The Serrano Succession (77 page)

"We rotate bunk and floor assignments," she said. "You're numbers nine and ten, so I've redone the rotations. Six nights out of ten, each person gets a bunk. Four nights, the floor. What we did was put numbers in a pile, and draw them out—what was left was yours. You're four, Miranda, in the rotation, and Cecelia, you're nine. We're starting fresh, so that means Miranda has a bunk the next four days. Cecelia, you have the floor."

"But she worked harder," Miranda said. Chief Jones cocked an eye at Cecelia.

"That's all right," Cecelia said. "I'm tired enough to sleep on anything."

"Good. Pipe down, everyone."

Despite what she'd said, Cecelia found the floor hard and unforgiving, with a nasty cold draft. No matter what position she lay in, something hurt, mostly a fresh bruise. She slept, off and on, but it was nothing like a real rest.

She woke to a clangor that turned out to be the guards hammering on metal buckets.

"Rise and shine! Get off those bunks, you lazy bums!"

After some days of this, the guards abruptly handed them mops and sponges. "Use these—you've got more to clean than just this head, and the way you work, it'd take you a month with rags." After they'd cleaned the guards' latrine, they were taken out of the brig area and down the corridor. Cecelia glanced through doorways they passed and saw stacked bunks in rows. Crew housing? It must be. The guards kicked open a door into a huge tiled room . . . urinals on this wall, toilet stalls on that, rows of shower stalls, rows of sinks. "Start at that end, and don't miss anything!" one ordered.

"And you'll need these," the other said. He unlocked a cabinet in which were toilet bowl brushes and jugs of chemicals labelled for their intended use.

Cecelia headed for the far end and dipped a brush in a toilet bowl; Miranda, without saying a word, went to the urinals. Aside from choosing a urinal she'd already cleaned to use, the guards didn't harrass them that day. Cecelia scrubbed, polished, mopped, and cleaned, as if she'd been born a janitor. The guards lounged near the door, clearly bored.

Within a few days they were spending all day every day cleaning four latrines—the guards', and three others on the crew deck. Cecelia was able to describe to Chief Jones, in detail, what equipment was being stored where: exactly what chemicals were in the equipment closets where they picked up and returned mops, brooms, sweep-vacs, brushes, and sponges, exactly how many people were usually around in each corridor and head (she'd finally taken to using the military term, when the Chief kept reminding her of it).

Day by day, she brought in more information, a snippet at a time . . . and day by day, their guards became more and more bored. To amuse themselves, they occasionally dirtied an area the women had cleaned and demanded that it be cleaned again, and as they'd decided the women feigned exhausted submission. That wasn't much fun; the guards began sneaking off singly. They never actually left the women alone and unwatched, but they weren't anywhere near as alert as before. Cecelia had time to think. And one sleep shift, she told Chief Jones what had occurred to her, the answer to a question that had puzzled her since her capture.

"I know what they want you alive for," Cecelia said.

Chief Jones shrugged. "Prisoner exchange . . . ransom . . ."

"No. They want you for prey."

Chief Jones stared at her, expressionless except for the slight widening of her eyes. "Prey."

"When I was on Sirialis, when Admiral Lepescu was killed—when Heris Serrano shot him—that's what he was doing. Hunting people. As sport."

The Chief's eyes narrowed and focussed far behind Cecelia's face. "They want a hunt, do they?" Then she refocussed on Cecelia's face, and her mouth widened slowly to a feral grin. "Fine. We'll give them a hunt . . . we start now. Here."

Cecelia had been prepared for shock, for anger, but not for this almost glee. "But—" she started but Jones shook her head.

"No. There is only one answer. It must not be their hunt, but ours."

R.S.S.
Indefatigable

Heris Serrano, having finally got her ship in order—or mostly in order—explained their mission.

"We're looking for mutineers by watching jump points and looking for out-of-range ansible transmissions. We engage and destroy mutineers, change out the recognition codes on ansibles and system defenses. If we find minefields, we'll clear them."

"What if they leapfrog us?" Seabolt asked.

"They may, but if we work our way through the jump points in between, we should pick up their trail before that happens. That was the reason for rushing crews onto ships and getting them into space, to move into this area and interdict their movement. That still gives them a lot of space, but at least it protects our most vulnerable civilians."

"Do you think they'd attack civilians, Captain?"

"I imagine they will, unless all they wanted was to run off and set up somewhere on their own. But so far no one's reported direct commmunication with them. All we have is that one report from
Vigor
, which had the sense to run like a rabbit with the distress message when it realized there was trouble. By the time we come out of jump, I expect to hear more. If they were agents of a foreign power—"

"The Black Scratch," someone muttered.

"The Benignity or any other," Heris corrected. "I suppose someone might even have fallen in love with the lifestyle of a NewTex religious fanatic." There was a chuckle from the younger officers. "My point is, it's too early to form conclusions about what these mutineers are like, except dangerous. We know they took over the Copper Mountain orbital station and freed prisoners from the high-security brig. It's our job to keep them penned up until someone figures out who they are and how to deal with them."

"Captain, won't this concentration leave border defense in jeopardy?"

"As I understand it, units are being pulled only from friendly borders. Nobody seriously thinks the Lone Star Confederation or the Guerni Republic or the Emerald Worlds want to invade us. There may be more smuggling than usual, but we can stand that."

Seabolt lingered when the others left. "I'm worried about security," he said.

"In what way, Commander?" Heris had learned not to assume she knew what his concerns were.

"Well, as you know—" Heris repressed a sigh. Seabolt insisted on starting off by telling her what she knew—what anyone with a brain knew—before finally coming to his point, and nothing she'd done had cured him of it so far. "As you know, there's a mutiny."

"I had gathered that," Heris said. "And your point is?"

"This crew is full of people with no shipboard experience—" Something else she already knew, and he himself was an example. "We don't know if they're qualified," Seabolt said, and hurried on, perhaps warned by her expression. "We don't know if they're part of the conspiracy. Since everything's going smoothly now, I want to start working on their dossiers. Did you know we have five people aboard who belong to the Church of Unified Brethren, and they have been holding meetings in a squad bay?"

Heris said, "No."

"It's true. And there was an advisory out only six months ago about all religious groups, that they might harbor extremists—"

"I mean, no, you may not start witch-hunting. I did know about Corporals Sennis and Solis, and Pivots Mercator, Januwitz, and Bedar . . . they're not extremists, and the Unified Brethren have never been any problem."

"But Captain—"

"Commander, everything is going as smoothly as it is—not nearly as smoothly as it should—because I am working very hard to find and nurture those who have competence. Among those people with competence is, for instance, Petty Major Tanira, who is also one of the Unified Brethren—there are at least fifty, not five, aboard. Tanira is the reason we didn't have a level three incident when some idiot clerk out of your former office didn't see why a valve had to be shut to three point two exactly. I will not have you upsetting him, or any of the others, on the basis of some crackpot report generated a long way from real ships or real combat."

"But Captain—"

"Is that clear, Commander?"

"Yes, but—but I must respectfully disagree."

"You can disagree all you want, but you will not—repeat
not
—go digging around making people feel that they're not trusted. We may have a would-be mutineer aboard; if we do, the best way to make that person try something is to create distrust and disaffection among everyone else. We may have a Benignity spy, or a serial killer, or a person whose idea of fun is being thrashed with dead snakes by someone wearing green paint—any of those—but in all those cases, until something definite happens, our best strategy is to build up this crew. And building up the crew starts with building their competence—which is why we're holding double shifts of training—and their confidence in their commanders."

"You're . . . you're just like they said," Seabolt blurted.

"And how was that?" Heris asked.

"Serranos," he said. "All of you. You won't listen to anybody else, you always think you know best . . ."

Heris felt the satisfaction of a cat which had the mouse firmly between its paws. "Commander, aboard a ship the captain
does
know best. By definition. Check your regulations: it's in my job description. If you act against my express orders,
that
—" she let her voice grow louder "—is mutiny, Commander. You are walking a very thin edge."

He turned pale, and sweat glistened on his forehead. "I didn't mean—of course I wasn't—I just—"

"You are dismissed," Heris said.

"I . . . ah . . . yes, sir." Seabolt left.

If only she had someone, anyone, to put in his place . . . but she didn't. She knew she wasn't at her best with his personality type—they annoyed her even when they were right—but she would have to find some way of dealing with him.

Terakian Fortune
, in passage
from Trinidad to Zenebra

Goonar Terakian had continued his occasional chats with Simon the priest, whenever he had time and didn't want to let himself brood about Betharnya and the impossibility of asking her to marry him. They had gone from Simon's history (which seemed unbearably dull to Goonar: a celibate life among books and scholars?) to Goonar's. Simon seemed to find the life of a merchanter captain as unattractive as Goonar found Simon's, commenting that poor Goonar never had time to think a thought all the way through. Goonar forbore to mention that thinking thoughts all the way through had led Simon to a death sentence, and turned the conversations back to religion and politics. Simon seemed convinced that the Familias Regnant's policy of religious toleration would lead straight to anarchy and immorality.

Goonar felt his neck getting hot, as it often did around Simon. "That's a nasty thing to say. Do you think I'm immoral?"

"No, Captain, not that I've seen . . ." Simon never got upset, that Goonar could tell. "But I don't see how it can work in practice."

"It's a matter of respect," Goonar said. "We respect the other beliefs—"

"How can you respect something when you know it's wrong?"

Goonar scowled. "I don't know it's wrong. I may think it's wrong—and in fact, I do think a lot of the religions I've heard about don't make sense—but that doesn't mean I can't act in a civilized way about them. If you want to believe—oh, let's say, you believe that a two-headed turtle created your planet—why should I argue with you? I think it's silly, but then most people believe some silly things. My cousin would tell you that my not wanting to marry again is silly."

"But peoples' behavior depends on their beliefs; you can't trust someone's behavior if they think it's all right to do wrong things."

"I think you're wrong—at least in part," Goonar said. "Look, a trader sees a lot—I know that some people use their beliefs, whatever they are, to make themselves better—kinder, more honest, more faithful, more responsible. Others use their beliefs as an excuse to lie, cheat, steal, and murder—all they have to do is tell themselves the other fellow isn't of their faith, and that makes it all right. So they say. Same beliefs, different people. And the good people can be found everywhere, believing all sorts of different things, and so can the bad. What I think is, religion makes a good person better and a bad person worse."

Simon sat in silence, then finally shook his head. "I can't agree, but you've posed a difficult thesis . . . it will take me awhile to work it out. I would have to say, to start with, that some beliefs would make anyone worse—"

"True. Now you take the Bloodhorde—you know about the Bloodhorde? All this thinking that only strength matters, that's going to lead to trouble. But the people who emigrate to Aethar's World are already that sort of person—people who are bullies and want to hang out with other bullies and feel good about themselves. I suppose it could be different with their children, who never know any difference. But the religions I do know about, they all hold up many of the same things as good: kindness, honesty, and so on."