“Yes,” he said.
“Well, I’ve proved it.” She closed the buttons, one by one. “One day the squadcom talked to me about whether you could have killed Fletcher, and I talked her out of the idea.”
Martinez was speechless.
“You shouldn’t count too much on the fact that you married Lord Chen’s daughter,” Chandra went on. “The impression I received was that if you died out here, it might solve any number of Lord Chen’s problems. He’d have a marriageable daughter again, for one thing.”
Martinez considered this, and found it disturbingly plausible. Lord Chen hadn’t wanted to give up his daughter, not even in exchange for the millions the Martinez clan were paying him, and his brother Roland had practically marched Lord Chen to the wedding in a hammerlock. If Martinez could be executed of a crime—and furthermore, a crime against both the Gombergs and the Fletchers—then he couldn’t imagine Lord Chen shedding many tears.
“Interesting,” he managed to say.
Chandra rose and leaned over his desk. “But,” she said, “I pointed out to Lady Michi that you’d played an important part in winning our side’s only victories against the Naxids, and that we really couldn’t spare you even if youwere a killer.”
The phrasing brought a smile to Martinez’s lips. “You might have given me the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “I mightnot have killed Fletcher, after all.”
“I don’t think Lady Michi was interested in the truth by that point. She just wanted to be able to close the file.” She perched on his desk and brushed its glossy surface with her fingertips. A triumphant light danced in her eyes. “So am I your friend, Gareth?” she asked.
“You are.” He looked up at her and answered her smile. “And I’m yours, because when Lady Michi was trying to pin the murder on you—with far more reason, I thought—I talked her out of it by using much the same argument.”
He saw the shock roll through Chandra like a slow tide. Her lips formed several words that she never actually spoke, and then she said, “She’s a ruthless one, isn’t she?”
“She’s a Chen,” Martinez said.
Chandra slowly rose to her feet, then braced. “Thank you, my lord,” she said.
“You’re welcome, Lieutenant.”
He watched her leave, a little unsteadily, and then paged Mersenne. When the plump lieutenant arrived, Martinez invited him to sit.
“Some time ago,” Martinez said, “before I joined the squadron, you found Lieutenant Kosinic leaving an access hatch on one of the lower decks. Do you happen to remember which one?”
Mersenne blinked in utter surprise. “I haven’t thought about that in months,” he said. “Let me think, my lord.”
Martinez let him think, which Mersenne accomplished while pinching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger.
“That would be Deck Eight,” Mersenne said finally. “Access Four, across from the riggers’ stores.”
“Very good,” Martinez said. “That will be all.”
As Mersenne, still puzzled, rose to his feet and braced, Martinez added, “I’d be obliged if you mention my interest in this to no one.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Tomorrow, Martinez thought, he would announce an inspection on Deck 8, and there would be plenty of witnesses to anything he might find.
After breakfast, Martinez staged an inspection in which Access 4 on Deck 8 was opened. The steady rumble of ventilation blowers rose from beneath the deckplates. He descended with Marsden’s datapad, squeezed between the blowers and a coolant pipe wrapped in bright yellow insulation material, and checked the serial numbers on the blowers against the numbers on the 77–12 that had been supplied by Rigger/First Rao.
The numbers matched.
Martinez crouched in the confined space and checked the numbers again. Again they matched.
He straightened, his head and shoulders coming above deck level, and looked at Rao, who looked at him with anxious interest.
“When were these blowers last replaced?”
“Just before the war started, my lord. They’re not due for replacement for another four months.”
So these were the same blowers that Kosinic had seen when he’d gone down the same access. If it wasn’t the serial numbers, Martinez thought, what had Kosinic been looking for?
Martinez ducked down the access again and ran his hands along the pipes, the ductwork, the electric conduit, just in case something had been left here, a mysterious message or an ominous warning. He found nothing but the dust that filled his throat and left him coughing.
Perhaps Mersenne had been wrong about where he’d seen Kosinic. Martinez had several of the nearby access plates raised, and he descended into each to find again that everything was in order.
Frustration bubbled in his blood as he complimented Rao on his record-keeping, and it kept bubbling as he marched away.
Hours later, while he was eating a late supper—a ham sandwich made of leftovers from the meal he’d given Michi—a memory burst on his mind.
With Francis it’s always about money.
That had been Alikhan’s comment on the cruiser’s former master rigger, and now, days after they’d been spoken, it came back to Martinez.
Gambling,he thought.
He carried his plate from the dining room to his desk, where he called up the display, then used the authority of his captain’s key to access the commissary records and check the files of the commissary bank.
Actual cash wasn’t handed to the crew during the voyage: accounts were kept electronically in the commissary bank, which was technically, a branch of the Imperial Bank, which issued the money in the first place. Crew would pay electronically for anything purchased from the commissary, and any gambling losses would be handled by direct transfer from one account to another.
The crew were paid every twenty days. Martinez looked at the account of Rigger Francis and saw that it totaled nearly nine thousand zeniths, enough to buy an estate on nearly any planet in the empire.
And this was only the money that Francis had inthis account. She could have more in accounts in other banks, in investments, in property.
Martinez called for Alikhan. His orderly came into the dining room first, was surprised to find Martinez in his office, and approached.
“Would you like me to take your plate, my lord?”
Martinez looked in surprise at the plate he’d brought with him from the dining room. “Yes,” he said. “No. Never mind that now.”
Alikhan looked at him. “Yes, my lord.”
“Some time ago,” Martinez said, “you took an advance on your salary in order to pay a gambling debt.”
Alikhan gave a cautious nod. “Yes, my lord.”
“I would like to know who you were gamblingwith.”
Alikhan hesitated. “My lord, I shouldn’t like to—”
“Do they cheat?” Martinez asked.
Alikhan considered his answer for a long moment before speaking.
“I don’t think so, my lord. I think they’re very experienced players, and at least some of the time they play in concert.”
“But they gamble with recruits, don’t they?”
Martinez thought he saw an angry tightening of Alikhan’s lips before the answer came.
“Yes, my lord. In the mess, every night.”
It’s always about money. Again Alikhan’s words echoed in his head.
Gambling was of course against Fleet regulations, but such regulations were applied with a degree of discretion. Action was rarely taken if the petty officers played cards in their lounge, or the lieutenants wanted to play tingo in the wardroom, or the recruits rolled dice in the engine spaces. It was a minor vice, and nearly impossible to stop. Gambling games and gambling scams were almost universal in the Fleet.