Conventions of War def-3

by Walter Jon Williams

  He stood on the seaside terrace of his friend Lord Stanley Loo, known since his school days as “Loopy.” A Cree orchestra played festive music from a bandstand that looked as if it had been designed by a lacemaker. The sea breeze carried over the terrace the refreshing scent of salt and iodine, and the roar of the waves on the rocks sometimes drowned out the band. Antopone’s red sky gave the waves a lurid cast.

  “Chen,” he said, raising his unit to his ear.

  “My lord. Lord Tork requires your immediate presence aboardGalactic.”

  Lord Chen recognized the careful diction of Lord Convocate Mondi, one of the members of the Fleet Control Board, a Torminel who took special care not to lisp around his fangs.

  “The meeting’s not for another three days,” Chen said. He reached for his cocktail with his free hand and raised it to his lips.

  “My lord,” Mondi said, “is this communication secure?”

  A cold hand touched Chen’s spine. He put down his drink and turned away from the group on the terrace. “I suppose so,” he said. “No one’s within listening distance.”

  There was a slight hesitation, and then Mondi spoke again. “The Naxids are moving from Zanshaa,” he said. “It looks like they’re heading for Zarafan under high acceleration.”

  And from Zarafan, Lord Chen knew, they could go straight on to Laredo, where the Convocation were taking up residence.

  Where his daughter would land any day.

  “Yes,” he said, “I understand. I’ll be there as soon as I can arrange transport.”

  And then, as the surf boomed below, he put his hand comm away and returned to the party.

  “Something’s come up, Loopy,” he said. “Can you have someone arrange my return to the skyhook?”

  “General quarters! Now general quarters! This is not a drill!”

  From the panic that clawed at the amplified voice of Cadet Qing, Martinez knew from the first word this wasn’t a drill. By the time the message began to repeat he had already vaulted clean over his desk and was sprinting for the companion that led to Command, leaving Marsden sitting in his chair staring after him.

  Martinez sprang for the companion just as the gravity went away. The distant engine rumble ceased, leaving the corridor silent except for the sound of his heart, which was thundering louder than the general quarters alarm. Martinez had no weight but still had plenty of inertia, and he hit the companion with knees and elbows. Pain rocketed through his limbs despite the padding on the stair risers. He bounced away from the companion like an oversized rubber eraser but managed to check his momentum with a grab to the rail.

  His feet began to swing out into the corridor, and that meantIllustrious was changing its heading. He had to get up the companion and into Command before the engines fired again. His big hand tightened on the rail so he could swing himself back to the steep stair, kick off and jump to the next deck.

  No good. The engines fired suddenly and he had weight again. His arm couldn’t support his entire mass and folded under him, and the rail caught him a stunning blow across the shoulder. He flopped onto his back on the stair. Risers sliced into his back.

  Martinez tried to rise, but the gravities were already beginning to pile on.Two gravities. Three… Pain lanced through his wrist as he seized the rail to try to haul himself upright. The stair risers were cutting into him like knives.Four gravities at least… He gasped for breath. Eventually he realized he wasn’t going to be able to climb.

  He realized other things as well. He was on a hard surface. He hadn’t recently taken any of the drugs that would help him survive heavy gravity. He could die if he didn’t get off this companion, cut by the stairs like cheese by a slicer.

  A sort of crabbing motion of his arms and legs brought him bumping down the stairs, each step a club to his back and mastoid, but once his buttocks thumped on the deck it was harder to move, and the risers were still digging into his spine.Five gravities… His vision was beginning to go dark.

  Martinez crabbed with his arms and legs and managed to thump down another stair. Comets flared in his skull as his head hit the tread. He clenched his jaw muscles to force blood to his brain and dropped down another step.

  It was Chandra’s nightmare, he realized. Relativistic missiles were inboundand he needed to get to Command. It would be the height of stupidity to die here, vaporized by a missile or with his neck broken by the sharp edge of a stair.

  He thumped down another stair, and that left only his head still on the companion, tilted at an angle that cramped his windpipe and strained his spine.Six gravities… His vision was totally gone. He couldn’t seem to breathe. Without the drugs, Terrans could only rarely stay conscious at more than six and a half gravities. He had to get off the stair or his neck was going to be broken by the weight of his head.

  With a frantic effort he tried to roll, his palms and heels fighting for traction against the tile, fighting the dead weight that was pinning him like a silver needle pinning an insect to corkboard. Vertigo swam through his skull. He fought to bring air into his lungs. He gave a heave, every muscle in his body straining.

  With a crack, his head fell off the stair and banged onto the tile. Despite the pain and the stars that shot through the blackness of his vision he felt a surge of triumph.

  Gravity increased. Martinez fought for consciousness.

  And lost.

  When he woke, he saw before him a window, and beyond the window a green countryside. Two ladies in transparent gowns gazed at the poised figure of a nearly naked man who seemed to be hovering in a startlingly blue sky. Above the man was a superior-looking eagle, and on the grass below the two ladies were a pair of animals, a dog and a small furry creature with long ears, both of whom seemed to find the floating man interesting.

  It occurred to Martinez that the man in the sky wasn’t alone. He, Martinez, was also floating.

  His heart was thrashing in his chest like a broken steam engine. Sharp pains shot through his head and body. He blinked and wiped sweat from the sockets of his eyes.

  The man still floated before him, serene and eerily calm, as if he floated every day.

  It was only gradually that Martinez realized he was looking at a piece of artifice, at one of the trompe l’oeil paintings that Montemar Jukes had placed at intervals in the corridors.

  The engines had shut down again. Now weightless, Martinez had drifted gently from the deck to a place before the painting.

  He gave a start and looked frantically in all directions. The companion leading to Command was two body lengths away. So far as he knew, the emergency, the battle, or whatever it was, had not ended.

  He swam with his arms to reorient himself, and kicked with one foot at the floating man. He shot across the corridor, absorbed momentum with his arms-pain shot through his right wrist-and then he did a kind of handspring in the direction of the companion.

  He struck the companionway feet first and folded into a crouch, which enabled him to spring again, this time through the hatch atop the companion.

  From there it was a short distance to Command’s heavy hatch. The door was armored against blast and radiation and would have been locked down at the beginning of the emergency. Martinez hovered before the hatch, his left hand clutching at the hand grip inset into the door frame, his right stabbing at the comm panel.

  “This is the captain!” he said. “Open the door!”

  “Stand by,” came Mersenne’s voice.

  Stand by?Martinez was outraged. Who did the fourth lieutenant think he was, some snotty cadet?

  “Let me into Command!” Martinez barked.

  “Stand by.” The irritating words were spoken in an abstract tone, as if Mersenne had many more important things on his mind than obeying his captain’s orders.

  Well, perhaps he did. Perhaps the emergency was occupying his full attention.

  But how much attention did it take to open a damn hatch?

  Martinez ground his teeth while he waited, fist clamped white-knu
ckled around the hand grip. Lieutenant Husayn floated up the companion and joined him. Blood floated in perfect round spheres from Husayn’s nose, some of them catching on his little mustache, and there was a cut on his lip.

  There hadn’t been the regulation warning tone sounded for high gee-or for no gee, for that matter. Probably there hadn’t been time to give the order. Martinez wondered how many injuries Dr. Xi was coping with.

  After Martinez had been waiting nearly a minute, the hatch slid open with a soft hiss. He heaved on the hand grip and gave himself impetus for the command cage.

  “I have command!” he shouted.

  “Captain Martinez has command!” Mersenne agreed. He sounded relieved. He was already drifting free of the command cage, heading toward his usual station at the engines display.

  Martinez glanced around the room as he floated toward his acceleration cage. The watch were staring at their displays as if each expected something with claws to come bounding out of them.

  “Missile attack, my lord,” Mersenne said as Martinez caught his acceleration cage. The cage swung with him, and he jacknifed, then inserted his feet and legs inside. “At least thirty. I’m sorry I didn’t let you into Command, but I didn’t want to unseal the door until I was certain the missiles had all been dealt with-didn’t want to irradiate the entire command crew if there were a near miss.”

  It grated, but Martinez had to admit Mersenne was right.

  “Any losses?” he asked.

  “No, my lord.” Mersenne floated to a couch next to the warrant officer who had been handling the engines board, then webbed himself in and locked the engine displays in front of him. “We starburst as soon as we saw the missiles incoming, but when we hit eight gravities, there was an engine trip.”

  Martinez, in the act of webbing himself onto his couch, stopped and stared.“Engine trip?” he said.

  “Engine number one. Automated safety procedures tripped the other two before I could override them. I’ll try to get engines two and three back online, and then work out what happened to engine one.”

  So now he knew why he’d suddenly found himself floating. The engines had quit, apparently on their own, and in the middle of a battle.

  He pulled his displays down from over his head, heard them lock, began a study of the brief fight.

  The Naxids hadn’t attacked in the Osser system, as Chandra’s war game had predicted. They’d waited for Chenforce to proceed to the next system, Arkhan-Dohg, where the hot, humid world of Arkhan supported a population of half a billion, mostly heat-loving Naxids, and cold, glacier-ridden Dohg supported a billion more, for the most part furry Torminel.

  Chenforce hadn’t found anything to shoot at in Osser, and there was very little traffic in Arkhan-Dohg. The Naxids knew they were coming, and every ship that could move was being routed away from them.

  Even though Chenforce was finding few targets at present, they were still creating a massive disruption in the rebel economy. The hundreds of ships fleeing Chenforce weren’t carrying cargoes to the appropriate destination. Not only were cargoes being routed well out of their way, many cargoes were stalled waiting for transport, and elsewhere industries were failing for want of supply.

  The Naxid attempt to swat them from the sky had occurred when the squadron was two days into the Arkhan-Dohg system. Chenforce was suddenly painted with tracking lasers. Mersenne had immediately gone to general quarters and orderedIllustrious to accelerate as rapidly as possible away from the other ships. BeforeIllustrious was on its new heading, the sensor operators were reporting brief flares that showed incoming missiles making last-instant course corrections.

  Most of the missiles targeted the swarm of decoys cruising ahead of Chenforce, but a few got through the screen to target the squadron itself, all to be destroyed by point-defense weapons. By that time the number one engine onIllustrious had tripped off and the cruiser was drifting, its captain floating bruised and unconscious in the corridor outside his office.

  The Battle of Arkhan-Dohg, from the first alarm to the destruction of the last incoming missile, had taken a little less than three minutes.

  “One failure in the point-defense array,” Husayn reported from the weapons station. “Antiproton gun three failed after one shot.”

  “Just like Harzapid,” muttered Mersenne.

  “How many decoys do we have in the tubes?” Martinez asked Husayn.

  “Three, my lord.”

  “Fire them immediately. We want to get decoys ahead of the squadron in case the Naxids have a follow-up attack.”

  The Command crew looked a little hollow-eyed at this possibility.

  “Decoys fired, my lord. Tubes cleared. Decoys proceeding normally under chemical rockets to safety point.”

  “Replace them in the tubes with another set of decoys,” Martinez added.

  Primary command crew were drifting through the hatch and quietly taking up their stations. Alikhan arrived lugging Martinez’s vac suit by a strap. Martinez told him to report to the weapons bays after putting the suit in one of the vac suit lockers: he didn’t have time to put it on right now.

  “I’ve commenced a countdown on engines two and three,” Mersenne reported. “We’re at five minutes twenty-one.”

  “Proceed.”

  “My lord,” Husayn said, “decoys’ antimatter engines have ignited. All decoys maneuvering normally.”

  “My lord,” said Signaler Roh, “Judge Arslanqueries our status.”

  “Tell them we experienced a premature engine shutdown,” Martinez said. “Tell them we expect no long-term problem.”

  “Yes, Lord Captain. Ah…Squadcom Chen wants to speak with you.”

  “Put her on my board.”

  “Yes, Lord Captain.”

  Martinez hadn’t strapped on the close-fitting cap that held his earphones, virtual array, and medical sensors, so Michi’s voice came out of the speaker on his display, and was audible to everyone in command.

  “Captain Martinez,” she said, “what thehell just happened?”

  Martinez reported in as few words as possible. Michi listened with an intent, inward look on her face. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll order the rest of the squadron to take defensive positions around us until we’re maneuverable again.”

  Martinez nodded. “May I recommend that you order more decoy launches?”

  “Lieutenant Prasad’s already taken care of that.” Michi’s head tilted as she looked into her display. “Captain,” she said, “you look like you got run over by a herd of bison.”

  “Acceleration threw me down a companion.”

  “Are you all right? Shall I page Dr. Xi to Command?”

  “I’m sure he’s busy enough where he is.”

  She nodded. “Find out who painted us with that laser,” she said, “and blow him the fuck up.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “And take out the wormhole stations as well. I’m not having them spotting for the enemy.”

  It’s uncivilized,Michi had said when she’d first raised the possibility of destroying wormhole stations. She’d occasionally done it in the past, when it was necessary to preserve secrecy concerning Chenforce’s movements, but for the most part she’d left them alone.

  The moment defining,Martinez thought. Nothing like being shot at to rub away these refined little scruples.

  The orange end-stamp came onto the display, signaling that Michi had broken the collection.

  “Sensors,” Martinez said, “are we still being hit by that laser?”

  “No, my lord,” Pan said. “They switched off as soon as the last missiles were destroyed-and because their information is limited by the speed of light, they don’tknow what happened here yet. So they must have had advanced warning concerning exactly when to light us up and when to stop.”

  “Did you get a bearing?”

  “It would help if I could communicate with the other ships and triangulate.”

  “Do so.” Martinez turned to Husayn. “Weapons
, target Wormhole Stations One, Two, and Three. Take them all out, one missile each. Don’t wait for my command, just do it.”

  “Yes, Lord Captain.”

  Martinez let himself float for a moment in his harness and considered the order he’d just given. Itwas uncivilized. The wormhole stations not only maintained communication between the worlds, they acted to stabilize the wormholes by balancing the mass moved through them in either direction. Commerce would be slowed to a crawl through wormholes that were in danger of becoming unbalanced.

  Arkhan-Dohg had just effectively been blockaded. It was a blockade that would continue until new stations were both built and equipped with the massive asteroid-sized chunks of matter they used to keep the wormholes in balance. The war might be over for ages before Arkhan-Dohg saw another merchant vessel.

  “One minute to engine ignition, my lord,” Mersenne said.

  “Hold at ten seconds.” Martinez hesitated, then said, “We can proceed on two engines without trouble?”

  Mersenne’s tone was confident. “Yes, my lord.”

  “Missiles launched and proceeding on chemical rockets,” Husayn said. “Tubes clear.”

  “Roh, put me through to the squadcom.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Ida Li’s face appeared on Martinez’s display. “You have a message for Lady Michi?”

  “Just that we’ll have two engines online in less than a minute. Does the lady squadcom have a heading for us?”

  “Stand by.”

  The screen blanked, and when an image returned it was that of Chandra Prasad. “I’m sending course coordinates to your pilot’s station now. Acceleration one-tenth of a gravity, until we’re sure the engines don’t cut out again.”

  “Understood. Mersenne, sound the warning for acceleration.”

  There were a few moments of genuine suspense waiting for the engine countdown to conclude, and then a distant rumble and a slight kick that sent the acceleration cages slowly tumbling until they settled at their deadpoints. Computers balanced the angle of thrust of the two engines to compensate for the loss of the third. Acceleration was gradually increased until one constant gravity was maintained.