The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III by Roger MacBride Allen, David Drake Read Free Book Online

and made his way below. He had about ten minutes to reach the main hatchway, rigged for the captain’s boarding ceremony it had seen far too often in recent times.
    Tallen wasn’t sure he was ready to endure this particular charade quite so soon. Kerad had only made her hurried departure into ignominy the week before, the ink still wet on her resignation of commission. The High Secretary’s assassination two weeks before had shaken up a lot of people. It had inspired the men of the Banquo in their revolt, and that in turn had inspired Kerad’s sudden resignation “for reasons of health.”
    She had been smart to quit: the Judge Advocate General’s office could not touch a member of a senatorial family, once he or she was out of the military. Tallen was not happy that she had eluded military justice, scurried back to the protection of her family—but at least Lucius Rockler was safely in the brig here on the Duncan.
    And then the signal from Sector HQ that the replacement captain would be coming aboard in one hour. God, they loved to jerk you around! There was no time at all to sweep Kerad’s disasters under the rug.
    Tallen ducked into his office long enough to switch into dress whites, and made it to the main hatch with two minutes to spare.
    The gig warped in, docked itself, the air locks cycled—and a scarecrow in a captain’s uniform stepped aboard the Duncan. Tallen tried not to do a double-take as he saw his new commanding officer for the first time. Tall, very young, gaunt, emaciated, with something about him suggesting a sudden, recent loss. This was a man who had been hurt, badly injured somehow, and not yet completely recovered. The man’s face was still youthful—but there was something very old in his boyish eyes. His brand-new naval uniform fit him, but he seemed not to fit the uniform. That much Tallen understood: the man had been in the Guard until not so long ago.
    “Duncan on board!” the lead sideboy announced, and Allison Spencer was piped aboard in the old, old, ceremony lost in the mists of time, back when navies sailed the blue oceans of water, and the sky and the stars were mere aids to navigation. Spencer came aboard and saluted everything he was supposed to salute, moving a bit mechanically, with the air of a man who doesn’t quite feel he’s earned the honors he was being accorded.
    Tallen knew the captain had brought along a “personal assistant,” honoring another age-old tradition, and was surprised to see that she did follow him off the gig.
    Tallen was pleasantly surprised. At least Captain Spencer knew that courtesans had no place in military protocol. It wasn’t much to make a first impression with, just a suggestion that Spencer had just a hint of decorum, but maybe the horses wouldn’t get quite so frightened this time out.
    Tallen stepped forward and saluted his new superior. “Lieutenant Commander Tallen Deyi, commanding, Sir. Welcome aboard.”
    “I relieve you, Sir,” Spencer said, returning the salute and talking in subdued tones. “What I’d like to do first off is talk to you. Could we go to your office, please?”
    Goddam. The office section was clear across the ship, and there was no use trying to snow this captain by walking him around the worst of it. They’d have to walk straight through officer’s country—and maintenance hadn’t even made a dent in cleaning up the mess. Nothing for it but to put the best possible face on it. “Of course, Sir. If you would come this way.”
    The officers’ cabins had been the focal point of Kerad’s little empire of self-indulgence. She had kicked out all the line officers and assigned their cabins to a whole gaggle of “special assistants,” none of whom had lost any time in redoing their cabins and the surrounding corridors. Then, when it suddenly became time to leave there was a panic to recover as much of that splendid loot as possible.
    Tallen Deyi led Captain Spencer down the corridors, offering no