“That awful Esmay Suiza,” the pivot-major said, with a toss of her head. “The one that practically sold poor Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter to the pirates.”
Barin managed not to leap over the desk and snap the girl’s neck, but it was an effort.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” he murmured.
“Well, everybody knows she hated her. And I heard Lieutenant Ferradi say that if everyone had known what she knew about Lieutenant Suiza, she’d never have been allowed near Sera Meager.”
Barin mentally moved a marker in his head to change Casea Ferradi’s label from “nuisance” to “enemy.”
“She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?” cooed the pivot-major.
“Mmm?”
“Lieutenant Ferradi. You’re lucky she likes you; she could have any man on the base.”
“She probably has,” Barin said without thinking; he looked up to find her outraged, glaring at him. “—Them all thinking about her,” he amended quickly. She held the glare long enough to let him know she wasn’t convinced, then relaxed.
“She’s a fine officer, and Chief Pell thinks so too. So does the admiral.”
Did he . . . did he indeed. Barin went out thinking hard in several directions, and nearly ran over the fine, beautiful Lieutenant Ferradi.
“Oh—Ensign—”
“Yes, sir?” He managed to smile at her.
“Have you heard anything from Lieutenant Suiza?”
“No, sir. I believe the lieutenant is on leave, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but—actually I wanted to talk to you about her.”
Now it was coming. He gripped his temper firmly by the collar, and waited.
“I know you . . . used to be friends.”
“We served together on Koskiusko,” Barin said.
“I know. And I heard you were friends. And I’m sorry, but—I think you should know that continuing that friendship would not be in your best professional interest.”
As if Ferradi cared about his professional standing, other than to take advantage of his family name.
“I have not had any contact with Lieutenant Suiza since Copper Mountain,” Barin said.
“Very wise,” she said, approving.
Barin headed back to Gyrfalcon’s berth, hoping that Captain Escovar was aboard. This time he knew when to call for help.
Chapter Seventeen
Escovar was not aboard; he was at another meeting.
“Is there something I could answer?” asked Lieutenant Commander Dockery. Barin hesitated only a moment.
“Yes, sir, quite possibly, but it would be better somewhere else.”
“Trouble?”
“Perhaps.”
“Sten, you have the bridge,” Dockery said. And to Barin, “Come on, then—we’ll use the captain’s office.”
Barin had just time to realize that he might be scuttling several careers, not just his own, when Dockery turned to him.
“Out with it, then. Found another problem with master chiefs?”
Barin’s jaw almost dropped. “As a matter of fact, sir, possibly yes. But that’s not my main concern.”
“Which is?”
Best get it out quickly, before he was tempted to soften it. “Sir, an officer from this ship has accessed records which she has no legitimate interest in, and may have given false information about someone else.”
“Hmm . . . that’s a serious charge about an indefinite—I presume you have a name for each of these?”
“Yes, sir.” Barin took a deep breath. “Lieutenant Ferradi talked a master chief named Pell—who incidentally is known to his juniors to be forgetting things this past year—into accessing Lieutenant Suiza’s legal records from the court-martial.”
“It didn’t occur to you that she might have had orders to do so? She is on Admiral Hornan’s staff for the present . . .”
“No, sir. If she’d had orders, she’d have gone through channels, not Chief Pell.”
“And you also accuse her of giving false information about Lieutenant Suiza? What kind of false information?”
“She’s said a lot of things about what Es—what Lieutenant Suiza was like in the Academy. Now I was too far behind to have witnessed any of this directly, but other people who were there don’t have the same account at all.”
Dockery pursed his lips. “I know that Lieutenant Ferradi’s been interested in you, Ensign—it’s been fairly obvious. Scuttlebutt had it that you were . . . ‘falling under her spell,’ I believe, is the term I heard used most. Are you sure this isn’t just a lovers’ quarrel you’re trying to make official business? Because if so, you’re about to be in more trouble than you were in over Zuckerman.”
“No, sir, it is not a lover’s quarrel. I have no interest in Lieutenant Ferradi and never did.”
“Mm. The other rumor was that you had been in love with Esmay Suiza—” Barin felt his face getting hot; the exec nodded. “And so the other possibility I see is that you’re accusing Lieutenant Ferradi of unprofessional behavior toward another officer because you’re still besotted with Suiza and can’t stand to hear her criticized.”
“Sir, I became . . . very fond of Lieutenant Suiza when we were both on Koskiusko. I think she’s a fine officer. We quarrelled at Copper Mountain, over what she’d said to Brun Meager”—and to him, though he wasn’t going to mention that at the moment—“and I haven’t seen her since. Whether I have a bad case of hero worship, which is what Lieutenant Ferradi’s told me, or a friendship, or—or something else, doesn’t really matter. What does, is whether the stories Ferradi’s spreading about her are true.”
“If they were true, what would you think?”
Barin felt a pain in his chest squeezing out hope. “Then, sir—I would have to change my opinion.”
“Barin, I’m going to tell you something, in confidence, because right now you need to know it. Casea Ferradi has been trouble for every commander she’s had—it’s why she’s at the back of her class’s promotion list—but she’s never quite managed to get herself thrown out. If Lieutenant Suiza hadn’t had that quarrel with Sera Meager, if Lord Thornbuckle hadn’t fastened on her as the scapegoat in this mess, no one would be paying the slightest attention to Ferradi’s accusations. Now they are—and if she’s so far overreached herself as to break regulations concerning legal paperwork, we’ve got her at last. Tell me, do you know if Koutsoudas is still running scan on your cousin’s ship?”
“I think so, sir.” Where was this leading?
“Good. We’re going to need really good scan to catch her in the act, because she’s no dummy. And by the way, good job on finding Pell. We’ve found two others here . . . though we haven’t figured out what the problem is yet.”
A half hour later, Barin was on his way to the berth of the Navarino, his cousin Heris’s ship. Heris was at home to family members—he had the distinct feeling that if he’d been an ensign named, perhaps, Livadhi or Hornan, he might have cooled his heels for an hour before getting in to see her.
“You want my scan techs sucking for you? What’s wrong with yours? Escovar’s always been able to pick good people.”
Dockery had left it to him how much to tell, but this was family. Barin made it as short as he could, emphasizing that he had thought at first it was Heris’s record Ferradi was after, in order to help Hornan wrest command of the task force from Admiral Serrano.
“Are you involved?” The emphasis clearly meant culpable as well.
“No, and yes,” Barin said. “Lieutenant Ferradi also happens to see me as her ticket to the Serrano dynasty.”
“Does she now?” Heris looked suddenly very dangerous indeed, as if a sleeping falcon had waked, and aimed its deadly gaze at a target. “And what do you think she’s done, that you need Koutsoudas to discover?”