Walter Williams - Logs

That much was deduction. But what was the final nail in the master rigger's coffin was the fact that the serial number on the pump and the number recorded in the 77-12 were different. So far as Martinez could tell, the number in the 77-12 was pure fiction.

"Well," Martinez said, "Rigger Second Class Francis, I suggest that you get your crew busy replacing this pump."

Francis' eyes flashed at the news of her demotion, and Martinez saw the firming of her jowls as her jaws muscles clenched.

Martinez turned to Marsden, who stood with his feet meticulously placed on a piece of dark plastic grate so as not to get coolant on his shoes.

"Who's the senior rigger now?" Martinez asked.

"Rigger/First Patil." Marsden didn't even have to consult his database for the answer.

Martinez turned back to Francis. "I will require the new department head to check every one of your entries in the 77-12. We don't want any more mysterious failures, do we?"

Francis said nothing. The humid atmosphere of the room had turned her skin moist, and droplets tracked down either side of her nose.

"You are at liberty to protest your reduction in rank," Martinez said. "But I wouldn't if I were you. If Squadron Leader Chen finds out about this, she's likely to have you strangled."

He marched out, shoes splashing in coolant, his head and wrist throbbing with every step. Marsden followed, far more fastidious about where he put his feet.

Martinez next visited the weapons bay where Gulik and Husayn were both examining the guts of the antiproton projector that had failed in the Naxid attack. The whole mechanism had been pulled from the turret and replaced, and now a post-mortem was under way, parts scattered on a sterile dropcloth that had been spread on the deck.

Gulik jumped to his feet, bracing with his chin high as Martinez approached. There were dark patches under his arms, and sweat poured down his face. Martinez hadn't seen him this nervous since Fletcher's final inspection, when he'd slowly marched past Gulik and his crew with the knife rattling at his waist.

Martinez wondered if word had already passed to Gulik about what had just happened to Francis. The noncommissioned officers were wired into an unofficial communications network, and Martinez had a healthy respect for its efficiency, but he could hardly believe it worked this fast.

Perhaps, Martinez thought, Gulik was always this nervous around higher officers.

Or perhaps he had a guilty conscience.

He called up Gulik's 77-12 on his sleeve display and quietly checked the serial numbers. The serial numbers matched, so at least Gulik wasn't yarning his log.

"Do we know what happened?" Martinez asked.

"The electron injector's packed up, my lord," Gulik said. "It's a fairly common failure, on this model particularly."

The antiprotons piggybacked on an electron beam, which kept the antiprotons contained until they hit the target, so the electron injector was a critical component of the system.

"I'll do further tests," Gulik said, "but it's probably just a matter of tolerances. These parts are machined very precisely, and they're stuck in the turret where they're subject to extremes of temperature and cosmic rays and all knows what. The turrets are normally retracted but we're keeping every point-defense weapon at full charge now, with the turrets deployed. Critical alignments can go wrong very easily."

Martinez remembered what someone had said in Command, and he said, "So it's not what happened at Harzapid?"

Gulik gave a start. Husayn answered for him, and firmly.

"Decidedly not, my lord."

Martinez sensed that a significant moment had just slipped by, somehow, but he had no idea why it was significant.

"What did happen at Harzapid?" he asked.

There was silence as both Husayn and Gulik seemed to gaze for a moment into the past, neither of them liking what they saw there.

"It was bad, my lord," Husayn said. "The Naxids were outnumbered five to one, so they tried to bluff us into surrender. They occupied Ring Command and ordered us all to stand down. But Fleet Commander Kringan organized a party to storm Ring Command, and he ordered the loyal squadrons to prepare a fight at close range with antiproton weapons.

"None of us kept the antiprotons on our ships when we were in dock-you know how touchy they can be-so Lieutenant Kosinic was sent with a party to bring antiprotons in their containment bottles. He did, but when we hooked them up to the antimatter feeders we discovered that the bottles were empty."

Martinez looked at him in surprise. "Empty?"

"The Naxids must have got into our storage compartment and replaced the full bottles with empty ones. The squadcom sent Kosinic was out again to get bottles from Imperious, which was berthed next to us, but that's when the shooting started. That's when the docking tube was hit and Kosinic was wounded."

Husayn's mouth stretched in a taut, angry grimace beneath his little mustache. "The Fourth Fleet blew itself to bits in a few minutes of close-range fire. All the Naxids ships were destroyed, but most of the loyalists were hurt, too, and some ships completely wrecked. There were thousands of deaths. But the Naxids didn't shoot at us! They knew Illustrious was helpless."

Frustration crackled in Husayn's voice. Martinez could imagine the scene in Command, Fletcher calling for firepower that simply wasn't there, the weapons officer-Husayn himself-pounding his console in fury. Kusinic racing along the docking tube with a party of desperate crouchbacks and the hand carts that carried the antiproton bottles. The long moments of helpless silence as the battle started and the crew waited for the fire that would rend their ship and kill them, followed by the horrid realization of the insult that the Naxids were flinging in their teeth, that the enemy knew that Illustrious could be of no assistance to their own side, and disdained so much as to target them.

The feeling of helplessness, Martinez thought, must have been at least as frustrating and terrifying as that of the captain of a ship pinned to a stair by heavy gee while his ship fought for its life without him.

"Captain Fletcher cast off from the ring, my lord," Husayn continued, "and maneuvered as if to attack. We were hoping draw their fire away from the others, but the Naxids still refused to respond. We hit them with our lasers, but the lasers really can't do the sort of damage antimatter can in those conditions, and…" He grimaced again. "Still they wouldn't attack us. We watched the whole battle from the sidelines. Captain Fletcher was in a perfect rage-I'd never seen him like that, never saw him show emotion before."

"Where was Squadron Commander Chen?"

"On the planet, my lord. Dinner party."

Martinez couldn't imagine Michi being happy about what had happened to Illustrious, either.

"We were very glad to finally get a swat at the Naxids at Protipanu, my lord," Husayn said. "It was good to pay them back."

"Yes," Martinez said. "Illustrious did very well at Protipanu. You all did very well."

He looked from Husayn to Gulik, who was still standing rigid, the sweat pouring down his face, his eyes staring into some internal horror.

No wonder they hadn't talked about it, Martinez thought. He had thought Illustrious had won a hard-fought victory alongside the other loyalists of the Fourth Fleet, and had assumed the cruiser had just been lucky not to suffer any damage. He hadn't known that Illustrious and its crew hadn't been a part of the fighting at all, all except for Kosinic and his little party who had been caught out of their ship.

"Very good," Martinez said softly. "I think we might institute a series of test firings and inspections to make sure the point-defense weapons won't fail when we need them."