Conventions of War

Author:Walter Jon Williams
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy, To-read, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780380820221
Publisher: Eos
Published: 2005-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

After breakfast, Martinez staged an inspection in which Access 4 on Deck 8 was opened. The steady rumble of ventilation blowers rose from beneath the deckplates. He descended with Marsden's datapad, squeezed between the blowers and a coolant pipe wrapped in bright yellow insulation material, and checked the serial numbers on the blowers against the numbers on the 77-12 that had been supplied by Rigger/First Rao.

The numbers matched.

Martinez crouched in the confined space and checked the numbers again. Again they matched.

He straightened, his head and shoulders coming above deck level, and looked at Rao, who looked at him with anxious interest.

“When were these blowers last replaced?”

“Just before the war started, my lord. They're not due for replacement for another four months.”

So these were the same blowers that Kosinic had seen when he'd gone down the same access. If it wasn't the serial numbers, Martinez thought, what had Kosinic been looking for?

Martinez ducked down the access again and ran his hands along the pipes, the ductwork, the electric conduit, just in case something had been left here, a mysterious message or an ominous warning. He found nothing but the dust that filled his throat and left him coughing.

Perhaps Mersenne had been wrong about where he'd seen Kosinic. Martinez had several of the nearby access plates raised, and he descended into each to find again that everything was in order.

Frustration bubbled in his blood as he complimented Rao on his record-keeping, and it kept bubbling as he marched away.

Hours later, while he was eating a late supper-a ham sandwich made of leftovers from the meal he'd given Michi-a memory burst on his mind.

With Francis it's always about money.

That had been Alikhan's comment on the cruiser's former master rigger, and now, days after they'd been spoken, it came back to Martinez.

Gambling, he thought.

He carried his plate from the dining room to his desk, where he called up the display, then used the authority of his captain's key to access the commissary records and check the files of the commissary bank.

Actual cash wasn't handed to the crew during the voyage: accounts were kept electronically in the commissary bank, which was technically, a branch of the Imperial Bank, which issued the money in the first place. Crew would pay electronically for anything purchased from the commissary, and any gambling losses would be handled by direct transfer from one account to another.

The crew were paid every twenty days. Martinez looked at the account of Rigger Francis and saw that it totaled nearly nine thousand zeniths, enough to buy an estate on nearly any planet in the empire.

And this was only the money that Francis had in this account. She could have more in accounts in other banks, in investments, in property.

Martinez called for Alikhan. His orderly came into the dining room first, was surprised to find Martinez in his office, and approached.

“Would you like me to take your plate, my lord?”

Martinez looked in surprise at the plate he'd brought with him from the dining room. “Yes,” he said.

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