Conventions of War def-3

by Walter Jon Williams

  Fletcher’s silver-embossed scabbard clanked faintly on the end of its chain. Martinez had never seen the captain wear his knife, not even at his very formal dinners.

  The party went down two decks, leaving behind officers’ country and the haunts of the enlisted. The captain marched to a hatch and knocked with a gloved hand.

  The hatch was opened by Master Engineer Thuc, whose towering figure nearly filled the doorway before he stepped back to reveal the engine control room. Beneath panels showing strong-thewed characters working with huge levers and winches on some impossibly antique machinery, the control room crew were lined up, braced, and spotlessly turned out.

  Apparently Captain Fletcher was conducting him on one of his frequent inspections. The captain was a demon for inspections and musters, and usually inspected some part of the ship every day thatIllustrious wasn’t engaged in some other crucial business. Today was the engine division’s turn, but Martinez could not imagine why he had been invited along. He wasn’t a line officer, but staff, and not in Fletcher’s chain of command-the state ofIllustrious ‘s engines was none of his business.

  So while he watched Fletcher and his two subordinates crawl over the engine control room, passing white-gloved fingers over the glossy surfaces, Martinez wondered why he had been summoned to observe this ritual, and paranoia soon began to scuttle through his mind on chitinous insect legs. Surely this had to do with Chandra Prasad. Surely Fletcher suspected him of being her lover, and the inspection was part of an elaborate revenge plot.

  The captain found flaws-a suspicious creak in an acceleration cage that indicated a worn part, a scratch on the transparent cover of a gauge, an emergency radiation suit carelessly stowed-and then the party went on to look at the engine department’s storage lockers, at the heavily shielded antihydrogen compartments, and-after donning ear protection-at the massive reactor that powered the ship and the huge turbopumps that operated the thermal exchange system.

  Martinez knew that in the reactor room the noise was hellish, but his earphones automatically pulsed out sound waves that canceled that of the pumps, and all he heard in his ears was a distant white noise. But hisbody reacted to the sound: he could feel the vibration in his bones and in his soft organs, and when he touched a wall or pipe.

  Fletcher stroked the pumps with white-gloved fingers, found them clean, and then returned to the engine control room so that his questions might be heard. Thuc followed the captain in docile silence, his muscular body looming over Fletcher’s shoulder except when he darted forward to open a hatch or a locker door.

  “You’ve changed the filters on the main pump recently?”

  “Just after Protipanu, my lord,” Thuc said. “We aren’t due for another change for two months.”

  “Very good. And the pump itself?”

  “We’ll swap it out in another…” Thuc considered his answer, his eyes focused somewhere above the captain’s left shoulder. “…thirty-eight days, my lord.”

  “Very well.” The captain tugged his white gloves over his wrists and smoothed the fine kidskin over his fingers. “I’ll just inspect your crew then.”

  He marched down the line of engine crew, stopping to make an occasional comment about dress or deportment. At the end of the line he encountered Thuc again, marched about him, then nodded.

  “Very good, Thuc,” he said. “Excellent marks, as always.”

  “Thank you, Lord Captain.” A hint of a smile touched his lips.

  When Fletcher moved, he was so fast that Martinez failed to see it properly and could only reconstruct the action later, out of fragments of memory. The sickle-shaped blade sang from the sheath, whistled through the air, and buried itself in Thuc’s throat. A crescent of arterial blood splattered the mural behind Thuc’s head.

  Thuc was too large a man to fall all at once. First his shoulders dropped, and then his knees gave way. His barrel chest sank, his stomach sagged, and then-as Fletcher’s knife cleared his throat-Thuc’s head lolled down. It was only then that he fell like a tower of wooden blocks kicked by a careless child.

  Martinez’s heart began to beat again, roaring in his ears. He looked at Fletcher in shock.

  Fletcher looked expressionlessly at the body with his ice-blue eyes, and took a step away from the spreading pool of red. He flicked scarlet from his blade with a movement of his wrist.

  The smell of blood hit Martinez’s senses, and he bit down hard on the stomach that was trying to quease its way past his throat.

  “Marsden,” Fletcher said, “call the doctor to examine the body, and have him bring a stretcher party to carry it away. Cho,” to a staring petty officer, “you are now in charge of the engineering department. Once the doctor is done, call the off-duty watch to help you police this…untidiness. In the meantime, I’d appreciate a cleaning cloth.”

  Cho nearly ran to one of the storage lockers, returned with a cloth, and handed it with bloodless fingers to the captain. Fletcher used it to clean the knife blade and mop some of the red off his tunic, then threw the cloth to the deck.

  A pale-faced young recruit swayed, then toppled to the floor in a dead faint. Fletcher ignored him and turned again to Cho.

  “Cho,” he said, “I trust you will maintain Engineer Thuc’s high standards.” He nodded to the control room crew, then turned and made his way out.

  Martinez followed, his nerves leaping. He wanted to flee Fletcher’s company, to barricade himself in his quarters with a pistol and several bottles of brandy, the first for protection and the second for comfort.

  He looked left and right at Marsden and Mersenne, and saw their expressions mirroring his own thoughts.

  “Captain Martinez,” Fletcher said. The words made Martinez start.

  “Yes, Lord Captain?” He was moderately surprised that he managed three whole words without stumbling, screaming, or falling into dumb silence.

  Fletcher reached the companionway that led to the deck above and turned to Martinez.

  “Do you know why I invited you along this morning?”

  “No, my lord.”

  He had managed another three words. He was making real progress. Soon he might be walking on his own and tying his own shoelaces.

  Martinez found himself very aware of the captain’s right hand, the hand that would reach across his body to draw the knife. He found his own hands ready to lurch forward and seize Fletcher’s forearm if the hand approached the hilt.

  He hoped that Fletcher did not see that he was so aware of his right hand. He tried not to stare at it.

  “I asked you along so that you could report to Squadron Commander Chen,” Fletcher said, “and tell her exactly what just occurred.”

  “Yes, Lord Captain.”

  “I don’t want her hearing a rumor, or getting a distorted version.”

  Distorted version.As if there was a version that would make this at all understandable.

  Martinez searched his numbed mind and found a question, but the question required more than three words and he took a second or two to organize his thoughts.

  “My lord,” he asked, “do you wish me to give Lady Michi the reason for your…your action?”

  The captain straightened slightly. A superior smile touched his lips.

  “Only that it was my privilege,” he said.

  A chill shimmered up Martinez’s spine.

  “Very good, Lord Captain,” he said.

  Fletcher turned and led up the companionway. At the top he met the ship’s doctor, Lord Yuntai Xi, who was going down, followed by his assistant carrying his bag.

  “The engine control room, Lord Doctor,” Fletcher said. “A fatality.”

  The doctor gave him a curious look and nodded.

  “Thank you, Lord Captain. Can you tell me-”

  “Best you see for yourself, Lord Doctor. I won’t detain you.”

  Xi stroked his little white beard, then nodded and began his descent. Fletcher led the party up three decks, to the deck he shared with the squadron command
er, then turned to face the two lieutenants. “Thank you, my lords,” he said. “I won’t be needing you any further.” He turned to his secretary. “Marsden, I’ll need you to enter the death in the log.”

  Martinez walked with Mersenne to the squadcom’s door. He felt a tingling in his back, as if he were expecting the captain to draw his knife and lunge at him. He didn’t quite dare look at the lieutenant, and he had a feeling that Mersenne wasn’t looking at him either.

  He came to the squadcom’s door, and without saying anything to Lord Mersenne, stopped and knocked.

  Lady Michi’s orderly, Vandervalk, opened the door, and Martinez asked to see the squadcom. Vandervalk said she’d check and left him waiting, then returned a few minutes later to say that the lady squadcom would meet Martinez in her office.

  Lady Michi arrived a few minutes later, carrying her morning tea in a gold-rimmed cup with the Chen family crest. Martinez jumped from his chair and braced. The breath of air on his exposed throat gave him a sudden shiver.

  “As you were,” Michi said. Her tone was abstracted, her gaze focused on papers that waited on her desk. She sat in her straight-backed chair.

  “How can I help you, Captain?”

  “Lord Captain Fletcher-” Martinez began, and then his voice failed him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Lord Captain Fletcher asked that I inform you that he’s just executed Master Engineer Thuc.”

  Suddenly he had the squadcom’s full attention. She placed her cup very carefully on a felt coaster, then looked up. “Executed? How?”

  “With his top-trimmer. During an inspection. It was…very sudden.”

  He realized now that Fletcher must have rehearsed the move. You couldn’t cut a throat that efficiently unless you practiced.

  He imagined Fletcher alone in his cabin, drawing the knife over and over as he slashed an imaginary throat, the cold blue eyes glittering, the superior smile on his lips.

  Michi’s gaze intensified. Her fingers drummed thoughtfully on the desktop. “Did Captain Fletcher give a reason?”

  “No, my lady. He said only that it was his privilege.”

  Michi softly drew in her breath. “I see,” she said.

  Fletcher was technically correct: any officer had the authority to execute any subordinate at any time, for any reason. There were practical reasons why this didn’t happen very often, including lawsuits in civil court from the victim’s patron clan; and usually when such a thing happened, the officer produced an elaborate justification.

  Fletcher very simply stood on his privilege. That had to be very, very rare.

  Michi turned her eyes deliberately away and took a deliberate sip of her tea. “Do you have anything to add?” she said.

  “Just that the captain planned it in advance. He wanted me there to witness it and to report to you.”

  “Nothing in the inspection could have provoked it?”

  “No, my lady. The captain complimented Thuc on his department before killing him.”

  Again Michi drew in her breath. Her eyes grew thoughtful. “You can think of no reason?”

  Martinez hesitated. “The captain and Lieutenant Prasad…ended…their relationship yesterday. But if he was going to kill anyone over it, I don’t know why it would be Thuc.”

  Maybe Thuc was handy,he thought.

  Michi considered this a moment. “Thank you, Captain,” she said finally. “I appreciate your informing me.”

  There was a clear tone of dismissal in her words, and Martinez wanted to protest. He wanted Michi to ask him to stay so they could work out some kind of theory about what had just happened and why, and then decide on a course of action. But Michi left him no choice but to stand, brace, and make his way out.

  Martinez had to pass Fletcher’s quarters on his way to his own. The captain’s door was closed. As he walked past, he strained his senses to detect anything that might be happening inside.

  Like what?he thought.A burst of maniacal laughter? A pool of blood creeping from under the door?

  There was nothing.

  He entered his own office and left the door open in the event that someone might want to talk to him.

  No one did.

  NINE

  The fourth edition ofResistance flew into the world on wings of electrons, carrying with it the announcement that Laurajean and his two colleagues had been killed as a result of the sentence of a tribunal of the secret government. Sula identified Laurajean’s two friends as well, having gotten the names from the death certificates filed electronically in the Records Office.

  The tribunal has passed other sentences, and execution is now pending,Sula wrote.

  That should put a scare into them.

  The previous three editions had been sent out with the forged security heading claiming they’d originated at the broadcast node of the Naxid-occupied Hotel Spartex. Sula decided that the Spartex had probably suffered as much as it was likely to from the Naxid security services, so she looked through some of Rashtag’s mail, found the code for the broadcast node at the Fleet Commandery, and used that instead.

  Now the Naxid security services would have to investigate the Naxid Fleet. The Fleet, she thought, was just going tolove that.

  Sula munched a pastry filled with sweet red bean paste as she sent out the usual fifty thousand copies ofResistance, then licked her fingers, closed her connection to the Records Office computer, and turned to where Spence and Macnamara waited, playing a puzzle that Spence had just bought from a street vendor. It was an intricate tangle of wire, with beads that moved from one intersection to the next, and could sometimes jump from one connection to another.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the puzzle, Sula looked at it with her chin propped on her fists. “What’s the point of it, exactly?” she said.

  Spence gave a puzzled frown. “I’m not sure. When the vendor demonstrated the thing, it all seemed pretty clear. But now…”

  Sula moved a bead along the wire to the next intersection, but it failed to move any farther. She moved it in the other direction, and with a sudden clang the entire puzzle fell apart into a jangling snarl of wires and beads.

  She drew back her finger and looked at the others. “Was thatsupposed to happen?” she asked.

  Spence blinked. “I don’t think so.”

  Sula stood up. “Maybe we should try something a little less challenging.”

  Spence looked up at her. “Yes?”

  “Win the war.”

  “Right.” Spence rose reluctantly to her feet.

  “And in the meantime we need to deliver some cocoa.”

  It was Macnamara who rented the truck this time, after which the three drove to one of the warehouses where Sula was keeping her cocoa, coffee, and tobacco, all in boxes labeled to discourage theft and marked USED MACHINE PARTS, FOR RECYCLING.

  “We can’t keep doing the fighting ourselves,” Sula said as she drove alongside one of the slow, greenish canals that cut the Lower Town near the acropolis. “We need an army. And the problem is, we haven’t got one.”

  The plan that Sula and Martinez had originally developed involved raising an armed force to hold Zanshaa City against the Naxids, confident that while the enemy would murder any other population without compunction, they would never dare destroy the capital and all the legitimacy that it symbolized. But the government had decided against that part of the plan, and instead settled for training Sula and Eshruq’s action teams, most of whom were now ash drifting along the streets of the Lower Town.

  The original plan would have worked much better, Sula thought.

  “We can try recruiting,” Macnamara said. “Ardelion and I can each can put together another cell.”

  Cells consisted of three people, like Sula’s action team. Each cell leader would know only the members of his own cell and a single member of the cell above, the better to preserve security. Everyone would be known by code names only, to reduce the chances for betrayal. Contact between cells would be through
cutouts and letter drops, to prevent anyone from listening to electronic communication.

  “Right,” Sula said, “we can recruit. And I can start by training PJ.”

  Macnamara gave a snort of laughter. Sula shook her head. “No, it’s too slow. By the time we had the first lot trained, and they each trained a few others, and so on until we had an entire network, we’d all have gray hair and the Naxids will have-Oh, damn.”

  They came to a halt behind a truck offloading produce from a canal boat. Sula craned her neck, but she couldn’t see whether there was enough clearance between the produce truck on one side and a Lai-own clothing emporium on the other.

  “Stick your head out,” Sula told Macnamara. “See if we’ve got room here.”

  Macnamara opened the window, and the rotting-flesh stench of the Daimong laborers floated into the vehicle along with the scent of green vegetables and the iodine smell of the canal. At the taste of the air, a shudder of memory trembled up Sula’s spine. “The hell with it,” she decided.

  She shifted the truck to all-wheel-steering and crabbed into the gap. A metal rack of Lai-own clothing was run against a brick wall and slightly buckled, and Macnamara gave a wince as he drew in his head and closed the window to the sudden yelps of the Lai-own shopkeeper. Sula accelerated and kept on going.

  “May need a little more practice in the driving department, boss,” Macnamara said.

  “Too slow,” Sula said. “We can’t train them in time. They’ve got to train themselves.”

  There was a moment, and then Spence nodded. “Resistance,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  They delivered the cocoa to Seven Pages, and as the chef counted out the money, she asked, “You heard they shot more hostages?”

  “Yes?” Sula asked.

  “Thirty. And they were all relatives of the people who were shot yesterday.”

  “Ten hostages shot for each Terran,” Sula said. “And nearly five hundred for a Naxid.” Her mind had already outlined another editorial on the subject forResistance.