Conventions of War (61 page)

Confidence
was annihilated early in the action, which gave a senior surviving captain practice at commanding the squadron until she too was destroyed. In the end Light Squadron 17 was wiped out, along with the squadron it had engaged.

After losing her ship, Sula had one of the cooks bring coffee and soft drinks to Command, and she added clover honey and condensed milk and drank in perfect contentment while listening to calls between ships.

Confidence
had been wiped out in three of the last four of Tork's exercises. Sula was inclined to view this as a threat.

It had been clear from the moment Tork had ordered Squadron 17 into the van that he was planning to eliminate her from his long list of troubles. Sula supposed she couldn't blame him. After all, she had spoiled his attack on Zanshaa by capturing the place without him; she had arranged for the elimination of his choice of governor; and she'd blackmailed him into giving her a ship. Probably he wished he could simply have her shot. But she was too prominent for that, too celebrated. Instead he affected to take her at her word—
I desire nothing so much as to once more lead loyal citizens into action against the Naxids
—and put her in a place of maximum danger.

She had to admit that she admired Tork's straightforward ruthlessness.

Still, it wasn't as if she hadn't anticipated something like this. She knew she was putting herself in Tork's hands as soon as she requested duty in the Orthodox Fleet.

There only remained the question of what she was going to do about it.

From her point of view, there was only one possible response.

She would have to become a legend.

 

T
he Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance continued its awkward orbit around Zanshaa. Reinforcements arrived, two or three or five at a time. Martinez continued to hear from old acquaintances. The arrival of the Exploration Service frigate
Scout
brought greetings from Shushanik Severin, who served as its third officer. Severin and his little lifeboat had spent months grappled to a frozen asteroid at Protipanu in order to provide last minute intelligence to Martinez and Chenforce just prior to the battle there, and as a result had been promoted lieutenant despite being born a commoner. Severin seemed cheerful and comfortable in his new status, and Martinez—who remembered the troubles the commoner Kosinic had experienced—was relieved.

He was also impressed that the down-at-heels Exploration Service had actually gotten a brand-new frigate out of the emergency. It was the first actual warship in the service for many centuries, though it would serve under Fleet command for the rest of the war.

Martinez also received greetings from Warrant Officer Amanda Taen, who arrived in command of a boat bringing supplies to the warships. She was a stunningly beautiful young woman who had shared a pleasantly carnal relationship with him before his marriage, and viewing her message sent a nostalgic charge through his groin.

Her arrival made him wonder just how many of his former lovers were serving with the Orthodox Fleet. He counted four women he had known intimately now circling Shaamah without him, and he felt depressed for the rest of the day.

Terza and Young Gareth joined Lord Chen at whatever secret location was playing host to the Fleet Control Board, driving home the fact that the location was secret to Martinez, but not to his wife. The stream of letters and videos from Terza arrived regularly. Martinez tried to find enough subjects for reply, but new topics of interest were rare on the ship. He began to send Terza word-portraits of his fellow crew, starting with Kazakov and working his way down the list in order of seniority. He wondered what she made of these descriptions of people she'd never met, but reckoned she had to at least give him credit for trying. When he ran out of people he wanted to describe, he began a description of Fletcher's paintings, beginning with
The Holy Family with a Cat
. He had a feeling that his description didn't do the work justice. He considered sending a picture instead.

Martinez saw Sula twice more, as officers visited back and forth. They kept their distance and did not speak.

Roland arrived on Zanshaa and sent him occasional messages. He was with a committee of other convocates, though what they were actually doing in the capital was obscure. Martinez was content that it remain that way.

The Orthodox Fleet grew. Seventy ships. Eight-one. Ninety-five. The last known number of enemy ships had been forty-seven. Martinez began to wonder if Tork would ever engage.

It was when the Orthodox Fleet reached the prime number of 109 that orders began raining down from Tork's staff. Censorship was tightened. Enlisted crew could send no personal messages home, but only choose from a list of messages provided by the Fleet. All of them were variations on the theme, “I am well, and send you greetings. Long live the Praxis!”

The twenty-two Lai-own ships were placed under Senior Squadron Commander Do-faq and detached to guard Zanshaa against a surprise Naxid attack. The fragile bones of their avian crew would not impede the acceleration of the Orthodox Fleet in pursuit of any enemy.

The rest of the Fleet, on its last swing around the system, participated in several final exercises to accustom them to maneuvering in their new order-of-battle, and then burned one last time around Vandrith for Zanshaa Wormhole 3, where the enemy had fled four months before.

Martinez sent one last message to Terza. If he skated the limits of the censorship, it was because he knew that Michi would be the officer censoring his mail, and that Terza would know more about Fleet activities from her father than she could ever learn from her husband.

Don't worry about me,
he wrote.
We've beaten them before, and we'll do it again.

I hope to see you and Gareth within a few months. You have no idea how much I regret this time we have spent apart.

When he signed the word
Love,
it was with perfect sincerity.

W
hen Fleet Commander Jarlath advanced toward Magaria at the beginning of the rebellion, he had come in fast, racing like an arrow aimed at the heart of the enemy.

When Tork moved, he came in slowly, like the tide, and with the same inexorable force.

Magaria had a well-equipped ring and seven wormhole gates to other systems. From Magaria the enemy could threaten a third of the systems in the empire. The Naxids had to defend it or risk losing everything.

There were four wormhole jumps and three systems between Zanshaa and Magaria. The loyalist forces had managed to seize the wormhole station on the far side of Zanshaa Wormhole 3, but not the others—Tork had sent another wave of special forces, but the Naxids again wiped them out with missiles fired from another system. The loyalist forces could see into the first of those three systems but no farther.

Though the Naxid fleet was almost certainly based at Magaria, Martinez knew it was possible they wouldn't choose to fight there, but to defend their base by fighting forward of it. The Orthodox Fleet had to make every wormhole transit after the first with the assumption that they might at any point encounter the Naxids. In response, Tork repeated the tactics he had used at Zanshaa. The Orthodox Fleet was screened by hundreds of decoys. Relativistic missiles were fired into each system ahead of time, radars and ranging lasers hammering out, all timed so that when the Orthodox Fleet arrived, their sensors would be able to pick up a fairly complete picture of the system. Between wormhole jumps, the Fleet and its decoy screen performed random changes of course to baffle any relativistic missiles fired at them.

The wormholes were unusually close together, and the entire journey to Magaria took only sixteen days. The first eight were spent accelerating, and then the blazing antimatter torches were turned toward the enemy and a deceleration began. Jarlath had gone in fast with the Home Fleet and lost almost everything; Tork would go in more slowly, grapple the enemy with slow deliberation, and crush him with superior weight.

Martinez spent most of his transit time in Command gazing fretfully at the tactical display. He took his meals there and often slept on his acceleration couch. He had been caught away from Command during one attack and nearly broke his neck: he wasn't going to let that happen again.

He stared at the display and watched the slow advance of the little symbols that represented the Orthodox Fleet as they crawled across the display's vast emptiness. Decoys were shown in pink, real ships in red. At the head of the long column of red was the little clump that was Squadron 17. Martinez wondered what Sula was doing as she sat at the point of Tork's spear; if she sat in Command, as he did, and watched her ship creeping toward its destiny.

The long hours of waiting in Command produced a restlessness in Martinez that worked itself out in motion. When he wasn't watching the tactical display, he walked the corridors of
Illustrious,
wandering from one department to the next, watching his crew as they too waited for the Naxids. He knew the value of his own ship and crew by now and wasn't interested in detailed inspections; and when the crew braced to attention, he was quick to set them back to their work. He chatted informally with the department heads and sometimes with the ordinary recruits; he tried to project an air of quiet conviction in victory, the assured confidence of the veteran commander leading his crew to yet another inevitable conquest.

To his surprise, he found that the crew didn't seem to need his confidence—they had plenty of their own. They possessed a moral certainty of victory that Martinez began to find inspiring. He had hoped to cheer his crew, and instead they cheered him. It would have seemed churlish not to live up to their trust in him.

The Orthodox Fleet plunged on through the three systems that neither side could truly claim as their own. Along the way, Tork issued demands for obedience and surrender. This was fairly pointless in the case of the first two systems, which were largely barren of life save for a few mining colonies. These, having surrendered to the Naxid fleet when the enemy were heading for Zanshaa, now surrendered with equal alacrity to the loyalists heading the other way.

In the third system, Bachun, Tork demanded that he be able to broadcast to the population. The Naxid governor declined to answer. Intercepted transmissions from the planet showed joyous celebrations in honor of a record harvest and increased industrial production, all testifying to the efficiency of the new regime.

Tork fired a missile straight at Bachun's capital city. Without missing a beat, his messages began to be broadcast throughout the system. Tork recalled the missile.

To Martinez, it was beginning to look as if there would be no suspense until the Fleet reached Magaria.

He was wrong. When the alarms began to chirp, he was suited on his acceleration couch. He knew from the sound of the alarm tone what had happened before Warrant Officer Pan, the sensor operator, could cry his warning.

“We're being painted by a targeting laser!”

“Engines!” Martinez shouted over him. “Cut acceleration. Pilot, rotate to heading one-two-zero by zero-eight-zero! Weapons, all point-defense lasers on automatic! Comm, get me Lady Michi! Engines, sound warning for acceleration!”

Gravity and the distant rumble of the engines ceased. The ship began its swing to its new heading. Inside the vac suit, Martinez's heart sounded like a roll of thunder.

Michi had given the squadron standing orders for this situation. All ships would disperse without the need for an order from the flagship.

“We're still being painted, my lord,” Pan said, more quietly.

The acceleration warning began to clatter. “Everyone med up,” Martinez said, and reached for the med injector in its holster by the side of his couch. He pressed it to his carotid and fired into it a precise dose of the drug that would—it was hoped—keep his veins and brain supple and safe from the effects of heavy acceleration.

The others in Command took their injectors and did likewise.

The ship ceased to swing. “One-two-zero by zero-eight-zero,” the pilot said.

“Engines, accelerate at six gravities.”

The roar of the engines overwhelmed the feeble warning tones of the sensor board. The room became a blur as Martinez's acceleration couch dropped to its zero point.

“Captain, what's the problem?” Michi's voice, hoarse with her battle against acceleration, sounded in his earphones.

“Enemy targeting laser,” Martinez said. “Are you all right?”

“I'm in my sleeping cabin. I got to my bed in time. Does—”

The squadcom's voice was drowned by a shout from Pan. “Here they come!”

“Ten gravities for one minute!” Martinez called.

He saw the flashes of white on the tactical display that were incoming missiles, a perfect swarm of them shooting out of Bachun Wormhole 2 like a stream of water caught by a stop-action camera.

The ship shuddered and groaned under the great surge of gravity. Martinez clamped his jaw in order to force blood to his brain. His vision darkened, narrowed to a tunnel focused on the tactical display. He saw blooms of bright light flash on the display as antimatter missiles detonated. Symbols flickered, indicating that
Illustrious
's point-defense weapons were firing. He fought for breath and consciousness, aware that control of the battle had never been his, that he would either live or die in the next few seconds and that he was helpless to make any difference…

The great pressure on his chest and mind eased. He had never felt he would be thankful to experience a mere six gravity acceleration.

Expanding clouds of plasma floated in the void ahead of the ship, showing where the oncoming Naxid missiles had destroyed part of the fleet's decoy screen. Silver flickers on the display indicated rapidly receding missiles that had flashed through the system so fast they failed to acquire a target. By the time they finished decelerating and had begun their return to the point of origin, the Second Battle of Magaria would be over, one way or another.

There seemed to be no new missiles coming their way.

“Reduce acceleration to one-half gravity,” Martinez said.

Michi's voice sounded in his earphones. “I take it we've survived, Lord Captain?”

“No casualties in the fleet, my lady. We seem to have lost forty or so decoys.”

“Message for the squadcom from the Supreme Commander,” said Nyamugali at the comm station.

“Forward it to her.”

Martinez heard the message secondhand, since his channel to Michi was still open when she played it.

“The lord commander,” said a chiming Daimong voice, “reminds Squadron Commander Chen that no element of the fleet is to disperse without permission of the Supreme Commander.”

Tork, Martinez thought, at least had the virtue of consistency.

 

M
ore decoys were launched to fill the gaps caused by the surprise attack. Tork then launched a missile to destroy the source of the ranging laser, which turned out to be Wormhole Station 2.

“The old pirate,” Michi said, with feigned affection.

Illustrious
suffered the expected number of sprains and broken bones during the attack. No one was incapacitated. The Naxid strike had come to nothing, but the crew of the wormhole station observed the Orthodox Fleet's reactions, and would have been able to deduce at least some of the icons on their screens that represented real ships and some that were decoys.

Perhaps that had been the whole point.

Martinez wrenched off his helmet to relieve himself of the scent of spent adrenaline that was souring his suit, then examined the spectra from the brief battle. There had been over two hundred enemy missiles, he saw. Most had missed completely. Only two squadrons had tried to starburst, his own and Sula's.

Something about the way Sula's squadron maneuvered seemed familiar, and he subjected the trajectories to analysis. They looked random, but on closer inspection they were not—they seemed to be following the hull of a chaotic system.

Somehow, Sula had taught the new tactics to her squadron, and presumably done so without Tork finding out.

Clever girl,
he thought. He wished he and Michi had been as clever.

Martinez decided that he wasn't going to leave Command until the campaign was over. He ordered Narbonne to bring him coffee and settled in for the approach to Bachun Wormhole 2, now marked on the display by the glowing dust that had been its station.

The Orthodox Fleet was preceded through the wormhole by the now usual swarm of relativistic missiles equipped with laser trackers and radar, and then by hundreds of decoys. In order to avoid any theoretical host of missiles waiting for them on the other side, the fleet performed some last minute maneuvers to delay their entry into the Magaria system, a movement that only served to increase suspense.

Martinez shifted to a virtual display before the fleet made its transit. The Bachun system filled his skull, the sun a white sphere, Bachun itself a tiny blue dot surrounded by a silver ring.

The wormhole sped closer. Martinez strained his thoughts to sense whatever waited on the other side. Energy raced along his nerves. He could feel his pulse beat hard in his throat.

He knew that
Illustrious
had made its leap through the wormhole when the Bachun system vanished from his mind, replaced by complete darkness. His mind flailed without bearings, and then the sensors began picking up data from the scanning missiles that had been fired into the system ahead of time, and bit by bit Magaria's system blossomed in his mind.

When Fleet Commander Jarlath had led the Home Fleet to disaster at Magaria, the battle was influenced by two gas giants, Barbas and Rinconell, that lay between Magaria Wormhole 1 and Magaria itself. This tactical map no longer existed—Barbas and Rinconell had moved on in their orbits, and Magaria itself was on the far side of its primary. The Orthodox Fleet could skate past Magaria's sun, Magarmah, and blast straight for the enemy-held world.

Except of course for the enemy fleet, which now flashed onto Martinez's display like a distant glittering string of fireworks. The Naxids had swung around Rinconell and were themselves heading for the primary.

The two fleets were on a gently converging course, and if nothing intervened, they could begin hurling missiles at each other in about five days.

The enemy commander had given Tork exactly the battle he was looking for.

 

“L
ord Captain,” said Warrant Officer Choy at the comm station, “we have a radio signal from the Naxid commander. It's in the clear.”

Martinez had to admire the enemy's timing. The message came within three minutes of the Orthodox Fleet's last squadron transiting into the Magaria system. The Naxids had known approximately when Tork would turn up, and had sent their message to arrive shortly afterward.

“Let's see it,” he said. He was still scanning the tactical display, just in case the message was intended to distract the loyalist command while some kind of skulduggery went on.

The image of a Naxid appeared in a corner of Martinez's display, and he enlarged it. The Naxid was elderly, with gray patches on his head where scales had fallen off. He wore the uniform of a Senior Fleet Commander, a uniform covered with softly glowing silver braid, and his eyes glimmered a dull scarlet in his flat head.

“This is Fleet Commander Lord Dakzad.” The voice was imperious. “In the name of the Praxis, I demand the immediate unconditional surrender of the disloyal, anarchist, and pirate elements that have just entered the Magaria system. You may signal your surrender by launching all missiles into interstellar space. If you fail to meet this demand, you will be destroyed by fleet elements operating under my command. I await your immediate reply.”

Martinez was already looking up Dakzad in
Illustrious
's database. The enemy commander was even older than Tork, and had in fact retired some eight years earlier. Apparently, the crisis had dragged him back into harness, to replace the hapless commander who had fled Zanshaa after the fall of the High City.