Many Words

“Excellent,” Church said. “How bad is the damage to Warspite? Is Hermes still in fighting trim?”

Weatherby shook his head. “You know I can’t answer those, Church, and you couldn’t print them in any event.”

The cleverest thing Weatherby had said so far, and it wasn’t newsworthy. Just my luck, Church thought. “Do you have anything else for me? Any notable heroics? Men you’ll be putting up for commendation?”

Weatherby’s gaze fixed on a point somewhere behind Church’s shoulder. Church let him think.

Weatherby had almost been enjoying the sparring match, but now the weight of command settled back on his shoulders. In his estimation, there had been no cowards in Warspite that day two and a half weeks ago, and to a man, her complement was worthy of praise.

He focused on Church again. The reporter stood there expectantly, pen poised over the page. Weatherby sighed. Though he may have been a torment to the Navy, Church was, unlike most of his compatriots in the press, a fundamentally honest man.

Weatherby spoke. “I have something for you, but you’ll have to sit on it until I’ve returned to the capital.”

Church raised his eyebrows. “Why the wait?”

“The man I have in mind is among the casualties,” Weatherby replied. “I hope to speak to his family personally before the news hits the papers.”

“That’s a little out of the ordinary, isn’t it?”

Weatherby’s jaw tightened. “I’ll say nothing further unless you agree to my terms.”

Church was not in the habit of sitting on stories, but something here piqued his interest. “Will you keep it between the two of us until I’ve gone to press?” After a moment, Weatherby nodded. “All right. I’ll take the deal.”

“Here’s your quote, then,” Weatherby said. “Winston Hughes, son of Balfour Hughes—yes, the Undersecretary—was among those lost off Argo. After-action reports suggest that his quick thinking and decisive action served to seal Warspite‘s burning Number One magazine. Had it not been for him, the ensuing explosion would have crippled the ship. His bravery and sacrifice will live on as an example of the finest traditions of the service and the finest qualities of the people of this Confederacy.”

“… this Confederacy,” Church repeated, scribbling rapidly. “Thank you, Commander. I will entrust my detailed story on the battle to you, before you leave for Nexus. You may deliver it to the Confederated Press after you’ve spoken with the family.”

Weatherby inclined his head. “I appreciate your discretion, Mr. Church.”

“For now, I’ve no further questions. Thank you again for your time. Safe travels, and a speedy turnaround in the Fleet Yards.”

“Commander Weatherby!”

Weatherby turned. Hustling after him down one of Resolution‘s narrow corridors was a short man with unkempt blond hair and a five-o’clock shadow Weatherby found unduly irritating; or, perhaps he was letting his opinion of the man influence his judgment. It was either now or some less convenient time later, so he stopped, cautiously polite. “Mr. Church. What can I do for you?”

Lloyd Church jogged the last few steps, pulled a notepad and pen from his pocket, and scribbled until the ink began to flow. The commander watched the pad suspiciously, as though it might bite. Church sighed. Getting a good quote out of an officer was, on a good day, as hard as pulling his teeth without his permission. It didn’t look like Weatherby was having a very good day. “Do you have a moment? I’d like to ask about the action off Argo.”

Weatherby’s head moved fractionally, first down, then up. ‘Nod’ was perhaps too generous a description.

Church waited a beat to see if Weatherby would simply leave—that had happened before. The commander remained, likely against his better judgment, so Church posed his first question. “Can you sum up the action in a few words?”

Weatherby replied, “Bloody.”

There it was, the legendary reticence which characterized every Navy man. Church pressed him. “You brought home a victory with a cruiser and a frigate, while a battlecruiser in the same company failed to do the same. How did you conduct the battle?”

“Cleverly,” Weatherby said dryly. “Come now, Church, surely you’ve read my report by now.”

Church sensed an opening. He shook his head. “Commander Resolution answered press questions, but we’ve not seen the full report.”

Weatherby raised an eyebrow. “What do you know?”

“In short,” Church said, “your squadron engaged a lone Exile protected cruiser and forced its surrender, taking heavy damage in the process.”

“If the base commander saw fit to say so little, how much more do you think I can get away with?” Weatherby said.

The reporter sighed. “Commander, I’m only asking for the roughest of sketches. As it is, I have a fifty-word story and seven hundred words of padding.”

Weatherby watched him steadily for a moment, then relented. “I had hoped to fight a running battle, but… circumstances at the start of the engagement did not permit it. No plan survives contact with the enemy, as they say.” Church just managed to keep from rolling his eyes. They did indeed say that, every single one of them, and they all thought it was somehow clever. “Warspite closed with Reprisal to draw her attention away from Hermes, while Commander Lassiter provided supporting fire from a distance. Warspite took her knocks, but Reprisal strayed too close. I was able to take her under fire with Warspite‘s point defense fit, and she surrendered soon after.”

A pegboard, corporate IDs hanging from nearly every spot, suggested I’d been right, as did the high-end computer sitting by the desk, and the stacks of data disks on most of the flat surfaces. I couldn’t legally take any of it—I’d have to present Wilson with a seizure order before I could—but I could find more than enough to justify coming back to kick the door in down the line. I set to work, looking through the ID cards, and said to Sam, “Go have a look around the rest of the place.”

He left, and thirty seconds later, I heard footsteps behind me. “You can’t have finished already,” I said.

The voice that answered me did not belong to Sam. “What are you doing in here?” It was cool and measured, but hard. I turned around.

Isaac Wilson stood in the room with me, two meters away, aiming a pistol at my chest. I thought about going for my sidearm, but he’d caught me flatfooted. He’d get his shot off before I could get mine in. “Police business,” I said. “You’re a person of interest—”

“I know,” he replied. He was on the verge of saying more when Sam appeared in the doorway behind him.

“Don’t move,” Sam said. Wilson tensed, and tried to look over his shoulder. “I said, do not move,” Sam repeated. He was holding something and pointing it at Wilson—not a gun, I knew, since I hadn’t given him one. “The whirring you hear comes from the gyroscopes built into my sidearm. They hold it precisely on target, which is, in this case, the back of your skull.”

“I’ll kill your partner,” Wilson threatened.

“No, you will not,” Sam replied. “My sidearm is also watching you. Tense to shoot, and it will see. You’ll be dead before you realize you were going to pull the trigger.”

Wilson’s eyes darted to one side, trying to catch sight of Sam. After a moment, he held up his hands and began to turn around. The moment I was out of his sight, I took one running step and launched myself at him. He snapped the rest of the way toward Sam and leveled his pistol. That was when I left my feet and hit him in the back with a flying tackle. (When you’re my size, you don’t go in for half measures when it comes to bringing someone down.) The pistol went flying. Sam dropped the threevee remote he’d been holding and caught the pistol neatly out of midair. I scrambled onto Wilson’s back and grabbed his arms while Sam covered me.

“Quick thinking,” I told him.

“I learned from the best.”

I showed him a toothy grin, closed the cuffs around Wilson’s wrist. “Are you aware of your rights?”

Wilson nodded, not speaking.

“Very well.” I stood, dusting off my hands. I sighed, and Sam raised his eyebrows at me. “I was just thinking,” I said, glad Stein wasn’t there to hear me, “that if you’re to be doing this sort of thing very much more, we ought to see that you’re properly armed.”

Before I dive into the actual story, a quick introduction: I’m behind on my normal writing trying to get one story out the door to magazines, so I’m dipping into the unpublished vignette archive a bit. I mentioned, in planning posts before Nathaniel Cannon and the Panamanian Idol began to air, that I wanted to revisit the world of Sam Hill and Amber Brighton, inspectors in the City of Nexus, in the same sci-fi universe in which We Sail Off To War is set. This is a step in that direction. I find myself in the unenviable position of wanting to make dramatic changes after having already published a story; fortunately, it isn’t published in any particularly immutable format, so I can do that.

Amber Brighton, freshly minted as an Inspector-Lieutenant, takes the narration this time around.

Rain drummed on the roof of our unmarked car. Sam and I had been sitting outside Wilson’s building for hours. This was late in 345, soon after my promotion. Sam had pitched in on a handful of cases—four or five, maybe—before then, but it took Stein longer to come around to his value than it did me, and this case was the first I’d brought Sam in on under my own authority. It would have been Sam’s first stakeout, then. Stein hadn’t thought unarmed backup merited the name, but with Carpenter and the rest of the lot off raiding a warehouse across the dome, nobody else was at hand to keep me company during my case, and as a young, fresh-faced Inspector-in-Charge, I thought I didn’t need to let myself be bound by my old commander’s hidebound ways. I’m putting the cart before the horse, though.

Sam and I had chatted for a few hours to start the morning. We’d made our way through the typical stakeout topics, and were just about to run out of things to say when a figure wrapped in an overcoat and huddled under an umbrella left the building. I glanced down at the dash clock—1315—and nudged Sam. “He’s on the move.”

“What now?”

“We have a look around.” We ran through the rain to the awning over the building’s entrance. I showed my badge to the doorman, and he let us in. Sam shook the water off of his jacket. We took the elevator up to Wilson’s floor and found his door. I’d gone with the full breaking-and-entering kit, fortunately. Wilson’s electronic lock yielded to my police override code, and the mechanical deadbolt he’d added fell to the pick gun I’d brought along. Sam and I put on our gloves and went inside.

“It seems to me a more subtle mode of entry than usual,” he remarked, looking about the place aimlessly. Sam’s a people person. Nosing around for evidence is more my game than his.

I replied, “This isn’t Violent Crimes anymore. I can’t risk bringing Wilson in only to have to cut him loose, if this fishing trip comes up empty.”

We went down the hallway toward the apartment’s main living space. Sam gently pushed open a door as we passed, then stopped me with a tap on the shoulder. “It looks as though you have a nibble.” He moved out of the way, and I went into the room. It was an office, and what had caught Sam’s eye immediately caught mine.

Isaac Wilson was a person of interest in a number of corporate and network espionage cases. The only evidence we’d found to date was circumstantial, at best—Wilson was in the right place at the right time a little more often than I thought could be coincidental. State prosecutors want a little more than a hunch, though, so we’d decided to have a little look around Wilson’s place.