “He was good enough then. Naturally I think Heris is better, but you’re right—not by much. I think he’s been a good officer. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“Yes. I had to come to you—I trust you—but I can’t—I needed to know you didn’t just hate him because he was here instead of her.”
“Of course not,” Petris said. “Man, I may be Heris Serrano’s . . . friend, but I’m still a professional. A good officer is a good officer.”
“All right, then. What did you think of the communications log?”
“Damaging,” Meharry said, before Petris could.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I haven’t talked to any of the officers, but Sim, one of the commtechs, is worried about it too.”
“It could still be innocent,” Petris said, playing devil’s advocate for the moment. “I mean—suppose he did have—oh, a premonition or something—and decided to send special presents to everyone he knew, and one of them was undeliverable. Maybe the shop figured his wife would pass on the note in the box.”
“Without instructions? Just a list of numbers and letters?”
“Well, she did send it on. Maybe things like that had happened before . . .”
“Not on the last cruise,” Koutsoudas said. “I asked Sim.”
“How’s Captain Burleson taking all this?”
“He’s tense, too. He’s an old Livadhi hand, same as I am, and so is our second and third.”
“I wish we had Mackay aboard,” Petris said. “He knew us; we knew him . . . we’re in a ticklish spot here. The way we’re talking, we could be taken up for conspirators—”
“We’re not the ones making trouble,” Oblo said.
“Yes, we are. By regulation, anyway. In a time of war or mutiny, conversations critical of a commander like this . . . and the last thing this Fleet needs is another mutiny aboard a ship.”
“The last thing this Fleet needs is another ship going over to the mutiny,” Meharry said.
“Or somewhere else,” Koutsoudas said.
“What do you mean?”
“You know . . . I never talked to anyone about why Livadhi wanted me gone. I know he told Commander Serrano I’d gotten in some kind of trouble—”
“So?”
“So . . . I wouldn’t have thought of it, ’cept for this. Never meant to mention any of it—”
“’Steban, if you don’t spit it out, I’m going to squeeze you dry,” Oblo said.
“It was right after I came up with that scan extension, that lets me get a little lead on downjump scan. Suddenly Livadhi had us heading toward the Shaft, just like we were going to use that grav anomaly jump point to skew around it, but then we went into the Shaft instead. Turned out we were going in to rescue Commander Serrano and Sweet Delight—”
“What?”
“Yeah, that time you had the prince with you, remember?”
“I remember,” Petris said. He glanced at Oblo.
“Well, so after we kicked those Benignity ships—and believe me, we were sweatin’ that, attacking them in their own territory—I got to thinking about how Livadhi had known where to look.” He took a long breath. “I had a buddy in comm then, and we kicked it around a bit—trying to figure out how he knew, or if it was just luck. Then I said something to Livadhi himself one day, and he rounded on me, told me to be quiet if I valued my freedom. That he’d had secret orders, but no one was supposed to know. And maybe I’d better spend some time away from the ship while he tried to cover up my lapse. I don’t know what he told you—”
“He’d heard we’d had bad data from Rotterdam—”