Statesman Read Free

residual trace of gas, like a planet stripped, by some calamity, of most of its atmosphere.
    We used the air lock for entry, rather than the jagged hole in the hull; there was no sense in risking our suits.
    The interior was ugly, of course; abrupt depressurization is rough on equipment as well as on personnel, and it was evident that this ship had not been prepared for it. I marveled at that; perhaps the Saturn vessel had never had battle experience, but how could a pirate be naïve about the dangers of action in space? Many items had not been properly secured; they would have moved about during free-fall, and of course had become missiles during depressurization.
    We found the first body. It was a man of Mongoloid origin, his blood-spattered eyeballs bulging from their sockets, his tongue swelling from the open mouth. Two of our party turned away; it is no fun to retch in a space suit.
    “Hold him,” I told Spirit. She caught the man's feet, anchoring him so that he would not float away while I searched him. I checked his body for identification, and found it. I glanced at it quickly, then passed it to Spirit without comment.
    She glanced and nodded. Then she put it in a utility pocket of her suit. We went on.
    What we did not tell the others was that the identification showed the pirate crewman to be a citizen of the Middle Kingdom. That was what Jupiter citizens called South Saturn, historically derived from the ancient China of Earth.
    There was no pirate treasure; this was a utilitarian ship. Yet it had attacked us in the manner of a pirate, though a strangely inept one. A serious pirate would have been properly prepared for the engagement and would never have given us the chance to fight back, even in the unusual manner we had done.
    Something was very strange here.
    We checked the arsenal and found it well equipped. But our own ship was not set up for such armament. In short, there were very few spoils to be taken. The crewmen were not interested in robbing the gruesome bodies of the dead. So we set up a marker-beacon so that the ship could be spotted for salvage, and returned to our own.
    Back in our own vessel, passengers again, I got private with Spirit. “Why would the Middle Kingdom seek to assassinate me?” I asked in Spanish, just in case we were being monitored. “I'm out of power now, and when I was Tyrant I treated that nation fairly. I would say relations were good, as these things go.”
    “How did they know we were aboard this ship?” she asked in return. “When even the crew didn't?”
    “Would Khukov have told them?”
    “Unlikely.”
    “Unless he wanted us killed, not traceable to him.” I pondered that. “He is certainly capable of such an act. But I know him. He would not do it to me. He knows he can trust me, and therefore you.”
    “I agree. Therefore it probably isn't the Middle Kingdom.”
    I pursed my lips. “A frame! We were intended to identify the personnel!”
    “Except that we would have been unable to do so if they had blasted us in space.”
    “The USR fleet would have done so, though,” I said. “That was a suicide mission, staffed by incompetents.”
    “Like ours,” she said.
    That made me pause. “No, not incompetents, I think. They must have had to reach pretty deep to find a crew that did not know I had been deposed and exiled and was being shipped to Saturn. With a phenomenally fast ship. This one must have been used as a courier ship to key territories, very fast and private, always avoiding combat and slipping by, outrunning pursuit. It could have returned from a three-month mission and been sent immediately on this one. Who would expect a noncombatant ship for this mission?”
    She nodded agreement. “Everyone seems incompetent at first blood. Once the situation was plain, the captain accepted your authority, and that armament officer is a good one.”
    “So we are left only with the mysteries of who is the real assassin, and how the ship spotted