The Years Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

The Political Officer - CHARLES COLEMAN FINLAY

New writer Charles Coleman Finlay made his first sale last year to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and has since followed it up with three more sales to that magazine, including the taut and suspenseful story that follows, which takes us on a deeply hazardous top secret mission into deep space, with a hard-pressed crew who soon discover that for all the dangers outside, the biggest dangers may be the ones that lurk within…

Finlay lives with his family in Columbus, Ohio.

Laxim Nikomedes saw the other man rush toward him but there was no room to dodge in the crate-packed corridor. He braced for the impact. The other man pulled up short, his face blanching in the pallid half-light of the “night” rotation. It was Kulakov, the chief petty officer. He went rigid and snapped a salute.

“Sir! Sorry, sir!” His voice trembled.

“At ease, Kulakov,” Max said. “Not your fault. It’s a tight fit inside this metal sausage.”

Standard ship joke. The small craft was stuffed with supplies, mostly food, for the eighteen-month voyage ahead. Max waited for the standard response, but Kulakov stared through the hull into deep space. He was near sixty, old for the space service, old for his position, and the only man aboard who made Max, in his mid-forties, feel young.

Max smiled, an expression so faint it could be mistaken for a twitch. “But it’s better than being stuck in a capped-off sewer pipe, no?”

Which is what the ship would be on the voyage home. “You’ve got that right, sir!” said Kulakov.

“Carry on.”

Kulakov shrank aside like an old church deacon, afraid to touch a sinner lest he catch the sin. Max expected that reaction from the crew, and not just because they’d nicknamed him the Corpse for his cadaverous and dead expression. As the political officer, he held the threat of death over every career aboard: the death of some careers would entail a corporeal equivalent. For the first six weeks of their mission, after spongediving the new wormhole, Max had cultivated invisibility and waited for the crew to fall into the false complacency of routine. Now it was time to shake them up again to see if he could find the traitor he suspected. He brushed against Kulakov on purpose as he passed by him.

He twisted his way through the last passage and paused outside the visiting officers’ cabin. He lifted his knuckles to knock, then changed his mind, turned the latch and swung open the door. The three officers sitting inside jumped at the sight of him. Guilty consciences, Max hoped.

Captain Ernst Petoskey recovered first. “Looking for someone, Lieutenant?”

Max let the silence become uncomfortable while he studied Petoskey. The captain stood six and a half feet tall, his broad shoulders permanently hunched from spending too much time in ships built for smaller men. The crew loved him and would eagerly die-or kill-for him. Called him Papa behind his back. He wouldn’t shave again until they returned safely to spaceport, and his beard was juice-stained at the corner by proscripted chewing tobacco. Max glanced past Lukinov, the paunchy, balding “radio lieutenant,” and stared at Ensign Pen Reedy, the only woman on the ship.

She was lean, with prominent cheekbones, but the thing Max always noticed first were her hands. She had large, red-knuckled hands. She remained impeccably dressed and groomed, even six weeks into the voyage. Every hair on her head appeared to be individually placed as if they were all soldiers under her command.

Petoskey and Lukinov sat on opposite ends of the bunk. Reedy sat on a crate across from them. Another crate between them held a bottle, tumblers, and some cards.

Petoskey, finally uncomfortable with the silence, opened his mouth again.

“Just looking,” Max pre-empted him. “And what do I find but the captain himself in bed with Drozhin’s boys?”

Petoskey glanced at the bunk. “I see only one, and he’s hardly a boy.”

Lukinov, a few years younger than Max, smirked and tugged at the lightning-bolt patch on his shirtsleeve. “And what’s with calling us Drozhin’s boys? We’re just simple radiomen. If I have to read otherwise, I’ll have you up for falsifying reports when we get back to Jesusalem.”

He pronounced their home Hey-zoo-salaam, like the popular video stars did, instead of the older way, Jeez-us-ail-em.

“Things are not always what they appear to be, are they?” said Max.

Lukinov, Reedy, and a third man, Burdick, were the intelligence listening team assigned to intercept and decode Adarean messages-the newly opened wormhole passage would let the ship dive undetected into the Adarean system to spy. The three had been personally selected and prepped for this mission by Dmitri Drozhin, the legendary Director of Jesusalem’s Department of Intelligence. Drozhin had been the Minister too, back when it had still been the Ministry of the Wisdom of Prophets Reborn. He was the only high government official to survive the Revolution in situ, but these days younger men like Mallove in the Department of Political Education challenged his influence.

“Next time, knock first, Lieutenant,” Petoskey said.

“Why should I, Captain?” Max returned congenially. “An honest man has noth ing to fear from his conscience, and what am I if not the conscience of every man aboard this ship?”

“We don’t need a conscience when we have orders,” Petoskey said with a straight face.

Lukinov tilted his head back dramatically and sneered. “Come off it, Max. I invited the captain up here to celebrate, if that’s all right with you. Reedy earned her comet today.”

Indeed, she had. The young ensign wore a gold comet pinned to her left breast pocket, similar to the ones embroidered on the shirts of the other two officers. Crewmen earned their comets by demonstrating competence on every ship system-Engineering, Ops and Nav, Weapons, Vacuum and Radiation. Reedy must have qualified in record time. This was her first space assignment. “Congratulations,” Max said.

Reedy suppressed a genuine smile. “Thank you, sir.”

“That makes her the last one aboard,” Petoskey said. “Except for you.”

“What do I need to know about ship systems? If I understand the minds and motivations of the men who operate them, it is enough.”

“It isn’t. Not with this,” his mouth twisted distastefully, “ miscegenated, patched-together, scrapyard ship. I need to be able to count on every man in an emergency.”

“Is it that bad? What kind of emergency do you expect?”

Lukinov sighed loudly. “You’re becoming a bore, Max. You checked on us, now go make notes in your little spy log and leave us alone.”

“Either that or pull up a crate and close the damn hatch,” said Petoskey. “We could use a fourth.”

The light flashed off Lukinov’s gold signet ring as he waved his hand in clear negation. “You don’t want to do that, Ernst. This is the man who won his true love in a card game.”

Petoskey looked over at Max. “Is that so?”

“I won my wife in a card game, yes.” Max didn’t think that story was widely known outside his own department. “But that was many years ago.”

“I heard you cheated to win her,” said Lukinov. He was Max’s counterpart in Intelligence-the Department of Political Education couldn’t touch him. The two Departments hated each other and protected their own. “Heard that she divorced you too. I guess an ugly little weasel like you has to get it where he can.”

“But unlike your wife, she always remained faithful.”

Lukinov muttered a curse and pulled back his fist. Score one on the sore spot. Petoskey reached out and grabbed the intelligence officer’s elbow. “None of that aboard my ship. I don’t care who you two are. Come on, Nikomedes. If you’re such a hotshot card player, sit down. I could use a little challenge.”

A contrary mood seized Max. He turned into the hallway, detached one of the crates, and shoved it into the tiny quarters.

“So what are we playing?” he asked, sitting down.

“Blind Man’s Draw,” said Petoskey, shuffling the cards. “Deuce beats an ace, ace beats everything else.”

Max nodded. “What’s the minimum?”

“A temple to bid, a temple to raise.”

Jesusalem’s founders stamped their money with an image of the Temple to encourage the citizen-colonists to render their wealth unto God. The new plastic carried pictures of the revolutionary patriots who’d overthrown the Patriarch, but everyone still called them temples. “Then I’m in for a few hands,” Max said.

Petoskey dealt four cards face down. Max kept the king of spades and tossed three cards back into the pile. The ones he got in exchange were just as bad.

“So,” said Lukinov, peeking at his hand. “We have the troika of the Service all gathered in one room. Military, Intelligence, and-one card, please, ah, raise you one temple-and what should I call you, Max? Schoolmarm?”

Max saw the raise. “If you like. Just remember that Intelligence is useless without a good Education.”

“Is that your sermon these days?”

Petoskey collected the discards. “Nothing against either of you gentlemen,” he said, “but it’s your mother screwed three ways at once, isn’t it. There’s three separate chains of command on a ship like this one. It’s a recipe for mutiny.” He pulled at his beard. “Has been on other ships, strictly off the record. And with this mission ahead, if we don’t all work together, God help us.”

Max kept the ten of spades with his king and took two more cards. “Not that there is one,” he said officially, “but let God help our enemies. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.”

Petoskey nodded his agreement. “That’s a good way to look at it. A cord of three strands, all intertwined.” He stared each of them in the eyes. “So take care of the spying, and the politics, but leave the running of the ship to me.”

“Of course,” said Lukinov.

“That’s why you’re the captain and both of us are mere lieutenants,” said Max. In reality, both he and Lukinov had the same service rank as Petoskey. On the ground, in Jesusalem’s mixed-up service, they were all three colonels. Lukinov was technically senior of the three, though Max had final authority aboard ship within his sphere.

It was, indeed, a troubling conundrum.

Max’s hand held nothing-king and ten of spades, two of hearts, and a seven of clubs. Petoskey tossed the fifth card down face-up. Another deuce.

Max hated Blind Man’s Draw. It was like playing the lottery. The card a man showed you was the one he’d just been dealt; you never really knew what he might be hiding. He looked at the other players’ hands. Petoskey showed the eight of clubs and Lukinov the jack of diamonds. Ensign Reedy folded her hand and said, “I’m out.”

“Raise it a temple and call,” Max said, on the off chance he might beat a pair of aces. They turned their cards over and it was money thrown away. Petoskey won with three eights.

Lukinov shook his head. “Holding onto the deuces, Max? That’s almost always a loser’s hand.”

“Except when it isn’t.”

Petoskey won three of the next five hands, with Lukinov and Max splitting the other two. The poor ensign said little and folded often. Max decided to deal in his other game. While Lukinov shuffled the cards, Max rubbed his nose and said to the air, “You’re awfully silent, Miss Reedy. Contemplating your betrayal of us to the Adareans?”

Lukinov mis-shuffled. A heartbeat later, Captain Petoskey picked up his spittoon and spat.

Reedy’s voice churned as steady as a motor in low gear. “What do you mean, sir?”

“You’re becoming a bore again, Max,” Lukinov said under his breath.

“What’s this about?” Petoskey asked.

“Perhaps Miss Reedy should explain it herself,” Max replied. “Go on, Ensign. Describe the immigrant ghetto in your neighborhood, your childhood chums, Sabbathday afternoons at language academy.”

“It was hardly that, sir,” she said smoothly. “They were just kids who lived near our residence in the city. And there were never any formal classes.”

“Oh, there was much more to it than that,” Max pressed. “Must I spell it out for you? You lived in a neighborhood of expatriate Adareans. Some spymaster chose you to become a mole before you were out of diapers and started brainwashing you before you could talk. Now while you pretend to serve Jesusalem you really serve Adares. Yes?”

“No. Sir.” Reedy’s hands, resting fingertip to fingertip across her knees, trembled slightly. “For one thing, how did they know women would ever be admitted to the military academies?”

Reedy hadn’t been part of the first class to enter, but she graduated with the first class to serve active duty. “They saw it was common everywhere else. Does it matter? Who can understand their motives? Their gene modifications make them impure. Half-animal, barely human.”

She frowned, as if she couldn’t believe that kind of prejudice still existed. “Nukes don’t distinguish between one set of genes and another, sir. They suffered during the bombardments, just like we did. They fought beside us, they went to our church. Even the archbishop called them good citizens. They’re as proud to be Jesusalemites as I am. And as loyal. Sir.”

Max rubbed his nose again. “A role model for treason. They betrayed one government to serve another. I know for a fact this crew contains at least one double agent, someone who serves two masters. I suspect there are more. Is it you, Miss Reedy?”

Lukinov turned into a fossil before Max’s eyes. Petoskey glared at the young intelligence officer across the table like a man contemplating murder.

Reedy pressed her fingertips together until her hands grew still. “Sir. There may be a traitor, but it’s not me. Sir.”

Max leaned back casually. “I’ve read your Academy records, Ensign, and find them interesting for the things they leave out. Such as your role in the unfortunate accident that befell Cadet Vance.”

Reedy was well disciplined. Max’s comments were neither an order nor a question, so she said nothing, gave nothing away.

“Vance’s injuries necessitated his withdrawal from the Academy,” Max continued. “What exactly did you have to do with that situation?”

“Come on, Max,” said Lukinov in his senior officer’s cease-and-desist voice. “This is going too far. There are always accidents in the Academy and in the service. Usually it’s the fault of the idiot who ends up slabbed. Some stupid mistake.”

Before Max could observe that Vance’s mistake had been antagonizing Reedy, Petoskey interrupted. “Lukinov, have you forgotten how to deal? Are you broke yet, Nikomedes? You can quit any time you want.”

Max flashed the plastic in his pocket while Lukinov started tossing down the cards. As he made the second circuit around their makeshift table, the lights flickered and went off. Max’s stomach fluttered as the emergency lights blinked on, casting a weak red glare over the cramped room. The cards sailed past the table and into the air. Petoskey slammed his glass down. It bounced off the table and twirled toward the ceiling, spilling little brown droplets of whiskey.

Petoskey slapped the ship’s intercom. “Bridge!”

“Ensign,” Lukinov said. “Find something to catch that mess before the grav comes back on and splatters it everywhere.”

“Yes, sir,” Reedy answered and scrambled to the bathroom for a towel.

“Bridge!” shouted Petoskey, then shook his head. “The com’s down.”

“It’s just the ship encounter drill,” Lukinov said.

“There’s no drill scheduled for this rotation. And we haven’t entered Adarean space yet, so we can’t be encountering another ship…”

Another ship.

The thought must have hit all four of them simultaneously. As they propelled themselves frog-like toward the hatch, they crashed into one another, inevitable in the small space. During the jumble, Max took a kick to the back of his head. It hurt, even without any weight behind it. No accident, he was sure of that, but he didn’t see who did it.

Petoskey flung the door open. “The pig-hearted, fornicating bastards.”

Max echoed the sentiment when he followed a moment later. The corridor was blocked by drifting crates. They’d been improperly secured.

“Ensign!” snapped Petoskey.

“Yes, Captain.”

“To the front! I’ll pass you the crates, you attach them.”

“Y es, sir.”

“Can I trust you to do that?”

“Yes, sir!”

Max almost felt sorry for Reedy. Almost. In typical fashion for these older ships, someone had strung a steel cable along the corridor, twist-tied to the knobs of the security lights. Max held onto it and stayed out of the way as Petoskey grabbed one loose box after another and passed them back to Reedy. There was the steady rasp of Velcro as they made their way toward the bridge.

“What do you think it is?” Lukinov whispered to him. “If it’s a ship, then the wormhole’s been discovered…”

The implications hung in the air like everything else. Max compared the size of Lukinov’s boot with the sore spot on the back of his head. “Could be another wormhole. The sponge is like that. Once one hole opens up, you usually find several more. There’s no reason why the Adareans couldn’t find a route in the opposite direction.”

Lukinov braced himself against the wall, trying to keep himself oriented as if the grav was still on. “If it’s the Adareans, they’ll be thinking invasion again.”

“It could be someone neutral too,” said Max. “Most of the spongedivers from Earth are prospecting in toward the core again, so it could be one of them. Put on your ears and find out who they are. I’ll determine whether they’re for us or against us.”

Lukinov laughed. “If they’re against us, then Ernst can eliminate them. That’s a proper division of labor.”

“Our system is imperfect, but it works.” That was a stretch, Max told himself. Maybe he ought to just say that the system worked better than the one it replaced.

“Hey,” Petoskey shouted. “Are you gentlemen going to sit there or join me on the bridge?”

“Coming,” said Lukinov, echoed a second later by Max.

They descended two levels and came to the control center. Max followed the others through the open hatch. Men sat strapped to their chairs, faces tinted the color of blood by the glow of the emergency lights. Conduits, ducts, and wires ran overhead, like the intestines of some manmade monster. One of the vents kicked on, drawing a loud mechanical breath. Truly, Max thought, they were in the belly of leviathan now.

One of the men called “Attention” and Petoskey immediately replied, “At ease-report!”

“Lefty heard a ship,” returned Commander Gordet, a plug-shaped man with a double chin. “It was nothing more than a fart in space, I swear. I folded the wings and initiated immediate shutdown per your instructions before our signature could be detected.”

“Contact confirmed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good work then.” The ship chairs were too small for Petoskey’s oversized frame. He preferred to stand anyway and had bolted a towel rack to the floor in the center of the deck. The crew tripped over it when the grav was on, but now Petoskey slipped his feet under it to keep from bumping his head on the low ceilings. It was against all regulations, but, just as with his smuggled tobacco, Petoskey broke regulations whenever it suited him. He shared this quality with many of the fleet’s best deep space captains. “Those orders were for when we entered Adarean space, Commander,” Petoskey added. “I commend your initiative. Put a commendation in Engineer Elefteriou’s record also.”

“Yes, sir.” Gordet’s voice snapped like elastic, pleased by the captain’s praise.

“Identity?”

“Its prime number pings up Outback. Corporate prospectors. Her signature looks like one of the new class.”

Petoskey grabbed the passive scope above his head and pulled it down to his eyes. “Vector?”

“Intercept.”

“Intercept?”

“It’s headed in-system and we’re headed out. At our current respective courses and velocities, we should come within spitting distance of each other just past Big Brother.”

Big Brother was the nickname for this system’s larger gas giant. Little Brother, the smaller gas giant, was on the far side of the sun, out past the wormhole to home.

“Are they coming from the Adares jump?” Petoskey asked.

“That’s what we thought at first,” said Gordet. “But it appears now that they’re entering from a third wormhole. About thirty degrees negative of the Adares jump, on the opposite side of the ecliptic.” He glanced over the navigator’s shoulder at the monitor and read off the orbital velocity.

Petoskey continued to stare into the scope. “Shit. There’s nothing out here.”

Gordet cleared his throat. “It’s millions of kilometers out, sir. Still too far away for a clear visual.”

“No, I mean there’s nothing out here. This system won’t hold their attention for long. It’s only a matter of time before they find the opened holes to Adares and home.” He paused. “Do that and they’ll close our route back.”

Indeed. Max had a strong urge to pace. If he started bouncing off the walls Petoskey would order him off the bridge, so he tried to float with purpose. Burdick, the third member of the intelligence team, paused in the hatch, carrying a large box. He nodded to Lukinov and Reedy, who followed him forward toward the secure radio room. Max wondered briefly why Burdick had left his post.

“The intercept makes things easier for us,” Petoskey concluded aloud. “Calculate the soonest opportunity to engage without warning. With any luck, the missing ship will be counted as a wormhole mishap.” Absorbed by the sponge.

Elefteriou turned and spoke to Rucker, the first lieutenant, who spoke to Gordet, who said, “Sir, radio transmissions from the ship appear to be directed at another ship in the vicinity of the jump. If we neutralize this target, then the other dives out and lives to witness.”

“Just one other ship?”

“No way of telling this far out without the active sensors.” Which they couldn’t use without showing up like a solar flare.

“The order stands,” said Petoskey. “Also, Commander, loose cargo in the corridors impeded my progress to the bridge. This is a contraindication of ship readiness.”

Gordet stiffened, as crushed by this criticism as he’d been puffed up by the praise. “It’ll be taken care of, sir.”

“See to it. Where’s Chevrier?” Arkady Chevrier was the chief engineer. He came from a family of industrialists that contributed heavily to the Revolution. His uncle headed the Department of Finance, and his father was a general. Mallove, Max’s boss in Political Education, had warned him not to antagonize Chevrier.

“In the engine room, sir,” answered Gordet. “He thought that the sudden unscheduled shutdown of main power resulted in a drain on the main battery arrays. I sent him to fix it.”

“Raise Engineering on the com.”

“Yes, sir,” said Gordet. “Raise Engineering.”

Lefty punched his console, listened to his earphones, shook his head.

Petoskey shifted the plug of tobacco in his mouth. “When I tried to contact the bridge from quarters, the com was down. If I have to choose between ship communications and life support in the presence of a possible enemy vessel, I want communications first. Get a status report from Engineering and give me a com link to all essential parts of the ship if you have to do it with tin cans and string. Is that clear?”

Gordet’s jowls quivered as he answered. “Yessir!”

Max noted that Gordet did not divide his attention well. He’d been so absorbed with the other ship, he hadn’t noticed the ship communications problem. Several past errors in judgment featured prominently in his permanent file. He seemed unaware that this was the reason he’d been passed over for ship command of his own. But he was steady, and more or less politically sound.

He could also be a vindictive S.O.B. Max watched him turn on his subordinates. “Corporal Elefteriou,” Gordet said. “I want a full report on com status. Five minutes ago is not soon enough. Lieutenant Rucker!”

“Sir.”

“Get your ass to Engineering. I want to receive Chevrier’s verbal report on this com here.” He punched it with his fist for emphasis. “If it doesn’t come in fifteen minutes, you can hold your breath while the rest of us put on space gear.”

The first lieutenant set off for Engineering. Petoskey cleared his throat. “Commander, one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“We’ll switch to two shifts now, six hours on, six off. All crew.”

“Yes, sir.”

Petoskey gestured for Max to come beside him.

“So now we wait around for three days to intercept,” Petoskey said in a low voice. “You look like a damn monkey floating there, Nikomedes. We could surgi-tape your boots to the deck.”

“That’s not necessary.” Petoskey wasn’t the only captain in the fleet who’d tie his political officer down to one spot if he could. Max needed to be free to move around to catch his traitor.

“If you were qualified for any systems, I’d put you to work.”

An excellent reason to remain unqualified. “And what would you have me do?”

“At this point?” Petoskey shrugged. Then he frowned, and jerked his head toward the intelligence team’s radio room. “Was that true? About-?”

“This is not the place,” Max said firmly. Illusion was not reality; the crew pretended not to hear Petoskey speak, but they’d repeat every word that came from his mouth.

“I hate the Adareans, I want you to know that,” Petoskey said. “Anything to do with the Adareans, I hate, and I’ll have none of it aboard my ship. So if there’s any danger, even from one of the intelligence men-”

“There will be no danger,” Max asserted firmly. “It is my job to make certain of that.”

“See to it, Lieutenant.”

“I will.” Max was surprised. That qualified as the most direct command any captain had given him during his tenure as a political officer.

Petoskey returned an almost respectful nod. Max was about to suggest a later discussion when Lukinov shouted from the hatch.

“Captain. You might want to listen to this. We tried to raise you on the com, but it’s not working.”

Petoskey slipped his feet free and followed the intelligence officer. Max invited himself and swam along.

Inside the listening room, Reedy stood-or floated-at a long desk, wearing headphones and making notes on the translation in her palm-pad. Burdick had a truck battery surgi-taped to a table wedged in the tiny room’s rounded corner. Wires ran from it to an open panel on the main concomsole, and Burdick connected others. He looked up from his work and grinned as they came into the hatch. “Gotta love the electrician’s mates,” he said. “They’ve got every thing.”

Lukinov laughed and handed headphones to Petoskey. “Wait until you hear this.”

Petoskey slipped the earpieces into place. “I don’t understand Chinese,” he said after a minute. “Always sounds like an out-of-tune guitar to me.”

Lukinov’s smile widened. “But it’s voices, not code, don’t you see? The level of encryption was like cheap glue.” He made a knife-opening-a-letter gesture with his hands.

“Good work. What have you learned so far?”

Lukinov leaned over Reedy’s shoulder to look at her palm-pad. “Corporate security research ship. Spongedivers.”

Petoskey nodded. “Bunch of scientists and part-time soldiers. Soft, but great tech. Way beyond ours. It’s a safe bet their battery arrays don’t go down when they fly mute. Lefty says there’s another one parked out by the wormhole.”

Lukinov confirmed this. “We know it because the radio tech is talking to his girlfriend over on the other ship.”

Burdick snickered, and Petoskey muttered “Mixed crews” with all the venom of a curse. He glared at Reedy so hard his eyes must have burned a hole in the ensign’s head. The young woman looked up. “Yes, sir?” she asked.

“I didn’t speak to you,” Petoskey snapped.

Mixed crews were part of the Revolution, a way to double manpower-so to speak-in the military forces and give Jesusalem a chance to catch up. So far it was only in the officer corps, and even there it hadn’t been received well. Some men, like Vance at the Academy, openly tried to discourage it despite the government’s commitment.

Lukinov held the back of Reedy’s seat to keep from drifting toward the ceiling. “The inbound ship’s called the Deng Xiaopeng. Why does that name sound familiar?”

Petoskey shrugged. “Means nothing to me.”

If they didn’t know, then Max would give them an answer. He cleared his throat. “I believe that Deng Xiaopeng was one of Napoleon’s generals.”

Lukinov curled his mouth skeptically.

“That doesn’t sound right,” said Petoskey.

“I’m quite certain of it,” said Max, bracing himself between the wall and floor at angle sideways to the others. “Confusion to the enemy.”

“Always,” replied Petoskey, apparently happy to find something he could agree with. “Always.”

Max lay on the bunk in his cabin waiting for the clock to tick over to morning. Two days after the spongedivers had been sighted, his thoughts still careened weightlessly off the small walls. The presence of the ship from Outback complicated the ship’s mission and his. Meanwhile, he was cut off from his superiors, unable to guess which goal they wanted him to pursue now. Or goals, as the case more likely was. So he was on his own again. Forced to decide for himself.

Nothing new about that, he thought ruefully.

He released the straps and pushed off for the door to take a tour of the ship. He paused for a moment, then grabbed his cap, and tugged it down tight on his head. If he made it a formal tour of the ship, it might draw out his traitor.

When he opened the door, he saw another one cracked open down the corridor. Lieutenant Rucker peeked out and gestured for Max to come inside. Max checked to see that no one was in the hall and slipped into the room.

The blond young man closed the door too fast and it slammed shut. He noticed Max’s cap and saluted with perfect etiquette before producing an envelope. “I was hoping to catch you,” he said. “This is from Commander Gordet.”

Max took the multi-tool from his pocket and flicked out the miniature knife to slice open the seal. He studied the sheet inside. Gordet had written down the codes for the safe that held the captain’s secret orders. Interesting. Max wondered if Rucker had made a copy for himself. “Did Gordet say anything specific?”

“He said to tell you that if we were to engage the Outback ship in combat and anything unfortunate were to happen to the captain, you would have his full cooperation and support.”

“So what did he tell the captain?”

Rucker looked at the wall, opened his mouth, closed it again. He was not a quick liar.

Max gave him an avuncular clap on the shoulder. “You can tell me, Lieutenant. I’ll find out anyway.”

Rucker gulped, still refusing to meet Max’s eyes. “He told the captain that, um, if we were to engage the other ship in combat, and anything unfortunate were to happen to you, he’d make sure it was all clear in the records.”

So Gordet was indecisive, trying to play both sides at once. That was a hard game. The Commander had no gift for it either. “What’s your opinion of Gordet?” probed Max.

“He’s a good officer. I’m proud to serve under him.”

Rather standard response, deserving of Max’s withering stare. This time Rucker’s eyes did meet his.

“But, um, he’s still mad about losing his cabin to you, sir. He doesn’t like bunking with the junior officers.”

“He’ll get over it,” said Max. “Just remind him that Lukinov is bunking with Burdick, eh?” He gestured at Rucker to open the door. Rucker looked both ways down the corridor, motioned that it was clear, and Max went on his way.

He headed topside, pulling himself hand over hand up the narrow shaft. When he exited the tube he found Kulakov conducting an emergency training drill in the forward compartments. Stick-its posted to all the surfaces indicated the type and extent of combat damage. Crews in full space gear performed “repairs” while the chief petty officer graded their performance.

“You’re dead,” shouted Kulakov, grabbing a man by his collar and pulling him out of the exercise. “You forgot that you’re a vacuum cleaner!”

“But sir, I’m suited up properly.” His voice sounded injured, even distorted slightly by the microphone.

“But you’re not plugged in,” Kulakov said, tapping the stick-it on the wall. “That’s open to the outside, and without your tether you’re nothing more now than a very small meteor moving away from the ship! What are the rest of you looking at?”

He glanced over his shoulder, saw Max, and froze. The crews stopped their exercise.

“You just spaced another crewman,” said Max, tilting his head toward a man who’d backed into the wall. “Carry on.”

He turned away without waiting for Kulakov’s salute. He didn’t know why he had such an effect on that man, but now he was thinking he should look into it.

He proceeded through several twisting corridors, designed to slow and confuse boarding parties headed for the bridge, and passed the gym. He needed exercise. The weightlessness was already starting to get to him. But he decided to worry about that later.

He paused when he came to the missile room.

The Black Forest.

That was the crew’s nickname for it. Four polished black columns rose four uninterrupted stories-tubes for nuclear missiles, back when this ship was intended to fight the same kind of dirty war waged by the Adareans. It was the largest open space in the entire ship. When the grav was on, the men exercised by running laps, up one set of stairs, across the catwalk, down the other, around the tubes, and up again.

Max went out onto the catwalk, climbed up on the railing, and jumped.

If one could truly jump in zero-gee, that was. He pushed himself toward the floor and prayed that the grav didn’t come on unexpectedly. On the way down he noticed someone who feared just that possibility making their way up the stairs.

Max did a somersault, extending his legs to change his momentum and direction, pushed off one of the tubes, and bounced over to see who it was. He immediately regretted doing so. It was Sergeant Simco, commander of the combat troops.

Every captain personally commanded a detachment of ground troops. It could be as big as a battalion in some cases, but for this voyage, with an entire crew of only 141, the number was limited to ten. Officially, they were along to repel boarders and provide combat assistance if needed. Unofficially, they were called troubleshooters. If crewmen gave the captain any trouble, it was the troopers’ job to shoot them.

Simco would enjoy doing it too. He had more muscles than brains. But then nobody had that many brains.

“Hello, Sergeant,” Max called.

“Sir, that was nicely done.”

“I didn’t have you pegged for the cautious type.”

Simco shook his head. “I don’t like freefall unless I’ve got a parachute strapped to my back.”

Typical groundhog response. “Are your men ready to board and take that Outback ship, Sergeant?”

“Sir, I could do it all by myself. They’re women.”

They both laughed, Simco snapped a perfect salute, and Max pushed off from the railing. When he landed on the bottom, he saw placards marked “Killshot” hanging on each of the four tubes. That meant they were loaded with live missiles, ready to launch. Something new since the last time he’d passed through the Black Forest. He saw handwriting scrawled across the bottom of the placards, and went up close to read it. A. G. W.

Under the old government, the hastily thrown together Department of War had been called the Ministry of A Just God’s Wrath. Considering the success of the Adareans, the joke had been that the name was a typo and should have been called Adjust God’s Wrath. Some devout crewmen still had the same goal.

On the lower level, Max continued to the aftmost portion of the ship, off limits to all crew except for Engineering and Senior officers. Only one sealed hatch allowed direct entrance to this section. Max found an off-duty electrician’s mate sitting there, watching a pocketvid. The faint sound of someone dying came from the tiny speaker.

Max stopped in front of the crewman. “What are you watching?”

The crewman looked up, startled. DePuy, that was his name. He jumped to his feet and went all the way to the ceiling. He saluted with one hand, while the thumb of the other flicked to the pause button. “It’s A Fire on the Land, sir. It’s about the Adarean nuking of New Nazareth.”

“I’m familiar with it,” Max replied. Political Education approved all videos, practically ran the video business. “The bombing and the vid. Move aside and let me pass.”

“Sorry, sir, the chief engineer said…”

Max turned as cold as deep space. He reached under DePuy to open the hatch. “Move aside, crewman.”

“The chief engineer gave me a direct order, sir!”

“And I am giving you another direct order right now.” Damn it, thought Max, the man still hesitated. “Rejecting an order from your political officer is mutiny, Mr. DePuy. A year is a very long time to spend in the ship’s brig waiting for trial.”

“Sir! A year is a very long time to serve under a chief officer who holds grudges, sir!”

“If I have to repeat my order a third time, you will go to the brig.”

DePuy pushed off from the wall. Though he seemed to seriously consider, for a split second, whether he wouldn’t rather be locked up than face Chevrier’s temper.

Max went down the corridor and paused outside the starboard Battery Room. The hatch stood open on the two-story space. One of the battery arrays was completely disassembled and diagrammed on the wall, with the key processing chips circled in red. A small group of men, most of them stripped to their waists, crowded into the soft-walled clean room in the corner. A large duct ran up from it toward the ceiling, the motor struggling to draw air. A crewman looked up and tapped the chief engineer on the shoulder.

“You!” Chevrier shouted as soon as he saw Max. “This is a restricted area! I want you out of my section right now!”

“Nothing is off limits to me,” Max replied.

“Fuck your mother!” Chevrier thundered, shooting across the room and getting right in Max’s face. Chevrier’s eyes had dark circles around them like storm clouds, and red lines in the whites like tiny bolts of lightning. He probably hadn’t slept since the spongediver was spotted; no doubt he was also pumped up on Nova or its more legal equivalent from the dispensary. That would explain his heavy sweating. It couldn’t drip off him in the weightlessness, but had simply accumulated in a pool about a half inch deep that sloshed freely in the vicinity of his breastbone. Max noticed that the comet insignia was branded on Chevrier’s bare chest. The Revolutionary government had banned that tradition, but the branding irons still floated around some ships in the service. Chevrier was the type who had probably heated it up with a hand welder and branded himself. He jabbed a finger in the direction of the empty spot on Max’s left breast pocket. “You haven’t qualified for a single ship’s system,” he said, “and you sure as hell aren’t reactor qualified. Now get out of my section!”

“You forgetting something, soldier?” Max asked, in as irritating a voice as he could manage.

Chevrier laughed in disbelief. “I wish I could forget! I’ve got a major problem on my hands, a ship with no fucking backup power.”

Max took a deep breath. “Did somebody break your arm, soldier?”

Chevrier’s eyes flickered. He made a sloppy motion with his right hand in the general direction of his head. Had Mallove sent word in the other direction too? Did Chevrier know that Max was supposed to leave him alone?

“Good. Give me a status report on the power situation.”

The chief engineer inhaled deeply. “Screwed up and likely to stay that way. The crewman on duty panicked-he folded the wings and powered down the Casmir drive without disengaging the batteries first and fried half the chips. We are now trying to build new chips, atom by atom, but you need a grade A clean hood to do that. And our hood is about as tight and clean as an old whore.”

Max had heard all this already, less vividly described, from the captain’s reports. “Go on.”

“Normally, we could just switch over to the secondary array, but some blackhole of a genius gutted our portside Battery Room and replaced it with a salvaged groundside nuclear reactor so we can float through Adarean space disguised like background radiation in order to do God knows what.”

“But you can switch communications, ship systems, propulsion, all that, over to the reactor, right?”

That was the plan: dive into Adarean space, do one circuit around the sun running on the nukes while recording everything they could on the military and political communications channels, then head home again.

“We’ve already done all that,” answered Chevrier, “but we can’t power up the Casmir drive with it. It’s strictly inner system, no diving.” He suddenly noticed the pool of sweat on his chest, went to flick it away, then stopped. “The Adareans won’t scan us if we’re running on nuclears, but they wouldn’t scan canvas sails either, so we might as well have used them instead. We’ve got to fix the main battery at some point.”

“Can you bring the grav back online?”

“Not safely, no, and not with the reactor. It’s a power hog. Too many things to go wrong.”

“Lasers?”

Chevrier ground his teeth. “You could talk to the captain, you know. He sends down here every damned hour for another report, asking the same exact damn questions.”

“Lasers?” repeated Max firmly.

“I recommended other options to the captain, but if you want to turn some Outback ship into space slag, I’ll give you enough power to do it. As long as you let me comb through the debris for spare parts once you’re done. Might be one way to get some decent equipment.”

“Fair enough. How are your men holding up?”

“They’re soldiers.” He pronounced the word very differently than Max had. “They do exactly what they’re told. Except for that worthless snot of a mate who apparently can’t even guard a fucking sealed hatch properly.”

Max didn’t like the sound of that. Chevrier couldn’t keep pushing his men as hard as he pushed himself, or they’d start to break. “Your men are not machines-”

“Hell they aren’t! A ship’s crew is one big machine and you’re a piece of grit in the silicone, a short in the wire. With you issuing orders outside the chain of command, the command splits. You either need to fit in or get the hell out of the machine!”

Chevrier jabbed his finger at Max’s chest again to punctuate his statement. This time, he made contact with enough force to send the two men in opposite directions.

It was clear that he didn’t mean to touch Max, and just as clear that he didn’t mean to back down. He glared at Max, daring him to make something of it. Aggressiveness was the main side effect of Nova. It built up until the men went supernova and burned out. On top of that, Chevrier also had that look some men got when things went very wrong. He couldn’t fix things so he wanted to smash them instead.

Max could bring him up on charges, but the ship needed its chief engineer right now. And if Mallove had promised his friends in government that he would protect Chevrier…

Max decided to ignore the incident. For the time being. “I’ll be sure to make a record of your comments.”

Chevrier snorted, as if he’d won a game of chicken. “If you have problems with any of the big words, come back and I’ll spell them out for you.” He flapped his hand near his head again, turned and went back to the clean hood.

The other men scowled at Max.

That was the problem with anger-it was an infectious disease. Frustration only made it spread faster. He continued his tour, looking into the main engine room and then at the nuclear reactors. Nobody was in the former because there was nothing to be done there, and nobody was in the latter because radiation spooked them. One man sat in the control room, reading the monitors. Max hovered near the ceiling a moment looking over the crewman’s shoulder, comparing the pictures on the vids to the layout of the rooms. The crewman stared at the monitors intently, pretending not to see Max. Yes, thought Max, anger was very infectious. You never knew who might catch it next.

The hapless mate DePuy still guarded the hatch, whipping the vid behind his back as he snapped to attention. Max ignored him. Accidents happened. Some idiots would just slab themselves.

He went back through the Black Forest, acknowledging salutes from a pair of shooters, the tactics officer’s mates. He swam through the air to the top level, and down the main corridor, past the open door of the exercise room. He turned back. If grav was going to be offline much longer, he needed to sign up for exercise time. Physically, he needed to stay sharp right now.

Max pushed the door open. The room was dark. It surprised him briefly that no one was there, but then, with the six-and-sixes, and all the drills, the men were probably too busy. He hit the light switch. Nothing came on. He moved farther into the room to hit the second switch. Something hard smashed on the back of the head, knocking his cap off. He twisted, trying to get a hold of his assailant, but there was no one behind him. He realized that the other man was above him, on the ceiling, too late, and as he twisted in the dark room, he suddenly became very dizzy, losing any sense of direction, any orientation to the walls and floors. A thick arm snaked around his throat, choking off his nausea along with his breath. Max got hold of a thumb and managed to pull it halfway loose, but he had no leverage at all.

He swung his elbows forcefully and futilely as black dots swam before his eyes like collapsing stars in the darkened room.

Then the darkness became absolute.

He experienced a floating, disconnected sensation, like being in the sensory deprivation tanks they’d used for some of his conditioning experiments. Max had hated the feeling then, of being lost, detached, and he hated it now. Then light knifed down into one of his eyes and all his pains awoke at once.

“Do you hear me, Lieutenant Nikomedes?”

“Yes,” croaked Max. His throat felt raw. The light flicked off, then stabbed into the other eye. “That hurts.”

“I should imagine that it’s the least of your hurts. Has the painkiller worn off completely then?”

“I hope so, because if it hasn’t you should just kill me now.” His throat felt crushed and his kidneys ached like hell. The light went off and Max’s eyes adjusted to the setting. He was in the sickbay with the Doc hovering over him. His name was Noyes, and he was only a medtech, but the crew still called him Doc. The service was short of surgeons. Command didn’t want to spare one for this voyage.

“Your pupils look good,” Noyes continued. “There’s a ruptured blood vessel in the right eye. It’s not pretty, but the damage is superficial. We had some concern about how long you’d been without oxygen when you came in.”

Yeah, thought Max. He was concerned too. “So how long was it?”

“Not long. Seconds, maybe. A couple of the shooters found you unconscious in the gym.”

“And so they brought the Corpse to sickbay?”

“You know that nickname?” Noyes administered an injection and Max’s pain lessened. “Whoever attacked you knew what he was doing. He cut off your air supply without crushing your windpipe or leaving any fingerprint type bruises on your throat. You’re lucky-the shooters did chest compressions as soon as they found you and got you breathing again.”

So this wasn’t just a warning. Someone had tried to kill him, and failed. Unless the shooters were in on it. But who would do it and why? His hand shot up to his breast pocket. Gordet’s note with the secret codes was still there.

“What’s that?” asked Noyes, noticing the gesture.

“A list of suspects,” replied Max. He wondered if someone had followed him from Engineering. “Did you hear the one about the political officer who was killed during wargame exercises?”

Suspicion flickered across the Doc’s face. “No,” he said slowly.

“They couldn’t call it friendly fire because he had no friends.”

Noyes didn’t laugh. He was young, barely thirty, if that. But his face was worn, and he had a deep crease between his eyes. “Can I ask you a direct question?”

“If it’s about who did this-”

“No. It’s about the ship’s mission.”

“I may not be able to answer.”

“It’s just the crew, you know what they’re saying, that this is a suicide mission. We’re supposed to sneak into Adarean space, nuke their capital, and then blow ourselves up, vaporize the evidence.”

“Ah.” No, Max hadn’t heard that one yet, though he supposed he should have thought of it himself. Sometimes there were disadvantages to knowing inside information; it limited one’s ability to imagine other possibilities. “We could blow up their capital, but their military command is space-based, decentralized. That kind of strike wouldn’t touch them at all. That doesn’t make any sense, Doc.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense for the service to order it.” Noyes laughed, a truncated little puff of air. “I was scheduled for leave, I was supposed to be getting married on my leave, and I got yanked off the transport and put on this ship without a word of explanation, and then found out I was going to be gone for a year and a half. So don’t tell me the service only gives orders that make any sense.”

Max had no answer for that. He knew how orders were.

“Is this a suicide mission?” asked Noyes. “Tell me straight. The shooters think that’s why someone tried to kill you, because they don’t have to worry about consequences when they get back home.”

And they could die knowing they’d offed an officer. There were definitely a few of that type onboard. But Max didn’t think it was that random. “And if it is a suicide mission?”

The medtech’s face grew solemn. “Then I want to send some kind of message back to Suzan. I don’t want her to think I simply disappeared on her. I don’t want her to live the rest of her life with that.”

Noyes couldn’t be the only one having those thoughts. No wonder there was tension on the ship. “This isn’t a suicide mission,” Max said firmly.

“Your word on that?”

“Yes.” He would have to try to kill this rumor. Even if it proved to be true. Max touched his pocket again. What exactly were the secret orders? He thought he knew them, but maybe he didn’t.

Noyes shook his head. “Too bad you’re the political officer. Everyone knows your word can’t be trusted.” He handed Max a bottle of pills. “The captain wants to see you on the bridge right away. Take one of these if you feel weak, or in pain, and then report back to sickbay next shift.”

Max sat up, and noticed his pants pockets were inside out. So someone had been searching him after all and the shooters interrupted them. Unless that too was part of the ruse. For now, he’d stick to the simpler explanation.

Noyes helped him to his feet. “I ought to keep you for observation,” he said.

“No,” replied Max. “I’m fine.” I’m as rotten a liar as Rucker is, he thought. He wondered if the first lieutenant had changed his mind. Or changed his allegiances.

The door opened and Simco waited outside. His bulk seemed to fill the small corridor. He held his hands folded behind his back. “Captain assigned me to be your guard, sir. He asks you not to speak about this incident while I’m investigating it. He also requires your immediate attention on the bridge.”

“The assignment comes a little too late, apparently, Sergeant,” murmured Max. He gestured for Simco to lead the way.

“You first, sir.”

Trouble never came looking for him face-to-face, thought Max as he led the way through the corridors. It always came sneaking up behind.

A double crew packed the already tight bridge because of shift change, giving reports to one another in low tones.

No one but the captain bothered to look up when Max entered, and even he only glanced away from the scope for a second. Vents hissed above the muted beeps from the monitors. The two shooters Max had seen in the Black Forest were seated next to the tactics officer. Max waited to make eye contact with them, to say thanks, but they were so absorbed in their work they didn’t notice him. He gave up waiting, and slid over to stand by Petoskey.

“It’s about damn time, Nikomedes,” growled Petoskey.

“I had a slight accident.”

“Well I have a slight problem. The incoming ship boosted. They’re in some kind of a hurry. So our window of opportunity is here, and it’s closing fast.”

He hasn’t made up his mind yet, Max realized. “Have they detected us?”

“No. We’re between them and the rings. They don’t see us because we’re floating dead, and because they don’t expect to see anyone out here.”

Max remained silent, running the calculations through his head. Outback’s presence would not affect the Jesusalem’s claim to the system, only the possible success of their mission through Adarean space.

“ ‘War is an extension of political policy with military force,’ ” prompted Petoskey, quoting regulations.

And it was the job of the political officer to be the final arbiter of policy. This was exactly the type of unforeseen situation that created the need for political officers on ships. “What are our options?”

Petoskey shifted his chewing tobacco into a spot below his lower lip. “Chevrier says we could power up and hit them with the lasers, but we wouldn’t get more than one or two shots. I don’t like our chances at this distance. We could launch the nuclears at them. They’d see them coming, but we could bracket them so that they’ll still take on a killer dose of radiation even if we don’t score a direct hit. Or we could do nothing.”

“What are your concerns?”

He sucked the tobacco juice through his teeth. “The last I heard officially, Outback was one of our trading partners.”

“We have met the enemy,” Max mused softly, “and they are us.”

Petoskey scowled. “But Outback also trades with Adares. If they find our dive to their system, they’ll let the Adareans know about it and that endangers our mission. So what’s the politically correct thing for me to do?”

“I would suggest that we haven’t been tasked with guarding the system or the other wormhole. I would point out that there are other ships in place specifically to do just that.” He paused. “And as long as we dive undetected, our mission isn’t really endangered.”

Petoskey leaned back and straightened so that his head nearly scraped the pipes. He slammed the scope back into its slot and stared hard at Max. “So we let them pass?”

“They’ve got a second ship outside our range. We pop this one and the other one sees us, then Jesusalem could face a war on two fronts.” Although they weren’t technically at war with Adares any longer, the capital was filled with rumors of war. “Politically, we’re not ready to handle that.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Petoskey, with a slight shudder that mixed revulsion with unease. “I’m glad not to use the nukes. Those are dirty weapons to use. On people.”

“I fail to see any difference,” said Max. “Two kinds of fire. Lasers or nukes, they would be equally dead.”

Petoskey had a lidded cup taped to the conduits on the wall. He pulled it off, spit into it, and taped it back up again. Pausing, so he could change the subject. “I understand that you were nearly dead a little while ago, Nikomedes. Simco has one of his men guarding Reedy.”

“Why?” asked Max. Had the ensign been attacked also?

“Spy or not, it’s obvious she’s trying to get back at you for your comments in quarters the other day. I asked around and found out what she did to Vance. Shows what happens when you don’t keep women in their place. Before I had her locked up, I wanted to make certain this wasn’t something arranged between the two of you. Some kind of duel. Not that I thought it was, but…”

He thought it might be, finished Max to himself. Or hoped it might be. “It wasn’t Reedy as far as I know. But let Simco’s man watch her while Simco investigates. If Reedy’s guilty, maybe she’ll give herself away.”

“Shouldn’t have a woman onboard anyway, even if she is language qualified. We can’t afford dissension on a voyage like this one. I will personally execute anyone who endangers this mission. I don’t care if it is a junior officer.”

Or a woman, thought Max. “Understood,” he answered. He looked up one last time, to see if he could catch the shooters’ eyes. That’s when he noticed Rucker and Gordet staring at him. They had been whispering to one another and stopped. “In fact, I think I’ll head down to the radio room right now.”

“You’re dismissed from duty until Doc says you’ve recovered. And Simco or one of his men will stay with you at all times.”

That was not what Max wanted, not at all. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

Petoskey nodded, dismissing him.

Max began to wish that whoever had attacked him had done a better job.

He went to the secure radio room and all three of the intelligence officers stopped talking and turned toward the doorway. It’s the Political Officer Effect, thought Max.

“What happened to your face?” Lukinov asked.

“I fought the law and the law won,” Max answered impulsively.

Burdick burst out laughing. Even Lukinov smiled. “Why does that sound so damned familiar?” he asked.

“Judas’s Chariot,” answered Burdick. “The vid. It was one of Barabbas’s lines.”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember that one now. It had Oliver Whatshisname in it. I got to meet him once, at a party, when he did that public information vid. Good man.” He twisted around. The smell of his cologne nearly choked Max. “Seriously, Max, what happened? Why has the captain put a guard on one of my men?”

“Someone tried to kill me.” Max was disappointed with the surprise in Lukinov’s expression. In all of their expressions. Intelligence was supposed to know everything. “Captain suspects the ensign here.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Lukinov rolled his eyes. Anger flashed across Reedy’s face.

“It wasn’t my suggestion,” Max replied. “But if you don’t mind my asking, which one of you is just coming on shift?”

“I am, sir,” Reedy answered immediately.

“And where were you?”

“In her quarters sleeping,” interjected Lukinov. “Where else would she have been?”

“You were there with her?” No one wanted to answer that accusation, so Max slid past it. “You two usually work one shift together, and Burdick takes the other, right?”

The senior officer hesitated. “I doubled shifted with Burdick because of the information we were getting.”

So. Reedy had been alone. Not that Max suspected her of the attack. But now he’d have to. Maybe he’d misestimated her in the first place. “What information is that?”

“The other Outback ship is doing some kind of military research defending the wormhole. Based on what we’re overhearing from observers in the shuttles. We’ve got a name on the second ship. It’s the Jiang Qing, same class as the other one.” He paused. “You aren’t going to try to tell me that Jiang Qing was one of Napoleon’s generals too, are you, Max?”

“Why not?” asked Max flatly. “Historically, Earth has had women generals for centuries. Jesusalem was the only planet without a mixed service.”

Lukinov’s lip curled. “We finally tracked down Deng Xiaopeng. He and this Jiang Qing woman were both part of the Chinese revolution. Reedy found the information.”

“The Chinese communist revolution,” clarified the ensign. “They were minor figures, associated with Mao. Both were charged with crimes though they helped bring about important political changes that led to the second revolution.”

“Ah,” said Max. A wave of pain shot through him. If his legs had been supporting his weight, they would surely have buckled. “Please cooperate with Sergeant Simco until we can get this straightened out. Now, if you will excuse me.”

He didn’t wait for their response, but turned back to the hall. Simco waited at parade rest, his hands behind his back. Another trooper stood beside him.

“I’m going to return to my cabin now,” Max said.

“I’ve detailed Rambaud here to watch you while I begin my investigation,” Simco replied. Rambaud was a smaller but equally muscled version of his superior officer. “I’ll be rotating all my men through this duty until we find the culprit.”

“Keeping them sharp?” Max said.

Simco nodded. “A knife can’t cut if you don’t keep it sharp.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Max barely noticed the other man shadowing him through the narrow maze of corridors. When he reached his room, he took a double dose of the doctor’s painkillers, added one from his own stock, and washed them all down with a gulp of warm, flat water. He looked in the bathroom mirror at his damaged eye. That was when he started to shake. He had the ludicrous sensation that he was going to fall down, so he grabbed hold of the sink and tried to steady himself. Eventually it passed, but not before his breath came out in ragged gasps.

He’d come too close to dying this time. And why?

The rumor of the suicide mission still bothered him, and so did the problem of Reedy. When he drifted off to sleep, he dreamed that he was wandering an empty vessel searching for someone who was no longer aboard, through corridors that were kinked and slicked like the intestines of some animal. They started shrinking, squeezing the crates and boxes that filled them into a solid mass, as Max tried to find his way out. The last section dead-ended in a mirror, and when he paused to look into its silver surface he saw a bloody eye above a pyramid.

He woke up shivering and nauseous. According to the clock, he’d slept nearly four and a half hours, but he didn’t believe it. He wasn’t inclined to believe anything right now.

He rose and dressed himself. He needed better luck. If it wouldn’t come looking for him, he’d have to go looking for it.

Down in the very bottom of the ship rested an observation chamber that contained the only naked ports in the entire vessel. Max went down there to think, dutifully followed by Simco’s watchdog.

Max paused outside the airlock. “You can wait here.”

“I’m supposed to stay with you, sir.”

“The lights are off, it’s empty,” said Max, realizing as soon as the words were out of his mouth what had happened the last time he went into a dark room alone. “If someone’s waiting in there to kill me, then you’ve got them trapped. You’ll get a commendation.”

Rambaud relented. Max entered the room, closing the hatch behind him. It sealed automatically, reminding Max of the sound of a prison cell door shutting.

Outside the round windows stretched the infinite expanse of space. The sun was a small, cold ember in a charcoal-colored sky dominated by the vast and ominous bulk of Big Brother. They were close enough that Max could see crimson storms raging on its surface, swirling hurricanes larger than Jesusalem itself. He counted three moons spinning around the planet, and great rings of dust, as if everything in space was drawn into satellites around the self-consuming fire of its mass.

A quiet cough came from the rear of the compartment.

Max pirouetted, and saw another man floating cross-legged in the air. As he unfolded and came to attention, light glinted off the jack that sat lodged in his forehead like a third eye. It was the spongediver, the ship’s pilot, Patchett.

“At ease, Patchett,” said Max.

Patchett nodded toward the port as he clasped his hands behind his back. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It’s no place for a human being to live,” Max said. “Give me a little blue marble of a planet any day instead.”

The pilot smiled. “That figures.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the political officer, and politics is always about the place we live, how we live together.” He gestured at the sweep of the illuminated rings. “But this is why I joined the service-to explore, to see space.”

“Has it been worth it?”

“Too much waiting, too much doing nothing.” Patchett shifted his position, rotating a quarter circle. “The diving makes it worthwhile.”

“Good,” murmured Max, looking away.

“You and I are alike that way. We both are the most useless men on the ship except for that one moment when we’re the only one qualified to do the job.” He stared out the port. “What happened to you, that was wrong, sir.”

Max gazed out the window also, saying nothing.

“I’d guess,” Patchett said, “that I’ve been in the service as long as you have. Nearly twenty years.”

“Just past thirty years now,” Max replied. It wasn’t all in the official records, but thirty years total. A very long time. Patchett clearly wanted to say something more. “What is it?” asked Max. “Speak freely.”

Patchett exhaled. “Things have been going downhill the past few years, sir. The wrong men in charge, undermining everything we hoped to accomplish in the Revolution. They all want war. They forget what the last one was like.”

“Are you sure you should be telling this to your political officer?”

“You may be the only one I can say it to. You have to know it already. Petoskey’s an excellent captain, don’t get me wrong, sir. But he’s too young to remember what the last war was like.”

They hung there in the dark, weightless, silent, watching the giant spin on its axis. If Patchett was right, there was one moment in the voyage when only Max’s skills would make a difference. But what moment, and what kind of difference, there was no way to know in advance.

When Max went to the med bay to check in with Noyes he found Simco sitting-more or less-at the exam table. “I’d salute,” Simco said, “but Doc here’s treating a sprain.”

“Dislocation,” corrected Noyes.

“What happened?” asked Max.

Simco grinned. “I scheduled extra combat training for my men. Want to make sure they’re ready in case they run into whoever attacked you. It doesn’t really count as a good workout unless someone dislocates something.”

Noyes snorted.

“Plus, Doc here says that we have to exercise at least an hour a day or we’ll start losing bone and muscle mass.”

“Nobody’s had to deal with prolonged weightlessness in a couple of hundred years,” added Noyes. “I’m only finding hints of the information I need in our database. The nausea, vertigo, lethargy-that I expected and was prepared for. But we’re already seeing more infections, shortness of breath, odd stuff. And we’ve got orders to spend months like this? It’s madness. Take it easy on this thumb for a few more days, Simco.” He went to lay his stim-gun on the table and it floated off sideways across the room. “Damn. Not again.”

Max snatched it out of the air and handed it back to the Doc. “Any word on who my attacker was?” he asked Simco.

“No.” The sergeant blew out his breath. “But I did hear that you picked a fight with Chevrier down in Engineering.”

“Nothing even close to that.”

“Good. He’s a big man, completely out of your weight class.”

“Right now, we’re all in the same weight class.”

That won Max a laugh from both Simco and Noyes. “Still, if you go see him again, about anything, please inform me first,” the sergeant said.

“You’ll know about it before I do,” promised Max.

After the Doc finished checking him, Max went back through the crate-packed corridors toward his quarters. On the way, he passed Reedy, whose mouth quirked in a brief smile as Max squeezed past her.

“What do you find so funny, Ensign?” Max growled.

Reedy’s eyes flicked, indicating the trooper following her and the one behind Max. “For a second there, sir, I wondered which of us was the real prisoner.”

Very perceptive. She had an edge to her voice that reminded him of Chevrier. He recalled that she had shown a strong aversion to confinement after the incident with Vance. “Remember who you’re speaking to, Ensign!”

“Yes, sir. It won’t happen again, sir.”

“See that it doesn’t.”

He went into his room and swallowed another painkiller. Even if the moment came when he could make a difference, would he be able to get away from his minders long enough to do it?

Eight more shifts, two more days, and nothing.

Max had no appetite, the food all tasted bland to him. He couldn’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time. If he turned the lights off, he’d wake in a panic, disoriented, unsure of his location. But if he slept with the lights on, they poked at the edge of his consciousness, prodding him awake. He tried to exercise one hour out of every two shifts, but everything seemed tedious. It just felt wrong, empty motions with nothing to push against.

On the bridge, he asked Petoskey if it was still necessary to have a guard.

“The attack’s still unsolved,” Petoskey said. “Until Simco brings me the manor woman-who did it, I want you protected.”

Max had the sinking feeling that might be for the rest of the voyage. “How are the repairs going?”

“Chevrier replaced all the chips in the dead array with new ones, but something failed when he tested it. He has an idea for rebuilding the chips with some kind of silicon alloy crystal. Says he can grow it as long as we stay weightless. Some other kind of old tech. Inorganic. He tried to explain it to me, but he’s the only one who really understands it.”

“Can we wait that long?”

“We can’t power up to jump as long as those Outback ships are in the vicinity. They’d see us-and the wormhole-in a microsecond. So far they still haven’t detected our buoy. Or if they have, they just took it for a pulsar signal.” Which was the idea, after all. Petoskey tugged hard at his beard. There were dark stains of sleeplessness under his eyes. “Don’t you have some work to do, some reports to write?”

He meant it as a dismissal. Max was willing to be dismissed. He was still no closer to catching his traitor, and his luck couldn’t have been more execrable.

He went to the ship’s library to read. Rambaud, his trooper again this shift, had no interest in reading or studying vids of any kind. He writhed in almost open pain as Max made it clear that he intended to stay at a desk alone for several hours. Max decided that it wouldn’t be murder if he bored Simco’s men to death.

He sat there, scanning Pier’s monograph on the Adarean war, skimming through the casualty lists in the appendixes, thinking about some of the worst battles, early on, and the consequences of war, when a voice intruded on his contemplations.

“… bored as hell down here. Uh-huh. Wargames. That sounds interesting. Can you understand that Outback lingo?”

Rambaud was whispering on the comlink to his compatriot in charge of Reedy. Max let the conversation turn to complaints about the exercise regimen and weightlessness before he flipped off his screen and rose to go.

He headed for the intelligence radio room. The scent of Lukinov’s imported cologne drifted out the open door into the corridor. Max paused at the doorway. Inside, the trooper floated behind Lukinov and Reedy. He wore a set of earphones.

“So this is how well you keep secrets?” asked Max.

The trooper saw Max, yanked the earphones out of his ear, and handed them back to an ebullient Lukinov. “Wait until you hear this, Max!” Lukinov said.

The trooper tried to squeeze by Max without touching him. Max stayed firmly in his way, making him as uncomfortable as possible. “Rambaud,” he said to his own man, “I believe I left my palm-pad down in the library by accident. Retrieve it for me and bring it to this room immediately so I can record this conversation.”

Rambaud hesitated before answering. “Yes, sir.”

The other trooper went over Max’s head and took up station outside the door. Max kicked the door shut and latched it.

“What’s going on with the spongediver?” asked Max.

“They’re testing a new laser deflector, using it for wormhole defense.” Lukinov grinned. “Go ahead and listen.”

Max picked up the headphones and fit the wires into his ears. Pilots chattered with tactics officers, describing the kind of run they were simulating. No wonder Outback outfitted their survey ships with the newest military equipment. The blind side of a wormhole dive was probably the only place in the galaxy they could test any new weapons without being observed. “Very standard stuff here,” he said after a moment. “Is there just one channel of this?”

“Their scientists are on the other channel, the one Reedy’s monitoring. But don’t you see what an advantage this gives us if we can steal it? We can attack Adares with impunity and keep them from diving into our system.”

Max switched the channel setting to the one Reedy listened to. “Do unto others before they do unto you?”

“Exactly!” replied Lukinov.

Reedy’s eyes went wide open. She started tapping the desk to get their attention. “Sir,” she said. “There’s something you should…”

“Not right now,” said Max.

Lukinov frowned at him. “Now see here-”

“No, you see here. Has the captain been informed of this?”

“Not yet,” replied Lukinov.

“You invite some grunt in here to listen to information that will certainly be classified top secret before you notify the captain?” He sneered at Lukinov, pausing long enough to listen to the scientists talk. “You can be sure that my Department will file a record of protest on our return. In the meantime, I better go get the captain.”

Lukinov popped out of his seat. “No, I’ll do that. I was just planning to do that anyway, if you hadn’t interrupted.”

“Sir,” repeated Reedy. “Sirs.”

“Ensign,” said Max, “Shut. Up.”

The ensign nodded mutely, her eyes shaped like two satellite dishes trying to pick up a signal.

“I’m coming with you, Lukinov,” Max said.

“No, you aren’t, Lieutenant,” snapped the intelligence officer. “I’m the one man on this ship you can’t give direct orders to and don’t you forget it.”

Max saluted, a gesture sharp enough to have turned into a knife hand strike at the other man’s throat. Lukinov stormed out of the room. Max turned back to the ensign, who simply stared at him.

“They just broadcast the complete specifications,” said Reedy. “They were checking for field deformation-”

“I know that,” said Max. And then he did something he never expected to do, not on this voyage. He said aloud the secret intelligence code word for “render all assistance.” Silently, to himself, he added a prayer that it was current, and that Reedy would recognize it.

“Wh-what did you say?” she stammered.

Max repeated the code word for “render all assistance” while he pulled off his earphones and reached in his pocket for his multi-tool. His fingers found nothing, and he realized that it had been missing since his attack. “And give me a screwdriver,” he added.

Reedy handed over the tool. “But… but…”

Max ignored her. In thirty seconds, he’d disconnected the power and disassembled the outer case of the radio. “Give me the laser,” he said.

The ensign’s hands shook as she complied.

“I need two new memory chips and the spare pod.” Reedy just stared at him, uncomprehending. “Now!” spit Max, and the ensign dove for the equipment box.

Max shoved the loaded chips into his pockets and snapped the replacements into their slots as Reedy handed them over. The radio was still a mess of pieces when someone rapped on the door.

“Stall them!” hissed Max.

The rap came again and the door cracked open. Rambaud pushed his head in partway. “Here’s your palm-pad, sir.”

“I’ll take it,” said Reedy, grabbing it and shoving the door shut on him.

“Thanks!” called Max. He’d lost one of the screws, and when he looked up from the equipment to see if it was floating somewhere, he was temporarily disoriented. His stomach did a flip-flop and his head spun in a circle. “Shit!”

Rambaud pushed back on the door. “Are you safe in there, sir? I’m coming in.”

Reedy wedged herself against the wall to block the door.

Max heard a plain thump as Rambaud bounced against it. He saw the screw floating near his ankles and scooped it up. He fixed the cover and powered the machine up again. Reedy grunted as the door pushed against her, cracking open. “I’m fine,” Max said loudly.

Rambaud nodded, but he stood outside the cracked door peering in.

Reedy panted, caught herself, controlled it. A thousand questions formed and died on her lips. Max had taken the leap, and now he had to see how far that leap would take him.

“Ensign,” he whispered.

“Yes, sir?”

“From this moment forth,” his lips barely moved, “you will consider me your sole superior officer.”

Her eyes jumped to the door. “Sir? But-”

“That is a direct order.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will not tell anyone-”

But he did not get the chance to tell Reedy what she should and shouldn’t say. The door swung open and Lukinov entered, followed by Captain Petoskey. Lukinov grinned like a party girl full of booze. “Wait until you hear this,” he said. He put his headphones on, and handed one to Petoskey as Reedy slid quickly back into her place.

They listened for a moment. Petoskey squinted his eyes, and rounded his shoulders even more than usual. “Sounds like they’re bringing the shuttles in, getting ready to leave. Radioing a safe voyage message to their other ship. What was I supposed to hear?”

“They’re testing a new deflector for wormhole defense. If we attack their ship and kill them, we can take it. Their other ship will be stuck in-system and we can nuke them.”

“Captain,” said Max.

“Yes?”

“I didn’t hear any evidence of this deflector. I can’t recommend an attack.”

Lukinov frantically punched commands into his keypad. “Let me back up to an hour ago.” His face went as blank as the records he was trying to access. “I can’t seem to find it. Reedy, what’s going on here?”

“Sir,” she muttered, with a pleading glance at Max, “uh, I don’t know, sir.”

“She’s covering up,” said Max.

Three faces stared at him with variations of disbelief.

“Look at the battery, it’s not properly grounded.” It was an awful explanation, but the best that Max could come up with on the spot. “Reedy was moving some equipment around, hit it with something. I didn’t see what. Sparks flew and the screens all went dead. She got them back up right away, but she probably wiped the memories.”

“Ensign,” Lukinov said coldly. “Explain yourself.”

Reedy’s mouth hung open. She didn’t know what to say. Betrayal was written all over her face.

Petoskey took off his headset. “Lukinov, I trust you to take care of this. Nikomedes…”

“Yes, sir?”

Petoskey couldn’t seem to think of any orders to give him. “I have to go talk to Chevrier. We have our mission. With the second ship out of the way, we have to prepare to dive.”

Max followed Petoskey out into the corridor, but returned to his room to stash the stolen memory. Only two things mattered now: getting the information to his superior, and keeping Lukinov from getting it to his. It needed to be used as a defensive weapon, not as an excuse to start a war. Lukinov had access to the radio and official channels. Max didn’t. That stacked the cards in Lukinov’s favor.

He had to do something with it soon, before they jumped to Adarean space. And he had to hope that a baby-faced ensign just out of the Academy didn’t fold under pressure and give him away. It was like a game of Blind Man’s Draw. Max had already put everything he had into the pot.

There was nothing else he could do at this point except play the card that he was dealt.

Meal time. Max sat by himself, as usual, at his own narrow table in the galley. Even the trooper guarding him sat with some of the other crewmen.

Lukinov entered, saw Max, and came straight over to him. “Reedy won’t say that you were lying, but you were,” the intelligence officer said. “Not that it matters. The machines are buggered, the data’s all gone. Even Burdick can’t find it.’

Max had a blank sheet in his pocket. He pulled it out, and a stylus, and passed it over to Lukinov. This was the way duels were proposed at the Academy. According to the Academy’s cover story, it was the way Reedy had arranged to meet with Vance.

Lukinov looked at the sheet, then scratched “observation room” and a time two hours distant on it. He pushed it back over to Max, who shook his head, and wrote “reactor room.”

“Why there?” asked the intelligence officer.

“They’ve got cameras there, but no mikes. It’s off limits to Simco’s troopers, but not to us. We won’t be there long.”

“So this is just to be a private conversation? I should leave my weapons behind?”

“I wish you would.”

“More’s the pity,” said Lukinov, and stormed out.

Max was putting his tray away, trying to resolve his other problem, when Simco came in. “Lukinov won’t let us throw the ensign in the brig, not yet. But he thought it was best if I stuck with you personally in the meantime.”

Perfect, thought Max, just perfect.

Two hours had never stretched out to such an eternity before in all Max’s life. Simco escorted him to his quarters and joined him inside.

“Do you want to follow me into the head and shake it dry for me?” asked Max on his way into the bathroom.

Simco laughed, but remained in the other room. Max retrieved a bottle of pills and an old pair of nail clippers from the medicine cabinet, putting them in his pocket. Then he led Simco on a long, roundabout trip through the corridors that ended up on the floor of the Black Forest. He stopped when he got there and snapped his fingers.

“I forgot something,” Max said. “You don’t mind if I borrow that multi-tool in your pocket, do you?”

Simco stuffed his hand automatically into his pants, wrapped it around the bulge there, and froze. “Sorry, sir, I don’t have one with me,” he said, grinning. “Got one in my locker. Or do you want to hit Engineering to borrow one?”

“No, it’s nothing I need that badly.” He jumped. “Meet you up top, in the exercise room.” He grabbed hold of the service ladder outside one of the missile shafts, and pulled himself up. He used his momentum to spin, kicking off from the side of the shaft, and shot like a rocket toward the ceiling.

“Hold up there,” called Simco, halfway up the stairs.

Max ducked into the upper corridor. He dove through the hall as fast as he could, past the exercise room, down the access shaft, and back out the corridor below, returning to the missile room. He watched Simco’s feet disappear above him into the top corridor, and then he flew straight across the cavern to the section over Engineering, opened a portside hatch, and closed it again after himself.

A long time ago Max had modified his nail clippers to function as a makeshift tool. Bracing himself against the wall, he used it now to remove the grille from the ceiling vent-it was the supply duct for the HEPA filters in the clean hood corner of the battery room directly below. He squeezed inside, feet first, pulling the grille after him. There was no way to reattach it, but with no gravity he didn’t need to. He simply pulled it into place and it stayed there.

It was an eighteen-inch duct and he was a small man. Even so, he felt like toothpaste being forced back into the tube. He had to twist sideways and flip over to get past the L-curve, but after that it was a straight trip down to the reactor room. With his arms pinned above his head, and no gravity to help him, he writhed downward like a rat caught in a drainpipe. He reached bottom, unable to go any further. His kicks had no effect at all and his heart began to race as he wondered if he’d be trapped inside the duct. Finally, by pressing his elbows out into the corners, and hooking one foot on the lip where the vent teed out horizontally, he was able to push the other foot downward until the duct tore open.

He eased downward into the plenum space above the hood ceiling and kicked through the tiles. When he finally lowered himself into the battery room he was drenched in sweat and his pants were ripped in the thigh. He hadn’t even noticed. He undid his belt and looked at the scrape on his leg. It was mostly superficial. Not much blood.

He leaned in the corner, with the hood’s softwalls pulled back, catching his breath. The cameras were all installed to monitor the reactor, so they faced the center of the room. Most of them close-upped on specific pieces of equipment. He eased out, pushing himself up toward the high ceiling.

He glanced at his chrono. Already seven minutes past his meeting time with Lukinov. He waited two more minutes before the hatch popped open. He had a split second to decide what he would do if it was one of the engineers.

But a familiar balding head poked through the door. Max eased out of the hood area. “Hey, Lukinov.”

“Max?” The other man twisted around to see him. He entered, closing the hatch behind him. “How the hell did you get in here? Chevrier’s guard at the door gave me the runaround, swore he hadn’t seen you. The mate watching the monitors said you never came in here either. What are you, some damn spook?”

Max ignored the questions. “You wanted to talk to me about the radio room. It was me. I stole the memory chips.”

Lukinov came toward him, pale with fury. “You did what? By god, I’ll see you shot.”

“Intelligence won’t touch me,” said Max. “Not for this.”

“I’ll get Political Education to do it, you goddamn weasel,” Lukinov vowed. He launched himself toward Max, keeping a hand against the wall to orient himself. “Your boss, Mallove, is a personal friend of mine. He won’t like-”

Max jumped, tucking his knees and spinning as he sailed in the air. He wrapped his belt around Lukinov’s throat, pivoted, twisting the belt as he pulled himself back to the floor. The motion jerked Lukinov upside down so that he floated in the air like a child’s balloon.

“Y our boss, Drozhin,” whispered Max, “doesn’t like the way you’ve been selling Intelligence’s secrets out to Political Education and War.”

Drozhin was Max’s boss too. He’d moled Max in Political Education as soon as the new Department formed.

Lukinov panicked. He thrashed his arms and legs, disoriented, trying to make contact with any surface, clutching futilely at Max, who was behind his back and below him. Max twisted the belt, pinching the carotid arteries and cutting off blood flow to the brain. Lukinov was unconscious in about seven seconds. His body just went still. He was dead a few seconds later.

Drozhin had ordered Max to watch Lukinov, not kill him, but he couldn’t see any other way around it. He shoved the body toward the corner, under the vent, and put his belt back on.

Still nobody at the hatch. Maybe they hadn’t noticed. Maybe they were summoning Simco. There’d be no denying this one, not if he’d missed the location of any cameras.

But he had no time to think about failure. He didn’t want anyone looking closely at Lukinov’s body and he didn’t want the ship making the jump to Adares. Intelligence was publicly part of the war party, but Drozhin believed that war would destroy Jesusalem and wanted it sabotaged at all costs. Max took the medicine bottle from his pocket and removed the two pills that weren’t pills. He popped them into his mouth to warm them-they tasted awful-while he removed the wire and blasting cap from the bottle’s lid.

He couldn’t blow any main part of the reactor, he understood that much. But the cooling circuit used water pipes, and a radioactive water spill could scuttle the jump. Max darted in, fixed the explosive to a blue-tagged pipe, plugged the wire in it, and hurried back to the hood. He pushed Lukinov’s corpse in the direction of the explosive before he climbed through the hole into the vent.

There was a soft boom behind him.

Max cranked his neck to peer down between his feet and saw the water spray in a fine mist, filling the air like fog. All the radiation alarms blared at once.

They sounded far off at first while he wiggled upward. He thought he was sweating, but realized that the busted air flow was drawing some of the water up through the shaft. Droplets pelleted him with radiation, and that made him crawl faster. He got stuck in the bend for a moment, finally squeezing through, and thrusting the vent cover out of the way without checking first to see if anyone was in the corridor. But it was empty-so far his luck held! He retrieved the grille and screwed it back into place. One of the alarms was located directly beside him. Its wailing made his pulse skip.

He emerged into the shaft of the weapons compartment as men raced both ways, toward the accident and away from it. No one noticed him. He was headed across the void toward his quarters when someone called his name.

“Hey, Nikomedes!”

He saw the medtech, Noyes, down by the corridor that led to Engineering. “What is it, Doc?”

“You don’t have your comet, do you?”

Max touched the empty spot on his breast pocket. “No. Why?”

“Radiation emergency!” he screamed. “You’re drafted as the surgeon’s assistant-come on!”

Max considered ignoring the command, but according to regulations, Doc was right. Anyone who wasn’t Vacuum and Radiation qualified was designated an orderly to help treat those who were. Plus it gave him an alibi. He jumped toward the bottom of the Black Forest and joined Noyes.

“Here, carry this kit,” Noyes said, handing over a box of radiation gear as he went back across the hall to grab another.

“Where is it?” asked Max. He held the gear close, covering the rip in his pants. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t know. The com’s down again. But it has to be the reactor.”

Nobody guarded the main hatch to Engineering so the two men went straight in. A crowd gathered in the monitor room, spilling out into the corridor. Noyes pushed straight through, and Max followed along behind him. Chevrier was shaking a crewman by the throat.

“-what the hell did you let him in there for?”

“He ordered me to!” the man complained. It was DePuy.

“There’s water everywhere!” another one of the men yelled, coming back from the direction of the reactor room hatch. “The reactor’s over-heating fast!”

“It’s already past four hundred cees,” said one of the men at the monitors.

Chevrier tried to fling DePuy at the wall, but they just flopped a short distance apart. The chief engineer turned toward the rest of crew in disgust.

Rucker, the first lieutenant, showed up behind Max. “Captain wants a report-the com’s down again!”

“That’s because the reactor’s overheating,” Chevrier said. “The cooling system’s busted.”

“My God,” said Rucker, invoking a deity he probably didn’t believe in, thought Max.

Noyes slapped a yellow patch on the first lieutenant’s shirt. “Radiation detectors, everyone. When they turn orange, you’re in danger, means get out. Red means see me for immediate treatment.” He handed some to Max. “Make sure everyone wears one.”

“We’ve got to go in there, fix the pipe, and cool the reactor,” said Chevrier. Some of the men started to protest. “Shut the fuck up! I’m asking for volunteers. And I’ll be going in with you.”

Rucker wiped the blond cowlick back off his forehead. “I’ll go in,” he said. Six other crewmen volunteered, most of them senior engineers. Max slapped radiation badges on those men first.

“Here’s the plan.” Chevrier pointed to pictures on the monitors. “We’re going to shut off these valves here and here, cut out and replace this section of pipe-”

Noyes, looking over his shoulder, said, “That man in there ought to come out at once. He looks unconscious.”

“That man is dead,” said Chevrier, “and it’s a good thing too, or I’d kill him. Then we’re going to run a pipe through here, from the drinking water supply-”

A moan of dismay.

“-shut up! We’ll take it from the number three reserve tank. That ought to be enough, and it won’t contaminate the rest of the water. Once we get the main engine back up, we can make more water off the fuel cells.”

Everyone had a badge now, and Max hung back with Noyes.

“I’d like someone to go in there and turn off these,” Chevrier tapped spots on one of the monitors, “here, here, and here, while I get the repair set up.”

“That’ll be me,” Rucker said. Like any junior officer, Max thought, trying to set a good example.

Chevrier gave him a nod. “This one here is tough. It’ll take you a few minutes. It’s right next to the reactor, and it’s going to be hotter than hell.” He gave Rucker the tools he needed and sent him off down the tube to the reactor room.

“I’ll need a shower set up for decontamination,” said Noyes.

Max found the air shower over by the other clean room, and showed him where it was. Noyes started setting up the lead-lined bags for clothing and equipment disposal.

By the time they went back to the monitor room, Chevrier had diagrammed his repair. His volunteers double-checked the equipment lined up in the hall. He sent others, who hadn’t volunteered, to run a connector line from the freshwater tank. They were just getting ready to go in, when Rucker staggered back out. He looked… cooked. Like the worst sunburn Max had ever seen. His clothes were soaked, and glowing drops of water followed through the air in his wake. Noyes was there, swiping the droplets out of the air with a lead blanket. He wrapped Rucker in it, and started leading him toward the shower.

The lieutenant’s badge was bright red.

One crewman bolted, another threw up. No one said anything about the smell, but one of the men took off his shirt and tried to catch the vomit as it scattered through the air.

Chevrier ripped his badge off. “Won’t need this. Just one more distraction. If we’re going to go swimming, we might as well go skinny-dipping.” He stripped off his clothes and the other volunteers followed his example. “Can’t handle tools in those damn vacuum suits anyway.”

Anger, fear, those things were contagious, Max reflected. But so were courage and foolhardy bravery. He hoped the price was worth it.

He supposed he ought to be at decontamination, with Noyes, but he couldn’t tear himself away from the monitors. There were no cameras aimed directly at the spot where the men were working with the pipes, but they passed in and out of the vids. The radioactive water pooled in the air, drop meeting drop, coalescing into larger blobs like mercury spilled on a lab table and just as poisonous. Or perhaps more like antibodies in a bloodstream. The men splashed into them as they moved and the water clung to their skin, searing wherever it touched.

Simco appeared at the door demanding a report for the captain. Max ignored him. Paint peeled off the overheating reactor, curling like bits of ash as it burned away. Water that hit its surface boiled away into steam, but the steam hit the other water, and became drops again instantly, a swirling rain that never fell. And, except for the dead tone of the radiation alarms, it all happened in silence, with no one in the monitor room speaking for long minutes, and no sound at all from the reactor room.

Noyes appeared beside Max. “That man needs to come out right now to have those burns treated,” he said, tapping at one of the monitors. Glowing circles spun in slow lambent spirals on one man’s buttocks.

Max laughed, a sound that came out of his mouth only as a breathless sigh. Those are tattoos, Doc. Jets. Lightning bug juice impregnated in the subdermal cells.”

“I’ve… never heard of that,” said Noyes.

“It’s supposed to bring a spacer safely home again.”

It’s an abomination,” blurted Noyes. The people of Jesusalem were against any mixing of the species. “Let’s hope it does,” he said.

“Indeed,” replied Max.

DePuy stood beside them, shaking his head. “They’re not getting it fixed.”

Max began to think he’d miscalculated badly. He hadn’t wanted anyone to look too closely at Lukinov’s corpse. He wanted the ship to turn around and head back home. But with the main engine down and the back-up scuttled, they were in big trouble.

The hatch flew open and two men came out.

“They’ve been in there almost an hour,” said Noyes, checking his chrono and calculating the damage to them.

“Is it done?” the men in the monitor room demanded. Max heard his own voice blurt out, “Is it fixed?”

But their faces were mute. The blistered flesh bubbled off as Doc wrapped them in blankets. Noyes helped one toward the shower, and Max took the other. “This is hopeless,” Noyes said, trying to clean the men. “You have to go back there now and get the other men out before they die.”

“I think we all die with the ship if they fail,” said Max.

Rambaud, one of the troopers, appeared in the door. “Message from the captain, Doc. He wants you on the bridge.”

“Tell him no.”

The trooper’s eyes kept flicking nervously to their badges. Max noticed his own was a sickly orange color. “Beg your pardon, Doc, but he’s getting ready to abandon ship. If it’s necessary.”

“If he wants to give me an order, he can come down here and do it himself,” said Noyes, shooting the burned man full of painkillers and starting an IV pump.

Rambaud fled.

Noyes stared after him. “They were going to suicide all of us anyway, for nothing. If I’m going to die, it might as well be doing my job.”

“Hell, yes.” Max’s job was getting the specifications on the deflectors to Drozhin. If the captain took the escape shuttles and flew in system, then it was Max’s duty to retrieve the chips from his quarters and get on a shuttle.

He followed Noyes back into the mouth of fire instead.

“They’re coming out!” someone shouted.

Four more men this time, in worse shape than the others. Noyes had to hypospray them full of painkillers just to get them down to the shower. Max carried the man with the tattoos. They were coal black in his skin. Whatever lived in the cells and gave them their luminescence had been killed off by the radiation.

Before they finished the others, Chevrier was brought to them, covered with burn blisters, his hands raw meat, his eyes blind. He couldn’t speak.

“Did he get it done?” shouted Max.

No one knew, so Max flew back toward the monitor room, where the handful of men who remained were arguing over the monitors. “The temperatures are still climbing,” shouted DePuy. His voice had risen an octave in pitch. “I tell you he didn’t get it running.”

“What’s going on?” asked Max.

“The pipes aren’t open,” said one of the electrician’s mates.

“Somebody needs to go in there and turn this valve here,” said DePuy. He pointed to a spot in the middle of the thick steam that surrounded the overheating reactor.

No one volunteered.

They were boys mostly, eighteen or nineteen, junior crewmen. They’d all seen the others carried out, had smelled the burned flesh, had listened to their weeping.

The cut on Max’s leg throbbed. His face and arms felt hot, burned. “I’ll go in,” he said.

Reactors were the only ship system he wasn’t officially trained on, and all the reading he’d done before the voyage seemed inadequate to the task now. But he could go in there and turn a valve. He could do that much.

He went out to the corridor and found it blocked by a man in a vacuum suit, dragging a plasma cutter on a tether and reading the manual in his palm-pad. The man turned, his face gray behind the clear mask covering his face. It was Kulakov, the chief petty officer.

For a second Max thought the man would freeze up.

Kulakov looked back down at his diagram. “Be sure to seal the locks tight behind me,” he said. “Send someone right now to levels three and four, portside, directly above us, to clear the corridors and seal the locks there. You have to do that!”

“Will do,” said Max. Then, “Carry on.”

Kulakov passed through the hatch, but when Max went to seal it, the freshwater supply tubing blocked it. “Damn,” he said, with a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Damn, damn, damn.”

Then DePuy was there beside him with a clamp and some cutters. He severed the pipe, and tossed the loose end through the hatch after Kulakov. Max sealed the door. “Did someone go to three and four?”

DePuy nodded. “But I’ll go double-check,” he added, glancing at the bare spot where Max’s comet should have been. No, he was looking at Max’s radiation badge. It was orange-red, bleeding into a bright crimson.

“You better head over to see Doc,” said the electrician’s mate at the monitors.

“Not yet,” said Max.

On the video feed they watched Kulakov move methodically from point to point, comparing the hook-up and settings with the diagram on his palm-pad. It took him much longer than it had Chevrier when he was naked. A couple times it was clear that between the fog, and the loss of sensation caused by the suit, Kulakov became disoriented crossing an open space. He spun in circles until he found the right side up again. He reached the final valve but couldn’t turn it. He peeled his gloves off, surrounded by the steam, and slowly cranked it over.

The electrician’s mate pounded the monitors. “It’s running! Look at the temps drop!”

Max did, but he watched Kulakov too as he struggled to put his gloves back on, picked up the plasma cutter, and then burned a hole through the hull.

The weeping sound of the radiation alarms was joined by the sudden keening of the hull breech alarms. The whole ship shuddered, the bulkhead creaked beside him, and Max’s ears popped.

But he kept his eyes fixed on the screen in the reactor room. The steam and all the radioactive water whooshed out of the ship. So did Lukinov’s body. And so did Kulakov.

There was a dark, flat line straight across one of the screens, like a dead reading on a monitor.

Kulakov’s tether.

“Hey look!” whispered one of the crewmen as Max entered the sick bay. “The Corpse is up and walking!”

They all laughed at that, the survivors, even Max. Chevrier was dead, and so was Rucker, and so were two other men. Of the six surviving men who’d received red badge levels of radiation exposure, only Max was strong enough to walk.

Kulakov sat in the middle of them. His hands were wrapped in bandages, two crooked, crippled hooks. Max nodded to him. “They still giving you a hard time?” he asked.

“You know it,” grinned Kulakov.

“Well it’s not fair that he should be the only one who gets leave while we’re on this voyage,” said one of the men.

“How can it be shore leave without a shore, that’s what I want to know,” said Kulakov.

They all laughed again, even Max. That was going to be a ship joke for a long time, how Kulakov got liberty-hanging on a tether outside the ship.

“Papa sent me down here with a message,” said Max. Captain Petoskey, Papa, had only been to the sick bay once since the accident, and quickly. Most of the other crewman stayed away as if radiation sickness were something contagious.

“What is it?” said Kulakov, the words thick in his throat.

“He wanted me to tell you that he’s going to request that they rename the ship.” The crewmen looked up at him seriously, all the humor gone from their eyes. “They’re going to call it the New Nazareth.”

New Nazareth had been nuked the worst by the Adareans. The land there still glowed in the dark.

Kulakov chuckled first, then the other men broke out laughing. Max saluted them, holding himself stiff for a full three seconds, then turned to go see Noyes. The medtech slumped in his chair, head sprawled across his arms on the desk, eyes closed. “I’m not sleeping,” he muttered. “I’m just thinking.”

“About your fiancйe,” asked Max, “waiting for you at home?”

“No, about the bone marrow cultures I’ve got growing in the vats, and the skin sheets, and the transplant surgery I have to do later this afternoon, that I’ve never done unassisted before, and the one I have to do tonight that I’m not trained to do at all.” He twisted his head, peeking one eye out at Max. “And Suzan. Waiting for me. And the ship flying home. How are you feeling?”

“I’d be fine if you had any spare teeth,” Max said, poking his tongue into the empty spots in his gums. That didn’t feel as strange as having gravity under his feet again.

“They’re in a drawer over by the sink,” said Noyes. “Take two and call me in the morning.”

Max walked through corridors considerably less crowded than they had been a few days before. Almost everything inside the ship had received some radiation. The crewmen went crate to crate with geiger counters deciding what could be saved and what should be jettisoned. With the grav back on, the men’s appetites returned. They also had a year’s worth of supplies and only a short voyage ahead of them, so every meal became a feast. Some celebrated the fact that they were going home, and others the simple fact that they’d survived.

Only Captain Petoskey failed to join the celebration. When Max entered the galley, Petoskey wore the expression of a man on the way to the lethal injection chamber. Max couldn’t say for sure if it was the condemned man’s expression or the executioner’s.

Ensign Reedy sat on one side of a long table, with two troopers standing guard behind her. Petoskey and Commander Gordet sat on the opposite side with Simco standing at attention. Petoskey looked naked without his beard, shorn before they recorded these official proceedings. Burdick, the other intelligence officer, sat off to one end.

Petoskey invited Max to the empty seat beside him. “Are you sure you feel up to this, Nikomedes?”

“Doc says I’ll be fine as long as it’s brief.”

“This’ll be quick.”

Petoskey turned on the recorder and read the regulations calling a board of inquiry. “Ensign Reedy, do you wish to make a confession of your crimes at this time?”

Max looked at the youngster. He hadn’t seen or spoken to her since he’d taken the chips in the radio room. If Reedy broke and told them what Max had done, then the entire gamble was for naught.

“I have nothing to confess,” Reedy said.

“Corporal Burdick,” continued Petoskey, “will you describe what you found in the radio room.”

“The equipment had been disassembled and the memory chips replaced with spares.” He made eye contact with no one. “This happened sometime during the last shift when Lieutenant Lukinov and Ensign Reedy were on duty together.”

“Sergeant Simco, please describe your actions.”

“Sir, we made a complete search of Ensign Reedy’s person and belongings looking for the items described by Corporal Burdick. We found nothing there, nor in any place she is known to have visited. We also searched Lieutenant Lukinov’s belongings and found nothing.”

“Lieutenant Nikomedes,” continued Petoskey. “Would you describe what you saw in the radio room.” He added the exact date and shift.

Max repeated his story about the battery short circuit. “If Lukinov removed the chips that Ensign Burdick described, and he had them on him, then they were spaced.”

Petoskey nodded. “Yes, I’ve thought of that. Ensign Reedy, can you explain what happened to the chips containing the communications from the neutral ship?”

“No sir, I cannot.”

“Were you and Lieutenant Lukinov working together as spies for the Adareans?”

“I was not,” answered Reedy. “I can’t speak for the lieutenant, as I was not in his confidence.”

Petoskey slammed his fist on the table. “I think you’re a coward, Reedy. You’re too weak to take responsibility for your actions. I’d tell you to act like a man, but you’re not.”

If Petoskey hoped to provoke Reedy, then his gambit failed. She sat there, placid as a lake on a still summer day.

“Can we conduct a medical interrogation?” interjected Max.

Petoskey went to tug at his beard, but his fingers clutched at emptiness. “I’ve discussed that already with the surgeon and Commander Gordet. Noyes is only a medtech and not qualified to conduct an interrogation that will hold up in military court. Conceivably, we could even taint the later results of a test.”

Max leaned forward. “Can we use more… traditional methods?”

“I won’t command it,” said Petoskey, looking directly into the recorder. He waited for Max to speak again.

Max ran his tongue over the loose replacement teeth, saying nothing, and leaned back. He might get out of this, after all.

“However, if you think…,” said Petoskey.

Max looked at the camera. “Without an immediate danger, we should follow standard procedures.”

Petoskey accepted this disappointment and concluded the proceedings with a provisional declaration of guilt. He ordered Reedy confined to the brig until they returned to Jesusalem.

As Max limped back toward his quarters afterward he noticed that Gordet followed him.

“What can I do for you, Commander?” asked Max.

The bull-shaped second-in-command looked around nervously, then leaned in close. “There’s something you should know, sir.”

“What?” asked Max wearily. “That Petoskey ordered Simco to kill me, that he intended to blame it on Reedy, and then have her arrested and executed?”

Gordet jerked back. “Did you check the secret orders too?”

“What does it matter now? Simco failed, Reedy’s arrested anyway, and we’re on our way home. A bit of advice for you, Mr. Gordet.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “Next time you should pick your horse before the race is over.”

He walked away. When he returned to his room, he recovered the sheet with the combination from its hiding spot and destroyed it. He didn’t know what the secret orders said. He didn’t care.

There was only one thing he had left to do.

Third shift, night rotation, normal schedule. Max headed down to the brig carrying a black bag. One of Simco’s troopers stood guard. “I’m here to interrogate the prisoner,” Max said.

“Let me check with Sergeant Simco, sir.”

Max had been thinking hard about this. Only two people knew that he had the plans for the deflector, and the only way two people could keep a secret was if one of them was dead.

“Sarge wants to know if you need help,” said the trooper.

“Tell him that I take full responsibility for this, in the name of the Department of Political Education, and that no assistance will be necessary.”

The trooper relayed this information, then gave Max a short, sneering nod. “He says he understands. Perfectly. But he wants me to make sure that you’ll be safe in there.”

Max patted a hand on his black bag. “If you hear screaming,” he said, “don’t interrupt us unless it’s mine.”

The trooper twitched uncomfortably under Max’s glare. “Yes, sir.” He opened the door for Max.

Reedy twitched then sat up quickly on the edge of her bunk. Her wrists and ankles were cuffed, and she wore insignialess fatigues. She folded her hands on her knees, fingertip to fingertip, pressed together hard enough to turn her knuckles white.

He stepped inside. The room was barely eight feet by four, with a bed on one wall and a stainless steel toilet built into the corner opposite the door, “That’ll be all, trooper,” Max said. “I’ll signal you when I’m done.”

The hatch closed behind him and latched shut. He looked at Reedy. Her eyes were red and puffy but devoid of feeling, her cheeks hollow and drawn. A blue vein stood out vulnerably on her pale neck.

With his lips tight, Max gave her a small nod. He removed a wand from his bag and searched the room for bugs. She watched closely while he located and destroyed them.

“You look depressed,” he said quietly when he was done.

She shook her head, once. “No, I’ve been depressed before. This time it’s not bad.”

“Define not bad.”

“It’s bad when you want to kill yourself. Right now, I just wish I was dead. That’s not bad.”

Max sat down with his back against the door and opened his bag. He removed two tumblers and a bottle of ouzo. The ensign remained perfectly still as Max pulled out a plate, and ripped open vacuum-wrapped packages of cheese, sausages, and anchovies to set on it.

“Not proper mezedes at all,” he said apologetically. “The fish should always be fresh.”

He filled one cup and pushed it over toward Reedy, then poured and swallowed his own. It tasted like licorice, reminding him both of his childhood and his days as a young man in completely different ways. Reedy remained immobile.

“I’ve been thinking.” Max spoke very quietly, unbuttoning his collar. “When two men know a secret, it’s only safe if one of them is dead.” Good men had died already because of this. So would many more, likely enough, along with the bad. “Therefore you don’t know anything. Only I, and Lukinov, and Luldnov’s dead. Do you understand this?”

“I don’t know anything,” Reedy said, with just a hint of irony. She reached over and lifted the glass of ouzo with both hands.

“My department will declare you the most politically sound of officers. Intelligence will know the truth, at least at the level that matters. Drozhin will get the captain’s official report, but he’ll get another report unofficially. You’ll be fine.” He picked up an anchovy. “There will be a very difficult time, a very ugly court-martial. But you can survive that.”

“Again?”

“Again. This one will not be removed from the record due to extenuating circumstances.” Her attack on Vance had been one of self-defense. “But you’ll be exonerated. You’ll be fine. Things are changing. They’ll be better.” He believed that.

She leaned her head back and tossed down the ouzo. Max reached over and poured her another glass while her eyes were still watering. “When I got this assignment,” she said, “I couldn’t figure out if I was being rewarded for being at the top of the class in languages, despite being a woman. Or if I was being punished for being a woman.”

“Sometimes it’s both ways at once,” Max said. He bit the anchovy and found he didn’t care for the taste.

“Can I ask you one question?” asked Reedy.

Why did people always think he had all the answers? “Information is like ouzo. A little bit can clear your head, make you feel better. Too much will make you sick, maybe even kill you.” He twirled his cup. “What’s your question?”

“Did you really win your wife in a card game?”

“Yes.” He drained his glass to cover his surprise. Though he’d won her with a bluff and not by cheating.

“Why did she leave you?”

Max thought about telling her that was two questions. Then he thought about telling her the truth, that his wife hadn’t left him, that she waited at home for him, not knowing where he was or what he did, going to church every day, caring for their two grandchildren. His daughter was about Reedy’s age. But he’d kept his life sealed in separate compartments and wouldn’t breech one of them now.

“Love, like loyalty,” he said, “is a gift. You can only try to be worthy of it.”

The silence lengthened out between them like all of the empty, uncharted universe. The food sat untouched while they drank. Max could feel himself getting drunk. It felt good.