A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (28 page)

What could her father do now but forgive her?

Few officers visited the lower decks. There was no reason for them to do so and, truth be told, they would probably not be welcome. As yeomen and nobles rarely visited belowstairs, so too were the lower decks the province of proles and best ignored. Ormuz, of course, had spent the first twenty years of his life as a prole. But he was not one now and could never be mistaken for one.

Varä’s attitude was typical. “Is this wise?” he asked.

They descended a ramp and found themselves in a narrow gangway with bare steel walls. Light-panels, spaced at wider intervals than on the upper decks, created a patchwork of shadows. From somewhere could be heard a steady drip.

“It’s a bit grim,” Varä added.

Ormuz, however, felt strangely at home. This gangway reminded him of
Divine Providence
, aboard which he had spent so many happy years. It was a welcome antidote to the palatial surroundings of
Vengeful
’s officer country. He reached out a hand and pressed his palm to the bulkhead. It was damp and cold, and he could feel the roughness of the metal. He smiled.

A group of passing rateds stop to watch him. “My lord…?” said one.

Ormuz turned to the speaker. Some of the Navy’s insignia were still a mystery to him but this man’s shoulder-patches Ormuz recognised. Three crossed carronades: Gunnery.

“You’re lost, my lord?” the rated asked.

“No.” Ormuz shook his head.

“You should not be down here,” the rated continued. “It’s not safe.”

Ormuz made an effort to reply in prole language. Once it had been his only language. “I came to see how everyone was doing.”

The other rateds were also gunners. From the grease and dirt smeared on their faces, uniforms and hands, they were coming off-duty.

“We do our duty,” one of the other rateds, a woman, replied.

“Indeed,” replied Varä and received several dirty looks in return.

Ormuz winced. He knew the marquis well enough to know he was being sincere but the proles had not interpreted it that way.

The woman—she was about Ormuz’s age, tall and skinny, with brown hair in pigtails—shouldered her way next to the rated who had first spoken. “My lord,” she said, “you need to go back up. It’s not good you’re down here.”

“Why not?” Ormuz did not understand. Why were these rateds being so hostile? Wasn’t he the embodiment of all their ambitions—the prole who became a noble? Only a year ago, he had been the same as them. Now he wore a sword and spoke differently; but he had not changed.

Surely he had not changed?

“We go to battle soon, my lord,” the first rated said. “We don’t need folk like you wandering around down here. We’ve got a job to do.”

“You do your work up top,” the woman added. She was, Ormuz noticed, pretty under the dirt and grime. “You best be up there, that’s where you help us all.”

Varä tugged on Ormuz’s arm. “Casimir, let’s do what they say,” he added. “Let’s leave.”

“No.” He shook off the marquis’ hand. He was being stubborn and he knew it. But he could not understand the rateds’ reaction and he wanted to do so.

He looked to the man. He was twice his own age, with stubble on his chin, heavy brow ridges but almost no eyebrows, and bald but for short-cut hair above his ears and circling his crown. His expression was… No, not hostile. Ormuz could not entirely interpret it but there was no enmity there. Nor on the woman’s face. If anything, her look appeared almost speculative.

“We’d be in your way,” Ormuz said.

The rateds nodded.

“To tell you the truth,” he continued, “I feel useless up there. I don’t do anything. I thought, perhaps, if I came down here I could show you that you mean something to me—all of you.”

“You lead us, my lord,” man said. “We’re here because of you.”

“And you don’t resent that?”

He had surprised them, he saw.

The woman spoke. “We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” She turned to her fellows. “Would we?”

They nodded.

She reached out tentatively and touched Ormuz on the shoulder. “My lord,” she said, “we know what you do. Word gets ‘round down here. We heard about the crew rosters you asked for. We’re proud to have you aboard
Vengeful
. The Admiral couldn’t have anyone better standing beside her.”

The irony of the woman’s words struck Ormuz deep. They approved of his relationship with the Admiral. Yet, they were here, now, after combat about Piorun, travelling to do further battle at Geneza… against the man who had once stood at the Admiral’s side.

“Let’s go, Casimir,” Varä said.

“Yes.” Ormuz nodded. “Thank you,” he said to the woman and her companions. “It seems it was my morale which needed improving, not yours.”

He crossed to the foot of the ramp. As he put a foot on it, he turned back to the rateds. “We’ll see to the Serpent,” he told them, “and we’ll all be rewarded. I shall see to it.”

Varä at his heels, he climbed the ramp and returned to his place in the scheme of things.

Livasto’s squadron led the fleet into orbit about Geneza. Spotters and sensormen busied themselves determining the location of the enemy ships. They soon found them. The Serpent’s fleet sat above the world’s north pole, closely gathered in a defensive formation.

All six glasses on the communications-console were lit. Without turning from the battle-consultant, the Admiral ordered, “I want a field of mines between us and them. Use
Atramentous
and
Swift Aliped
. And see if you can spare half a dozen frigates to assist.”

She was not ready for battle and meant to delay any attack until she was. Not, she thought contemptuously, that she need have taken any precautions. From their formation alone, she guessed the enemy was content to allow the Admiral to arrange her own fleet for battle. There was, she remembered, something about it in the
Fighting Instructions
.

“How are the troop-transports?” she asked.

She needed them unloaded and out of the battle-space. They were a liability. Fighting ships she needed were tied up defending them.

“Almost in position,” came Voyna’s voice from the communications-console.

Troop-transports… Her thoughts moved onto Rizbeka. The Admiral looked up from the battle-consultant and gazed across the conning-tower well at the Pilothouse. She wondered how Rinharte fared. She missed her still.

Not because she had been an excellent lieutenant of intelligence, the best the Admiral had ever commanded, in fact. No, she missed her counsel, her presence by her side.

She had Ormuz, of course. At this exact moment in time, she had no idea as to his location. At this exact moment in time, she did not particularly care. One place aboard
Vengeful
was safe as any other during a battle.

Dropping her gaze to the battle-consultant’s glass, she marvelled again at the intelligence at her fingertips. Every ship in the enemy fleet named—Ormuz had discovered that information. And, thanks to Rinharte and her comprehensive files, the Admiral had data on every enemy captain and their records.

Soon enough, Voyna reported that the two battlecruisers were away. He had detached five frigates to assist them. The Admiral glanced forward but saw nothing. She had not expected to.
Vengeful
’s prow was directed at the planet; she orbited bow-down. As did all the ships of the Admiral’s fleet. They swung about the planet like a convocation of cathedrals, the buildings themselves at worship.

“Ma’am, the mines will not stay there forever,” said Voyna. “Their orbits will decay.”

She turned to communications-console. “They will stay there long enough,” she replied. Weeks, in fact.

“Yes, ma’am. But after we’ve left, they’ll rain down on Geneza.”

“And hit what? There is only ocean below. Zolima is safe.”

Voyna shook his head. “Ma’am, it’s possible that…”

“Very well,” she snapped. This was an irrelevance. “Signal Captain Fugil in
Atramentous
. Have him lay the mines at a higher latitude. I would sooner the enemy had more time to build up velocity before hitting them, but never mind.”

Henotics. She could not understand why a
place
should be considered holy. A religion was people, not places. She knew why Henotics revered Zolima—many millennia ago, the religion’s founder had first appeared there. The Admiral had visited the town herself as a teenager. She remembered only ancient ruins and a history that was a mass of contradictions and confabulations.

“Ma’am!”

The Admiral was dragged from her memories. She turned to the communications-console. The voice had been Voyna’s but his head in the circular glass was looking off to one side. She glanced down at the battle-consultant. It had been updated.

The enemy fleet was moving.

She looked up, through the Pilothouse’s roof. She did not have long to wait—a matter of minutes. She heard the data-pipes hum with new information. Ahead, Geneza’s face was blue, marbled with wisps of clouds. And there, those streaks of fierce orange, those narrow slashes of black smoke—ships, victims of her mines, falling into the atmosphere and burning up. There would be stormy weather at sea for a few days.

“Torpedos, Mr Voyna,” ordered the Admiral. “Mr Pismo, inform the troop-transports of the urgency of our situation.”

She gripped the edge of the battle-consultant with both hands. Her strategy unfolded before her. The enemy fleet had allowed her ships to make orbit. Now she was ready.

Her ships loosed braces of torpedos at the approaching warships. The battle-consultant could not update fast enough to show them in its glass. Nor could they be seen through the Pilothouse’s glass roof. Torpedos were no larger than a coffin. And painted black to make spotting them difficult.

But their effects could be seen.

Torpedos hit ships and imploded. They ripped open hulls, split apart decks and bulkheads. Debris began to drift across the battle-space.

“Re-orient!” said the Admiral. “Now!”

Vengeful
swung through ninety degrees and brought her main gun to bear. The rest of the fleet, waiting for the manoeuvre, followed suit.

“A signal, Mr Pismo. All ships to fire when they have solutions.”

A vessel off to port was the first to do so—a line of brightness spearing through the dark.

The enemy replied. The beams of directed-energy, straight and bright and destructive, laid a pattern over the pale pearlescent face of Geneza. The heavens were scored with their light.

The Admiral gave a fierce grin. Oh, this was a battle indeed. So many lines of fire, writing such a story across the sky. This was her battle and it would be her victory. Who else could say they had witnessed such a sight? For this, she had been born.

For this, she would go down in history.

He stood at the foot of the conning-tower well and stared up. The glass roof sixty feet above him seemed on fire. He could see Geneza and he could see a cross-hatched sea of white light which did not originate from the planet. The light-panels in the Great Hall flickered and dimmed. They returned to full brightness. The deck beneath his feet vibrated with unleashed energies.

He heard the clattering of computational engines from Fire Control. The hull creaked and groaned. Booted feet rang hollowly on the decking. He followed the sound of the feet around the gallery, although he could not see the runner.

Vengeful
shuddered. He heard something break, something large and heavy. The sound filled him with dread and he imagined the battlecruiser breaking up about him. Splitting open. Bodies spilling into space. Freezing, no breath, dying… He among them.

He couldn’t stand here and do nothing. There was no position he could fill aboard
Vengeful
while she fought. He hated not knowing what was going on.

With a muttered curse, he strode across to the lift platform and stepped onto it. He rose up the well, passing each of the decks. He saw rateds and officers busy at their tasks. One or two looked up as he ascended past them. He reached the gallery at the top of the well and stepped off the lift.

The Admiral stood gazing down at the battle-consultant. He hurried round to the Captain’s Bridge. No sooner had he set foot on it, then she looked up and said,

“Go away.”

Startled at her brusqueness, he paused.

“You are a distraction. Go away.”

Her dismissal angered him. “I’ll not be put to one side,” he said. “I must know what’s happening!” He threw out an arm. “People are dying out there because of me.”

“It cannot be helped.”

He stepped forward to stand beside the battle-consultant. Its glass showed each of the ships in the two fleets and a great green arc that was Geneza. He could make little sense of it.

“Are we winning?” he demanded.

“Perhaps.” The Admiral savagely twisted a pair of buttons on the battle-consultant. Something changed in its glass. “We have lost ships. We will lose more. But we will carry the day.”

“At what cost?”

“At any cost, Casimir. No war is won by turning back at the first wounding blow.”

“You think we’ll be defeated?” he asked, incredulous. To have come so far and lose…

The Admiral shook her head slowly, the reflected colours of the battle-consultant’s display sliding across her shaven scalp. “He has ships in reserve somewhere—if your intelligence is to be believed.”

“You know the nature of my intelligence,” he protested. “I’ve explained the nomosphere repeatedly.”

“Nonetheless —” She looked up at him and her gaze was fierce— “it is on your head, Casimir. The sooner you realise that, the sooner you will learn to accept the cost.”

“Damn you, Flavia. At least try and minimise casualties. I won’t have you throw people away for nothing.”

“I will accept your leadership but I will not accept your familiarity,” she snapped, her anger palpable across the distance separating them. “This is a battle. People will die. It cannot be helped.”