The Sundering def-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  He’d just have to let the younger folk take the lead on this one, preferably without letting them notice that Martinez wasn’t exactly in charge.

  Martinez shifted the wall screen to the Structured Mathematics Display.

  “Right,” he said. “Let’s begin.”

  “My lords,” said Junior Squadron Commander Michi Chen, “Chenforce has now arrived in the Zanshaa system. We await your orders.”

  At the sight of his sister, Lord Chen felt his anxiety begin to loosen its grip on his heart. Which was irrational, since Chenforce consisted of only seven ships scraped together from the damaged remnants of the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid. The Naxid revolt had failed at Harzapid, but only just, with ships blasting each other at point-blank range with antiproton beams. Michi Chen had come to Zanshaa with the few undamaged survivors—the rest had either been destroyed or were in dock for urgent repairs. It would be months before Harzapid could send another squadron.

  But at least Zanshaa now had a force to defend it besides the six battered, exhausted survivors of the Home Fleet plus the swarm of pinnaces and improvised warships that would be swept away in the event of any determined attack. Chenforce could now cover the capital while the remnants of the Home Fleet decelerated and docked to take on new armament, and while Faqforce made its U-turn around Hone-bar and returned to Zanshaa.

  When Faqforce arrived, Zanshaa would have twenty-eight ships to guard it against attack.

  The great terror was that the enemy had thirty-five known survivors of the battle at Magaria. These, by now, had probably been reinforced by the ten ships that had rebelled at the remote station of Comador; and there remained at large another eight enemy ships last seen over two months ago at Protipanu. Those ships might well be on their way to join the enemy force at Magaria, and if that were the case, the defenders of Zanshaa would be outnumbered nearly two to one.

  Senior Fleet Commander Tork, chairman of the Fleet Control Board, rose from his seat and absently peeled a strip of dry, dead flesh from his face before facing the cameras. “Reply, personal to Squadron Leader Chen.” His Daimong’s voice tinkled like wind chimes in the stillness. “Lady Commander, kindly establish a defensive orbit about Zanshaa and its primary. When other forces enter the system, we will match their trajectories toyou.”

  This wasn’t a dialogue. Michi’s message had taken six hours to reach Zanshaa, and Tork’s reply would take nearly that long to return to her.

  The chairman politely turned to Lord Chen. “Would you like to say a few words to your sister?”

  “Yes, lord chairman, I thank you.”

  Lord Chen rose and looked into the camera, which obligingly panned toward him. “Welcome, Michi,” he said. “Your arrival has brought relief to everyone here. We’re delighted to have you with us.” And then, as he was on the verge of sitting down again, he added, “I’ll send you a personal message later.”

  There’s a lot you’d better know,he thought.

  He sat, and butter-smooth leather embraced him. His sister’s message had arrived during a meeting of the Fleet Control Board, and resulted in a considerable lightening of the meeting’s tone. Lord Chen decided that he wasn’t the only person here to feel irrational relief.

  Still, the old debates continued.

  “The Hone Reach must be defended,” said Lady Seekin. Her large eyes, adapted for night vision, were wide in the soft light of the room, and she’d taken off the dark lenses most Torminel wore during daylight hours.

  “We can’t defend the Hone Reach at the expense of Zanshaa,” said Tork. “The capital is everything. It’s the whole war. We can’t afford to lose it.”

  A whiff of rotting flesh floated across the table from Tork, and Lord Chen lifted his hand to his face and took a discreet sniff of the cologne he’d applied to the inside of his wrist.

  “Two ships, my lord,” Lady Seekin insisted. “Two ships to defend the whole of the Reach.”

  “Two ships, yes,” said Lady San-torath, the Lai-own convocate. “There will be no confidence in the Reach unless you can protect them somehow.”

  Useless,Lord Chen thought. When the war broke out he’d been part of a faction insisting that Hone-bar and the Reach had to be defended, but that was before the Battle of Magaria. Lord Chen had given up trying to protect the Reach—now he was just trying to get what he ownedout. He had to agree with Tork: the capital was more important.

  Lose the Hone Reach, he thought, and you have a chance of taking it back. Lose Zanshaa and you lose everything.

  The Fleet Control Board met in a well-appointed room of the Commandery, all low-key lighting, polished wood, and pale, spotless plush carpet. Overhead glowed an abstract map of the empire, connected by lines that represented wormhole gates. Hone-bar and the Hone Reach stood out in fluorescent green.

  The map was not a star chart: a map of stars would be irrelevant. The wormholes overleaped nearby stars, jumping anywhere in the universe—sometimes to places so remote that it wasn’t clear where they stood in relation to anywhere else.

  There were three wormholes in the Hone-bar system, one that led to the fourteen systems of the Hone Reach, and two that led elsewhere in the empire. Whoever controlled Hone-bar controlled access to those fourteen worlds where so much of Lord Chen’s wealth remained at hazard.

  At the opening of the rebellion, Lord Chen and the other members of the Hone Reach faction had insisted on sending Faqforce to the Hone-bar system. Now those two squadrons were urgently needed to defend the capital, and were to make a wide, fast swing around Hone-bar’s sun to return as fast as they could.

  “It will be close,” said Senior Fleet Commander Tork. “The enemy could be here before Faqforce makes its return.”

  The elderly Daimong, who was twirling in his fingers the dry strip of dead flesh he’d pulled from his pale face, let it fall in silence to the carpet. Tork chaired the nine-member board, which consisted of four civilian convocates and five active or retired Fleet officers, some of whom were also convocates.

  “Can we order them to increase speed?” one of the civilians asked.

  “No. They’re already traveling as quickly as the Lai-own physique permits.”

  “But, my lord”—this came from one of the Fleet officers—“the light squadron doesn’t have any Lai-own ships, does it?”

  After a long moment of chagrin, Tork gave orders ensuring that the light squadron, under Captain Martinez, would separate from Do-faq’s squadron and return to Zanshaa with the greatest possible speed.

  “After the battle the enemy would need at least two months to decelerate, dock with the Magaria ring, and fill their magazines with fresh missiles,” Tork said. “Then another two months to accelerate to fighting speed and begin their journey here. And that’s if the enemy is willing to push gee forces to their maximum, with their personnel already on the point of exhaustion, and also if they are willing to dock their entire fleet at once, and risk it being destroyed by a raid.”

  These facts were familiar to all present—all knew almost to the day the moment when they would begin to dread an enemy attack—but all had also learned not to interrupt Tork when the chairman was in the middle of one of his speeches. An interruption only inspired Tork to greater didactic emphasis, not to mention greater length. It was strange how the Daimong voice, normally chiming and bell-like, could at such moments be altered into such an insistent, nagging tone of declamation.

  “The Home Fleet will also need to decelerate and take on new armament before they can again build up enough delta-vee to be of use in defending the capital…”

  Lord Chen wearily reflected that it was entirely like Lord Chairman Tork to refer to the six battered survivors as “the Home Fleet,” as if it still resembled the armada with which Fleet Commander Jarlath had set about the recapture of Magaria.

  “I’m concerned for the well-being of those crewmen,” Tork said. His round-eyed, startled-looking face was incapable of showing fear, concern, or any other emotion, but from the tone of th
e fleetcom’s voice Chen knew that the concern was real. “By the time their ships are in position to join the defense of the capital, they will have suffered more than six months of high acceleration. The degradation of their mental and physical state will be acute.”

  “Yet what choice do we have?” asked Lady San-torath. “As you say, the capital must be defended.”

  “We have sufficient personnel on Zanshaa to crew an entire new fleet,” said Tork. “I propose that we move entirely new crews aboard when the Home Fleet comes in to rearm.”

  “Ships with new crews?” Junior Fleet Commander Pezzini was startled. “But they won’t have time to learn their ships before they may have to take them into combat!”

  “And all the experienced officers will have been taken off the ships,” added the Lord Convocate Mondi, a retired Fleet captain and the second Torminel on the board. “It would be folly to remove the only officers experienced in battle.”

  “Fleet doctrine is established,” Tork said, “and experience should make little difference in how the battle is fought. And as far as the officers go, one Peer is the equal of another—thatis doctrine, too, my lords.” Pezzini tried to interrupt, and Tork’s voice took on its dreaded merciless hectoring tone as he outshouted his junior. “The new crews will have a month to shake down before an attack is likely to come! And beforehand, they can accustom themselves to their new ships in virtual!”

  There was argument, but in the end Tork had his way. New crews would be assembled on the ring station and would begin training in virtual ship environments immediately. There was more argument as they appointed commanding officers—each board member had clients and favorites—and then a further brisk discussion in appointing a squadron commander.

  “We must appoint an overall commander for the defense of the capital,” Tork went on. “The two squadron commanders, Lady Michi and Lord Do-faq, are young officers with no experience in maneuvering an entire fleet. Wemust pick a fleetcom.”

  This was problematical, as most of the qualified officers had died with Jarlath at Magaria. The new commander would have to be Terran, since he would command from one of the Home Fleet survivors, all Terran ships. Again, each board member had his candidates, and when they deadlocked Lord Chen simply suggested they promote his sister to fill the place.

  Well, he thought, it seems worth trying.

  The motion had no support whatever, and Lord Chen withdrew it. The board reached no agreement, and Tork deferred the matter till the next meeting.

  “If one Peer is as good as the next,” Pezzini muttered, “I don’t see why this always takes so blasted long.”

  There followed more decisions in regard to the Fleet’s logistical support, and this was where Lord Chen began to earn the money that Roland Martinez was paying him. He managed to snag a delivery contract for a shipping concern owned by a Martinez client, and a supply contract for state-of-the-art laser communications systems for a Martinez-owned firm on Laredo.

  “Have you noticed how many contracts seem to be going to Laredo?” muttered Lord Commander Pezzini. “I thought the place was a rustic paradise full of strong-thewed woodcutters and bucolic shepherds, and now I find it’s some kind of industrial powerhouse.”

  “Really?” asked Lord Chen. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Why did we lose at Magaria?” From the display in his command cage, Caroline Sula gazed at him with her face drawn by fatigue and deceleration. From her gasping voice Martinez could tell she was undergoing three gees or more.

  “There were lots of reasons,” she said. “They were ready for us, for one thing, and they had more ships. They out-planned us, though I can’t fault Jarlath for that, I suppose his plan was as good as he could make it, given what he knew.” She drew in a breath, lungs fighting gravity. “The main reason is that we didn’t starburst early enough. Whole formations got overwhelmed at once. The enemy’s tactics showed the same fault, but they started with more ships, and they could afford the losses.”

  Martinez was warmed by Sula’s analysis and the fact that it agreed with his own. He felt flattered.

  When did he start counting so much on Sula’s opinion? he asked himself.

  Sula took in another breath, and Martinez realized his own breath was synchronous with hers. For he, too, was living through hard gee, and he as well was strapped into an acceleration couch, his body confined in a pressure suit.

  It was impossible to share each other’s company, he thought, but at least we can share our misery.

  Sula breathed again, and for a brief moment Martinez saw mischief flare in her weary eyes. “We had a discussion about censorship in the mess the other day, and about why the government has been suppressing what happened at Magaria. I suggested that the point of censorship isn’t to hide certain facts but to keep the wrong people from finding them out. If the majority knew the true facts, they would begin to act as their self-interest dictates, and notenlightened self-interest either. If they’re kept in ignorance they’ll be much more inclined to act as the self-interest of others dictates.” She gasped in air. “One of our officers—won’t mention names here—said the whole point is to prevent civilians from panicking. But I think it’s what happensafter people panic that should frighten us. We should be scared of what happens when people stop panicking and start tothink. ” Sula gave an intense green-eyed look to the camera. “I wonder whatyou think about such things.”

  She allowed herself a morbid smile. “I also wonder if your old friend Lieutenant Foote is going to let you see any of this, particularly my speculations on the nature and purpose of information control. But I suppose if he chops any of this, it will only prove my point.” Her smile broadened. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you. Let me know how your next exercise turns out.”

  The orange End Transmission symbol appeared on the screen. Apparently Foote had tried to disprove Sula’s argument by not cutting any of the message.

  Clever Sula, Martinez thought.

  Martinez saved the message to his private file as he thought about censorship. It had always been there, and he’d never spent a lot of time thinking about it except when it intruded on his time, as when he was ordered to censor the pulpies’ mail.

  As for official censorship, he’d always thought of it as a kind of game between the censors and himself. They’d try to hide something, and he’d try to read behind the censors’ words to find out what had really happened. From an exhortation to Unceasingly Labor at Public Works, it was possible to conclude that a major building project had fallen behind schedule; likewise, a news item praising emergency services often implied a disaster at which emergency services had been employed, but which was too embarrassing for those in charge to admit. An item praising certain ministers could be a tacit criticism of those ministers who were not mentioned, or a criticism of one junior minister could in reality be a disguised assault on his more senior patron.

  Reading behind the news was a game at which Martinez had grown expert. But unlike Sula he’d never thought of censorship having apurpose, in part because it seemed too arbitrary for that. What was cut, and what permitted, was so capricious as to seem almost stochastic: sometimes he wondered if the censors were amusing themselves by cutting every sentence with an irregular verb, or any news item in which appeared the word “sun.”

  Sula’s notion that censorship was aimed at giving certain people a monopoly on the truth was new to him. But whowere these people? He didn’t know anyone who didn’t have to deal with the censorship—even when he’d worked on the staff of Fleet Commander Enderby, he’d discovered that Enderby’s public pronouncements had to be reviewed by the censors.

  Possiblynobody knew what was really happening. Martinez found that more frightening than Sula’s theory of a conspiracy of elites.

  It would have been hard, for example, to work into any theory of censorship the conversation he’d had the previous day with Dalkeith. They’d had a breakfast meeting about ordinary ship business, and at the end, over coffe
e, she’d given him a puzzled look, as if she didn’t know where to begin, and then said, “You know I’m censoring the other lieutenants’ mail.”

  Censorship, like all tasks that no one really wanted, was a job that tended to fall quickly down the ladder of seniority. The most junior cadets censored the messages of the enlisted; and the most junior lieutenant censored the cadets. Dalkeith censored the two lieutenants junior to her, and Martinez was left free of all responsibility but that of reviewing her messages only—a light task, as they consisted entirely of dull but heartfelt greetings to her family back on Zarafan.

  “Yes?” Martinez prompted. “Is there a problem?”

  “Not a problem, exactly.” Dalkeith lips twisted, as if searching for an entry point to this subject. “You know Vonderheydte has a lady friend on Zanshaa. Her name is Lady Mary.”

  “Is it? I didn’t know.” He rather doubted that the lady’s name was of any great relevance.

  “Vonderheydte and Lady Mary exchange videos, and the videos are of a…” She hesitated. “…highly libidinous nature. They exchange fantasies and, ah, attempt to enact them for the camera.”

  Martinez reached for his coffee. “You haven’t encountered this before?” he said. “I’m surprised.” When he was a fresh young cadet aboard ship for the first time, he had been deeply shocked by both the ingenuity and depravity of the holejumpers whose messages he’d been called on to review. By the end of the second month of this involuntary course in human nature, he’d become a cynical, hard-boiled tough, a walking encyclopedia of degeneracy, incapable of being surprised by any iniquity, no matter how appalling.

  “It’s not that,” Dalkeith said. “I just wonder at thepersistence. They spendhours at it, and it’s all very elaborate and imaginative. I don’t know where Vonderheydte gets the energy, considering we’re under acceleration.” Her troubled eyes gazed into his. “There’s a relentless quality to it that seems unhealthy to me. You don’t suppose he’s doing himself actual physical harm, do you?”