Praxis def-1

by Walter Jon Williams

  Then he added up the figures in his head again, and didn’t like them any better than he had the first time.

  Magaria was the key, he decided. If Fanaghee and her force stayed loyal, then the empire would survive what was to come.

  Ifnot …Well, Jarlath thought, he would try to maintain an air of confidence.

  It was only then, nine hours after Elkizer had disobeyed orders and bypassed Vandrith, that Jarlath remembered that there was one Naxid warship remaining on the station, the brand new light cruiserDestiny, which was ten days from completion-or so the dockyard superintendent had maintained for over a month now.Destiny had its crew and officers aboard, but had yet to be towed to the completion arena to receive its missiles, defensive weapons, and to test its propulsion systems with their first charges of antimatter.

  Jarlath ordered the Military Constabulary to seize the ship. They were met with small-arms fire from the ship’s officers.Destiny ‘s crew ran out of the ship into the dockyard, where they began hurling homemade explosives and incendiaries. It was two hours before they were all rounded up and shot. Eight million zeniths’ worth of stores and dockyard equipment had to be written off.

  Shortly after making his report on the incident, Jarlath received a reprimand complaining that he had shot the rebels instead of throwing them off a cliff, as prescribed by a new law passed that afternoon by the Convocation.

  That was how the first day ended.

  The message from the Commandery to Fanaghee at Magaria took twenty hours to arrive. It took another twenty for the reply to get back to Zanshaa. Fanaghee expressed alarm over the mutiny of Elkizer and Farniai and announced that she was dispatching the Second Fleet to intercept the rebels.

  “Very good, Lord Commander,” said Lord Convocate Maurice Chen, who by virtue of the fact that he’d demonstrated martial skill by clouting the chief rebel on the head with a chair, had been deemed worthy of a promotion out of Oceanographic and Forestry and onto the Fleet Control Board. “It must be a relief to know that Magaria is safe,” he said to Fleet Commander Jarlath.

  “Idon’t know it,” Jarlath replied. His fingers twirled little angry knots into his fur. “I don’t know if I credit Fanaghee’s report, or for that matter if I wish to.”

  He ordered Fanaghee to provide detailed reports on the status of every ship under her command, the reports to be provided in video form and by the captains of the individual ships themselves. Which should make it clear, he thought, whether the captains could speak for themselves.

  As he feared, there was no reply to his message. He informed Lord Chen and the rest of the Fleet Control Board that Magaria had fallen to the rebels.

  There were five squadrons at Magaria. If the Naxids controlled them all, Fanaghee’s force would now be equal in number to the five squadrons remaining in the Home Fleet, and once Elkizer and Farniai joined her, she would have the advantage.

  In which case, he knew he might as well surrender hope of recapturing Magaria. It would be all he could do to hold Zanshaa.

  The next bulletin came from the Third Fleet at Felarus. Its Naxid squadron had departed the station unexpectedly on what its commander claimed was a training exercise, then opened fire on the rest of the Third Fleet, still moored to the ring station. Antiproton beams, intended as an antimissile defense, had been used offensively, and at point-blank range. Warships were blown apart, along with critical parts of the ring station. The Naxid barrage hadn’t been as severe as it could have been, which indicated that they were exercising a degree of restraint, perhaps out of compassion for their fellows, perhaps simply because they intended to return and capture Felarus’s ring later. Despite the rebels’ self-restraint, half the ships of the Third Fleet were destroyed, and the rest severely damaged. Because of additional damage to the repair facilities of the ring station, it would be many months before any of Third Fleet’s ships could be used against the rebels.

  A puzzled message arrived from the commander of the ring station at Comador. The Naxid squadron based there had departed the station and were making their way out of the system, refusing communication. The station commander wished to know if the squadron was flying away on an exercise that he hadn’t been told about.

  Jarlath also had to presume that the squadron at Naxas was lost.

  From Harzapid alone there was good news. The commander of the single Naxid squadron, as inexperienced at staging a rebellion as anyone in the Fleet and far from any advice from the ruling council on Naxas, had marched his followers into Ring Command and sent forth a public announcement to the effect that he was now in charge. After recovering from her surprise, the commander of the Fourth Fleet organized storming parties and retook Ring Command. Unfortunately, this precipitated another point-blank battle with antiproton beams, but this time the loyalists weren’t caught unprepared. The Naxid ships were destroyed, at a cost of a third of the loyalists damaged or destroyed. That left enough ships to form two squadrons.

  Jarlath ordered that any captured rebels be thrown off a cliff, if one was conveniently at hand, and otherwise be shot.

  The victory at Harzapid gave Jarlath two more squadrons, four once damaged ships were repaired, and Jarlath took heart. He counted no more than ninety ships in the enemy fleet, and these included single ships on detached duty and the squadron from Comador, a station so remote that its renegade squadron would take months to arrive near the scene of any prospective action. This total also included the three squadrons captured at Magaria, which were not fitted for Naxid crews and thus would take some time for the special requirements of a centauroid species to be made.

  Once Jarlath called in the Daimong squadron from Zerafan-only ten days away if he ordered a brutal, maximum acceleration-he would have fifty-four ships in the Home Fleet, which should suffice to hold Zanshaa until further help arrived. Squadron Commander Do-Faq’s Lai-own squadron at Preowin could arrive in forty days, necessarily at a much more gentle acceleration due to the less robust Lai-own physique. Individual ships could also be called in, enough to eventually make a squadron of small vessels.

  Unfortunately, the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid was at least three months away. But after those three months were past and the Fourth Fleet arrived, Jarlath could be reasonably certain that any offensive he launched toward Magaria would stand a good chance of success.

  In the meantime, Magaria preyed on his mind. Its ring was an enormous arsenal of missiles, parts, shipyards, and training facilities, a far superior facility to anything else the rebels possessed. Magaria also had the seven wormhole gates that could send an enemy force to much of the empire. If he could retake Magaria, Jarlath knew he could rip the guts out of the rebellion.

  Instead he took steps for the defense of Zanshaa. Having put himself aboard his giant flagship, called in all crews and filled all ships with weapons, fuel, and supplies, he launched the remaining squadrons of the Home Fleet five days after Akzad’s abortive rebellion, and then began an acceleration toward Vandrith. This was not a pursuit of Elkizer’s fleeting squadrons, which by now were well out of reach, but rather, an attempt to give the Home Fleet some delta-vee so if an enemy attacked, the defenders wouldn’t be sitting ducks and massacred.

  For the first few days of the emergency Sula ended up guarding a skyhook terminus again, though this time her party was armed with automatic rifles rather than stun batons, and one mustachioed petty officer was in charge of a tripod-mounted antimatter gun that would dispose of armored vehicles, or, indeed, anything at all. Only military personnel with valid identification were permitted on the cars, and Naxids were flatly forbidden to ride the skyhook under any circumstances.

  The official stories being broadcast were confused and contradictory, indicating that something had happened that the censors didn’t know how to spin. The story they eventually settled on was that the Lord Senior and a group of his followers had tried to seize the government and killed a number of convocates, but were promptly flung off a cliff by indignant legislators. Two squadrons of the Home F
leet had rebelled as well, but these were now in flight. Fleet Commander Jarlath and the rest of the Home Fleet would soon depart to take vengeance on behalf of the established order.

  Sula supposed that most of this was true, or true enough, except the part about the heroic convocates killing the traitors themselves. The Convocation had never done their own dirty work before, she thought: why start now? But looking at the news reports in more detail, Sula saw that it was possible to draw other conclusions.

  She knew that the two rebellious squadrons were crewed by Naxids. The list of the traitorous convocates included only Naxids, whereas those convocates martyred by their treachery were all non-Naxids. And she had been ordered to forbid Naxids to ride the critical skyhook. From all of this, certain conclusions could be drawn.

  Sula was quicker at math than Jarlath, and she didn’t like how the numbers were adding up either.

  After two days of standing watch at a mostly deserted skyhook terminus, she received a call on her sleeve display from Captain Lord Richard Li.

  “I’m calling to renew my offer of a place onDauntless,” he said. “We’re filling up the crew, and I expect we’ll be leaving station in a matter of days.” He hesitated, then added, “I haven’t heard officially yet, but the rumor is that your exam results are going to be thrown out. If you want to take the exams again, you’ll have to wait months and reapply.”

  Hopeless bitterness filled Sula. “I understand,” she said. That left her with little option but to accept Lord Richard’s offer and get into the war. It was clear that those with experience in combat would have an increased chance of notice and promotion: to miss the war would be to throw her career to the winds.

  Lord Richard smiled. “Before you answer yes or no, I need to tell you the rest of the bad news. I can’t take you on as a lieutenant. Lord Commander Jarlath is insisting that all crews be made up with experienced officers-he doesn’t want anyone learning on the job, not when so many lives may depend on it. I have to say that I agree with him. So if you come aboard, it will be as a pinnace pilot.” From out of Sula’s sleeve display, he gave her what he probably thought was an encouraging look.

  “Iwill see that you’re promoted as soon as possible,” he said. “The next time one of my lieutenants is rotated or promoted out ofDauntless, you’ll have the place.”

  That is, of course, if she survived her career as a pinnace pilot. Which, in a real shooting war, was not the surest way to bet.

  Still, an appointment under a rising young officer, with the promise of promotion to come, was the best offer she was likely to get. It was certainly better than guarding a skyhook while brooding over her lost exam results.

  She managed a smile. “Certainly,” she said. “Where do I sign?” At least it would get her away from the ongoing Blitsharts trial, which, with its appeals, might go on for the next decade.

  Whatever task the Fleet assigned Sula lately, it assigned her a sidearm to go with it. Her first job aboardDauntless was to enslave the civilian workers. Jarlath, two days into the rebellion, had remembered with fury his experience with the dockyards-had remembered theDiscipline! Order! Obedience! he had pledged as the watchwords of his administration-and realized he neededDauntless and the capturedDestiny more than he needed the goodwill of the dockyard staff. He therefore ordered the captains to keep the civilian workers aboard, without allowing them leave or contact with their friends or families, until the work was done to the captains’ satisfaction.

  Lord Richard, nearly overcome with glee at this order, placed armed guards at the personnel and cargo hatches, and told the workers that if they didn’t complete their tasks before the Fleet Commander orderedDestiny to leave the station, they would just have to come along to the war. So Sula spent half of each day mounting guard inside the cargo hatch, a sidearm on one hip as she listened to the litany of sad, desperate reasons why one person or another had to leave the ship. The endless succession of plaintive excuses wore on her patience and left her with no pity for the imprisoned workers whatever, and in the end she gave them a cold, green-eyed stare. “Odds are I’m going to die in combat,” she told them. “Why shouldn’t I take a few of you with me?” After that they avoided her.

  Jarlath gave the fleet less than a day’s notice before leaving Zanshaa, an announcement that set the workers into a frenzy. Sula’s final task before leaving was to supervise workers carrying boxes of the captain’s slate tiles into storage, where they would remain until such time asDauntless found another few weeks in dock. Lord Richard seemed wistful as he watched them go by: the last captain’s tilework of asteroid material, filled with gaudy splashes of glittering pyrite, was really not to his taste, and the paneling in his cabin, in which yellow chesz wood was accented with trim of scarlet ammana paste, was not his style either.

  It wasn’t long before Sula concluded that Lord Richard was a good captain. He had visited every department on the ship and spoken to everyone good-naturedly, displaying his crinkly-eyed smile. He’d had a knack for distinguishing what was important from what wasn’t, and rarely hounded his crew over the latter. All unlike her last captain, Kandinski, who tried to pretend that the crew didn’t exist except as imperfect mechanisms to keep his paneling buffed and his silver polished, and who never spoke to his crew unless issuing a rebuke.

  Dauntlessmanaged to depart Zanshaa ring on schedule, with the rest of the Home Fleet. Sula found that she didn’t regret leaving Zanshaa. The capital hadn’t been lucky for her.

  Not thatDauntless was shaping up to be any better.

  “The Convocation wishes to know when you plan to launch your assault on Magaria.” The speaker was the elderly Senior Fleet Commander Tork, a Daimong whose long, mournful face belied the fervor that added a monotonal harshness to the chimes of his voice. Tork was the chairman of the Fleet Control Board, one of the five active or retired officers who served alongside the board’s four politicians.

  Jarlath reclined on his acceleration couch aboardGlory of the Praxis, while the Fleet Control Board’s holographic images floated before his eyes. Suffering from four days’ hard acceleration, his bleached-white fur by now showing its black and gray roots, Jarlath knew he hardly presented his best face to his superiors.

  “The enemy outnumbers us,” he said. “Once the Zerafan squadron joins, I’ll have fifty-four ships. Once Elkizer joins Fanaghee, she’ll have fifty-nine, and we can assume that squadrons from Naxas or Felarus will join as well.”

  “You assume that Fanaghee will be able to convert all the captured squadrons to Naxid use by the time you arrive.”

  “My lord,” said Jarlath, “I cannot afford to think otherwise.”

  “And you also assume that she’ll be able to crew all her captured ships.”

  A headache thudded dully behind Jarlath’s eyes. He had been over this with his own staff a dozen times.

  “Her personnel will be overworked and overstrained, but it can be done,” he said. “If she strips much of the ring station of its personnel, she’ll have adequate fighting crews, though her damage control won’t be as efficient as ours.”

  “But if she strips the ring station personnel,” Tork replied, “she won’t have enough dock workers to refit her captured ships.”

  “She can bring workers up from the planet. Most of the inhabitants of Magaria are Naxids, and we have to presume they’ll sympathize with the enemy council.”

  “You forget that you have the battleship squadron.”

  Jarlath closed his weary eyes. “I have not forgot.”

  “You have sixPraxis — class ships to the enemy’s one.” A metallic bray of triumph entered Tork’s voice. “Each battleship is the equal of a squadron!”

  Then let’s send the battleships by themselves and win a glorious victory, Jarlath thought viciously, but he suppressed his anger. His weary muscles dragged his eyelids apart. “A hit by an antimatter missile will destroy a battleship as easily as it will destroy a frigate,” he said.

  “You are being too cautious,
my lord commander.”

  Jarlath let the two-gravity acceleration drag his lips from his fangs. Enough was enough. “If your lordships give me a direct order to attack immediately,” he said, “an order inwriting, I shall of course obey.”

  There was a long silence from the board members. Then Lord Chen spoke.

  “I ask you to understand that there is much anxiety in the Convocation. The fall of Magaria has effectively cut us off from a third of the empire. Many of us have friends, clients, and other interests in the area controlled by the rebels.”

  Lord Chen looked more than a little anxious himself. Jarlath remembered that he owned a shipping company, one that presumably had many ships and cargoes in enemy-controlled space.

  “I too have friends on the other side of Magaria,” Jarlath said. “Throwing away the Home Fleet will do them no good.”

  After the meeting came to an end, Jarlath wondered if he were wrong and the others right. One great strike at Magaria might well end the rebellion. The Naxids might not be ready. Jarlathwanted to make that strike. But the odds gave him caution.

  Eight days later, engines burned fire and piled on the gees as Jarlath swung his ships around Vandrith for the return journey to Zanshaa. He was traveling one-fourteenth of the speed of light, and would continue accelerating and performing slingshot maneuvers around the system’s planets until he was traveling at least.5c, fast enough to avoid immediate destruction from any of Fanaghee’s ships tearing out of Magaria at eighty percent of the speed of light.

  It was then that word came fromCorona and Lieutenant Martinez. Having escaped from Magaria to the Paswal system, Martinez was at last able to send his report through a wormhole relay station that Fanaghee didn’t control.

  The Convocation responded to the news with raptures. Martinez,Corona, and its crew were voted the Thanks of the Convocation. Every crew member would be decorated, and Martinez himself would receive the Golden Orb, the empire’s highest military decoration, which had not been awarded in eight hundred years. Martinez and his descendants were awarded the right to have their ashes entombed in the Couch of Eternity, alongside the Great Masters. And aCorona monument would be dedicated somewhere in the High City, its location yet to be determined.