Her heels stayed on the floor as she gave him a thoughtful look. “Very good. We’ll do it.” Another thought struck her, and she frowned. “What am I going to do for a new tactical officer?”

“You don’t want to use Coen or Li?”

She shook her head. “Not seasoned enough. All their experience is in communications.”

A vague sense of obligation compelled Martinez to make a suggestion. “There’s Chandra Prasad.”

Michi looked at him suspiciously. “Why Prasad?”

“Because she’s the senior lieutenant after Kazakov, and I can’t spare Kazakov. Not now.”

Which certainly sounded better than,She wrung a promise out of me to help her, and much, much better than,If she didkill Fletcher, we could try being very nice to her and hope she doesn’t kill us.

Michi frowned. “I’ll ask her to design one experiment. I’ll ask the other lieutenants too. We’ll see if any of them have a talent for it.”

When Kazakov and Husayn came to report that no evidence had been found in the wardroom or the lieutenants’ quarters, Michi accepted the news without comment and then turned to Martinez.

“You’re next, Lord Captain.”

“Next?” Martinez said through his surprise.

“You’re a suspect, after all,” Michi said. “You’re the one who benefited most from Fletcher’s death.”

He hadn’t looked at the situation in that light. He supposed that, objectively, she had a point.

“I wasn’t even aboard when Kosinic died,” he pointed out.

“I know,” Michi said. “What difference does that make?”

None, apparently. Martinez submitted without protest as a committee of male officers—Husayn, Mersenne, and Lord Phillips—searched his quarters and his belongings. Alikhan watched the inspection from the doorway, his body stiffened in outrage, watching every movement with glowering eyes as if he suspected the three Peers might pocket valuable items in the course of their search.

The long, useless afternoon delayed supper, and consequently Martinez’s meeting with the lieutenants in the informal circumstances ofDaffodil, the requisitioned luxury yacht that had brought him to his new assignment as Michi’s tactical officer.

The party wasn’t a success. Everyone was tired after having spent the day pawing so uselessly through others’ belongings, and also the officers didn’t quite know how the new relationship with Martinez was supposed to work. During previous get-togethers onDaffodil, Martinez had been a staff officer playing host to the line officers in a setting more congenial than the starchy dinners and receptions given by the captain. Though Martinez had outranked them, he wasn’t in their chain of command, and the lieutenants had felt far less inhibited than they would have been in the company of a direct superior. But now the relationship had changed, and they were more on their guard. Martinez was generous with liquor, but for most of the officers the alcohol seemed only to act as a depressant.

The one exception was Chandra Prasad, who chattered and laughed all evening in loud, high spirits, oblivious to how much it irritated the others. Perhaps, he thought, she felt she had no reason to feel on guard around him because they shared a special relationship.

Martinez hoped she was wrong.

Finally he called an end to the dismal evening, and by way of good-night told everyone there would be a maneuver during the forenoon watch.

Alikhan was waiting in his cabin to take his trousers, shoes, and uniform tunic for their nightly rehabilitation. “What are they saying in the petty officers’ lounge?” Martinez asked.

“Well, my lord,” Alikhan said, with a kind of finality, “they’re saying you’ll do.”

Martinez suppressed a grin. “What are they saying about Fletcher?”

“They aren’t saying anything at all about the late captain.”

Martinez felt irritation. “I wish they were.” He handed Alikhan his tunic. “You don’t think they know more than they’re saying?”

Alikhan spoke with the utmost complacency. “They’re long-serving petty officers, my lord. Theyalways know more than they tell.”

Martinez sourly parted the seals on his shoes, removed them, and handed them to Alikhan. “You’ll tell me if they say anything vital? Such as who killed the captain?”

Alikhan dropped the shoes into their little carrying bag. “I’ll do my best to keep you informed, my lord,” he said. He sealed the bag and looked up. “By the way, my lord. There is the matter of Captain Fletcher’s servants.”

“Ah.”

Each officer of captain’s rank was allowed four servants, whom he could take with him from one posting to the next. Martinez had his four, and so had Fletcher; but now with only one captain remaining, that left four servants too many.

“Are Fletcher’s people good for anything?” Martinez asked. “Anything besides being servants, I mean?”

Alikhan’s lip curled slightly, the long-serving Fleet professional passing judgment on his inferiors.

“Narbonne was a valet in civilian life,” he said. “Baca a chef. Jukes is an artist, and Buckle is a hairdresser, manicurist, and cosmetologist.”

“Well,” Martinez said dubiously, “I suppose Baca could be sent to the enlisted mess.”

“Not if Master Cook Yau has anything to say about it,” said Alikhan. “He won’t want that fat pudding of a man taking up space in his kitchen and fussing with his sauces.”

“Alikhan.” Martinez examined himself in the mirror over his sink. “Do you think I need a cosmetologist?”

Alikhan curled his lip again. “You’re too young, my lord.”

Martinez smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Alikhan draped trousers over his arm, and then the jacket over the trousers. Martinez nodded in the direction of the door that led to his office.

“Do you have someone sleeping out there again?” he asked.

“Ayutano, my lord.”

“Right. If the killers come by way of the dining room instead, I’ll try to shout and let him know.”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate it, my lord.” Deftly, with the hand that wasn’t holding Martinez’s clothing, Alikhan opened a silver vacuum flask of hot cocoa and poured.

“Thank you, Alikhan. Sleep well.”

“And yourself, my lord.”

Alikhan left through the door that led to the dining room. Martinez changed into pajamas and sat on his bed while he drank the cocoa and looked at the old dark painting. The young mother held her infant and the little fire glowed and the cat crouched with his ears pinned back, and it all took place inside a painted frame or maybe a stage.

He kept seeing the painting for a long time after he turned out the light.

In the morning Martinez printed a series of supper invitations on Fletcher’s special bond paper, and sent them via Alikhan to all the senior petty officers. He didn’t know whether Fletcher would have invited the enlisted to supper—he suspected not—and he was certain Fletcher wouldn’t have used the fancy bond invitations.

He didn’t care. It wasn’t his bond paper anyway.

The experiment began shortly afterward. The ships of Chenforce were linked by communications laser into a virtual environment, and while the ships themselves continued on their way, a virtual Chenforce maneuvered against a virtual enemy squadron of superior force, a squadron that was meeting them head-on at Osser, the system into which Chenforce would pass after Termaine. The system was largely uninhabited, with a pair of wormhole relay stations and some small mining colonies on some mineral-rich moons, but nothing else, nothing that would complicate an engagement between two forces.

Chenforce deployed the dispersed tactics that had been created by Martinez and Caroline Sula and the officers of Martinez’s old frigate,Corona. The ships were widely separated, maneuvering in ways that seemed absolutely random but were in fact dictated by a complex mathematical formula devised by Sula, the ships riding along the convex hull of a chaotic dynamical system.