The Serrano Connection (67 page)

Brun looked at the mug holding her ale, suddenly feeling almost sick. Had she been drinking from . . . ? No, it wasn't
Paradox
. But now that its frosting had melted, she could see it was etched with some design. She squinted slightly. R.S.S.
Balrog
.

She had been drinking from dead men's cups. She was sitting on . . . a seat made from salvaged bits . . . and what bits? Her elbows rested on a table made of . . . she wasn't sure what, but she was now sure it was something that had been part of a living ship, and had been salvaged from a wreck. She looked for clues—and there, in a dull-finished plaque set into the tabletop next to the menu screen, she found it. R.S.S.
Forge
, enlisted bunk 351. A tiny button to one side caught her eye; she pressed it.

The menu screen blanked, replaced by a historical note: R.S.S.
Forge
had been lost thirty-two years before, in combat with a Benignity strike force; all hands had died. This fragment had been salved twenty-eight years ago, and identified by the stamped part number (still on the underside of the table); at the time of the ship's death, enlisted bunk 351 had been assigned to Pivot Lester Green.

The table's pedestal, the note went on, was formed of a piece of shielded conduit from the same ship; the two chairs were both from
Forge
, but one was from the enlisted mess and the other had been that of the senior weapons tech serving the aft starboard missile battery. The five people who had taken that position during
Forge
's final battle were all listed: Cpl. Dancy Alcorn, Sgt. Tarik Senit, Cpl. Lurs Ptin, Cpl. Barstow Bohannon, Sgt. Gareth Meharry.

Brun's breath caught. Bad enough that all the names were listed, real people who had lived real lives and died a real death. But Meharry . . . she had known Methlin Meharry . . . was this a relative? A . . . parent? Aunt? Uncle?

Each name was linked, she realized, to some other information. She didn't want it; she didn't want those names to be any more real than they already were. But Meharry—she had to know. She activated the link.

Gareth Meharry had been twenty-six when he died; his family tree, spread across the screen, with Fleet members in blue, was more blue than gray. His parents (both now deceased, one in combat) had been Fleet; of his four sibs, two were active-duty Fleet, and two were married to Fleet members. Methlin Meharry was his sister . . . hard to think of that tough veteran as anyone's sister. One of his nieces—her niece too—was named after her. So there would be another Methlin Meharry someday, and with both parents, and aunts and uncles, in Fleet, there was every chance that she would go into Fleet.

Sudden curiosity—and an escape from the weight of tragedy that was making it hard to concentrate—sent Brun back to the main menu. Sure enough, below the lists of drinks and food, she found data access choices. From this table, she could check on the publicly accessible records of anyone in Fleet.

Esmay—she wondered if there were other Suizas in Fleet. She entered the name and waited. Up on the screen came only one name, and Fleet's choice of data for public consumption. Name . . . she had not known that Esmay's full name was Esmay Annaluisa Susannah Suiza. Planet of origin: Altiplano. Family background . . . Brun caught her breath. In a few crisp sentences, she was informed that the Suiza family was one of the three most prominent on Altiplano . . . that Esmay's father was one of the four senior military commanders . . . that her uncles were two of the others, and that the fourth was considered to be a Suiza choice. That the military influence on Altiplano's government was "profound."

Brun tried to tell herself that a senior military commander on a backwater planet was nothing special—her father's militia, back on Sirialis, was just a jumped-up police force. Its commander, though given the title "General," had never impressed her as the regulars of Fleet did. But Altiplano . . . she read on . . . had no Seat in Council. It had no Family connections at all. Which meant—she wasn't sure what, but she suspected that a General Suiza had a lot more power than old General Ashworth.

Of Esmay herself, there was little: a list of her decorations, with the citations that went with them. Conspicuous gallantry. Outstanding leadership. Outstanding initiative. A list of the ships she'd served on. Her present assignment, to Training Command's Junior Officer Leadership Course.

Well. Brun sat back, aware of tension in her neck and shoulders, the feeling that she'd got herself in well over her head in more than one way. She returned the screen to its default, and thought of ordering a snack. But it would come on a plate from some wrecked ship. She didn't think she could face that. As it was, she already had tears in her eyes.

"Something wrong?" asked a deep voice behind her. She turned.

He was stocky, heavy shoulders thick with muscle; his bald head, like Oblo's, deeply scarred. His eyes were scarcely higher than hers; he was in a hoverchair. Brun kept her eyes from dropping to see why with an effort—but that gave him a clear look at her face.

Out of the scarred face, brown eyes observed her with more insight than she liked. His wide mouth quirked.

"Lady, you're not Fleet, and you don't know what you've gotten yourself into, do you?"

The "lady" threw her off-stride for a moment. In that pause, he jerked his head toward the farthest angle of the back.

"Come on over here, and let's get you sorted out," he said. She was moving before she realized it, compelled by something in his voice. His hoverchair turned, and slid between the tables; Brun followed.

Two tables away, someone called, "Hey! Sam!" He turned his head slightly—he could not, Brun realized, turn it all the way—and raised a hand but did not answer. Brun followed him and found a half-booth: enclosing bench and table, with space on the other side for his hoverchair.

"Sit," he said. Then, over his shoulder to a waitress, "Get us a pair of Stenners, and some chips." His gaze returned to Brun, as disturbing as ever.

"I'm not really—" Brun began.

"That much I know already," he said, humor in his tone. "But let's see what you are." He ticked off points with a stubby finger that looked as if it had been badly moulded of plastic. "You're Thornbuckle's daughter, according to your credit chip, and according to the class list over there—" He jerked his head in the direction of the Schools. "You're Brun Meager, choosing to use your mother's family name. Target of assassination attempts—" Brun noted the plural and wondered how he knew. "By your instructors' reports, physically agile and strong, bright as a new pin, quick learner, gifted with luck in emergencies. Also emotionally labile, argumentative, arrogant, stubborn, willful, difficult. Not officer material, at least not without a lot of remedial work."

Brun knew her face showed her reaction to that. "And why not?" she asked, trying for a tone of mild academic interest.

He ignored the question and went on. "You're not Fleet; no one in your bloodline's been Fleet for over two hundred forty years. You come from a class where social skills are expected in a normal person your age. Yet you come into a Fleet bar—"

"There's nothing
but
Fleet bars in Q-town," Brun muttered.

"And not only a Fleet bar," he went on, "a bar with special connotations, even for Fleet personnel. Not all of them will come here; not all of them are welcome here. I've seen kids with what you would call no social background at all come through the door and recognize, in one breath, that they don't belong here. Which makes me wonder, Charlotte Brunhilde Meager, about someone like you
not
noticing."

Brun glared at him. He gazed back, a look neither inviting nor hostile. Just . . . looking . . . as if she were an interesting piece of machinery. That look didn't deserve an answer, even if she'd had one, which she didn't. She didn't know why she'd ducked into this doorway instead of another. It was handy; she'd wanted a drink; when the thought of a drink and a doorway offering drinks overlapped, she went in. Put that way it didn't sound as if she were thinking straight, but she didn't want to think about that. Not here; not now.

"You know, we've got security vid outside," the man said, leaning back a little. "When your cube ID popped up on my screen, I ran back the loop. You were stalking along the street like someone with a serious grievance. Then you hitched a step, and turned in here, with just a glance at the sign. Anyone tell you about this place?"

"No." Even to Brun's present mood, that sounded sulky, and she expanded. "I was given a list of places that catered to various specialties, mostly sexual. They have a code of light patterns in the windows, the briefing cube said. Anything else was general entertainment."

"So, just as it seemed on the vid, you were in a rage, thought of getting a drink, and turned into the first bar you saw." His mouth quirked. "Really high-quality thinking for someone of your tested intelligence."

"Even smart people can get mad," Brun said.

"Even smart people can get stupid," he replied. "You're supposed to have a security escort at all times, right? And where are they?"

Brun felt herself flushing again. "They're—" She wanted to say
a royal pain
, but knew that this man would think that childish. Everyone seemed to think it was childish not to want half a dozen people lurking about all the time, looming over private conversations, listening, watching, just . . . being where she didn't want them to be. "Back at the Schools, I suppose," she said.

"You sneaked out," the man said, with no question at all in his voice.

"Yes. I wanted a bit of—"

"Time to yourself. Yes. And so you risk not only your own life, which is your right as an adult, but you risk their safety and their professional future, because you wanted a little time off." Now the scorn she had sensed was obvious in his expression and his tone. Those brown eyes made no excuses, for himself or anyone else. "Do you think your assassin is taking time off, time to have a little relaxation?"

Brun had not thought about her assassin any more than she could help; she had certainly not thought about whether an assassin kept the same hours as a target. "I don't know," she muttered.

"Or what will happen to your guards if you get killed while they're not with you?"

"I got away from them," Brun said. "It wouldn't be their fault."

"Morally, no. Professionally, yes. It is their job to guard you, whether you cooperate or not. If you elude them and are killed, they will be blamed." He paused. Brun could think of nothing to say, and was silent. "So . . . you got mad and barged in here. Ordered. Started looking around. Noticed the decor—"

"Yes. Pieces of ships. It's . . . morbid."

"Now that, young lady, is where you're wrong."

Faced with opposition, Brun felt an urge to argue. "It is. What's the point of keeping bits of dead ships, and—and putting people's names on them, if not morbid fascination with death?"

"Look at me," the man said. Startled, Brun complied. "Really look," the man said. He moved the hoverchair back a little, and pointed to his legs . . . which ended at what would have been mid-thigh. Brun looked, unwillingly but carefully, and saw more and more signs of old and serious injury.

"No regen tanks on an escort," the man said. "It's too small. A buddy stuffed me in an escape pod, and when old
Cutlass
was blown, I was safely away. By the time I was picked up, there was no way to regrow the legs. Or the arm, though I chose a good prosthesis there. They'd have given me leg prostheses too, but I had enough spinal damage that I couldn't manage them. Now the head injuries—" He dipped his head, showing Brun the scars that laced his head. "Those were from another battle, back on
Pelion
, when part of a casing spalled off and sliced me up."

He grinned at her, and she saw the distortion of one side of his mouth. "Now you, young lady, you don't have a clue what using part of
Cutlass
's hull as my bar means to me. Or to any of the men and women who come here. What it means to have crockery from
Paradox
and
Emerald City
and
Wildcat
, to have cutlery from
Defence
and
Granicus
and
Lancaster
, to have everything in this place made of the remnants of ships we served on, fought on, and survived."

"I still think it's morbid," Brun said, through stiff lips.

"You ever killed anyone?" he asked.

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I have."

"Tell me about it."

She could not believe this conversation. Tell him about the island, about Lepescu? But his eyes waited, and his scars, and his assumptions about her ignorance. Which of these finally drove her to speak, she could not have said.

"We—some friends and I—had taken an aircar to an island on Sirialis. It's a planet my father owns." She didn't like the sound of that, now; she wasn't boasting, but it sounded like it. He didn't react. "We didn't know that there were . . . intruders. A man—he was a Fleet officer—"

"Who?"

She felt a reluctance to answer, but could think of no way to avoid it. "Admiral Lepescu." Was there a reaction? She couldn't tell. "He and some friends—at least, I was told they were friends—had transported criminals . . . well, not really criminals, but that's what they said . . ." He shifted, with impatience she could almost feel. "Anyway," she said, hurrying now, "he and his friends transported these people to the island, to hunt. To hunt them, the supposed criminals. Lepescu and his friend stayed on a nearby island, which had a fishing lodge on it, and flew over every day to hunt. The hunted had cobbled together some kind of weapon, and shot down our aircar, thinking we were Lepescu. They captured us. When they realized their mistake, we realized that we would all be hunted; Lepescu would try to cover up his crimes."