“Because,” Martinez continued, picking carefully through his thoughts, “in the end Captain Fletcher only knew what you told him. If it looked all right, and what he was told was plausible, then how would he ever find out if he’d been yarned or not?
“Particularly because Fleet standards require that equipment exceed all performance criteria. Politicians have complained for centuries that it’s a waste of money, but the Control Board has always required that our ships be overbuilt, and I think the Control Board’s been right.
“But whatthat meant,” he said, “is that department heads could, with a little extra maintenance, keep our equipment going far longer than performance specs required.” He looked up for the first time, and saw Strode watching him with a kind of thoughtful surprise, as if recalculating every conclusion about Martinez that he’d ever reached. Francis was staring straight ahead of her, her graying hair partly concealing her face. Cho seemed angry.
Gulik was pale. Martinez could see the pulse beating in his throat. When he saw Martinez studying him, he reached for his glass and took a large gulp of the wine.
“If you keep the old equipment going,” Martinez said, “and if you know where to go, you can sell the replacement gear for a lot of money. Things like blowers and coolers and pumps can bring a nice profit. Everyonelikes Fleet equipment, it’s so reliable and forgiving and overbuilt. And they were gettingthis stuff new, right out of the box.”
He looked at Francis’s scowling profile. “I checked the turbopump that failed at Arkhan-Dohg—using thecorrect serial number, not the number that Rigger Francis tried to yarn me with—and I found out the pump was supposed to have been retired three years ago. Someone had been keeping it going long after it should have been sold as scrap.”
Martinez turned to Gulik. Sweat was pouring down the weaponer’s face. He looked as deadly sick as he had been on the morning of Fletcher’s last inspection, as the captain stalked toward him with the knife dangling at his waist.
“I also checked the serial number of the antiproton gun that failed in the same battle, and that was supposed to have been retired thirteen months ago. I hope that whoever sold the replacement wasn’t selling it to someone intending to use it as a weapon.”
“It wasn’t me,” Gulik croaked. He wiped sweat from his upper lip. “I don’t know anything about this.”
“Whoever did it,” Martinez said, “didn’t intend to endanger the ship. We weren’t at war.Illustrious had been docked in Harzapid for three years without so much as shifting its berth. The heavy equipment was moving on and off the ship all the time, moving through the locked storage room where substitutions could be made without anyone being the wiser.”
Martinez turned to look down the line of petty officers. “In order to work this scheme,” he said, “you’d need that storage room. You’d also need the services of a first-rate machinist, with access to a complete machine shop, so that the old equipment could be rehabilitated before it was reinstalled.”
Strode turned to look thoughtfully at the master machinist. Gawbyan’s lips had thinned to a tight line across his fleshy face. His mustachios were brandished like tusks. One large, fat-fingered hand had closed into a fist around the stem of his wineglass.
“So far, so good,” Martinez said. “Our happy band of felons were making a profit. But then they took on some partners. And the partners were Naxids.”
That surprised some of them. Yau and Cho stared. Strode’s mouth dropped open.
“Specifically,” Martinez said, “the Naxid frigateQuest, which was berthed next toIllustrious on the ring station. I expect the gang knew the Naxid petty officers informally before anyone mentioned the possibilities of mutual profit. And then they began using one another’s facilities and swapping parts with one another, which is how equipment from theQuest ended up aboardIllustrious.
“Now in order to exchange parts, the codes for the storage areas had to be exchanged as well. And that didn’t work out so well, because the Naxids involved somehow got theextra codes for the antiproton storage areas—maybe they came up with a plausible story of needing to exchange antiproton bottles, or maybe they just hid a camera where they could get a view of the lock so they could record the combination—but the result was that shortly before the Naxid rebellion, all of our antiproton bottles were exchanged for empty ones.”
Theour was deliberate, even though Martinez hadn’t been there. In war there was us and them, and Martinez wanted to make it clear who was which.
“The result was thatIllustrious was helpless to defend itself in the battle, and unable to aid our comrades. I’m sure you all remember what that was like.”
They did. He watched as they relived their helplessness, as anger blotched their faces, as jaw muscles clenched at the memory of humiliation.
“The bastards,” Nyamugali said. Hatred burned in her eyes. “The bastards,” she repeated.
Usandthem, Martinez thought. Very good, signaler.
“Illustrioussurvived the battle,” Martinez said, “no thanks to the thieves. But the Naxid rebellion left them with a problem. Before the war, they were felons; but once shots were fired, they weretraitors. And while the penalty for theft from the state can be dire under the Praxis, the cost of being found a traitor is much, much worse.
“The thieves’ problems increased,” Martinez said, “when an officer launched his own, personal investigation of how the antiproton bottles turned up empty. Maybe his injuries had turned him into an obsessive, or maybe when he was running into the storage area to fetch the bottles, he’d seen something that made him suspicious. But once Kosinic started conducting his own equipment inspections—lifting access plates and checking the machine spaces—it was clear that he was going to find the evidence that would condemn our ship’s clique. So Kosinic had to die.”
“It was Thuc.” Gawbyan’s voice came out in a half-strangled croak. “Thuc killed Kosinic because of the cult. You said so yourself.”
“I was both right and wrong,” Martinez said. “Thucdid kill Kosinic. But not because Thuc was a cultist. Kosinic was killed because Thuc was a thief, and Thuc may not have acted alone.”
There was a moment of silence. Somewhere down the table, Master Data Specialist Zhang tossed back her glass of wine, then reached for a bottle and refilled it.
“Kosinic’s death was ruled accidental, as it was meant to be,” Martinez continued. “All continued well for the conspirators, until the worst possible thing happened. Captain Fletcher himself grew suspicious. Maybe it was his turn to wonder how onlyhis antiproton bottles, of all those in the Fourth Fleet, had turned up empty; or maybe he began to realize the weakness in his own system of inspections; or maybe he grew offended when he discovered that a gambling ring composed of high-ranking petty officers was skinning a group of recruits in the mess hall every single night.”
That accusation struck home, Martinez saw. Even those who weren’t a part of the gambling had to know about it, and most of them had the decency to look embarrassed.
“Captain Fletcher was a proud man,” Martinez said. “His pride had already been offended when his ship was disarmed in a crucial battle. That was the sort of thing that would have launched an official investigation ifIllustrious hadn’t been so badly needed in the emergency—and maybe there would have been an investigation anyway if Fletcher hadn’t been so well connected, I don’t know.
“That his ship had not only been humiliated at Harzapid, but was also home to a gang of traitorous thieves, was a further blow to the captain’s pride. Any kind of official investigation would reveal how badly Captain Fletcher had let things get out of hand.That would be a black mark that neither his career or his pride would survive.