Martinez felt a stream of astonishment and delight. It was as if he and Sula were reading one another’s minds.
The ships darted like swallows.
Sulahad to be alive, he thought. No one else had the kind of genius that so thoroughly complimented his own.
The combat was like a ballet.
It was like telepathy.
It was like great sex.
Naxid ships flamed and died. The few that remained were scattered, and the loyalists could pick them off whenever they wanted.
Only the converted transports and the squadron facing Michi was still putting up resistance. Michi was fighting the Naxid heavy cruisers, better armed and better able to defend themselves, and though she’d destroyed four of them, she’d lost two of her own.
“Message to Captain Tantu,” Martinez said. “Take Division One and go after the converted transports. End message.”
Division 1 was four ships, including the two light cruisers. Division 2 was five frigates, includingCourage, and he was going to take it to Michi’s relief.
After expressing brief thanks for having at least half of his old command back, Tantu ordered his ships into a heavy acceleration for the transports, regrouping into a separate Martinez Method formation as he went.
Martinez swung his own five ships away from Sula’s squadron, rolling down on the Naxid heavies. Joy danced in his heart as he saw Sula detach four of her own ships and roll away from him with the remaining three, coming to Michi’s aid.
The Naxid heavies didn’t last long, attacked from three directions and by superior numbers. After that, ignoring the few Naxid warships that still danced around the perimeter of the fight, all of Chenforce went after the converted transports with everything they had.
The big ships didn’t last long either, particularly once they’d starburst. They were configured for offense, and their defensive abilities left a lot to be desired. In addition, Michi’s antiproton cannon kept blowing big chunks off them.
After that, the remaining Naxid warships were hunted down, one after another, and dispatched.
An anthem of triumph began to thunder in Martinez’s veins.
Chenforce had lost four ships to the enemy’s forty. His Squadron 31 had lost none.
In the course of the war, in the battles in which he’d either commanded a squadron or had an influence on the tactics, he had lost only one ship, at Protipanu.
He was as proud of that as of the victories themselves.
He didn’t count Second Magaria, where his advice had been ignored.
Tork could have that one, if he wanted it.
Before the last sphere of plasma had cooled and dispersed, Michi called for a simultaneous conference between herself and Chandra, Martinez, and Sula.
Michi and Chandra looked weary but exultant in their virtual images, sagging in their vac suits but glowing with victory.
Sula appeared spattered with blood.
Martinez looked at her in shock. He remembered her appearance in bloody body armor after the Battle of the High City, and wondered if she’d decided to specialize in dramatic entrances.
“Are you all right, Lady Sula?” Michi asked.
“Yes. I had a nosebleed under high gee.”
Sula’s tone was curt and dismissive. Michi changed the subject.
“I need a report from all ships on the number of remaining missiles. I need to know if we can fight those three enemy ships that just entered the system.”
“I happen to have the figures,” Sula said. “My ships’ magazines average nine percent of full capacity.”
“My ships range between three and six percent,” Michi said. Her gaze flickered to Martinez. “And Squadron Thirty-one?”
“Ah,” Martinez said, “I’ll check. But I don’t suppose our numbers are much better.”
Michi looked grim. “If those three big ships are like the others, they’ll be able to fire off six hundred missiles in each salvo.”
That, Martinez thought, was going to make fighting them very difficult indeed.
Stupid to die, fighting a trio of improvised warships, just because you’re at the end of your logistical tether and you don’t have anything to shoot at them.
“My lady,” he said, “may I suggest that you make your surrender demand extremely convincing?”
Determination crossed Michi’s face. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll make it clear that if we’re fired on, Naxas burns. We’ve got enough missiles forthat.” She looked at someone off-camera-presumably Chandra, because Chandra also looked off-camera.
“I’ll want a list of the twenty-five largest cities on Naxas,” Michi said.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Better make it fifty. And I’d like demographic data as well, so we can be sure to pay special attention to smoking any Naxid neighborhoods.”
Chandra hid a smile. “Yes, my lady.”
Michi’s demand for unconditional surrender went out in the clear, both to Naxas and to the oncoming ships. It would be nearly three hours before Naxas could reply. Chenforce took aboard its surviving pinnaces, recovered the few missiles that hadn’t yet found something to blow up, and began repairing the minor damage taken by some of the ships in the fight.
Martinez took a shower to wash off the scent of his suit seals and invited Captain Dalkeith to a celebratory dinner. That seemed fair, since after all he was dining in her cabin.
“I wish I had your cook,” Dalkeith said in her breathless child’s voice. She looked at the black specks in her fluffy scrambled eggs, which Perry had laid on a bed of fragrant preserved seaweed. “Are those truffles?”
Martinez didn’t know.
He was back in Auxiliary Command at the earliest possible moment that Naxas could reply. No answer came, not even an acknowledgment.
Minutes ticked by. The air in Auxiliary Command began to seem hot and close. The bodies of the crew, liberated from the confines of vac suits, combined to give the room a sour, combusted scent, all save Khanh, who wore far too much lime-scented cologne.
Martinez heard chatter in the background as Chandra gave the weapons officers targeting information for the fifty largest cities of Naxas. He thought about how to fight those three big ships with their limitless supply of ammunition.
“Squadcom wants another conference, my lord.” Falana’s fingers jabbed at the touch pads on his display.
“I’ll go virtual.”
The same three faces appeared in the display. Michi and Chandra looked scrubbed and refreshed, but Martinez didn’t spare them more than a glance. Instead he stared at Sula. She was breathtaking-beautiful and polished and perfect. She wore understated Fleet undress, and the dark sensor cap and its chin strap framed her face and made it seem to glow. Suddenly he could scent a phantom memory of her perfume.
“I’ve given them an hour,” Michi said. Her angry voice snapped Martinez out of his trance. “I think that’s enough. We’ll launch our missiles for Naxas. Time the impacts for a hundred twenty minutes from now, so they can see it coming at them and have time to think about it.”
“That will give them extra time to evacuate their cities,” Chandra pointed out.
“The living will envy the dead,” Sula said. Her voice was hard.
Martinez looked at her again, and wondered where that cold anger had come from. He knew her anger well enough, but he remembered it as hot. He remembered her as insecure, as clumsy in formal situations, as passionate in bed.
Clearly she had learned a few new social strategies.
“My lord!” Falana cried. “Message from Naxas!”
The others must have been alerted at the same time, because they were all gazing off-camera.
“Let’s see it,” Martinez said.
His virtual space was invaded by the image of a young Naxid. He wore the brown tunic of the civil servant, and he stood alone and faced the camera with frozen dignity.
“To Squadron Commander Chen,” he said, “greetings. I am Lord Ami Yramox, Secretary to t
he Assistant Minister of Right and Dominion, Lady Rundak.”
Secretary to an assistant minister, Martinez thought. Yramox lived pretty far down the chain of command to reply to an ultimatum as crucial as Michi’s.
“All my superiors have committed suicide,” Yramox said. “Before their deaths they instructed me to surrender to you all forces under the command of the Naxas government. We await your orders.”
The Naxid spoke on, but he was drowned by the cheers now ringing from the walls of Auxiliary Command. Even Gunderson, who throughout the battle had spoken with a deliberate, sonorous calm, was bellowing with undisguised joy.
Michi and Chandra were glancing left and right, off-camera, smiling, apparently enjoying a similar frenzied demonstration in the Flag Officer Station.
Sula remained cool, gazing at the camera with her jade eyes. Apparently there was no spontaneous shouting permitted in her control room.
A few hours later, when orders from Naxas reached the new arrivals, the three big Naxid ships began firing their missile batteries, hundreds and then thousands of missiles racing into the void. When they reached a safe distance, they exploded, a long series of bright expanding detonations, like fireworks celebrating the end of a long, bloody war.
THIRTY-SIX
There were a few hours for rejoicing, just enough time for the cooks to produce a feast and for the crew to drink to their own survival and that of their mates. The recreation tubes were very much in demand. Martinez dined with the officers ofCourage while Alikhan packed his belongings, then he formally surrendered command of Squadron 31, and with it, his acting rank of squadron commander.
He sent a farewell message to his captains, praising their record of enemy killed without a single casualty, then said good-bye to Dalkeith and the other lieutenants. He arrived aboardIllustrious to the usual formalities. The corridors echoed to the same sort of celebrations he’d just left. The party was just getting started when alarms began to blare, and everyone strapped in for more hours of heavy gee. In order to stay in the Naxas system and avoid shooting off into space, Chenforce had to lose delta vee, and that meant more days of bone-hammering deceleration.
This was clearly unfair. The crews resented the fact that they’d just won the war but had to endure the heavy gees anyway.
Martinez resented it too. He had just enough time to visit his cabin-he found the Holy Family undisturbed, still snug with their cat and their fire-and then he had to don his vac suit.
Around them, as the gravities pressed the crew deeper into their couches, the peace began to take shape. The Fleet and the Convocation had worked out a plan ahead of time. Non-Naxid officials who-the last anyone heard-had been on Naxas were ordered by Michi to take command of the government, provided they hadn’t accepted jobs in the rebel administration. A disturbingly large percentage of them had and were disqualified. The remainder were not always the pick of the crop, but would have to serve till new administrators were sent out from Zanshaa.
The Naxids seemed to accept the situation quietly, which was certainly lucky for those who so unexpectedly found themselves in charge. The presence of three squadrons armed with dozens of missiles seemed a good recipe for social order, and those most likely to lead a resistance had just committed suicide.
The three Naxid converted warships, traveling too fast to decelerate completely, were ordered to proceed through one of Naxas’s wormholes, dock at another system, and surrender themselves there. Michi didn’t want them in the Naxas system, where they might tempt some unreconstructed Naxid into a misadventure.
A consequence of the sudden victory was that all the wormhole stations were suddenly open. For the first time in a year and a half, nearly all parts of the empire were in communication with one another, the communication lines broken only here and there where a wormhole station had been blasted out of existence.
Michi sent a brief report to Tork through the wormhole relay, the text wrapped in the Fleet’s most elaborate code in case the Naxids were inclined to eavesdrop. It mentioned the bare facts of the battle-victory, a loss of four warships for thirty-eight enemy, a friendly government soon to be in place-but carefully avoided any details, such as the dire lack of ammunition.
A more candid report went to Tork via the more secure method of a relativistic missile, with another missile going to the Fleet Control Board. These reports featured a complete record of the fighting as well as a statement concerning the perilous state of the ammunition supply.
Because there were two reports, Michi received two replies. The first, which arrived fifty-odd hours after she flashed off the original brief report, featured equally brief congratulations. The message was in text, signed by a staff officer.
The second message, which flashed into the system on the back of a relativistic missile, was a video from Tork himself. Michi called off the squadron’s acceleration, then summoned Martinez to her office to view it.
Ligaments creaking in the reduced gravity, Martinez came to her office and braced. Michi sagged wearily in her chair, a cup of coffee before her. The half-nude bronze statues towered over her. The strain of days of high gee lined her face, and there was something else as well, sadness and a kind of defeat.
“This concerns you,” Michi said, “and in a burst of cowardice I decided that you’d better get the news from Tork and not from me.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Yes. Sit down.”
Michi’s servant Vandervalk was already pouring coffee. Martinez thanked her, sat, and took the cup. The coffee’s sharp scent bit the back of his throat.
A pall enshrouded his mind. This wasn’t going to be good.
Michi ordered the video wall to show Tork’s message. The Supreme Commander appeared at once. He looked more healthy than Martinez had recently seen him-his skin was a healthier shade of gray, and no strips of dead flesh hung from his face. He was out of his body cast and dressed in a viridian dress uniform covered with more silver braid than Martinez had ever seen. Around Tork’s narrow throat was a ribbon on which hung a simple gold disk.
“They gave him theOrb?” Martinez blurted.
Tork gazed from the wall without expression. “To Squadron Commander Chen, greetings,” he said in bell-like tones. “Your full report has been received, along with your request for additional missiles. I can spare no missiles here, but will order as many as I can from elsewhere in the empire and inform your command when you may expect their arrival.”
Can spare no missiles,Martinez thought. Who was Tork planning on shooting his damned missilesat?
“As you can see,” Tork continued, “the Convocation has awarded me the Golden Orb for the recapture of Zanshaa and the victory at Magaria, and they have also honored me by making permanent my rank as Supreme Commander.”
Which explained where all the braid came from. Martinez suppressed an urge to spit on the floor, and sipped his coffee instead.
“As one of my first acts,” Tork said, “I will establish a Committee of Inquiry to analyze the tactical lessons of the war and to prepare a series of recommendations for the Fleet. This committee will be chaired by Fleet Commander Pezzini and will be headquartered at the Commandery in Zanshaa.”
That figured,Martinez thought. Pezzini was a retired fleetcom, a Control Board member who had never seen a missile fired in anger.
Tork continued. His voice was a melodious chime.
“I therefore order Captain Sula, Captain Martinez, and Squadron Commander Chen to report at once to Zanshaa and place themselves at the disposal of the committee.Illustrious andConfidence will go into dock at Zanshaa for routine refit. Lady Michi’s command will remain at Naxas under Captain Carmody, who is promoted Acting Squadron Leader. You will find the text of these orders in an attached file.”
Martinez stared at Tork’s image in shock.He’s taking my ship away?
Ships that went into refit were turned over to dock superintendents and lost their officers and crew.
The harmonies of Tork’s voice
were implacable. “Because it would be premature to release any information regarding the battles, or the tactics employed, prior to the report of the committee, I must classify all this information as Highly Sequestered. Any publication or discussion of these matters will be deemed a violation of the Imperial Sequestration Edict and subject to prosecution.
“You will acknowledge receipt of these orders and proceed at once to Zanshaa.”
There was a highlight to Tork’s chiming voice that Martinez suspected was Daimong triumph.
It was all going to be hidden away,Martinez thought. The conclusions of the committee were foreordained. Innovations were a wrong path, and the orthodox tactics with which Tork had captured Magaria were going to be enshrined. Michi’s victories would be explained away or forgotten.
He could imagine already what the committee would say about Naxas. It wasn’t a real battle, it was fought against patched-together converted traders and warships heavily damaged at Magaria. Ofcourse it was one-sided. Under the circumstances, Michi Chen was criminally negligent for losing as many as four ships.
He turned to Michi. “What do we do?” he asked.
Michi’s look was matter-of-fact. “We obey orders.”
“And then?”
Michi considered the question for a half a second or so, then said, “We wait for Tork to die.”
“You could talk to Lord Chen. He’s on the Fleet Control Board.”
She nodded. “I’ll talk to Maurice, of course. But in order for him to reverse an order by the Supreme Commander, he’d need a majority of votes on the board, and I don’t think he’ll get them. Anything he attempts on our behalf will just look like special pleading on behalf of his relatives.” She pushed a plate toward him. “Almond cookie?”
Furious anger raged in Martinez. He put down his coffee cup before he crushed it in his hand.
“We can demand a court-martial,” he said.
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