"My suspicion is that the captain got caught off-balance during the course change early this morning. There was one at 03:46. There was a moment of weightlessness, and then when acceleration resumed he was caught wrong-footed. Or maybe he was floating weightless in the room, and resumption of gravity caught him by surprise. Doctor Xi might be able to confirm the timing."
Michi saw Martinez' surprised look out of the corner of her eye. "Captain Martinez?" she said. "Did you have a question?"
Martinez was startled. "No, my lady," he said quickly. "I just remembered that I woke during that course change. I wonder… if I heard something."
He groped through his memory, but failed to grasp whatever it was that had brought him awake.
"It was most likely the zero-gravity alarm that woke you up," Kazakov said.
Martinez surrendered his quest through his memories. "Very possible, my lady."
Michi returned her attention to Garcia. "Was the captain dressed?" she asked.
"No, my lady. He wore pajamas, a dressing gown, and slippers."
"I have no more questions," Michi said. She glanced at Martinez and Kazakov. "Is there anything else?"
"I have a question," Martinez said. "Did you take any notice of what the captain was working on?"
"Working?"
"If he was in his office, I'd suppose he'd be working."
"He wasn't working at anything. The display wasn't turned on, and there were no papers on the desk."
"Where was his captain's key?"
Garcia opened his mouth, closed it, and opened again. "I don't know, my lord."
"Was it slotted into the desk?"
"I don't think so."
Martinez looked at Michi. "That's all," he said. "I think."
Michi turned to the petty officer. "Thank you, Garcia," she said.
He braced and made his way out. Michi gave Martinez a look. "That was good thinking, about the captain's key. It's got access to practically everything." She turned to her desk and began entering codes. "I'll cancel the key's privileges."
This proved to be unnecessary, as the next person to report was Doctor Xi, who put Captain Fletcher's key on the desk in front of the squadron commander.
"I found this on a cord around his neck," Xi said.
Lord Yuntai Xi was a small man with a well-tended white beard, salt-and-pepper hair that hung over his collar, and a little pot belly. The Xi clan were clients of the Gombergs and he had known the captain from boyhood. He spoke in a steady tenor voice, but there was a deep sadness in his brown eyes.
"Because we've spent most of the last hours at general quarters, I've been able to conduct only a superficial investigation. There is a substantial depression on the right side of the skull, and the skin is torn, and skull fracture is the obvious cause of death. There are no other wounds. I made a small incision under the ribs on the right side and inserted a thermometer into the liver, and from that I calculate that the time of death was 04:01, plus or minus half an hour."
04:01 was only seven minutes after the change of course that might have caused the captain's stumble and death.
"Thank you, lord doctor," Michi said. "I think in view of the questions that will inevitably be raised, I think an autopsy will be required."
Xi closed his eyes and sighed. "Very well, my lady."
After Xi left, Michi took up Fletcher's key and held the thin plastic strip thoughtfully in her hand.
"Do you wish me to make an announcement to the ship's company?" Martinez asked.
"No. I'll do it." She tossed the key into the rubbish. "That's a bad coincidence," she said.
"Yes, my lady," said Kazakov. Her expression was thoughtful.
"Coincidence?" Martinez repeated.
"First Kosinic," Kazakov explained, "and then Captain Fletcher."
Kosinic had been Lady Michi's first tactical officer, and unusually for a staff officer had been a commoner, not a Peer. He had died early in Chenforce's journey from Harzapid to Zanshaa, and his death provided an opening on the staff that Martinez had jumped to fill; and he joined the squadron later, at Seizho.
"Coincidence?" Martinez said again. "I don't understand what you mean by coincidence. I thought Lieutenant Kosinic died from wounds received at Harzapid."
"No." Michi's glare was savage. "He fell and hit his head."
Martinez returned to his cabin to find his orderly Alikhan, assisted by his other servants Espinosa and Ayutano, were packing his belongings.
Alikhan turned to him as he paused in the doorway. He was a tall, iron-haired man, a thirty-year veteran who had retired with the rank of Master Weaponer, and who had returned to the Fleet in Martinez' service.
"I presume we will be moving to the captain's cabin, my lord," he said.
"I suppose we will." Martinez hadn't actually got that far in his thinking.
Nor was there any point in wondering how Alikhan had known of the vacancy in the captain's quarters. Even though no announcement had been made, everyone on the ship might well know by now.
"We've removed your staff tabs from all your tunics except for the one you're wearing now," Alikhan said. "If you'd care to give me your jacket, my lord?"
Martinez changed into another tunic and stepped into his sleeping cabin. Alikhan and his mates had nearly finished the job, remarkably efficient considering the amount of gear an officer was supposed to carry with him from one posting to the next.
"Are the captain's belongings also being packed?" he asked.
"Everything but what was in his office," said Alikhan. "There's a constable on guard there."
"Right," Martinez said. He turned, left his cabin, buttoned up his collar, and marched down the corridor to Fletcher's office. The constable there braced as he entered.
"Come with me, constable," he told her, and walked through the office, deliberately turning his eyes from the desk with the blood and the scrapings of Fletcher's scalp. He entered Fletcher's sleeping cabin, stopped in the doorway, and gaped.
Something Chandra said had led him to conclude that he'd find erotica on Fletcher's walls, but Fletcher hadn't adorned his private room with anything so ordinary. In place of the bright tile work or classically balanced frescos Fletcher had placed elsewhere on his Illustrious, in the sleeping cabin the walls were paneled in ancient dark wood. The wood was rough-hewn and scarred and had never been painted or polished. Presumably it had been fireproofed as Fleet regulations required, but otherwise it looked as if it had been acquired from some timeworn ruin of a house, a timbered hulk survived from a distant, desolate dark age. The ceiling panels might have been equally as old but were in a different style, dark wood again and roughly hewn, but polished to a mellow glow. The floor was laid with mud-colored tiles with geometrical patterns in faded yellow. Lights were recessed into crude copper sconces. Small dark old pictures sat on the walls in metal frames that winked dully of gold or silver.
Dominating the far wall was the life-sized figure of a man, cast apparently in porcelain. The man had been savagely tortured and then hung on a tree to die. Cuts and blood and the marks of burning tongs were vivid in the translucent porcelain flesh and rendered in immaculate detail by the artist. Despite the many wounds and the agonized posture, the clean-shaven face of the man was serene and unearthly, with unnaturally large dark eyes that wrapped partly around the sides of the head. His hair had been braided in long ringlets that hung to his shoulders. As Martinez took a step closer, he saw that the figure had been lashed by metal bands to what appeared to a chunk of a perfectly genuine tree.