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Chapter Fifty
"You do realize, Skipper, that you're shooting craps with your career?"
"Nonsense, Ansten." Terekhov shook his head with a half-smile, but FitzGerald wasn't buying it.
"You told me, once, that you might need me to warn you that what you had in mind was a little risky," the XO reminded him. "Well, the Sollies're going to go ape-shit... and that may be the good news!"
The captain and his exec sat in Hexapuma 's number two pi
"I think the admiralty courts call this 'piracy,'" he said.
"Nonsense," Terekhov replied airily. "This is a simple and obvious case of salvage of an abandoned vessel."
"Which you arranged to have 'abandoned' in the first place!"
Terekhov was gazing out the viewport, watching Copenhagen draw steadily closer. Privately, he was prepared to admit FitzGerald had a point. Several of them, in fact. But what he was prepared to admit to himself was quite different from what he was prepared to admit to anyone else.
"Another thing you might want to think about, Skipper," FitzGerald said, in the tone of the man looking for a telling argument, "is the amount of grief you may be buying for Montana when the Sollies find out the part Suttles agreed to play in this little charade."
"President Suttles is showing a perfectly reasonable and prudent concern, under the circumstances, Ansten." Terekhov's expression was that of someone widows and orphans could safely trust with their final pe
"Given the fact that a Solarian-registry vessel was apprehended in the very act of supplying illegal weapons to terrorists on his planet, President Suttles has every right to be concerned. Since there was a second Solarian-registry vessel in orbit at exactly the same time, and since Kalokainos Shipping and the Jessyk Combine are known to have coordinated their interests in several areas of the Verge, the discovery that Maria
"And you think that... fairy tale is going to convince the League Suttles didn't have a thing to do with the rest of this?" FitzGerald gestured at Copenhagen again, as the pi
"I think that, either way, it isn't going to matter," Terekhov said much more seriously. FitzGerald looked at him, and he shrugged. "If the a
The pi
FitzGerald sat studying the captain's profile and trying to think of a fresh argument which might bring Terekhov to his senses. It wasn't that he didn't understand what the other man had in mind, or even that he disagreed with Terekhov's suspicions or the captain's conviction that something had to be done to prove or disprove what he feared. It was the method Terekhov had selected... and, perhaps even more, what FitzGerald suspected the captain had in mind if his investigation confirmed his worst fears.
The green light came on above the airlock's i
"Time to get your people on board."
"Skipper, at least send one of the other ships straight to Spindle," FitzGerald half-blurted, but Terekhov shook his head.
He was gazing back along the center aisle, watching Aikawa Kagiyama. The midshipman looked better, but his shoulders still hunched, as if they were bearing up under a burden of guilt, and Terekhov was worried about him. That was one reason he'd assigned Aikawa to FitzGerald's party.
Lieutenant MacIntyre would be along as FitzGerald's engineer, with Lieutenant Olivetti as his astrogator and Lieutenant Kobe to handle his communications. That was as many officers as Terekhov could spare, but it was still going to leave FitzGerald shorthanded, since only Olivetti was watch-qualified. MacIntyre and Kobe were both junior-grade lieutenants, capable enough in their specialties, but with limited experience. In fact, MacIntyre had something of a reputation for being sharp-tongued and waspish with enlisted perso
"Admiral Khumalo's going to think you should've sent word directly to him, Sir," FitzGerald said flatly, in his strongest statement of disagreement yet.
Terekhov looked back at him, touched by the concern in his executive officer's expression.
"Thank you for worrying, Ansten," he said quietly, "but the decision's made. I only have three hyper-capable units, aside from Hexapuma herself-and, of course, Copenhagen . I can't spare any of them for a direct flight to Spindle, but Ericsson will continue on to Spindle from Dresden. She'll deliver my complete report to the Admiral and the Provisional Governor."
"But— "
"I think we should move on to something else," Terekhov said firmly, and FitzGerald closed his mouth. He looked for a moment at the CO about whose resolution he'd nursed such reservations when they first met, six months before, and knew there was no point in arguing.
"Yes, Sir," he said finally, and Terekhov smiled gently and patted him on the forearm.
"Good. And now, let's get your people aboard your new command. You've got a lot to do before you break orbit."
Aleksandra Tonkovic stood with a welcoming smile as her butler ushered Tomaz Zovan into the library of her Karlovac townhouse.
"Tomaz," she greeted, holding out her hand.
"Madam President," he replied as he took it, and her smile turned into a slight frown at the unexpected formality. Zovan was a Democratic Centralist and a forty-T-year veteran of Parliament. She'd known him literally since childhood, and if he'd never been one of the most brilliant intellects Parliament had ever known, he'd always been a loyal, dependable wheel-horse for the Party and her own administration. As such, he was accustomed to addressing her by her given name, at least in private.
"Why so formal, Tomaz?" she asked, after a moment. "I understood this was to be a social visit."
"I wasn't fully confident of the security of my com when I had my secretary make the appointment, Madam President," he replied, and grimaced. "Rajkovic and Basaricek swear they aren't using Manty technology to monitor all calls from the Nemanja Building, but-"
He broke off with a shrug, and Tonkovic's face tightened.
"Surely not even he would go that far!"
"Madam President," Zovan said, deliberately emphasizing the title, "how can we be sure of that? He hasn't returned the seal of office to you, has he? Doesn't it seem likely at least part of the reason he hasn't is to keep you from finding out exactly what he's been up to? What he's still up to?"
Tonkovic started to protest that Zovan was being u
Besides, she hadn't needed the official return of her authority to monitor what was happening inside "his" Cabinet. Mavro Kanjer and Alenka Mestrovic kept her fully informed on anything Rajkovic said at Cabinet meetings, and Kanjer, as Justice Secretary, would certainly have known about any communications taps the Manticoran detachment from Spindle was maintaining.