The Sundering

by Walter Jon Williams

  “He should know the right family,” Martinez said, “if anyone should.”

  Chandra offered a cynical smile. She spread her hands and glanced down at herself. “And look at me. Nothing’s changed. Still scraping along looking for a patron.”

  You haven’t found one? Martinez wondered. What was Fletcher, then?

  She looked at him. “There wouldn’t be a Chen to spare, would there?”

  “Lady Michi has a boy at school, but you’d have to wait.” He tried to make a joke out of it, but there wasn’t any laughter in Chandra’s dark eyes.

  “Really, Gareth,” she said. “I’m desperate. I could use some help.”

  “I can’t promote you, Chandra,” Martinez said. “Not till I get flag rank, and I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

  “But you’re going to get command of a ship before long. And that ship will need a first lieutenant. And if you do something brilliant with your ship, the way you do, your premiere’s going to get a promotion.” She folded her arms and gave him a searching look. “I’m putting my money on you, Gareth. You always seem to come out on top.”

  Frantic alarm bounded like a rubber ball along the inside of Martinez’s skull. He really didn’t want Chandra as a first lieutenant. It wasn’t that he minded her ambition, but he’d want a premiere less tumultuous, and besides he didn’t want her close to him. Yet he felt sympathy for her position—eight months ago, he’d been in the same situation, a provincial officer with no patronage and scant chance for promotion.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “But look—we’re going to beat the Naxids here. And that will mean notice for everybody on the flagship.”

  Disdain curled her lip. “It’ll mean notice for you. And for Chen, and the captain, and promotion for Kazakov—and isn’t she smug about it, the bitch!” She shook her head. “There isn’t going to be much notice left over for the little provincial who’s been waiting for seven years for her next step.”

  Martinez found whatever sympathy he’d retained oozing away. “There’s nothing I can do now,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do”—he gave a hopeless shrug—“when circumstances change.”

  “I know you will.” She put a hand on his arm again, then leaned forward to softly kiss his cheek. Her scent whirled in his senses. “I’m counting on you, Gareth.”

  She turned from Martinez and went to her meeting with the captain. His head spun left and right, like that of a frantic puppet, until he made certain that the kiss had been unobserved.

  This is going to be trouble, he thought.

  Supper with the squadcom was surprisingly relaxed. He presented the latest version of his plan, and received her approval.

  “I’m going to head for the wormhole gate, by the way,” she said. “I agree with your analysis of Bleskoth’s character.”

  Martinez felt a little tug of pleasure somewhere in his mind. “Have you told Lord Captain Fletcher?” he asked.

  “I will in the morning.”

  That night he might have managed a few hours’ sleep. He was up well before his usual time, walking about the ship, nodding to any crew he encountered but not speaking. He tried to make the nods brisk and confident. He hoped the thought, We’re going to thrash the enemy was shining out of his eyes.

  When he found himself nodding, brisk and confident, to the same crewman for the third time, he realized how absurd was this behavior and he returned to his cabin. Silence grew around him as he sat at his desk. In the semidarkness the faces of the winged children seemed unusually grave.

  He looked down at the surface of the desk and saw Terza, the image he’d installed there on his arrival, and the sight reminded him that he hadn’t written her since leaving Seizho. He picked up a stylus and began.

  In a few hours we’re going into battle. You can spare yourself any suspense in regard to the outcome, because you won’t be receiving this unless we win.

  And then the words stalled. After that opening sentence, his usual queries about her health and the memories of his boyhood on Laredo were going to seem banal. Going into mortal action alongside thousands of comrades seemed to call for some degree of profundity and introspection.

  The problem was that introspection was not his strong point, and Martinez knew it.

  He began by describing the silence of the ship, the way the vibration and rumble of the engines seemed to fade into white noise…how the crew were dutiful but quiet, waiting and watching…how he thought the battle would go well, and that he was hoping to win it without Chenforce taking any casualties.

  I was called ‘clever’ the other day, he wrote. It’s a word people use to describe a kind of intelligence of which they do not entirely approve, and I have been called clever before. I am inclined to resent it, but suppose I should take whatever compliments come my way. At least they don’t call me stupid.

  Martinez looked at the lines and thought that, before he sent the words onward, he should find out whether it was Michi or the captain who censored his correspondence.

  His stylus hovered over his desk as he wondered what to write next. An old lover kissed me yesterday, but I didn’t want her.

  Not the most reassuring of sentiments. His stylus didn’t move.

  He looked at Terza’s picture, and he tried to remember her voice, the way she moved. Only vague memories came to him. The time they’d spent together seemed like a half-remembered dream.

  Without invitation, pictures of Sula came to his mind. He remembered the flash of her emerald eyes, the silken weight of her golden hair on his palm, the taste of her flesh on his lips. It was as if he could reach out and touch her.

  The scent of Sandama Twilight stung his sinus. He felt the weight and thrust and agony of a long steel sword as it drove through his heart.

  An old lover kissed me yesterday, he thought, but she was the wrong old lover.

  The pain will go, he told himself.

  I delight in your letters, he wrote, but send a little video with your next message, so that I can see what you look like now.

  And then he signed, Love, Gareth.

  He didn’t send the letter on to whoever would censor it, but instead saved it in memory, and then blanked the desktop.

  He secured the stylus in its gravity-proof holder and looked up to see winged children leering at him from the walls.

  Three hours before Illustrious’s closest approach to Okiray, Lady Michi gave a dinner for the cruiser’s officers. Alcohol was not served. Chandra Prasad was not present, being officer of the watch and in command of the ship. Martinez wondered whether Fletcher had made special provision for that.

  Michi was an accomplished hostess, making certain to include everyone, even the most junior, in the conversation. Captain Lord Gomberg Fletcher, reflected multiple times in the mirror-bright asteroid material that decorated the walls, presented a series of magnificent pictures with his silver hair and patrician manner, so elegant and imposing that he seemed almost to be a host rather than a guest. Martinez, his eye on his sleeve chronometer, drank much coffee, ate whatever was put in front of him without tasting it, and said little.

  At the conclusion of the dinner, Michi rose to offer a toast, raising her crystal glass of water. “To victory,” she said.

  “Victory!” they all chanted, and for the first time that day Martinez felt his heart surge. Tongues of flame seemed to flicker on his skin. He was going to win this battle, and he was going to make the victory total.

  “Action stations, my lords,” Michi said. “Now, if you please.”

  Martinez returned to his quarters, took off his dress uniform, and used the toilet thoroughly before donning his vac suit. Helmet under his arm, he marched to the Flag Officer Station, encountering other crew on their way to their places. As they braced to let him pass he saw smiles on their faces, nods of greeting. Their absolute confidence buoyed him. He began to feel the pulse of victory surge through his veins.

  Michi had not yet arrived at her station. Mart
inez made a point of circling the room and shaking the hands of Coen and Li and Franz, the warrant officer who monitored the status of the ship. Lady Michi arrived, saw what Martinez was doing, and made the rounds herself.

  “Luck,” she said, clasping Martinez’s hand.

  He looked at the brown eyes beneath the straight bangs, and smiled. “And to you, my lady.”

  He webbed himself into his couch and the displays brightened around him. Forty-six minutes till their closest approach to Okiray, and six minutes till the next missiles were launched. All the squadron had already received their orders, and Martinez restrained his impulse to contact all the ships and confirm.

  The six minutes ticked slowly by, and then two missiles leaped from each ship in Chenforce, and after igniting antimatter engines hurled themselves toward the eleven decoys that flew between the squadron and Bleskoth’s warships.

  Martinez hunched forward and stared at the displays as anticipation hummed in his nerves. He was very interested to know if Bleskoth would behave as he had twice before, cutting his acceleration for twelve minutes whenever Chenforce fired missiles. Martinez thought that Bleskoth didn’t have any choice—his decoys were all programmed with that twelve-minute pause, and if he didn’t want to give himself away he’d have to follow suit.

  Which was exactly what happened. Martinez took a deep, relieved breath. Bleskoth had just saved him the burden of recalculating a lot of trajectories at the last minute.

  The ship rotated and the engines began the Okiray burn. Martinez tensed and growled and fought for breath, blackness closing in on his vision as he fought a losing war against the growing force of gravity. Eventually he passed out, and so missed the moment when the squadron’s tactical computers launched a hundred and twenty-eight missiles, all to be guided by a pair of cadets in pinnaces who—unconscious, like everyone else—were launched into space after them.

  Gravity eventually ebbed, and Martinez gasped for air and clawed for his displays, trying to bring them close to his dimmed vision. Failing, he lunged forward against the reluctant webbing and slammed the rim of his helmet on the display, staring unblinkingly until the bright icons of the missiles flared into being at the darkened center of his vision. They were on their way, and were keeping the mass of the planet between themselves and the advancing enemy. Triumph blazed in his mind as Martinez sagged back into his seat.

  Minutes later, the sixteen missiles fired at the eleven decoys, located most of their targets, and created a brilliantly hot screen of expanding, overlapping plasma spheres between Bleskoth and Okiray, preventing the enemy commander from seeing the last missile launch.

  Bleskoth had no way of seeing the doom that was waiting for him in the planet’s shadow.

  “All ships, increase deceleration to three gravities at 18:14:01,” Martinez signaled the squadron.

  “Imperious acknowledges,” Coen reported. “Illustrious acknowledges. Challenger acknowledges…all ships acknowledge, my lady.”

  The force of the engines punched Martinez back into his couch. Chenforce was no longer content to wait for the Naxid pursuit: now they would increase the rate at which the two forces converged.

  Minutes ticked by. The nearest Naxid decoys maneuvered like real squadrons, adjusting their velocities to that of Chenforce. Other decoys, making no pretense that they were warships, came screaming at inhuman accelerations from remote corners of the system, and would be used as weapons. Bleskoth’s squadron punched through the cooling plasma screen and for the first time saw that the loyalists were headed for Wormhole 3, not a circuit of the system, and that Chenforce was inviting a fight.

  The Naxid force dropped its acceleration while it considered its options. No doubt Bleskoth wanted to clear his head and think. Martinez gave a shout of pure rage while he beamed course and speed changes to the missiles approaching Okiray, to keep them hidden from Bleskoth’s radars.

  When the Naxids’ engines flared again, Martinez was ready. Another set of course changes were sent to the missiles, and then Martinez looked up at Lady Michi.

  “Permission to starburst, my lady?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Permission granted, lord captain.”

  “All ships,” Martinez sent, “Starburst Pattern One. Execute at 18:22:01.”

  Coen chanted off acknowledgments from the other captains. Acceleration abruptly ceased and sent Martinez’s stomach lurching unexpectedly into his throat. Illustrious reoriented, Martinez’s cage swinging gently with the movement, and then the acceleration resumed and his couch crashed violently in a direction that was suddenly “down.” The elements of Chenforce began to separate, moving in a seemingly random pattern determined by the bit of chaotic mathematics that Caroline Sula had built into the new Fleet maneuvers, gliding along the convex hull of a dynamical system.

  Bleskoth’s squadron reoriented for its burn past Okiray. No matter what they saw Chenforce do, it was too late for them to change their intended course now.

  “All ships,” Martinez sent, “fire by salvo.”

  “Illustrious acknowledges. Challenger acknowledges…”

  By the time a hundred and sixty missiles and another pair of pinnace pilots leaped into space and began their burn for the enemy, all Naxids were unconscious from the high gravities they were pulling on their approach to Okiray. They would have to deal with the salvo after they woke up.

  And if Martinez was lucky, they wouldn’t wake up at all.

  The rebel Light Squadron 5 hurled itself into Okiray’s gravity well. And the hundred and twenty-eight missiles that had been lurking in the planet’s shadow flashed forward to intercept them.

  On his displays Martinez saw little but a sudden roil of angry antimatter energy, a concentrated burst of gamma rays and energetic neutrons that poured from the heart of the expanding plasma. It was clear that the Naxids’ automated laser defense systems had caught a number of the attacking missiles, and that these had probably blown up other missiles arrowing to the same targets. But surely, Martinez insisted to himself, some must have got through.

  There was a strange crunching noise in Martinez’s ears as he searched the displays for any sign of the enemy. At some point he realized that the sound was the grinding of his own teeth. He relaxed his jaw muscles through a deliberate effort.

  Seconds passed, and then his heart sank as he saw ships flying out of the expanding, cooling plasma cloud. Two, he counted, three, seven. No more.

  Ten had flown in. His ambush had accounted for almost a third of the Naxid strength.

  It should have been more, he thought in a sudden burst of passion, and then his head snapped up at the sound of Michi Chen’s voice.

  “All ships,” she said, “fire by salvo.” Coen at the comm station transmitted the order to the other ships.

  Another hundred and sixty missiles launched, their precise paths guided by the individual ships’ weapons officers. Martinez felt a surge against his spine as Illustrious made a course shift, all in accordance with Starburst Pattern One.

  One of the Naxid ships, he saw, was on a diverging course from the others. Its engines were no longer firing. But he saw missile flares appear near the single ship, and knew it was still in the fight.

  The other six had all fallen into Illustrious’s wake. Martinez had been right. Bleskoth had planned all along to hang on to Chenforce’s tail until one side or another was beaten.

  The six Naxid ships ceased acceleration. Missiles leaped off their rails. Then the warships rotated and began a fierce deceleration burn, trying to slow the rate at which they were overtaking Chenforce. They knew they were in trouble.

  Martinez felt a wild grin distorting his features. It was all working brilliantly.

  “Another salvo,” said Michi Chen.

  The enemy spat out missiles at a fantastic rate, many intended as countermissiles, the rest flying to the attack. The Naxid decoys, receiving new orders, began to home in on targets. Individual ships’ captains and weapons officers ordered countermissile fire.
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  Martinez watched it all, surprised by the comparative silence and order of the Flag Officer Station. In his previous battles he’d been in Command, a hive of energy as sensor operators called out their findings, signals traffic flashed back and forth, weapons officers fired missiles and worked out their plots, the officer at the engine controls repeated course and acceleration orders, and he himself shouted his own commands into the din.

  Here there was very little sound, only the rumble of the engines, Lady Michi’s occasional orders, and the signals lieutenants calling out other ships’ acknowledgments. Now that the battle was fully joined, Martinez was little more than an observer. He could offer advice to Lady Michi, but she seemed to be doing fine on her own.

  Throwing out too many missiles for his taste, but in general doing well.

  Enemy lasers began to rip into the oncoming missile salvo. Expanding plasma shells brightened the darkness. Soon the Naxids vanished from the displays, their very existence concealed behind the plasma screen.

  But the plasma bursts were closer to the enemy than they were to Chenforce, and the Naxids were racing toward the plasma screens that baffled and confused their sensors, while the loyalists were increasing their distance. Martinez felt triumph hum in his veins at the thought of the screen moving closer and closer to the enemy until it enveloped them, leaving them prey to missiles they couldn’t even see.

  Chenforce’s own point-defense lasers began their fire at oncoming enemy missiles, joined shortly thereafter by the bright lances of the antiproton beams mounted on the heavy cruisers. The mutually supporting fire wove patterns through the darkness like swords clashing in the night, impaling oncoming missiles with high-energy fire. Plasma flares dotted the night. A blazing curtain seemed to have been flung across half the universe.

  Martinez shifted to a virtual display so that he could better study the developing situation, and found, as the system blossomed in his skull, that he now seemed to be sailing in serene silence amid a hellish scene of unspeakable violence. He shifted his perspective so that he seemed to be closer to the enemy, just in front of the advancing plasma screen. He had moved back in time as well, the time it took for light from this point to reach Illustrious’s sensors. Missiles leaped out of the screen on wild, frenetic dodging paths. Lasers quested after them. A pillar of light blazed off Martinez’s right shoulder as several incoming missiles were hit at once, a line of fury pointing like a long arm toward the frigate Beacon. Martinez realized that he—or rather his position in the virtual display—was about to be engulfed by blazing plasma and his view of the action turned to electromagnetic hash. He pulled back to zoom across space, and up time’s axis, in pursuit of Chenforce.