Conventions of War def-3

by Walter Jon Williams

  Anything more,she thought,than the word of the Peers,Lord Tork among them, who swore to defend Zanshaa to their dying breath and then ran like dogs.

  “If the word of a Peer is to mean anything at all, I repeat, then these amnesties should stand. This list too will be made publicly available within the hour.”

  She took a breath and leaned slightly forward. “As for the discipline of the army,” she said, “they were so busy killing Naxids that they didn’t have a chance to learn to march properly.”Perhaps in your own command, she thought,the reverse is true. “I’ll do my best to teach them the necessary skills, however.

  “End communication.”

  Sula sent the message before she had the opportunity to change her mind, then arranged for the Ministry of Wisdom to make public the list of decorations and amnesties. It was then that she received a message from the guard on the Commandery’s main entrance saying that she was needed there urgently.

  She arrived to find a group waiting at the front door in a drizzling rain. In the lead was a tall Torminel in the undress uniform of the Fleet, followed by others similarly clothed. Sula looked at the rank badges and saw that the leader was a lieutenant captain, and the rest petty officers.

  The next thing she checked was to see if they were armed. No weapons were visible. She signed for the door to be opened.

  “Yes?” she said. “Who the hell are you?”

  The leader gave her a surprised look, the fur tufting up above her dark goggles. “I would expect a salute,” she said, “from a lieutenant.”

  “From a military governor,” Sula said, “you get nothing till you tell me who you are.”

  “Lieutenant Captain Lady Trani Creel, Action Group 569.” She reached in her pocket and produced a Fleet ID.

  Sula looked at the picture now dotted with tiny drops of rain. Everything seemed in order.

  “Ah. Hah,” she said. There had been Torminel missing from the Naxid roundup following the Axtattle battle, and now she knew where they were, all-she counted-thirteen of them.

  It also occurred to her that she now knew who had been sending Tork reports of her activities.

  Lady Trani licked her fangs delicately. “I would appreciate a report, Lieutenant,” she lisped.

  Sula looked at her. “To what end?” she asked.

  “So that I understand what’s happening in my command. I gather that I’m the senior officer present.”

  A burst of laughter erupted from Sula. “You can’t be serious!” she said.

  Again that surprised look. “Of course I’m serious. May I please come in out of the rain?”

  “Why not?” Sula laughed again, and stepped back from the door. Lady Trani moved into shelter, brushing rain off her shoulders. Drops of water glittered like rhinestones on her goggles. The other Torminel crowded in behind her. The air began to smell of wet fur.

  “Do you really expect to take command of my army?” Sula said.

  “Of course. And the government as well, until a proper governor arrives from the Convocation.” Sula could see her reflection in the Torminel’s dark eyeshades. “I’m still awaiting a salute.”

  “You’ll wait a long time if you expect a salute from the army,” Sula said. “May I ask where you’ve spent the war?”

  “Kaidabal,” Lady Trani said, naming a city south of Zanshaa. “We ran there after we heard that everyone was being arrested. We stayed with a client of ours, a wealthy businessman.”

  “And what did you do there?”

  “Hid. We had no other options, because we had to abandon all our equipment in Zanshaa.” Lady Trani sighed. “There were such problems. We couldn’t get ration cards, you see.”

  “I see.” Sula looked Trani up and down and saw little evidence of starvation. Her fur was glossy and her bottom was no less plump than that of most Torminel.

  “Lady Trani,” Sula said, “may we speak privately?”

  “Of course.”

  Sula took Trani’s arm and led her to the room where important visitors had once been asked to wait while their escorts were found. The place still had its thick carpeting and expensive paneling, but the original furniture was gone, and had been replaced by some cheap sofas on which the guard took their breaks.

  “My lady,” Sula said, “please believe I have your best interests at heart. I ask that you not make yourself ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous?” Again that surprised look. “Whatever do you mean, Lady Sula?”

  “You can’t expect my army to respect a commander who spent the war hiding in Kaidabal when they were fighting and dying here in Zanshaa. And the government-I proclaimed myself Governor on the day of the victory and no one has disputed it.”

  “But I’m the senior officer,” Lady Trani said, her lisping voice quite mild. “One doesn’t salute the person; one salutes the rank-and obeys it too. You keep referring to ‘my’ army, but it doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to the empire, and I am the senior imperial officer present. I don’t dispute that you’re the military governor, just as I don’t expect you to dispute the fact that I’m about to succeed you.”

  “They’ll laugh at you,” Sula said. Her own laughter had faded, to be replaced by a growing foreboding.

  “As long as they laugh in private,” Trani said, her voice level. “If they laugh in public, or disobey, I shall be forced to cut their throats.”

  Sula refrained from taking a step back, and reminded herself that Lady Trani was unarmed.

  “I think,” she said, “that we should refer this matter to higher authority.”

  The delay was mainly to allow herself time to think. Lady Trani no longer seemed a figure of fun. She was going to be a serious problem, and worse for the fact that Fleet law, custom, and the Praxis were all behind her.

  Furthermore, the only person to whom Sula could appeal was Tork. He was exactly the sort of person who would find Lady Trani’s simplicities appealing; and in any case, Sula very much doubted that Tork, on the heels of receiving her last message, would feel much in sympathy with her.

  “While I don’t dispute that Lady Trani outranks me,” Sula said in her message to Tork, “I am nevertheless concerned whether someone who spent the war in hiding, after abandoning her equipment, is going to receive the respect of the army and other institutions here in the High City. I don’t want to push myself forward, but if the disparity in rank is truly a problem, you could solve the problem by promoting me. I’m already doing the work, after all.”

  As Sula expected, Tork’s reply, received some fifteen hours later, ignored this suggestion.

  “It has long concerned me that a lieutenant of such youth and of only a few months’ seniority held such a critical post,” he said in a message addressed to Lady Trani Creel. “It is meant as no offense to Lady Sula to say that she has suffered from her inexperience. Lady Trani, I am pleased to confirm you as Military Governor of Zanshaa. I hope you will rule with firmness, and consider it your first duty to kill the traitors who have caused our people so much suffering.”

  Lady Trani turned from the screen to where Sula sat, in the office of the Home Fleet commander with its huge curved glass window.

  “I believe I’ll take that salute now, Lady Sula,” Trani said.

  “Yes, my lady.” With grave deliberation Sula rose from her desk and braced.

  “Thank you very much,” Trani said. She ambled across the office to join Sula behind her desk. She looked through the great curved window at the morning light shining over the Lower Town, the kingdom she had just conquered without firing so much as a shot.

  “I’ll need your access codes,” she said. “I trust you will remain on hand for the duration of the transition, after which I will find you a posting suitable to your station. And of course I’ll recommend you for a nice decoration for all you’ve done here.”

  Sula tried not to show the savage amusement she felt. No doubt Trani was trying to be kind.

  “Thank you, my lady,” she said.

  She’d h
ad nearly fifteen hours to make herself ready for this moment.

  Lady Trani looked down at the desk. “I’ll also need to meet with your council, or cabinet, or whatever they’re called.”

  “I don’t believe they have a name,” Sula said. “But I’ll call them.”

  “No,” Lady Trani said firmly. “I’llcall them. If you’ll provide me with contact information.”

  “Very well.”

  Sula had to admire Lady Trani’s composure. She knew so very clearly what she wanted, what was proper, and what was her due.

  Whether anyone else could be brought to agree with her was another problem.

  “I’ve been reviewing the communications between the governor’s office and Supreme Commander Tork,” Lady Trani told the meeting later. “The Supreme Commander has several areas of concern.

  “First, the matter of punishments. We simply haven’t been killing enough traitors. It’s my understanding,” she said, turning to Sula, “that we have something like a thousand prisoners?”

  “They’re being debriefed,” Sula explained. “Once the interrogators are done with them-”

  “Lord Tork said just to kill them,” Trani said. “It seems to me that we could do it all at once, with machine guns.”

  “The penalty for treason,” Sula reminded, “is to be thrown from a height.”

  “Blast. I forgot.” A shiver of annoyance crossed Trani’s furry face. “Well, can’t we machine-gun them first, then chuck them?”

  The governing council gazed at her from their places. They used the room in the Commandery, all subdued lighting and polished wood, that had been used by the Fleet Control Board before the evacuation. Overhead glowed a wormhole map of the empire, Zanshaa a burning red jewel with its eight wormhole gates. The council sat at a U-shaped table, with the new lady governor at its center.

  “The High City lacks the necessary open spaces for a mass execution in that style,” Sula said. “Besides, the custom is for the victim to be alive when he’s tipped over the side.”

  “Blast,” Trani said. “Well, see that it’s done as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Sula said.

  Her reluctance to kill the Naxid prisoners had nothing to do with compassion. They had killed tens of thousands, and she wished them nothing but years of torment. She just didn’t want them to die until their last brain cell had been stripped of any useful content.

  Lady Trani paused to light a cigarette, which she placed in a holder that clipped to one of her fangs, allowing her to talk and smoke without using her hands. Sula wondered idly if the cigarette was one that, at some point, she’d had in one of her warehouses.

  Trani looked at the others. “Smoke if you please, my lor-I mean, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Julien reached in a pocket for a cigarette. Sergius, seated next to him, stared expressionlessly at the lady governor, his thoughts well hidden behind his dead eyes.

  “Another item,” Lady Trani said, “concerns the matter of awards and decorations. I shall personally review any recommendations to make certain they are appropriate.

  “And the third,” she said, looking up, “concerns the matter of amnesties promised by Lady Sula for offenses committed prior to the war. I will review these on a case-by-case basis. The Supreme Commander sees no reason why doing one’s duty in fighting the enemy should excuse criminal activity in the past.”

  Julien snickered behind his cloud of cigarette smoke. Sergius Bakshi maintained his expressionless stare. Sula gave a cough as a whiff of tobacco hit the back of her throat.

  “Lady Commissioner…” Lady Trani spoke to the senior police officer present. “I would appreciate your assistance in locating police files.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Julien snickered again. The Lai-own commissioner was a friend of the Bakshis, and had a long, financially profitable relationship with them. It was likely that quite a number of files would turn up missing.

  Trani received reports on antimatter and power supplies, on economic and security matters. Sula made notes on the data screen set into the table in front of her.

  Certain of the notes were sent to a desk at the Ministry of Wisdom. While Lady Trani received the reports of the council, the ministry broadcast the news of Sula’s supercession, along with capsule biographies of Sula and the new lady governor. It was made clear that Trani had spent the Naxid occupation in hiding.

  It also mentioned that amnesties were being questioned, and that the army was going to have its medals taken away by someone who had spent the war skulking in Kaidabal.

  Nothing could have served to make the new governor less popular with her citizens.

  That would be a useful lesson, Sula thought. If she had the time and energy, she could teach Lady Trani quite a lot with lessons like these, and very possibly Trani would find herself seeing Sula’s point of view.

  But she didn’t have the time, and she certainly didn’t have the energy. The lesson, therefore, would have to be for the benefit of someone else.

  As the meeting broke up, Sula found herself walking next to Julien. “You’ll take care of this, won’t you?” she said.

  Julien gave her a cold little smile. “Leave it to me,” he said.

  “My lord,” Sula sent to Tork, “your new governor lasted all of two days before she got herself killed in a riot. Exactly what happened is a little vague at this point, but it appears that during the course of a public address, she saw fit to threaten the crowd-told them that if any of them had ever cooperated with Naxids, they were going to be punished. It was the wrong sort of crowd to threaten, I’m afraid.”

  She looked into the camera pickup and suppressed her instinct to shrug.

  “I will of course launch a thorough investigation. The official video record of the proceedings seems to have been destroyed, but maybe something will turn up.”

  She had returned to the office of the commander of the Home Fleet, with its magnificent view of the Lower Town. Techs were in the process of changing the passwords to all the computer files. Theju yao pot was back in its place on her desk.

  “I have been reviewing your correspondence with Lady Trani,” Sula said, “and I have come to agree with you that the task of military governor is unsuitable to someone with the permanent rank of lieutenant.”

  She couldn’t quite hide the smile that she felt twitching at the corners of her mouth.

  “I believe I should like to be promoted Captain, at least,” she said. “I’m going to need all the advantages of rank in dealing with this situation. The people here have overthrown two governments that didn’t suit them, and I don’t want them to get into the habit.”

  Not unless it suitsmeas well, she thought.

  After concluding her message, with the little threat at the tail like the sting of a scorpion, Sula reached for the cup of tea that waited on the desk and turned her swivel chair to view the Lower Town below. The scent of cardamom rose from the tea, and she’d sweetened it with condensed milk, just as she liked it.

  Not caring helps, she thought. She could bet everything on a single throw of the dice because the results didn’t matter to her.

  Perhaps she’d be accused of conspiring to murder Lady Trani.

  Perhaps Lady Trani was but the first governor of Zanshaa she’d have to kill.

  Perhaps she’d even be promoted to Captain. She was open to that sort of surprise.

  Tork showed that he’d learned Sula’s lesson, and promoted her to Captain, though he couldn’t bring himself to do it in person-the message came from a staff officer. Sula sent to her tailor for new uniforms.

  Her mastery of the Records Office computers proved a bonus. Fictional killers were created, their names proclaimed to the public at large, and police sent after them.

  She decided to keep the back door into the Records Office after her term as governor ended. It was proving too useful.

  She now was surprised to discover the existence of another loyalist force that had remained beh
ind, one that she’d never guessed at.

  There were small stay-behind intelligence teams in the fragments of Zanshaa’s demolished ring, floating weightless for months, listening to electronic communications and forwarding it to the Convocation and the Fleet, relaying it through stealthy, uncharted satellites placed on the far sides of the wormholes. Sula surmised that they must have been providing Lord Tork with very detailed knowledge of the Naxid Fleet throughout the enemy occupation of Zanshaa.

  The teams asked Sula for relief. She wanted to oblige-particularly since the highest-ranking of them was a warrant officer and there was no danger of them trying to supplant her-but the only way she had of relieving them was to pick them up with shuttles, and since the only shuttles she had on the planet were configured for Naxid crews, she had to tell them to wait.

  Perhaps, she thought, she’d overestimated Lady Trani. She hadn’t been reporting behind her back to Lord Tork, it had been the intelligence teams on the ring.

  Two days after Lady Trani’s death, as frozen sleet pounded the High City, regular communication was opened between the empire and Zanshaa. Another wave of Tork’s commandos had been launched at the relay stations, and this time there was no Naxid fleet to vaporize them.

  After months of silence, massive amounts of information began to flood into Zanshaa. Messages, held in some remote electronic buffers for ages, now poured into the private files of Zanshaa’s citizens: information about relatives and loved ones, births and deaths, money and markets. The capital went mad with rejoicing.

  Sula received very little personal mail. A kind note from Lord Durward Li, a former client of the Sula clan whose son, Sula’s captain, had died at Magaria. A formal change of address notice from Morgen, who had been the senior surviving lieutenant of theDelhi, and who had been promoted to Lieutenant Captain.

  Two queries from Lady Terza Chen, Martinez’s wife, asking where she was and how she was faring. Terza also happened to mention that she was pregnant with Martinez’s child.