“Yes.” Kazakov’s answer came without hesitation. “Unusually so.”
“Lady Michi’s lieutenants are fitting in? Coen and Li?”
“Yes. They’re amiable people.”
“How about Kosinic? Was he a happy member of the wardroom mess?”
Kazakov blinked in surprise. “Kosinic? He wasn’t aboard for very long and—I suppose he agreed well enough with the others, given the circumstances.”
Martinez raised his eyebrows. “Circumstances?”
“Well, he was a commoner. Not,” Kazakov was quick to add, aware perhaps that she’d put a foot wrong, “not that being a commoner was a problem, I don’t say anything againstthat, but his family had no money, and he had to live off his pay. So Kosinic had to take an advance on his pay in order to pay his wardroom dues, and he really couldn’t afford to club together with the other lieutenants to buy food stores and liquor and so on. The rest of us were perfectly happy to pay his allotment, but I think he was perhaps a little sensitive about it, and he severely limited his wine and liquor consumption, and avoided eating some of the more expensive food items. And he couldn’t afford to gamble—not,” she added, catching herself again, “that there’s high play in the wardroom—nothing like it—but there’s often a friendly game going on, for what we’d consider pocket money, and Kosinic couldn’t afford a place at the table.”
Kazakov reached for her wine and took a sip. “And then of course the mutiny happened, and Kosinic got wounded. I think perhaps the head injury changed his personality a little, because he became sullen and angry. Sometimes he’d just be sitting in a chair and you’d look up and see him in a complete fury—his jaw would be working and his neck muscles all taut like cables and his eyes on fire. It was a little frightening. This is extremely good wine, my lord.”
“I’m glad you like it. Do you have any idea what made Kosinic angry?”
“No, my lord. I don’t think the wardroom conversation was any more inane than usual.” She smiled at her own joke, and then the smile faded. “I always thought getting blown up by the Naxids was reason enough for anger. But whatever the cause, Kosinic became a lot less sociable after he was wounded, and he spent most of his time in his cabin or in the Flag Officer Station, working.”
Martinez sipped his own wine. He thought he understood Kosinic fairly well.
He himself was a Peer, and blessed with a large allowance from his wealthy family. But he was a provincial, and marked as a provincial by his accent. He knew very well the way high-caste Peers could condescend to their inferiors, or deliberately humiliate them, or treat them as servants, or simply ignore them. Even if the other officers intended no disparagement, a sensitive, intelligent commoner might well detect slights where none existed.
“Do you happen to know how Lady Michi came to take Kosinic on her staff?” Martinez asked.
“I believe Kosinic served as a cadet in a previous command. He impressed her and she took him along when he passed his lieutenant exams.”
Which was unusually broad-minded of Michi, Martinez thought. She could as easily have associated herself only with her own clients and the clients of powerful families with whom she wished to curry favor, as had Fletcher. Instead, though she came from a clan at least as ancient and noble as the Gombergs or Fletchers, she’d chosen to give one of her valuable staff jobs to a poor commoner.
Though it had to be admitted, in retrospect, that Michi’s experiment in social mobility hadn’t been very successful.
“Was Kosinic a good tactical officer?” Martinez asked.
“Yes. Absolutely. Of course, he didn’t bring in a new tactical system, the way you did.”
Martinez sipped his wine again. In spite of Kazakov’s praise, it still tasted vinegary to him. “And the warrant officers?” he asked.
Kazakov explained that Fletcher had his pick of warrant and petty officers, and had chosen only the most experienced. The number of trainees was kept to a minimum, and the result was a hard core of professionals in charge of all the ship’s departments, all of whom were of exemplary efficiency.
“But Captain Fletcher,” Martinez said, “chose to execute one of those professionals he had personally chosen.”
Kazakov’s expression turned guarded. “Yes, my lord.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
Kazakov shook her head. “No, my lord. Engineer Thuc was one of the most efficient department heads on the ship.”
“Captain Fletcher had never in your hearing expressed any…violent intentions?”
She seemed startled by the question. “No. Not at all, my lord.” Her brows knit. “Though you might ask…” She shook her head. “No, that’s ridiculous.”
“Tell me.”
The guarded look had returned to her face. “You might ask Lieutenant Prasad.” She spoke quickly, as if she wanted to speed through the distasteful topic as quickly as she could. “As you probably heard, she and the captain were intimates. He may have said things to her that he wouldn’t have…” She sighed, having finally gotten through it. “…to any of the rest of us.”
“Thank you,” Martinez said. “I’ll interview each of the lieutenants in turn.”
Though he couldn’t imagine Fletcher murmuring plans for homicide along with his endearments, assuming he was the sort of man who murmured endearments at all. Neither could he imagine Chandra keeping such an announcement secret, especially in those furious moments after she and Fletcher had their final quarrel.
“Thank you for your candor,” Martinez said, though he knew perfectly well that Kazakov hadn’t been candid throughout. On the whole he approved of the moments when she’d chosen to be discreet, and he thought he could work with her very well.
They ended the interview discussing Kazakov’s plans for her future. Her career had been planned to minimize any possible intervention by fortune: in another one of those trades so common among Peers, a friend of her family would have given her command of the frigateStorm Fury, a plan that had been detailed when both the friend and the frigate were captured by the Naxids on the first day of the mutiny.
“Well,” Martinez said, “if I’m ever in a position to do something for you, I’ll do my best.”
Kazakov brightened. “Thank you, my lord.”
The Kazakovs seemed a useful sort of clan to have in one’s debt.
After the premiere left, Martinez stoppered the wine bottle and gulped whatever was left in his glass. With his captain’s key, he opened the personnel files, intending to look at the lieutenants’ records. Then the idea struck him that Fletcher might have made a note in Thuc’s file explaining why the engineer had been executed, and Martinez went straight to Thuc’s file and opened it.
There was nothing. Thuc had been in the Fleet for twenty-two years, had passed the exam for Master Engineer eight years ago, and was aboardIllustrious for five of those years. Fletcher’s comments in Thuc’s efficiency report were brief but favorable.
Martinez read the files of the other senior petty officers and then went on to the lieutenants, looking through the files more or less at random. Kazakov, he discovered, had been fairly accurate in describing their accomplishments. What she hadn’t known, of course, were the contents of the efficiency reports Fletcher had made personally. For the most part they were dry, terse, and favorable, as if Fletcher was too grand to dole out much praise, but instead dribbled it out tastefully, like a rich sauce over dessert. About Kazakov he had written, “This officer has served as an efficient executive officer and has demonstrated proficiency in every technical aspect of her profession. There is nothing that stands in the way of her further promotion and command of a ship in the Fleet.”
A note that “nothing stands in the way” was not quite the same as Fletcher’s endorsement that Kazakov would be a credit to the service or would do a fine job in command of her own ship; but carefully guarded enthusiasm seemed to be Fletcher’s consistent style. Perhaps he hadn’t thought that praise was necessary, given that his officers were so well-connected that their steps to command had been arranged ahead of time.
After the dry asperity of Fletcher’s views of the other officers, Chandra’s report came like a thunderbolt. “Though this officer has not demonstrated any technical incompetence that has reached her captain’s attention, her chaotic and impulsive behavior has thoroughly befouled the atmosphere of the ship. Her level of emotional maturity is not in any way consistent with the high standards of the Fleet. Promotion is not indicated.”
The curiously worded first sentence managed to insert the word “incompetence” without justifying its inclusion, and the rest was pure poison. Martinez stared at this for a long moment, then looked at the log to check the date at which Fletcher had last accessed the file. It had been at 2721 hours the previous evening, a mere six hours before he was killed.
His mouth went dry. Chandra had ripped apart her relationship with Fletcher, and after thinking about it for two days, Fletcher fired a rocket at Chandra with every intention of blowing up her career.
After which, some hours later, Fletcher was killed.
Martinez thought the sequence through carefully. For this to be anything other than a coincidence, Chandra would have had to know that Fletcher put a bomb in her efficiency report. He checked Fletcher’s comm logs for the evening and found that he’d made only one call, to Command, possibly for a situation report before going to bed. Martinez checked the watch list and discovered that it hadn’t been Chandra on watch at the time, but the sixth lieutenant, Lady Juliette Corbigny.
So there was no evidence that Chandra would have known the contents of her efficiency report. Not unless Fletcher had made a point of looking for her and telling her in person.
Or unless Chandra had some kind of access to documents sealed under Fletcher’s key. She was the signals officer, after all, and she was clever.
Martinez decided that this theory had too much whisky and wine in it to make any sense, and he failed in any case to successfully imagine Chandra wrestling the fully grown Fletcher to his knees and then banging his head repeatedly on his desk.
He rose and stretched, then looked at the chronometer: 2721. At this exact time, Fletcher had made his last cold-blooded alterations to Chandra’s fitness report.
The coincidence chilled him. He left his office and took a brief march along the decks, circling back to his own door. He passed the door of the captain’s cabin, which was closed, then found himself turning back to it. It opened to his key. He stepped in and called for light.