But the gambling could become dangerous when it crossed lines of caste. When petty officers gambled with recruits, serious issues of abuse of power came into play. A superior officer could enforce a vicious payment schedule, and could punish recruits with extra duties or even assault. A recruit who owed money to his superior could not only lose whatever pay he happened to possess at the time, but could lose future salary either in direct losses or interest payments. The recruit might be forced to pay in other ways: gifts, sexual favors, performing the petty officers’ duties, or even being forced to steal on behalf of his superior.
It had been months since Chenforce left Harzapid, and it would be months more beforeIllustrious would stop in a Fleet dockyard. A recruit in the grips of a gambling ring could lose his pay for the entire journey, possibly the entire commission.
“Who’s taking part in this?” Martinez asked.
“Well, my lord,” Alikhan said, “I’d rather not get anyone in trouble.”
“You’re not getting them in trouble,” Martinez said. “They’realready in trouble. But you can exclude those who aren’t a part of it by naming those who are.”
This logic took a few seconds to work its way through Alikhan’s mind, but in the end he nodded.
“Very well, my lord,” he said. “Francis, Gawbyan, and Gulik organize the games. And Thuc was a part of it, but he’s dead.”
“Very good,” Martinez said. He turned to his desk, then looked back at Alikhan. “I don’t want you mentioning this conversation to anyone.”
“Of course n—”
“Dismissed.”
Martinez was already racing on to the next problem. He called up the accounts of Francis, Gawbyan, Gulik, and Thuc, and saw that they jumped on every payday, far more than if they were being paid their salary. Nearly two-thirds of their income seemed to come in the form of direct transfers from other crew. Martinez backtracked the transfers and found no less than nine recruits who regularly transferred their entire pay to the senior petty officers. They’d been doing it for months. Others were paying less regularly, but still paying.
Anger simmered in Martinez.You people like playing with recruits so much, he thought,maybe you should berecruits.
He would break them. And he’d confiscate the money too, and turn it over to the ship’s entertainment fund, or perhaps to Fleet Relief to aid distressed crew.
He checked the totals and found that Gulik was losing the money practically as fast as he was making it. Apparently the weaponer was truly devoted to gambling, and eventually lost every bit of his earnings to his friends. At the moment he had practically nothing in his accounts.
The scent of coffee wafted past his nose, and he looked up from the accounts to find that someone had placed a fresh cup of coffee by his elbow, next to a plate of newly made sandwiches. Alikhan had made the ghostly delivery and Martinez hadn’t even noticed.
He ate a sandwich and drank a cup of coffee.
Always about the money,he thought.
He opened the 77–12 that he’d viewed just that morning and looked again at the serial number of the ventilation blowers. He backtracked through the record and found that Rao had corrected the serial number from the purely fictional one that Francis had originally recorded in the log.
Every item inIllustrious, Martinez knew, came with its own history. Every pump, every transformer, every missile launcher, every robot, every processor, and every waste recycler came with a long and complex record that included the date of manufacture or assembly, the date at which it was purchased by the Fleet, the date at which it was installed, and each date at which it was subject to maintenance or replacement.
Martinez called up the history of the air blowers on Deck 8 and discovered that, according to the records, the blowers had been destroyed with theQuest, a Naxid frigate involved in the mutiny at Harzapid.
Rebel Data,he thought.
He checked the history of the turbopump that had failed at Arkhan-Dohg, and found that the turbopump had been decommissioned three years earlier, replaced by a new pump fresh from the factory, and sold as scrap.
His mouth was dry. He was suddenly aware of the silence in his office, the easy throb of his pulse, the cool taste of the air.
He knew who had killed Kosinic and Fletcher, and why.
TWENTY-THREE
Once the Fleet Control Board and their staff had come aboard,Galactic cast off from the ring in order to build the delta vee necessary for escape in the event the Naxids came to Antopone. A few hours later the two brand-new heavy cruisers launched. Their Daimong crews were inexperienced, and the ships hadn’t yet received their weapons. They couldn’t fight, and so would have to flee.
A squadron of eight Naxid ships had departed the fleet guarding the Zanshaa system: they were heading for Zanshaa Wormhole 2 at a steady four gees acceleration. At that rate they could be at Zarafan in less than ten days.
From Zarafan they could continue to Laredo, normally a journey of three months, but less if they continued to tenderize themselves with heavy gravities. Or from Zarafan the Naxids could take a wormhole that could lead them eventually to Antopone and, from there, Chijimo; or alternately, they could use another wormhole to take them through a series of barren systems to Seizho, from which they could return to Zanshaa.
This last was thought unlikely. If they wanted to raid Seizho, they could go there direct from the capital.
“They’ve learned from us,” Mondi said in his precise way. He adjusted the dark goggles he wore over his night-adapted eyes. “Our raids must be hurting them if they’re launching a raid themselves.”
“But is this theironly raid?” Pezzini wondered. “This could be a probe designed to get our defenses off balance, and then they launch a larger strike elsewhere—Harzapid and what remains of the Fourth Fleet, for example.”
Lord Chen contemplated mosaics on the walls, with their bright warships rocketing out of wormholes, and shook his head.
“That doesn’t matter, my lords,” he said. “We don’t have the ships to oppose more than one raid, and in any case Laredo has to be protected.”
He was just a politician, he thought, not a Fleet officer, but even he knewthat. He could already picture in his mind the panicked series of instructions from the Convocation, demanding that the Fleet save them from the Naxids.
“Very well,” said Lord Tork. “We shall order Lord Eino to move his forces in this direction, to guard the Convocation if necessary.”
Tork was in the process of dictating this order to the secretary of the board when the secretary’s comm unit chirped—a message from Lord Eino Kangas stating that the Home Fleet was already in motion, heading for Antopone.
Kangas had read the situation as the board had, and reached an identical conclusion.
Bulletins arrived almost hourly, so Lord Chen and the others were kept well-informed of the movements of the various players. The Naxids took ten days to reach Zarafan, a journey that normally took a month. Once there, they destroyed the few civilian ships that hadn’t made their escape and demanded and received the planet’s surrender. It had been hoped that the Naxids might detach ships to remain in the system—detachments could be picked off later—but instead they reduced their fierce acceleration and swung through Wormhole 3 on a course that would eventually take them to Antopone. The course of the enemy raid was now clear: Zarafan-Antopone-Chijimo, and then the return to Zanshaa. It was an unambitious raid compared to those Michi Chen and Altasz had launched into Naxid space, but perhaps it was a rehearsal for others.
Now that Kangas knew where the enemy were bound, he increased his acceleration and headed for Antopone, his ships crossing paths with theGalactic and the two refugee cruisers heading the other way. Kangas wanted to arrive at Antopone ahead of the Naxids to protect the shipbuilding facilities on the planet’s ring.