Conventions of War def-3

by Walter Jon Williams

  He considered forbidding the journey-he could claim that Lord Chen was too close to a possible Naxid attack-but decided against it.

  He was too far away to issue his wife orders, but that was only a part of it. The fact was, the only daughter of Lord Chen outranked the second son of Lord Martinez. Young Gareth was Lord Gareth Chen, not Lord Gareth Martinez the Younger. He was the son of the Chen heir and the presumed Chen heir himself.

  In other words, Terza could take the child anywhere she damn well pleased, and he had very little to say about it.

  Martinez sent Terza a letter in which he wondered whether it was completely safe for her to make the journey, but otherwise made no protest. He bade her to give Lord Chen his very warmest regards.

  He dared say nothing else.

  From her position in the middle of the van squadron, Sula half drowsed through one of Tork’s maneuvers. After the intricacies and complexities of Ghost Tactics, Tork’s standard exercises were a dreary trudge toward slumberland.

  “Enemy missile flares,” said Warrant Officer Maitland from the sensor station. “Flares across the board. Forty-sixty-nearly seventy, my lady.”

  The languor in Maitland’s drawling voice as he announced the launch of a host of enemy missiles aimed at the squadron showed that he too was merely going through the motions.

  “Comm,” Sula said. “Each ship will fire one battery counterfire. Weapons”-to Giove at the weapons station-“this is a drill. Engage the enemy barrage with Battery Two.”

  “This is a drill, my lady,” Giove reported. “Tubes eight through thirteen have fired. We have a failure to launch from tube thirteen. Missile is running hot in the tube.”

  Lady Rebecca Giove-short, dark, and kinetic-was incapable of sounding bored by anything. Her sharp voice had a clear ring of urgency even when she was making the most routine report.

  “Weaponers to clear the faulty missile,” Sula said.

  “Weaponers to clear the faulty missile, my lady.”

  Sula could only imagine what the scene would be like in real life-seventy enemy missiles racing for the squadron, each with its antihydrogen warhead ready to rip apart the fabric of matter, the countermissiles lashing out, the faulty missile flooding the missile bay with heat and energetic neutrons, on the verge of destroying the ship, tension tautening the nerves, the scent of rising panic in her vac suit…

  Nothing like that here.Confidence was following a script that had been written ahead of time by Tork’s staff. The faulty missile had been planned from the beginning, to give the weaponers practice at clearing a missile from the tube.

  Sula sat in her vac suit and recited the lines that the script more or less demanded. She left her helmet off so she didn’t have to feel closed-in. Counterbattery fire destroyed most of the enemy missiles, and point-defense lasers got the rest. Weaponers operating damage-control robots cleared the defective missile from the tube. Light Squadron 17 launched its own attack, which was duly parried by the approaching-and virtual-enemy.

  Confidencewas annihilated early in the action, which gave a senior surviving captain practice at commanding the squadron until she too was destroyed. In the end Light Squadron 17 was wiped out, along with the squadron it had engaged.

  After losing her ship, Sula had one of the cooks bring coffee and soft drinks to Command, and she added clover honey and condensed milk and drank in perfect contentment while listening to calls between ships.

  Confidencehad been wiped out in three of the last four of Tork’s exercises. Sula was inclined to view this as a threat.

  It had been clear from the moment Tork had ordered Squadron 17 into the van that he was planning to eliminate her from his long list of troubles. Sula supposed she couldn’t blame him. After all, she had spoiled his attack on Zanshaa by capturing the place without him; she had arranged for the elimination of his choice of governor; and she’d blackmailed him into giving her a ship. Probably he wished he could simply have her shot. But she was too prominent for that, too celebrated. Instead he affected to take her at her word-I desire nothing so much as to once more lead loyal citizens into action against the Naxids-and put her in a place of maximum danger.

  She had to admit that she admired Tork’s straightforward ruthlessness.

  Still, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t anticipated something like this. She knew she was putting herself in Tork’s hands as soon as she requested duty in the Orthodox Fleet.

  There only remained the question of what she was going to do about it.

  From her point of view, there was only one possible response.

  She would have to become a legend.

  The Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance continued its awkward orbit around Zanshaa. Reinforcements arrived, two or three or five at a time. Martinez continued to hear from old acquaintances. The arrival of the Exploration Service frigateScout brought greetings from Shushanik Severin, who served as its third officer. Severin and his little lifeboat had spent months grappled to a frozen asteroid at Protipanu in order to provide last minute intelligence to Martinez and Chenforce just prior to the battle there, and as a result had been promoted lieutenant despite being born a commoner. Severin seemed cheerful and comfortable in his new status, and Martinez-who remembered the troubles the commoner Kosinic had experienced-was relieved.

  He was also impressed that the down-at-heels Exploration Service had actually gotten a brand-new frigate out of the emergency. It was the first actual warship in the service for many centuries, though it would serve under Fleet command for the rest of the war.

  Martinez also received greetings from Warrant Officer Amanda Taen, who arrived in command of a boat bringing supplies to the warships. She was a stunningly beautiful young woman who had shared a pleasantly carnal relationship with him before his marriage, and viewing her message sent a nostalgic charge through his groin.

  Her arrival made him wonder just how many of his former lovers were serving with the Orthodox Fleet. He counted four women he had known intimately now circling Shaamah without him, and he felt depressed for the rest of the day.

  Terza and Young Gareth joined Lord Chen at whatever secret location was playing host to the Fleet Control Board, driving home the fact that the location was secret to Martinez, but not to his wife. The stream of letters and videos from Terza arrived regularly. Martinez tried to find enough subjects for reply, but new topics of interest were rare on the ship. He began to send Terza word-portraits of his fellow crew, starting with Kazakov and working his way down the list in order of seniority. He wondered what she made of these descriptions of people she’d never met, but reckoned she had to at least give him credit for trying. When he ran out of people he wanted to describe, he began a description of Fletcher’s paintings, beginning withThe Holy Family with a Cat. He had a feeling that his description didn’t do the work justice. He considered sending a picture instead.

  Martinez saw Sula twice more, as officers visited back and forth. They kept their distance and did not speak.

  Roland arrived on Zanshaa and sent him occasional messages. He was with a committee of other convocates, though what they were actually doing in the capital was obscure. Martinez was content that it remain that way.

  The Orthodox Fleet grew. Seventy ships. Eight-one. Ninety-five. The last known number of enemy ships had been forty-seven. Martinez began to wonder if Tork would ever engage.

  It was when the Orthodox Fleet reached the prime number of 109 that orders began raining down from Tork’s staff. Censorship was tightened. Enlisted crew could send no personal messages home, but only choose from a list of messages provided by the Fleet. All of them were variations on the theme, “I am well, and send you greetings. Long live the Praxis!”

  The twenty-two Lai-own ships were placed under Senior Squadron Commander Do-faq and detached to guard Zanshaa against a surprise Naxid attack. The fragile bones of their avian crew would not impede the acceleration of the Orthodox Fleet in pursuit of any enemy.

  The rest of the Fleet,
on its last swing around the system, participated in several final exercises to accustom them to maneuvering in their new order-of-battle, and then burned one last time around Vandrith for Zanshaa Wormhole 3, where the enemy had fled four months before.

  Martinez sent one last message to Terza. If he skated the limits of the censorship, it was because he knew that Michi would be the officer censoring his mail, and that Terza would know more about Fleet activities from her father than she could ever learn from her husband.

  Don’t worry about me,he wrote.We’ve beaten them before, and we’ll do it again.

  I hope to see you and Gareth within a few months. You have no idea how much I regret this time we have spent apart.

  When he signed the wordLove, it was with perfect sincerity.

  THIRTY-TWO

  When Fleet Commander Jarlath advanced toward Magaria at the beginning of the rebellion, he had come in fast, racing like an arrow aimed at the heart of the enemy.

  When Tork moved, he came in slowly, like the tide, and with the same inexorable force.

  Magaria had a well-equipped ring and seven wormhole gates to other systems. From Magaria the enemy could threaten a third of the systems in the empire. The Naxids had to defend it or risk losing everything.

  There were four wormhole jumps and three systems between Zanshaa and Magaria. The loyalist forces had managed to seize the wormhole station on the far side of Zanshaa Wormhole 3, but not the others-Tork had sent another wave of special forces, but the Naxids again wiped them out with missiles fired from another system. The loyalist forces could see into the first of those three systems but no farther.

  Though the Naxid fleet was almost certainly based at Magaria, Martinez knew it was possible they wouldn’t choose to fight there, but to defend their base by fighting forward of it. The Orthodox Fleet had to make every wormhole transit after the first with the assumption that they might at any point encounter the Naxids. In response, Tork repeated the tactics he had used at Zanshaa. The Orthodox Fleet was screened by hundreds of decoys. Relativistic missiles were fired into each system ahead of time, radars and ranging lasers hammering out, all timed so that when the Orthodox Fleet arrived, their sensors would be able to pick up a fairly complete picture of the system. Between wormhole jumps, the Fleet and its decoy screen performed random changes of course to baffle any relativistic missiles fired at them.

  The wormholes were unusually close together, and the entire journey to Magaria took only sixteen days. The first eight were spent accelerating, and then the blazing antimatter torches were turned toward the enemy and a deceleration began. Jarlath had gone in fast with the Home Fleet and lost almost everything; Tork would go in more slowly, grapple the enemy with slow deliberation, and crush him with superior weight.

  Martinez spent most of his transit time in Command gazing fretfully at the tactical display. He took his meals there and often slept on his acceleration couch. He had been caught away from Command during one attack and nearly broke his neck: he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

  He stared at the display and watched the slow advance of the little symbols that represented the Orthodox Fleet as they crawled across the display’s vast emptiness. Decoys were shown in pink, real ships in red. At the head of the long column of red was the little clump that was Squadron 17. Martinez wondered what Sula was doing as she sat at the point of Tork’s spear; if she sat in Command, as he did, and watched her ship creeping toward its destiny.

  The long hours of waiting in Command produced a restlessness in Martinez that worked itself out in motion. When he wasn’t watching the tactical display, he walked the corridors ofIllustrious, wandering from one department to the next, watching his crew as they too waited for the Naxids. He knew the value of his own ship and crew by now and wasn’t interested in detailed inspections; and when the crew braced to attention, he was quick to set them back to their work. He chatted informally with the department heads and sometimes with the ordinary recruits; he tried to project an air of quiet conviction in victory, the assured confidence of the veteran commander leading his crew to yet another inevitable conquest.

  To his surprise, he found that the crew didn’t seem to need his confidence-they had plenty of their own. They possessed a moral certainty of victory that Martinez began to find inspiring. He had hoped to cheer his crew, and instead they cheered him. It would have seemed churlish not to live up to their trust in him.

  The Orthodox Fleet plunged on through the three systems that neither side could truly claim as their own. Along the way, Tork issued demands for obedience and surrender. This was fairly pointless in the case of the first two systems, which were largely barren of life save for a few mining colonies. These, having surrendered to the Naxid fleet when the enemy were heading for Zanshaa, now surrendered with equal alacrity to the loyalists heading the other way.

  In the third system, Bachun, Tork demanded that he be able to broadcast to the population. The Naxid governor declined to answer. Intercepted transmissions from the planet showed joyous celebrations in honor of a record harvest and increased industrial production, all testifying to the efficiency of the new regime.

  Tork fired a missile straight at Bachun’s capital city. Without missing a beat, his messages began to be broadcast throughout the system. Tork recalled the missile.

  To Martinez, it was beginning to look as if there would be no suspense until the Fleet reached Magaria.

  He was wrong. When the alarms began to chirp, he was suited on his acceleration couch. He knew from the sound of the alarm tone what had happened before Warrant Officer Pan, the sensor operator, could cry his warning.

  “We’re being painted by a targeting laser!”

  “Engines!” Martinez shouted over him. “Cut acceleration. Pilot, rotate to heading one-two-zero by zero-eight-zero! Weapons, all point-defense lasers on automatic! Comm, get me Lady Michi! Engines, sound warning for acceleration!”

  Gravity and the distant rumble of the engines ceased. The ship began its swing to its new heading. Inside the vac suit, Martinez’s heart sounded like a roll of thunder.

  Michi had given the squadron standing orders for this situation. All ships would disperse without the need for an order from the flagship.

  “We’re still being painted, my lord,” Pan said, more quietly.

  The acceleration warning began to clatter. “Everyone med up,” Martinez said, and reached for the med injector in its holster by the side of his couch. He pressed it to his carotid and fired into it a precise dose of the drug that would-it was hoped-keep his veins and brain supple and safe from the effects of heavy acceleration.

  The others in Command took their injectors and did likewise.

  The ship ceased to swing. “One-two-zero by zero-eight-zero,” the pilot said.

  “Engines, accelerate at six gravities.”

  The roar of the engines overwhelmed the feeble warning tones of the sensor board. The room became a blur as Martinez’s acceleration couch dropped to its zero point.

  “Captain, what’s the problem?” Michi’s voice, hoarse with her battle against acceleration, sounded in his earphones.

  “Enemy targeting laser,” Martinez said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m in my sleeping cabin. I got to my bed in time. Does-”

  The squadcom’s voice was drowned by a shout from Pan. “Here they come!”

  “Ten gravities for one minute!” Martinez called.

  He saw the flashes of white on the tactical display that were incoming missiles, a perfect swarm of them shooting out of Bachun Wormhole 2 like a stream of water caught by a stop-action camera.

  The ship shuddered and groaned under the great surge of gravity. Martinez clamped his jaw in order to force blood to his brain. His vision darkened, narrowed to a tunnel focused on the tactical display. He saw blooms of bright light flash on the display as antimatter missiles detonated. Symbols flickered, indicating thatIllustrious ‘s point-defense weapons were firing. He fought for breath and con
sciousness, aware that control of the battle had never been his, that he would either live or die in the next few seconds and that he was helpless to make any difference…

  The great pressure on his chest and mind eased. He had never felt he would be thankful to experience a mere six gravity acceleration.

  Expanding clouds of plasma floated in the void ahead of the ship, showing where the oncoming Naxid missiles had destroyed part of the fleet’s decoy screen. Silver flickers on the display indicated rapidly receding missiles that had flashed through the system so fast they failed to acquire a target. By the time they finished decelerating and had begun their return to the point of origin, the Second Battle of Magaria would be over, one way or another.

  There seemed to be no new missiles coming their way.

  “Reduce acceleration to one-half gravity,” Martinez said.

  Michi’s voice sounded in his earphones. “I take it we’ve survived, Lord Captain?”

  “No casualties in the fleet, my lady. We seem to have lost forty or so decoys.”

  “Message for the squadcom from the Supreme Commander,” said Nyamugali at the comm station.

  “Forward it to her.”

  Martinez heard the message secondhand, since his channel to Michi was still open when she played it.

  “The lord commander,” said a chiming Daimong voice, “reminds Squadron Commander Chen that no element of the fleet is to disperse without permission of the Supreme Commander.”

  Tork, Martinez thought, at least had the virtue of consistency.

  More decoys were launched to fill the gaps caused by the surprise attack. Tork then launched a missile to destroy the source of the ranging laser, which turned out to be Wormhole Station 2.

  “The old pirate,” Michi said, with feigned affection.