The Devil and Deep Space Read Online Free PDF Page A

you to take Security 5.1 rather than your previously selected Security 5.3 home with you on leave. And it is critically important that you leave immediately.”
    Said who? Jennet ap Rhiannon? Andrej folded his arms across his chest and raised his eyebrows at her skeptically. She was shorter than he was. And he outranked her. Who did she think she was, to tell him what to do?
    “I’m not inclined to make any such substitution, Lieutenant.” He’d been through a great deal with 5.3, or rather they had been through a great deal with him. Because of him. On his behalf, for his sake. “I have clearance for 5.3. I’m taking them with me. What possible interest could you have in interfering with my holiday?”
    And yet the First Officer was here, and he was not jumping down her throat for overreaching her position. First Officer rarely tolerated breaches of rank–protocol; Andrej therefore asked the question in a curious, rather than an overtly hostile, tone of voice. Oh. Perhaps a little hostile. Perhaps. He didn’t like Command Branch interfering with his life. Captain Lowden had had altogether too much to do with Andrej’s life, until someone had killed him at Port Burkhayden.
    “In the recently completed exercise from which Security 5.1 has just returned, a target was destroyed near the containment perimeter.” All right, she clearly seemed to feel that she was making an explanation. He would wait. “Shortly afterward, an observation station proximal to the final kill exploded. I don’t know if 5.1 knows about the explosion. I’m quite sure they don’t know where our own remote observation team was when the explosion occurred.”
    Andrej began to see where the argument was headed. He didn’t like it. “Lieutenant, I have promised these people, and long anticipated this. Is it truly necessary?”
    Even through the liquor and the partying, however, Andrej’s mind could track the logic. Command Branch officer dead. Explosion proximate to fighter manned by Security 5.1. Interrogate the crew for any potential evidence of conspiracy to commit a mutinous act. Aggressively investigate all implied or explicit disaffection among the crew.
    “Your Excellency, through the death of acting Captain Cowil Brem I have assumed command of the Ragnarok . In the legal capacity of your commanding officer, I direct you to take Security 5.1 and clear this ship with all expedient speed.”
    How dare she use such language with him? She had the technical authority, but it was just that, a mere technicality. And yet she was right. She was the senior Command Branch officer, and that made her acting Captain.
    That didn’t mean he had to like any of this a bit. “First Officer. What have they been told?” It was capitulation on his part, and she would recognize it as such. But he dared not leave without understanding exactly what Lek Kerenko knew, and what supposed; Lek was bond–involuntary, and vulnerable.
    “I told ‘em that Fleet would try to pick the team apart, to cover for the embarrassment of being blown out of the water by an experimental ship. So they were going on assignment. Captain’s direct and explicit orders.”
    Well, it would do, and it was all he had. Very well. “I will say good–bye to my Security,” Andrej said firmly, and not very respectfully either. “And then I will leave straightaway. By your leave, of course, Lieutenant.”
    He didn’t wait for leave. He went through the intervening door into the muster room, where Security 5.3 stood in formal array, waiting for him. There was to be no chance to explain; what the Lieutenant proposed was to willfully evade normal Judicial procedure by removing persons potentially of interest from their immediate environment, and that might create trouble in the hearts and minds of bond–involuntary troops.
    Bond–involuntaries had been carefully schooled in the performance of their duty. Emotional conflict was the signal for the governor that each had implanted in