Praxis def-1

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Oh, so sorry,” she said. “Would you like a match?”

  “Signal from Flag, my lord,” Martinez said. “Second Division, alter course in echelon to two-two-seven by one-two-zero relative, and accelerate at two-point-eight gravities. Commence movement at 27:10:001 ship time.”

  “Comm, acknowledge,” Tarafah said. He sat in his rotating acceleration couch in the middle of the command center.

  The padded rectangular room was unusually quiet, with the lighting subdued in order not to compete with the glowing pastel lights of the various station displays, green and orange and yellow and blue. Through the open faceplate of his helmet Martinez could smell the machine oil that had recently relubricated the acceleration cages, all mixing with the polymer plastic scent of the seals of his vac suit.

  From his couch behind the captain’s, he observed that Tarafah’s body was so rigid with tension that the rods and struts of the acceleration cage vibrated in sympathy with his taut, quivering limbs.

  “Yes, Lord Elcap,” Martinez said, using the accepted shorthand for Tarafah’s grade, which came more easily than “Lieutenant Captain” to a Fleet officer in a hurry.

  Tarafah stared at his displays, one muscle working in his cheek, visible because he hadn’t put on his helmet, a breach of procedure permitted in a captain but scarcely anyone else. Gazing at his displays, he had the attitude of a footballer deep in concentration on an unfamiliar playbook. Martinez figured that Tarafah was desperate not to wreck the assigned maneuver, which was a greater possibility than usual since so many of his top petty officers-the noncommissioned officers who were the backbone of his crew-were useless dunces.

  Fortunately, Martinez had only one such dunce in his own division, Signaler First Class Sorensen, otherwise known asCorona’s star center forward. It wasn’t that Sorensen wouldn’t learn his official duties-he seemed cheerful and cooperative, unlike some of the other players-but that he seemed incapable of understanding anything the least bit technical.

  No, Martinez thought, that wasn’t exactly true. Sorensen was perfectly capable of understanding the complex series of lateral passes that Tarafah had built into the Coronas’ hard-charging offense, and all that was technical enough-and besides, Martinez took his hat off toanyone who could understand the intricacies of custom, interpretation, and precedent that made up the Fleet League’s understanding of the offside rule. It was just that Sorensen couldn’t understand any complexities beyond football, to which he seemed dedicated by some unusually single-minded force of predestination.

  All that wouldn’t have mattered so much if Sorensen hadn’t been promoted past Recruit First Class. But Tarafah had wanted to boost his players’ pay beyond the hefty under-the-table sums he was doubtless handing them, so he’d promoted eight of his first-string players to Specialist First Class. No doubt he would have promoted them to Master Specialist if that rank hadn’t required an examination that would have exposed a complete ignorance of their duties.

  Leaving aside the senior lieutenant, Koslowski, who despite playing goalkeeper seemed a competent enough officer, there were ten additional first-string players, plus an alternate-the second alternate being an officer cadet fresh from a glorious playing season at Cheng Ho Academy. To these were added a coach in the guise of a weaponer second class, all of which made up a lot of dead weight in a crew of sixty-one.

  Thus it was that Martinez discovered what Captain Tarafah meant when he said he wanted the entire ship’s company to pull together. It meant that everyone else had to do the footballers’ jobs.

  He could have coped easily enough if it meant covering for the genial but inept Sorensen. But because Tarafah was consumed with football, and the Premiere, as well, he had to do much of Koslowski’s work, and even some of the captain’s. And sometimes stand their watches as well as his own. And this during a period in which football wasn’t even in season. Martinez dreaded the time when the games actually started.

  He enviedCorona’s second officer, Garcia. A small, brown-skinned woman, she wasn’t a suitable footballer, and she spoke with a provincial accent almost as broad as his own, but she’d got herself in with the captain as, in effect, First Fan. She’d organized the nonfootballer crew to attend and cheer for the Coronas at the games, and made up signs and banners and threw parties in the players’ honor. Thus, she had worked her way into the captain’s circle, though she was also obliged to keep her own watch and do her own work, and probably a little of the premiere’s as well.

  “Pilot, rotate ship,” Tarafah said. A little ahead of time, Martinez thought, since the other ships in the division hadn’t rotated yet, but no harm done.

  “Rotating ship,” called Pilot/Second Anna Begay, who was doing the job of Pilot/First Kostanza, a long-legged hairy-wristed halfback who sat behind her in the auxiliary pilot’s position, and whose displays had been set to an archived edition ofSporting Classics.

  The acceleration couches swung lightly in their cages asCorona rotated around them. Martinez kept his eyes focused on his signals display board in front of him.

  “Two-two-seven by one-two-zero relative, Lord Elcap,” Begay reported.

  “Engines, prepare for acceleration,” said Tarafah.

  “Engines signaled,” said Warrant Officer Second Class Mabumba, who was doing a class on propulsion to prepare for his exams for Warrant Officer/First.

  The little muscle ticked in Tarafah’s cheek as he watched the digital readout on his displays. “Engines, accelerate on my mark,” he said, and then, as the counters ticked to 27:10:001, “Engines, fire engines.”

  Gravity’s punch in the chest, and the gee suits tightening around arms and legs, told everyone in the ship that the engines had fired, but Mabumba reported the fact anyway, as protocol dictated. Acceleration couches swung to new attitudes as gee forces piled on, and began to generate the pulsing miniwaves that kept blood from pooling. The second division of Cruiser Squadron 18, echeloned so that each ship wouldn’t fry the one behind with its torch, blazed out toward the target.

  Martinez saw that Tarafah seemed to relax once the engines were fired. There hadn’t been the slightest chance that theywouldn’t fire, of course: the dour, impatient Master Engineer Maheshwari had the engines well in hand, even considering the two footballers stuck in his department, one rated Engineer/First and supposedly in charge of his own watch.

  The problems, if any, would come when weapons began to fire. SinceCorona had never fired a weapon in anger, the weapons bays had seemed a useful sort of place to stuff excess footballers. But now missiles were actually going to be launched, from launchers maintained and loaded by crews supervised by bogus weaponers. If anything would go amiss, it would be there.

  In order to head off trouble, Martinez had sent Alikhan, his orderly, to the weapons bays instead of to the damage control or medical sections, as was normal. Alikhan had retired a master weaponer, and Martinez knew thatCorona’s weapons division could use him.

  Still, if anything went wrong, Martinez hoped it wouldn’t involve antimatter.

  Quietly, he configured his screen to show the view of the security camera in the weapons bay. He tucked the image into a corner of his display, then jumped back to his real job as a new message flickered onto his screens.

  “Message from flag,” he reported.“Second Division, alter course in echelon to two-two-seven by one-nine-zero relative, execution immediate.”

  Martinez touched the pad that would send the new course to the captain, pilot, navigator, and engine control, which would assure that they would all receive the same information and that it wouldn’t be garbled in transmission.

  “Signals, acknowledge,” Tarafah said. “Engines, cut engines.”

  “Engines cut, Lord Elcap.” Suddenly everyone was weightless in their straps.

  “Pilot, rotate ship.”

  “Rotating ship, Lord Elcap. New heading two-two-seven by one-two-zero relative.”

  “Engines, fire engines.”

  Again that punch in th
e solar plexus, the swinging of the couches in their cages. Somewhere, a couch wheel gave a little metallic scream.

  “Engines fired, my lord.” Redundantly.

  Over Tarafah’s shoulder, Martinez caught a glimpse of the navigation displays. The ships of the second division had all made the course change in their own time, leaving their line slightly ragged.Corona, at one end of the line, was headed just for the enemy, exactly according to plan.

  “Weapons,” Tarafah commanded, “prepare to fire missiles.”

  Martinez reflected that if it hadn’t been for Tarafah’s worry over whether one of his nominal petty officers was going to make him look bad, the current operation would scarcely have had any suspense at all.

  Martinez had yet to see Magaria,Corona’s new base. Not that it was worth viewing: Magaria had been chosen as a major Fleet installation not because the world was a desirable one, but because the system had seven useful wormhole gates-only one fewer than Zanshaa itself-and the Second Fleet squatting at the wormhole nexus could therefore hold much of the empire in its power.

  Magaria had been a hellishly hot planet when it was discovered, shrouded in clouds of acid and swept by typhoon winds, and thousands of years of tinkering with its climate had barely succeeded in making the place habitable. The population of Magaria’s accelerator ring was higher than that of the planet proper, several million who lived off the money the military brought in, or who existed as middlemen for cargoes passing through the port. A few towns crouched near artificial oases near the skyhook termini, hiding from the scouring sandstorms, their economies based on supporting and supplying the Fleet and entertaining its crews. Most of the inhabitants were Naxids, who were more suited for hot, dry weather than other species.

  The local Fleet commander was a Naxid as well, Senior Fleet Commander Fanaghee. She was a ferocious disciplinarian who ruled her domain from a luxurious suite aboard theMajesty of the Praxis, one of the huge Praxis-class battleships that provided vast planet-slagging firepower as well as the splendor and magnificence which the customs of the service demanded for senior officers.

  Because no one quite knew what to expect following the death of the last Shaa, Fleet elements had been dispersed around the empire in order to preserve order. Now that order seemed to have been preserved without the intervention of the Fleet, the squadrons were reassembling-but they were also reshuffling. Two of Fleetcom Fanaghee’s squadrons were new to the Magaria station, and so she had declared a series of maneuvers, the two Naxid squadrons versus the other three. It was a reasonably even match, as the Naxid ships were more heavily armed and included the only battleship.

  Coronahad arrived on station just as the maneuvers were beginning, and to Tarafah’s alarm had been added to the second division as its smallest ship, the rest being medium and light cruisers.

  Maneuvers weren’t common in the Fleet. Squadrons had to spend a month or more at high accelerations beforehand, and the same amount of time decelerating afterward. Martinez had participated in maneuvers only once, years ago, when he was a young cadet on theDandaphis.

  Live-fire exercises, particularly on short notice, had not exactly been Tarafah’s specialty. So Martinez wasn’t surprised to hear renewed tension in his captain’s voice as he spoke to the weapons officer.

  “Weapons, this is a drill,” Tarafah said, following form. “Target salvo one at trailing enemy cruiser. This is a drill.”

  “This is a drill, my lord. Salvo one targeted at trailing enemy cruiser.”

  “Weapons, this is a drill. Fire salvo one.”

  There was a brief, suspenseful pause as gauss rails flung missiles into space-there was no recoil detected in Command-after which solid-fuel boosters carried the missiles to a safe distance before their antimatter engines ignited. An instant later Cadet Kelly was hurled after them in her pinnace.

  “Salvo one away, Lord Elcap. Pinnace one away.” She paused and only then remembered her disclaimer. “This is a drill.”

  Martinez glanced at the corner of his screen that showed the weapons bays. Nothing was happening, a good sign, and the weaponers all seemed to be remaining in the safety of their hardened shelters.

  The missiles raced off on their preprogrammed tracks, followed by the pinnace that was supposed to shepherd them. Naturally warheads wouldn’t actually explode-not unless someone in the weapons department hadreally bollixed something up-but their effects would be simulated; or at least, their assumed effects would.

  Not that what the missiles actually did would matter: the fate of all the ships, not to mention their missiles, had already been decided. Fleetcom Fanaghee and her staff had labored many hours to script the maneuvers to the last detail. The two Naxid squadrons, designated the “defenders of the Praxis,” were holding one of Magaria’s wormholes against “mutineers,” and the Praxis, along with Fanaghee’s squadrons, would inevitably triumph.

  As forCorona, it would attack with the second division against the enemy’s light squadron. The first salvos fired by each side were scheduled to annihilate each other in a simulated spray of antimatter radiation, thus confusing sensors and masking maneuvers from the other side-the missiles wouldn’t actually detonate, and the sensors’ confusion was programmed. The second salvo from the enemy would mostly fall to point-defense weapons, but one would detonate near enough to theCorona to damage one of the weapons bays and require the venting of one of the antimatter storage tanks, thus providing some useful drill for the frigate’s damage-control teams.

  Coronawould fight on, launching several more waves of missiles, until annihilated by an oncoming barrage from the flagship at precisely 29:01:021. The entire battle could have been loaded into the ships’ computers and fought without a single officer giving an order, except this was specifically forbidden. The officers were to have practice at giving orders, even if the orders were scripted well in advance.

  “Weapons, this is a drill. Fire salvo two. This is a drill.”

  The officers were very scrupulous indeed to give the right orders. They and their ships would be judged by how well they followed the plan. The point of the maneuver wasn’t who won, but who best did what they were told.

  “This is a drill. Salvo two away, Lord Elcap. This is a drill.”

  The tension in Command seemed to fade with news of the two successful launches.

  “Enemy light squadron firing missiles,” Navigation reported. “Missile tracks heading our way. Estimated time of impact, eight-point-four minutes.”

  The missiles in question had actually been fired some minutes ago, but the limitations of the radars’ speed of light had prevented the information from reachingCorona till this moment.

  “Starburst, Lord Elcap!” Navigation managed to simulate surprise. “Enemy starburst!”

  Which meant that the target squadron, perceiving incoming missiles, were now trying to separate from one another as swiftly as they could. To keep their ships firmly under their control, squadron commanders usually wanted to keep them clustered about them as long as possible, but ships that were clumped together also made overlarge targets, with a possibility of one strike destroying more than one ship. The question of when to order a starburst was one of the questions that junior officers debated ceaselessly in their wardrooms. If the senior officers debated this subject, or indeed anything at all, they gave no sign.

  Tarafah frowned down at his displays. “Weapons, this is a drill. Power up the point-defense lasers.”

  “This is a drill, Lord Elcap. Point-defense lasers powered.”

  As the enemy’s second salvo came in, the point-defense lasers fired away at low power, perhaps even scoring hits. Whether hit or not, most of the salvo had been declared destroyed days before they were fired, and were deactivated. Whether hit or not, one missile was assigned to penetrate the defensive shield and detonate, its simulated radiation burning away the control systems on the number two engine, setting off a potential runaway antimatter leak that required a fuel tank to be vented into space. Other damag
e would include the disabling of an entire bank of missile launchers, and sensors burned away along one whole flank of the frigate.

  A message flashed onto Martinez’s displays. Relief danced in his heart as he reported it to Tarafah. “General message from flagshipMajesty.” The qualifier was to distinguish it from the heavy cruiser that was the flagship of the mutineers’ squadron. “Bombardment of Kashmahas failed to launch pinnace number three. All ships are to proceed as if the pinnace were launched.”

  “Comm, acknowledge,” Tarafah said. He could barely contain his delight. Someother ship had screwed up, and furthermore, one in Fanaghee’s own squadron.

  Coronacould look on the rest of the maneuvers with rising optimism. Even if they made some hideous mistake, they wouldn’t be alone.

  The hideous mistake came twelve minutes later, when the simulated damage occurred to a bank of eight missile launchers. It was not to be repaired by actual members of the crew, because the powerful and unpredictable accelerations of a warship might fling them fatally against the nearest bulkhead. Instead weaponers, from the safety of their thick-walled shelters, cleared the missiles from the tubes with remote-controlled robots, massive machines built on the lines of spiders, with multiple arms that would clamp on stanchions fixed to the ship’s polycarbon frame, move from one stanchion to the next while the powerful arms secured themselves against accelerations, and smaller manipulator arms did the work.

  The movements of the two robots seemed at first to go well. “Damaged” control systems were replaced, and the robots began to yank missiles from their tubes. Then somehow one of the multilegged machines fouled the other, and in an effort to break free, tore away the other robot’s central hydraulic reserve. Hydraulic fluid jetted out into the weightless missile compartment, forming a spray of perfect azure globes, and the second robot died.

  Now both robots were useless, since the dead robot was blocking the one that still functioned.

  Martinez watched the silent little video picture with the same fascination with which he would watch any other disaster he was helpless to prevent. The footballers Tarafah had stuffed in the weapons division might have just finished off their patron’s career.