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The sergeant's wince changed into a scowl. "Sure as hell never had no beef against Captain Justice. He shouldna had us do that, dammit. It idn't proper."
The injuries to Yuri's face caused his ensuing snort of sarcastic half-laughter to hurt. Especially his broken nose. He added that little item to his long list of grievances against Special Investigator Victor Cachat.
"Ide 'ay nod!" he wheezed. "Ma'ines an'd zuppose do bead dey own ovizuhs." He steeled himself for more pain. "'Ow iz Zha—Gabban 'Usdis—doin'?"
"She's fine, Sir," the sergeant assured him, almost eagerly. "We went as easy as—I mean, well—the Special Investigator left before we started on Captain Justice, Sir. So he wasn't there to watch. So—"
Pierce was floundering, obviously feeling trapped between human sympathy and duty—not to mention the possible Wrath of Cachat. Yuri let him off the hook. Given the difficulty of speaking, he also decided to ignore the citizen sergeant's unthinking use of the forbidden term "sir." He understood full well the word was an indication of Pierce's trust in him.
"Nedduh mine, Ziddezen Zajend. Z'okay. Iz 'uh noze boke doo?"
"Oh, no, Sir!" Yuri had to force down another laugh. The sergeant seemed deeply aggrieved at the suggestion. "Pretty a woman as she is, we wouldn't do nothing like that. Didn't knock out none of her teeth, neither. Just, you know, bruised her up good for the recorder."
Feeling two missing teeth of his own with a probing tongue—they also hurt —Yuri was pleased at the news. He'd always found Sharon Justice a very attractive woman. So much so, in fact, that on more than one occasion he'd had to remind himself forcefully of the prohibition against romantic liaisons between officers in the same chain of command. That hadn't been easy. He was a bachelor begi
The citizen sergeant began moving about the cabin, fussily tidying up here and there. As if trying, somehow, to make amends for the events of the previous day. There was something utterly ludicrous about the whole situation, and another little laugh wracked pain through Yuri's face.
"Nedduh mine, zajend," he repeated. Then, gesturing toward the door. "Wad's 'abbenin' oud deh?"
Pierce gri
He broke off, coughing a little. It was also against regulations for a Marine noncom to refer to the officers and crew of a State Security SD as "sorry worthless bastards."
Under the circumstances, Yuri decided to overlook the citizen sergeant's lapse. Indeed, with a lifted eyebrow, he invited Pierce to continue. Even went so far, in fact, as to invite the Marine to sit with a polite gesture of the hand.
For the next half an hour, Pierce regaled Radamacher with Tales of the Terror. He'd had a ringside seat at the proceedings, since he and the other Marines from the Veracity had continued to serve as Cachat's impromptu escort and ready-made police force.
"Got some StateSec people with us too, of course, making the actual arrests. But those are all okay folks. From the fleet. The Special Investigator brought 'em over from half the ships in the task force."
Yuri was puzzled. "'Ow did 'e know widge ones do ged?"
The sergeant's face flushed a little. "Well. Actually. He asked us, Sir—we Marines, I mean, especially Major Lafitte—which ones we'd recommend. If you can believe it. Then he went into Captain Justice's cabin—she's just down the corridor a ways—and cross-checked the names with her."
Yuri stared at him.
"It was weird as hell," Pierce chortled. "He went over the list with the captain just as calm as could be. Didn't even seem to notice the bandages."
No, the bastard wouldn't, Yuri thought sourly. Cachat would pass out beatings like he'd pass out any other assignment.
But there wasn't really much anger in the thought. Radamacher was just fascinated by the peculiarities of the whole thing. Cachat's actions were like a grotesque Moebius strip concocted in the mind of a torturer. First, Cachat used the Marine contingent from Sharon's own ship to beat her into a pulp. Then, he turned around and consulted with those same Marines with regard to StateSec assignments—and cross-checked the recommendations with the same woman they'd just gotten through torturing!
Utterly insane. Not simply the actions of a fanatic, but of one who was unhinged to boot. It wasn't precisely against regulations for an officer of StateSec to rely on Marines for their recommendations for StateSec staff assignments. But that was only because it never would have occurred to anyone that such a regulation was needed in the first place. It just wasn't done, that's all. As well pass regulations forbidding stars to revolve around planets!
As the days passed and the citizen sergeant continued his Tales of the Terror, however, Yuri soon realized that Cachat was not a man to concern himself with "what isn't done." Results were all that mattered to him, and—fanatic or not; unhinged or not—results he was certainly getting.
Seven officers and twenty-three crewmen of the Hector Van Dragen arrested, for starters, within the first week. Two officers and seven crewmen from the other SD, the Joseph Tilden. One of those officers and four of the crewmen subsequently executed, after Cachat finished examining the evidence found in their quarters.
Most of the officers and ratings had been arrested for routine corruption. Theft and embezzlement, mostly. Those Cachat slammed with the maximum penalties allowable under the official rules for shipboard discipline short of court-martial. But the others had been implicated in Jamka's activities. Clearly so in the case of the officer. The evidence had been fuzzier for the crew members. From what Radamacher could determine, the hapless ratings had been mainly guilty of being too closely identified as "Jamka's people."
No matter. They were all shot. By a firing squad this time, selected from StateSec members brought over from the fleet, not by Cachat himself.
Radamacher wondered how much of Cachat's ruthlessness was dictated by typical StateSec empire-building. Guilty or not, the net effect of the purge was to completely shatter any residual Jamka network, and to intimidate anyone else from forming a different informal network. Or, at the very least, to keep it well under cover. By the end of his first week in La Martine Sector, Victor Cachat had established himself as The Boss, and nobody doubted it.
As cynical as he tried to be about the matter, however, Yuri didn't really think much if any of Cachat's behavior was motivated by personal ambitions. He noted, for instance, that although Cachat had ordered and personally overseen the beatings—okay, call them "interrogations"—of half a dozen of the top ranked StateSec officers attached directly to the task force, he had left it at that after pronouncing them all i
And thank God for that. Yuri still resented his bruises, and his broken nose and missing teeth. And he resented the bruises he saw on Sharon even more—which was every day, now, since they were both still on the SD and had cabins not too far apart. Still . . .
Any danger of being accused of being a McQueen conspirator was growing more distant as each day passed. Not just for Yuri himself, but for anyone in the task force. By hammering into a pulp the StateSec officers overseeing Admiral Chin's task force—and then declaring them all i