The Sundering

by Walter Jon Williams

  It would take nearly five minutes for the last transmission, with its suggestion for maneuver on the part of Do-faq, and another five minutes for Do-faq’s response to come back. But in order for Light Squadron 14 to embark on Martinez’s plan, it would have to begin its maneuver before Do-faq’s reply could possibly arrive.

  In order for Martinez to continue with the plan that he had devised, he was going to have to disobey Do-faq’s order.

  Suddenly he wished that the Exploration Service had been corrupted, that the messages hadn’t got through the wormhole stations.

  “Comm,” he said, “message to squadron. Rotate ships: prepare to decelerate on course two-eight-eight by zero-one-five absolute. Stand by to decelerate on my command.”

  Shankaracharya repeated the order and then transmitted it to the squadron. Martinez gave the order also to Corona’s pilot, and the acceleration cages in Command sang in their metallic voices as Eruken swung the frigate nearly through a half-circle, its engines now aimed to begin the massive deceleration that Do-faq had ordered.

  He watched the chronometer in the corner of the display and watched the numbers that marked the seconds flash past. He thought of Do-faq’s dislike of Kamarullah, who Do-faq blamed for wrecking a maneuver, and how Do-faq’s vengeance had followed Kamarullah over the years and deprived him of command.

  How much in the way of retribution could Martinez expect if he disobeyed Do-faq during an actual battle?

  And yet, within the ten-minute lag, it was very possible that Do-faq would countermand his own order, and agree to Martinez’s plan.

  Brilliant light flared on the virtual display. Solid flakes of antihydrogen, suspended by static electricity in etched silicon chips so tiny they flowed like a fluid, had just been caught by the compression wave of a small amount of conventional explosive in the nose of each of the three missiles Martinez had launched. The resulting antimatter explosion dwarfed the conventional trigger by a factor of billions. Erupting outward, the hot shreds of matter encountered the missiles’ tungsten jackets and created three expanding, overlapping spheres of plasma between Light Squadron 14 and the enemy ships, screens impenetrable to any enemy radar. The screen would hide any number of maneuvers on the part of Martinez’s force.

  The plasma would also screen the arrival of Do-faq’s eight heavy cruisers.

  The sight of the explosions made up Martinez’s mind, and words seemed to fly to his lips without his conscious order.

  “Comm: message to the squadron. Rotate ships to course two-nine-two by two-nine-seven absolute. Decelerate at five gravities commencing at 25:52:01.”

  Mentally he clung to a modest justification: Light Squadron 14 was not technically a part of Faqforce any longer; Martinez’s squadron command was theoretically independent until Do-faq actually entered the Hone-bar system….

  None of that, however, would make the slightest difference to Martinez’s career if Do-faq chose to inflict vengeance on his junior.

  The order would swing the light squadron through a course change that would shoot it over Soq’s south pole and slingshot it toward the enemy at a very narrow angle that would put it on a trajectory to place it between Hone-bar and the oncoming Naxids. This would place the squadron in an ideal position to further conceal the existence of Do-faq’s oncoming heavy ships.

  Martinez gave the order to Eruken, and again the acceleration cages sang as, in obedience to the laws of inertia, the couches rotated easily within them.

  “Let me help you with that, my lord.” The murmured comment from Signaler Trainee Mattson snapped Martinez away from his concentration on the tactical display.

  “Display: cancel virtual,” Martinez said. He reached a hand to the curved bars of his acceleration cage, seized it in a fist, and swung his weightless body to a position where he could look directly at the communications cage.

  Shankaracharya was staring at his communications board, his wide eyes ticking back and forth over the displays in apparent bewilderment. Signaler Trainee Mattson, teeth gnawing his lower lip, tapped away at his own display.

  “What is going on, comm?” Martinez demanded.

  Shankaracharya gave Martinez a startled look. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said. “I—I didn’t hear the order. Could you repeat, please?”

  “Course two-nine-two by two-nine-seven relative,” Mattson said helpfully.

  “Absolute, not relative!” Martinez said. “Check the record! All commands are recorded automatically! Call up the command display, everything should be there!”

  Mattson gave a quick, nervous shake of the head at this reminder. “Very good, my lord.”

  Shankaracharya was now busy at his own display. Martinez could see that his hands were trembling so severely that he kept pressing the wrong parts of the display, then having to go back and correct.

  “What was that time, my lord?” Shankaracharya asked.

  “Never mind. I’ll take the comm board myself.”

  He had been communications officer on the Corona prior to the Naxid revolt: he could do the job easily enough, and there was no way he could allow such a critical operation to remain in the hands of a trainee and a very junior, suddenly very erratic lieutenant. In the profound silence of the control room, Martinez let go of the cage and called up Shankaracharya’s board onto his own display. Mattson had managed to get most of the message onto the board, excepting only the time of acceleration. A glance at the chronometer showed that all the ships might not have time to perform the maneuver in time, so he advanced the time half a minute to 25:52:34.

  He sent the message, as well as the time correction to Mabumba on the engines board. Martinez was still minding the comm board when the call from Kamarullah came.

  “Martinez,” he answered. “Make it quick.”

  Kamarullah’s image was flushed a brighter color red than it had been before. “Are you aware that you’ve disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer?” he demanded.

  “Yes,” Martinez admitted. “Is that all?”

  Kamarullah seemed staggered by Martinez’s confession, and was without words for a few seconds. “Are you mad?” he managed finally. “Is there any reason why I should consider obeying this order?”

  “I’m beyond caring if you obey my orders or not,” Martinez said. “Do as you please, and we’ll see what a court says afterward. End transmission.”

  A few seconds later Corona’s engines fired and delivered a kick to Martinez’s tailbone that threw his couch swinging along the inside of a long arc. This was followed by a series of shorter arcs until the couch finally settled, with Martinez’s suit clamping gently on his arms and legs to prevent his blood pooling, and the iron weights of gravity stacking themselves one by one on his bones.

  Corona groaned, its frame shuddering as the acceleration built, jolting as if a giant were stamping on the deck. The display showed that Kamarullah’s ship had, in fact, obeyed Martinez’s order, and done so correct to the second. Whatever Kamarullah intended, it wasn’t open mutiny.

  A few minutes later, Do-faq’s squadron appeared through the wormhole, rotated to two-nine-zero by zero-one-five absolute, and fired their engines. Relief bubbled in Martinez’s heart like the finest champagne.

  Do-faq had done as Martinez had asked. Martinez had not ended his career with an act of disobedience.

  Martinez was too drained by the five-gravity deceleration to celebrate, and he knew he had work to do. Fighting against the deadening anesthesia the high gee wrapped about his mind, Martinez planned and ordered another series of missile launches that would, as his original plasma clouds cooled and dispersed, reinforce the screen behind which the loyalist squadrons could maneuver.

  If he commanded a larger ship he’d have a tactical officer to make these calculations and suggest solutions to problems, but as Corona was only a large frigate he had to do all the work himself.

  With gravity dragging at his brain he couldn’t be certain that his calculations were completely correct so he added mor
e missiles just to make certain.

  Antimatter tore itself to pi-mesons and gamma rays in the solar wind, and plasma fireballs expanded in the darkness. Behind the torn, hot matter, Do-faq’s squadron plunged onward, unobserved. Martinez, fighting to think as desperately as he fought for breath, launched more sets of missiles.

  A little over two hours after entering the Hone-bar system, Corona’s squadron made a furious burn across Soq’s south pole, briefly reaching ten gees as every person aboard sank groaning into unconsciousness. When Martinez battled his way to awareness like a punch-soaked fighter swinging wildly at an enemy he could barely perceive, he put all his concentration into forming and sending an order for the squadron to reduce its deceleration to two gravities.

  Martinez gasped and rolled his neck as the weight of gravity came off. With the relief of the interminable pressure he could feel alertness pouring back into his brain as if someone had opened a tap. He called up the abstract, perfect virtual display, and watched little burning figures fly across darkness.

  Light Squadron 14 had now swung on a course that would cause it to pass close to Hone-bar, inside the most probable course taken by the enemy. The Naxids, for their part, hadn’t altered their course, and in fact had no reason to—they were still two hours from learning of the loyalists’ existence.

  Martinez ordered another missile barrage—and ordered one of his light cruisers to make it, a ship with a greater store of missiles than his own frigate. He gave no orders for the missiles to explode, or where—he just pushed them out ahead of the squadron in the expectation that they would be useful later.

  The Naxids were most likely intending to stay in the Hone-bar system—their deceleration flares implied that—but it was possible they intended to slip by Hone-bar’s sun and continue on to Wormhole 3 and the Hone Reach. Whatever their purpose, the appearance of Martinez’s squadron on their displays might make them change their plans completely. If they had been ordered to avoid battle, they might blaze away for Wormhole 3 even if their original intention had been to stay. And even if they had been intending to pass on, the sight of a weaker squadron might convince them to engage.

  In any case, Kreeku would have to make his decision very soon after detecting Martinez’s arrival. His squadron would be on the verge of passing Hone-bar’s sun when they first saw Martinez’s engine flares, soon to be followed by maneuvers completely obscured by a screen of radiation from exploding antimatter missiles. Kreeku would have to conclude that the maneuvers were intended to bring on an engagement—Martinez might be intending to obscure a flight for Wormhole 3, but Kreeku couldn’t assume that.

  So the question was whether Kreeku would fight or not—and given that the Naxids would believe themselves superior in numbers, Martinez assumed that Kreeku would commit to battle. He would sling his forces around Hone-bar’s sun at a sharp angle and head more or less for Soq.

  And then, three hours later when Kreeku finally saw what course Martinez had taken shooting out of Soq’s gravity well, he would have to decide whether or not to react. He would either crowd in toward Martinez, in effect pinning him against Hone-bar, or engage from a distance. How aggressive was he?

  Martinez called up Kreeku’s biographical file out of Corona’s data system and saw the career track of a successful officer—a mix of specialties, ship and planetary assignments, staff college. In the public record there were, of course, none of the more candid assessments given by Kreeku’s superiors, nothing to indicate whether he was brilliant, stodgy, dull, or a swashbuckler.

  Martinez decided that Kreeku probably wouldn’t react right away. He wouldn’t need to—it would still be hours before the squadrons would clash.

  “Message to the squadron,” he said. “Alter course to two-eight-seven by zero-two-five relative, commencing at 27:14:01. Deceleration to remain at two gravities.”

  As his spoken words were transcribed into text by the computer he sent them forth. He had ordered the course change “relative,” meaning with relation to the squadron’s current heading, rather than “absolute,” in reference to the arbitrary coordinate system that had been imposed on every star system by the conquering Shaa.

  He gave further instructions to the missile barrage he’d sent out ahead of the squadron, and then decided it was time to send another message to Do-faq. “My lord,” he said into the camera, “I am enormously gratified at the confidence you have expressed in me by taking my suggested course. If you will further oblige me by ordering your squadron onto a heading of zero-one-five by zero-zero-one absolute after you pass Soq, I will do my best to provide cover and prevent the enemy from detecting you.

  “Thank you again for your trust. I shall try to prove worthy of it. Message ends.”

  As he sent the message to Do-faq he was aware of a light prickle of sweat on his forehead. He felt a sudden awareness of how much he was taking on himself, the fate of the Hone-bar system, the lives of thousands of crew. He looked at his displays and hoped that Kreeku wouldn’t prove to be a genius.

  At 27:14:01 the missile barrage exploded, creating a wall of hot plasma in front of the squadron, and the ships commenced their maneuver. If the Naxids had been able to see it, they would have seen the squadron make a kind of diagonal move in front of them, from a course that would pass between the Naxids and Hone-bar to one that would pass outside of both planet and squadron. It might look as if Martinez had changed his mind about how he wanted the battle to develop.

  What Martinez actually wanted was an excuse to create the plasma screen in the first place, any reason to hide Do-faq’s force. The maneuver itself was secondary.

  Some time later the ships passed through the screen they had created, and Corona traveled for several minutes in a bubble of hot radio hash, blind to the universe outside, the hull temperature rising. And then they were clear, and the other ships of the squadron appeared, their formation unaltered, their torches burning.

  Martinez shifted their heading again, aiming for where he suspected Kreeku would appear after his transit around Hone-bar’s sun, and then he rearranged their formation. The Naxids would see them arranged in a wheel, Corona at the hub surrounded by a constellation of seven ships. But the Naxids wouldn’t see the ships themselves—what they would see instead would be the ships’ tails of antimatter fire pointing straight toward them, obscuring anything behind.

  What would be obscured behind, Martinez hoped, would be the eight ships of Do-faq’s squadron, flying in Martinez’s wake and accelerating at a steady 2.3 gravities, the highest acceleration the frailty of the Lai-own physique would permit. Any radiation from Do-faq’s engine torches would, Martinez hoped, be taken for his own squadron’s engine exhaust.

  If Martinez had worked his calculations aright—and if the Naxids’ own maneuvers were reasonably conventional—he would lead Do-faq’s heavy squadron right onto the enemy without Kreeku’s being aware of their existence.

  Do-faq, without comment, followed Martinez’s suggestion and put his squadron on the course that would enable Martinez to guard the fact of his presence. Hours ticked by. Martinez could spot the moment when Kreeku first saw Light Squadron 14 fly through Wormhole 1—the deceleration burn ceased, and then the squadron reoriented and began a deceleration at higher gees.

  When Kreeku burned around Hone-bar’s sun and emerged on the track Martinez had most desired, he felt relief melt his limbs like butter. He made some fine adjustments to the positions of his squadron, and sent another suggestion to Do-faq that enabled Martinez to more efficiently screen his force as the angle between the opposing forces changed with their movement toward one another.

  Martinez and Kreeku, now four light-hours apart, were approaching each other at a combined speed of nearly seven-tenths the speed of light. They would meet in less than six hours—though by then, of course, a great many people would be dead.

  A flower of something like vanity began to blossom in Martinez’s heart. He had actually done it—he had smuggled eight large warships into the H
one-bar system without the enemy learning of their existence. He was giving orders to his own superior officer, the formidable and unforgiving Do-faq, and Do-faq was obeying them without comment. Even the enemy seemed to be flying in obedience to Martinez’s will.

  This battle would be studied by generations of Fleet officers, Martinez knew. Even if, as seemed perfectly possible, he was killed in the next few hours, he had assured himself a place in history.

  Martinez celebrated by reducing his deceleration to one gravity and sent his crew to supper. Though he felt no hunger himself, he thought his crew would fight better on a full stomach.

  Once food was placed before him he found he was ravenous, and he shoveled Alikhan’s fare into his mouth at a relentless rate. When his plate was empty he paged the premiere to his office, then explained to Dalkeith his plans for the upcoming battle, which she would need if he was killed and she, by some wild chance, survived.

  “Who do you have on your comm boards?” Martinez asked her.

  “Yu, my lord. Backed by Signaler/2nd Bernstein.”

  “Are they satisfactory?”

  She seemed unsurprised by the question, but then she was unsurprised by most things. “I have no complaints, lord elcap.”

  “Good. I want them transferred to Command. Trainee Mattson is too inexperienced, and Shankaracharya—well, he hasn’t worked out.”

  A tremble in Dalkeith’s watery blue eyes demonstrated a pattern of thought that she chose not to voice. “Very good, my lord,” she said.

  Martinez told Shankaracharya as the Command crew returned to their stations following the meal. “You and Mattson will be going to Auxiliary Command,” Martinez told the lieutenant. “Yu and Bernstein will serve the comm boards here.”

  Shankaracharya’s face didn’t show surprise—instead there was a kind of spasm, a tautening of the muscles of the neck and cheek, and then no expression at all. “I’m, ah, sorry, my lord,” he said. “I—I’ll try to do better in future.”