7

Gallanti was not thrilled to see him.

"For God's sake!" she snarled, as soon as he was ushered into the stateroom she used for her command quarters when not on the bridge. "The maniac hasn't even left orbit yet and you're already here to give me grief?"

"There is no God," Radamacher informed her serenely. "Mention of the term is expressly forbidden in StateSec regulations."

That brought her up short. Her eyes rolled and Yuri could sense the woman's notorious temper rising. But he'd already gauged his tactics before entering the room, and knew what to do.

"Oh, relax, would you?" Radamacher gave her a wry smile—he had a superb wry smile; people had told him so over the years hundreds of times—and eased his way into an armchair. "For God's sake, Citizen Captain Gallanti, just once can you assume we're adults instead of kids in a schoolyard? I didn't come here to play dominance games with you."

That threw her off her stride, as he'd suspected it would. Gallanti stared at him, her mouth half-open. The stocky blonde's heavy brow was frowning more in puzzlement now than anger.

Yuri pressed the advantage. "Look, as you said: The maniac hasn't even left orbit yet. So let's take advantage of all the time we've got to get everything straightened up before he comes back. If we work together, we can see to it that by the time he returns—that'll be at least six weeks, more likely eight—not even that fanatic can find anything wrong any more. He'll blow on his way and we'll have seen the last of him."

Gallanti was as notorious for her suspiciousness as her temper. Her eyes narrowed. "Why are you being so friendly, all of sudden?"

He spread his hands. "When have I ever not been friendly? It's not my fault you don't know me. I couldn't very well invite myself over to your staff dinners, could I?" He left unspoken the rest of it. Although you could have, Exalted SD Captain—if you hadn't been such a complete snot toward every officer in the task force since you arrived on station. 

Gallanti's heavy jaws tightened. That was embarrassment, at first. But, like anyone with her temperament, Gallanti was not fond of self-doubt, much less self-criticism. So, within seconds, the embarrassment began transforming into anger.

Yuri cut it off before it built up any steam. "Let it go, will you? If you think you can't stand the maniac, try getting a beating at his hands." He fingered his still somewhat swollen jaw, opening his mouth to let her see the missing front teeth. He'd already begun regeneration treatment, but the gap was still obvious. And Yuri had rebandaged his nose before leaving his cabin, taking care to make the dressings as bulky as possible.

That did the trick. Gallanti managed a half-smile of tepid sympathy; then, flopped into the chair behind her desk.

"Isn't he something else? Where in creation did the Citizen Chairman dredge him up from? The Ninth Circle of Hell?"

"I believe that's the circle reserved for traitors," Radamacher said mildly, "which I'm afraid is the one fault you can't find in the man. Not without being laughed out of court, anyway. It's been a while since I read Dante, but if I recall correctly, intemperate zealots were assigned to a different level."

Gallanti glared at him. "Who's Dante?" Without waiting for an answer, she transferred the glare to her desktop display.

"As soon as I'm certain that bastard's into hyper-space, I'm sending off a purely blistering set of dispatches by courier ship. I can promise you that! Vesey is doing the same." Half-spitting: "We'll see what's what after they find out on Haven what the maniac's been up to!"

Radamacher cleared his throat delicately. "I would remind you of two things, Citizen Captain Gallanti. The first is that it will be at least six weeks before we can expect any answer, travel times being what they are between La Martine and the capital. I'd guess more like two months. StateSec is going to study all the dispatches carefully before they send back any reply."

She was still glaring at him. But, after a couple of seconds, even Gallanti seemed to realize that glaring at a man for simply stating well-known astrophysical facts was foolish. Grudgingly, she nodded. Then, summoning up her still-moldering anger and resentment, spat out: "And what's the second thing?"

Yuri shrugged. "I'm afraid I don't share your confidence that Nouveau Paris will be very sympathetic to our complaints."

That was a nice touch, he thought. In point of fact, Yuri Radamacher's name did not and would not appear on a single one of those "blistering dispatches." But, as he'd expected, a woman of Gallanti's mindset was always prepared to assume that everyone around her except lunatics would agree with her. So she took his casual mention of "our" complaints for good coin. That helped defuse her anger at his questioning of her judgement.

"Why not?" she demanded. "He had almost a dozen StateSec officers shot—"

"The figure is actually seven," Yuri countered mildly, "the rest were StateSec security ratings. Muscle, to put it crudely. And every single one of them was guilty—there's no doubt about this, Citizen Captain, don't think there is—of the most grotesque crimes and violations of StateSec regulations. You know as well as I do that Nouveau Paris will stamp 'fully approved' on each and every one of those summary executions."

Again, he cleared his throat delicately. "You'd do well not to forget that the Special Investigator is also—has also, I should say—sent dispatches of his own. I happen to know—never mind how—that those dispatches included a large sampling of the pornographic record chips found in the personal quarters of Jamka and his confederates. I don't know if you've seen any of those records, Citizen Captain, but I have—and I can assure you that the impact they will have on StateSec at the capital is not—not not not—going to be: 'why did Cachat blow their brains out?' The question is going to be of quite a different variety. 'Why was none of this reported prior to Cachat's arrival—especially by the commanding officers of the superdreadnoughts where the criminal activity was centered?'"

Finally, something seem to penetrate Gallanti's armor of self-righteousness. Her face paled a little. "I wasn't—damnation, it was none of my affair! I command an SD, I'm not assigned to the task force! Jamka was a people's commissioner—assigned to the task force—not someone under my command."

Try as she might, the words lacked force. Radamacher shrugged again.

"Citizen Captain Gallanti—do you mind if I call you Jillian, by the way, while we're speaking privately?"

Gallanti hesitated. Then, nodded her head brusquely. "Sure, go ahead. As long as it's private. Ah—Yuri, isn't it?"

Radamacher nodded. "Jillian, then. Look, let's face facts. We've all got our excuses, and you and I both know they aren't flimsy ones—not, at least, if you're willing to live in the real world instead of Cachat's fantasy one. But . . ."

He let the word fall into silence. Then:

"Face it, Jillian. Real world excuses always come up short against fantasy accusations whenever the fantasist can point to real crimes. So let's not kid ourselves. Cachat's rampage is going to go down very well in Nouveau Paris, don't think it won't." In a slightly cynical tone of voice: "Out of idle curiosity, I once did a textual analysis of several of our Citizen Chairman's occasional speeches to StateSec cadre assemblies. Back when he was still Director of State Security. Outside of common articles like 'a' and 'the,' do you know which word appears the most often?"

Gallanti swallowed.

"The word was rigor, Jillian. Or rigorous. So tell me again, just how sympathetic our boss is going to be when he hears us whining that the fanatic Victor Cachat was too rigorous in his punishment of deviants using StateSec rank to cover their misdeeds."

Now, Gallanti looked like she was choking on something. Yuri segued smoothly into the opening of what he thought of as "the deal." Prefacing it by sitting up straight and sliding forward in his chair. Nothing histrionic, just . . . the subtle body language of a man suggesting a harmless—nay, salutary and beneficial—conspiracy. Say better: private understanding. 

"We'll have a lot more luck with what I'm sure you raised in the way of your other complaints. It is outrageous, the way Cachat's been swapping personnel around. You can be damn sure Nouveau Paris is going to look cross-eyed at the way he's been using the Marines."

"They certainly will! 'Cross-eyed' is putting it mildly! They'll have a fit!"

Yuri waggled a hand. "Um . . . yes and no. Cachat's a sharp bastard, Jillian, don't make the mistake of underestimating him. Fanatics aren't necessarily stupid. Don't forget that he was always careful to assign an equal number of hand-picked StateSec guards to serve alongside the Marines."

Yuri saw no reason to mention that the Marines themselves, in effect, had done the handpicking. He pressed on:

"Yes, Cachat bent regulations into a pretzel. But he didn't outright break them—no, he didn't, I checked—and he'll still have the excuse that he faced extraordinarily difficult circumstances because Jamka had corrupted the normal disciplinary staff. Unfortunately, five out of the seven executed officers—and all four of the ratings—belonged to the SDs' police details. He'll claim he had no choice—and the claim isn't really all that flimsy. Not from the distance of Nouveau Paris, anyway."

Gallanti fell into gloomy silence, slumping in her chair. Then, in a half-snarl: "The whole thing's absurd. The one thing the stinkbug was supposed to do is the one thing he didn't! We still have no idea who murdered Jamka. Somehow that 'little detail' has gotten lost in the shuffle."

Yuri chuckled drily. "Ironic, isn't it? And after Cachat's rampage, we'll never know. But so what? I assume you saw the medical examiner's report, yes?"

Gallanti nodded. Yuri grimaced. "Pretty grisly business, wasn't it? No quick killing, there. Whoever did Jamka was as sadistic about it as Jamka himself. From looking at the holopics of his corpse, I'd almost be tempted to say Jamka committed suicide. Except there's no possible way he could have shoved—"

Yuri shuddered a little. "Ah, never mind, it's sickening. But the point is—you know, I know, anyone with half a brain knows—that Jamka was certainly murdered by one of his own coterie. A falling out between thieves, as it were. So when you get right down to it, who really cares any more who killed Jamka? Cachat shot the whole lot of them, and there's an end to it. Good riddance. You really think Oscar Saint-Just is going to toss in his bed worrying about it?"

Glumly, the SD captain shook her head. Even more glumly, and in a very low voice, she said: "This is going to wreck my career. I know it is, damn it. And—" Her innate self-righteousness and resentfulness began to surface again. "It's not my fault. I had nothing to do with it! If that fucking Cachat hadn't—"

"Jillian! Please." That cut her short. Yuri hurried onward. "Please. There's no point to this. My own career's on the rocks too, you know. Even when you're found 'innocent,' having an official 'rigorous interrogation' on your record is a big black mark. Worse than any on your record, when you get right down to it."

Gallanti almost—not quite—managed a smile of sympathy. Yuri decided the moment was right to strike "the deal."

This time, he slid all the way to the edge of his seat. "Look, the worst thing you can do is wallow in misery. There's still a chance to clean this up. Minimize the damage, at the very least. Cachat taking himself off on a romantic haring around after pirates and commerce raiders is the best thing we could have hoped for."

She cocked a questioning, vaguely hopeful eyebrow. Yuri gave her his very best sincere smile.

And an excellent one it was, too. Friendly, intimate without being vulgar, sympathetic; over the years, hundreds of people had told Yuri how much they appreciated his sincerity. Perhaps the strangest thing about it all—certainly in that moment—was that Yuri knew it for the simple truth. He was a sincere, sympathetic and friendly man. Using his own nature, since he was otherwise disarmed, as the only weapon at his disposal.

"I'm not a cop, Jillian. Cachat can plaster whatever labels he wants on me. I don't have the temperament for it. To cover my ass—everybody's ass—I'll find and bust up a few more pissant 'spots of corruption.' On a ship this big, there's got to be at least half a dozen illegal stills being operated by ratings."

"Ha. Try 'two dozen.' Not to mention the gambling operations."

"Exactly. So we'll fry a few ratings—slap 'em with the harshest penalties possible—while I go ahead with my real business."

"Which is?"

"I'm a commissioner, Jillian. And a damn good one. Whatever other beefs any of my superiors have ever had about me, nobody's ever given me anything but top marks for my actual work. Check my records, if you don't believe me."

That, too, was the simple truth. Radamacher didn't try to explain any of it to Gallanti, for the task would have been hopeless. By the nature of her assignment, even leaving aside her own temperament, Gallanti was a StateSec enforcer. That was how her mind naturally worked, and she'd inevitably project that onto anyone else in StateSec.

The reality was more complex. Yuri, unlike Gallanti, had spent his entire career in "fleet StateSec"—one of those handful of StateSec officers on each ship assigned to work and fight alongside the officers and ratings of the People's Navy they were officially overseeing. Many if not all of such StateSec officers, as the years passed, came to identify closely with their comrades in battle. For someone with Yuri's temperament, the process had been inevitable—and quick.

Gallanti was too dull-witted to grasp that. Oscar Saint-Just, of course, was not. He'd always understood that he held a dangerous double-edged sword in his hand. The problem was that he needed it. Because bitter experience had proven, time and again, that the StateSec commissioners who got the best results in the crucible of war were not the whiphandlers but precisely the ones like Yuri Radamacher. The ones who did not "oversee" their naval comrades so much as they served them as priests had once served the armies of Catholic Spain. Inquisitors in name, but more often confessors in practice. The people just far enough outside the naval chain of command that ratings—officers, too—would come to them for advice, help, counsel. Intercession with the authorities, often enough, if they'd fallen afoul of regs which were intolerant on paper but could somehow magically be softened at a commissioner's private word. Despite the grim "StateSec" term in his title, the simple fact was that Yuri had spent far more time over the past ten years helping heartsick young ratings deal with "Dear John" or "Dear Jane" letters than he had trying to ferret out disloyalty.

Yuri had pondered the matter, over the years. And, with his natural bent for irony, taken a certain solace in it. Whatever else the Committee of Public Safety's ruthlessness had crushed underfoot, it had not been able to transform basic human emotional reactions. Yuri doubted now if any tyranny ever could.

"So what do you want, Yuri?" Gallanti's words were gruff, but the tone was not that of a woman issuing a rebuff. It sounded more like an appeal, in fact.

"Give me free rein aboard the ship," he replied at once. "In name I'll be the 'assistant investigator' scurrying all over rooting out rot and corruption. In the real world, I'll serve you as your commissioner. I'm good at morale-building, Jillian, try me and see if I'm not. By the time Cachat gets back, I'll have a handful of 'suppressed crimes' to wave under his nose. But, way more important, we'll have a functioning capital ship again—and a crew, including all the transfers, who'll swear up and down that the good ship Hector is a jolly good ship and Cap'n Gallanti a jolly good soul."

"And what good will that do?"

"Jillian, give Victor Cachat his due. I'd do that much for the devil himself. Yes, he's a simon-pure fanatic. But a fanatic, in his own twisted way, is also an honest man. The kid's for real, Jillian. When he says 'the needs of the State,' he means it. It's not a cover for personal ambitions. If we can satisfy him that the rot's been rooted out—even that we've got things turned around nicely—he'll be satisfied and go on his way. The fact is that La Martine Sector has been a stronghold for the Republic's economy for the past few years. The fact is that you weren't personally implicated in Jamka's crimes—and Cachat said so himself, in his official report to Nouveau Paris."

"How'd you know that?" grunted Gallanti. Skepticism mixed with anxiety—and now, more than a little in the way of hope.

He gave her his best worldly-wise smile, which was just as good as any of his other smiles. "Don't ask, Jillian. I told you: I'm a commissioner. It's my job to know these things. More precisely, to make the connections so that I can know."

And, again, that was the pure and simple truth. Even under arrest and self-restricted to his cabin, a man like Yuri Radamacher could no more help "making connections" than he could stop breathing.

He knew what Cachat had said about Gallanti in his report because the SI had asked Citizen Major Lafitte for his input and the Citizen Major had mentioned it to Citizen Sergeant Pierce, and Ned Pierce had told Yuri. None too cheerfully, as it happened, because like all Marines serving on the Hector, Ned Pierce and Citizen Major Lafitte detested the SD's CO. But Yuri saw no reason to tell Gallanti that. 

It was just a fact of life; and now, finally, Yuri Radamacher accepted it entirely. People liked him and trusted him. He couldn't remember a time in his life when they hadn't—or a time when he'd ever repaid that trust except in good coin.

It was odd, perhaps, that he came to accept it at the very moment when—for the first time in his life—he was consciously plotting to betray someone. The woman sitting across the desk from him, whose confidence and trust he was doing everything possible to gain.

But . . . so be it. There was, indeed, such a thing as a "higher loyalty," no matter how cynical Yuri had gotten over the years. Something of the fanatic Cachat had rubbed off on him after all, it seemed. And if a middle-aged man like Radamacher shared none of the young Special Investigator's faith in political abstractions, he had no difficulty understanding personal loyalties. When push came to shove, he owed nothing to Citizen Captain Jillian Gallanti. In fact, he despised her for a bully and a hot-tempered despot. But he did owe a loyalty to the thousands of men and women alongside whom he'd served in Citizen Admiral Chin's task force, for years now—from Genevieve herself all the way down to the newest recruit. So, he'd use his natural skills to create a false front—and then use that front to save them from Saint-Just's murderous suspicions.

And if Citizen Captain Gallanti had to fall by the wayside in the process, stabbed in the back by her newfound "friend" . . . 

Well, so be it. If a fanatic like Cachat had the courage of his convictions, it would be nothing but cowardice for Yuri to claim to be his moral superior—yet refuse to act with the same decisiveness.

As he waited for Gallanti to fall into the trap, Yuri probed more deeply into his conscience.

Well. Okay. Some of it's just 'cause I got the hots for Sharon and I will damn well keep my woman alive. Me too, if I can manage it.  

Gallanti fell. "S'a deal," she said, extending her hand. Yuri rose, bestowed on her his very best trustworthy smile and his very best sincere handshake—both of them top-notch, of course. All the while, measuring her back for the stiletto.