“Next assignment?” Pezzini said. “Do you know how many captains are on the list, waiting for commands? We can’t jump some junior captain over their heads!”
“He’s a verysuccessful junior captain,” Lady Seekin remarked.
“It will not do to be seen favoring one officer, however worthy,” Tork said. “Captain Martinez has already achieved honor enough for one lifetime. There are many posts worthy of an officer of talent, and not all of them involve ship duty.”
Lord Chen concealed his dismay. He would have to do some lobbying among the other members of the board.
Lord Roland would expect nothing else.
“How shall we announce the victory?” Mondi asked. “Shall we mention Martinez’s contribution as well as Do-faq’s?”
Tork raised his long, pale, expressionless head. A whiff of rotting flesh floated on the air as he raised an arm. “I beg the board’s indulgence,” he said, “but I do not believe an announcement should be made at all.”
The others stared at him. “But it’s avictory, ” said Lady Seekin. “It’s what we’ve all been waiting for. It’s what theempire has been waiting for.”
News of a victory would give heart to loyalists everywhere, Chen knew. The news would also discourage those inclined to make peace with the Naxids, such as whoever had suppressed those communications at Hone-bar.
“I do not wish the enemy to learn of their defeat at Hone-bar, at least not yet,” Tork said. “If they learn that a force exists at Hone-bar sufficient to destroy their squadron, then they learn also that this forceis not defending the capital at Zanshaa. It might inspire them to attack ushere, while we are weak. I beg that the board not release this information until such time as the elements of Faqforce arrive here at Zanshaa.”
“But wouldn’t the Naxids already know?” asked Lady San-torath.
“Not unless some traitor at Hone-bar told them,” said Tork. “But if there is treason there, it appears to be at the top. If it hasn’t infected the wormhole relay stations, then no messages will go to Magaria or any other rebel stronghold. To the rebel high command it will seem as if their squadron vanished. They may not even see anything wrong with that—they know they don’t control communications. It may be some weeks before they grow anxious. And before they know for certain that Kreeku’s force was destroyed, I want Faqforcehere, and guarding the capital.”
Lord Chen took a discreet sniff of his perfumed wrist as Tork’s vigorous gestures propelled the scent of rotting meat into the room.
“Very well reasoned, my lord,” he said. “I agree that the release of the information should be delayed.”
That would give Chen a little time to work on the other members of the board in the matter of Martinez’s promotion and assignment. Perhaps he could contact his sister Michi and ask for suggestions.
In the meantime, however, the board occupied itself with totting up numbers. Kreeku’s ten heavy cruisers could be wiped from the Naxid column of the ledger.
At the moment, Zanshaa was protected by Michi Chen’s seven heterogeneous ships from Harzapid, the six bruised survivors of the Battle of Magaria, and several hundred decoys—missiles configured to resemble a large vessel on radar, and which might absorb at least some of the enemy’s offensive power before being blown to bits.
But the six battered ships from Magaria were at the moment practically useless, since they needed to dock with Zanshaa’s ring station in order to undergo repairs, to replace their depleted missile batteries, and to take aboard Lord Eino Kangas, the new fleet commander the board had finally appointed after much wrangling. Even thenBombardment of Delhi was probably too damaged to fight without spending months in dock. That was why Faqforce was crucial: Do-faq’s fifteen ships would more than double the capital’s defense. But of those fifteen, Martinez’s eight ships of the light squadron had likewise expended most of their ammunition at Hone-bar, and would likewise have to decelerate, dock, and replenish.
Once that was done, the defenders would have twenty-five ships—or twenty-six, if you countedDelhi — still decisively outnumbered by the thirty-five ships last seen at Magaria. The odds against the loyalists were even worse if the eight Naxid ships last seen at Protipanu joined the Naxid main body—and why wouldn’t they? Zanshaa was the whole war. Once the Naxids were in command of the Zanshaa system, the government on the ground would have no choice but to capitulate under the threat of antimatter fire rained from above.
“Wemust win,” Mondi muttered, and drew snarling lips back from his fangs.
Lord Chen felt weariness seep into his mind like spring meltwater into the soil, slowing and chilling his thoughts. They had been over these figures meeting after meeting. “This business of replenishing ships’ missiles takes far too long,” he said. “A month or more to decelerate, time in dock, a month or more to get up to speed so that you’re not a sitting duck when the enemy shows up.”
“At least the enemy is under the same handicap,” Mondi said.
“The Fleet is not designed for this sort of war,” said Tork. Despair edged his chiming tones.
The Fleet was designed to sit in space and bombard helpless populations, or to make overwhelming surprise attacks on barbarians whose level of technology was lower than that of the empire. The Fleet hadnot been designed to fight another fleet with the same technology and tactics, let alone one with advantage in numbers.
“Why can’t we just load up a big cargo ship with missiles?” Chen asked. “Accelerate it and just keep it in orbit around the system? Any ship needing a supply of missiles could rendezvous with it and resupply. They wouldn’t have to drop their velocity to zero to dock with the ring.” He thought ofClan Chen burning its way toward Zanshaa, just ahead of Faqforce. “I can even supply the ship,” he said, then mentally added,Lord Roland permitting.
“I’ve considered this,” Tork said. “The enemy will be on our necks before the ship could be modified, loaded, and accelerated to useful velocities.”
“We’ll have your tender ready in time for thenext war,” Pezzini added, teeth biting down on his sarcasm.
“What if the enemy doesn’t come on schedule?” Lady Seekin asked. “What if they attack and we beat them? Wouldn’t it be useful to have missile reloads ready at hand, so that we could pursue them?”
Tork’s long, mournful face remained, as always, expressionless, but there was a profound silence before he raised his head to gaze at the others. “I can’t help but think that this war will change the way the Fleet operates. After this war, I don’t see that our ships will spend so much of their time in dock, where they’re vulnerable to rebellion and mutiny. Some of them, certainly, must be kept in orbit, where they can be useful in an emergency. And these tenders could be a part of that scheme, even if they’re completed too late for the decisive battle of this war.”
“We needwarships, ” someone said. “If we’re going to spend imperial funds, let’s buy something that will kill Naxids.”
“When a warship is in dock taking on supplies it isn’t able to killanything, ” Lady Seekin said. “I think this could work.” She looked up at Lord Chen. “Thank you, my lord, for a very useful idea.”
Lord Chen was calculating how much of this work he could shift to the Martinez family shipyards at Laredo. Not many—they were already stuffed with government contracts.
He’d consult with Lord Roland.
And then he’d speak to some other friends. People who might be very grateful for a contract or two.
Kamarullah issued few commands to the squadron over his first few days. When repairs were completed on his two damaged ships, he increased acceleration toward Zanshaa. Orders for minor course changes came after the wormhole transition.
The first attempt by Martinez to make use of Sula’s formula, with ships simulated inCorona ‘s computer and programmed to make use of Sula’s tactics, succeeded only in crashing the display. Shankaracharya gave the opinion that this wasn’t Sula’s fault, but the fault of the program, which wasn�
��t flexible enough to absorb Sula’s innovations.
Another attempt was made: Martinez, Vonderheydte, Shankaracharya, and Kelly each commanded a ship in a simulation, battling a squadron commanded by Dalkeith and using conventional tactics. The four ships using Sula’s tactics had their course changes programmed in by hand rather than by running it through the simulator. This approach showed promise, and the battle was beginning to look interesting when Vonderheydte’s ship vanished from its place in the simulation and reappeared clean on the other side of the virtual “universe,” having made an unscripted transition of a sort that was not, so far as was known, permitted in nature. The participants had barely recovered from this surprise when Shankaracharya’s ship made a similar leap.
The simulation software seemed to have a good many more limitations than anyone had suspected.
“We’ll have to try it with actual ships,” Vonderheydte said.
Martinez looked down at his supper, one of Alikhan’s casseroles a bit the worse for gravity. Macaroni stood up to high gees very well until the point when you cooked it.
“I no longer command the squadron,” Martinez pointed out.
“There’s another problem,” said Dalkeith. “Whoever heard of a fleet maneuver in which the outcome wasn’t determined in advance? No commander’s going to call for such a thing—they’d look like idiots if the wrong side won.”
In silence they contemplated the enormity of a senior officer calling for maneuvers this radical, and the colossal loss of dignity that would result when things didn’t go as expected. Dalkeith’s seemed a conclusive argument.
“Well,” Kelly said, musing on her glass of wine, “what if we don’tsay it’s a maneuver? It can be called an ‘experiment.’ The wholepoint of experiments is that no one knows for certain how they’ll turn out.”
Martinez blinked. Stale olive oil wafted to him from his plate. “Worth a try,” he judged.
He sent a message to Do-faq, along with Sula’s formula and a description of the limitations of the standard tactical simulation. He also suggested that an experiment, rather than a maneuver, would be the best way to test the innovations. Do-faq sent a polite reply saying that he and his tactical officer would review the innovations, and Martinez assumed it would end there.
Martinez also sent a copy of the message to Kamarullah. Kamarullah did not reply beyond a routine acknowledgment from his comm officer.
Five days into his tenure, Kamarullah finally called for a maneuver—a maneuver out of the old playbook, the ships flying closely together and linked by laser into a shared virtual environment. Martinez shrugged and assumed that his theories, and Sula’s, would remain in obscurity until one or both of them reached flag rank. But no sooner had the maneuver started than Do-faq’s ships, some ten light-minutes behind and visible on the navigation displays, began to separate, one division maintaining a rigid formation while the other formed in a looser group at a distance, a group in which the relative positions of the ships were constantly shifting.
“Screens,” Martinez told his sensor operators, “I want that maneuver—thatexperiment — recorded.”
Martinez didn’t believe for a moment that this was spontaneous. Do-faq was proving even more devious a service infighter than Martinez had suspected. Do-faq had waited for Kamarullah to call a maneuver—he must have partisans within the light squadron, among the captains—and then he’d called his own for the same moment. His staff must have been working overtime to put this together, to show Do-faq’s commitment to tactical innovation while Kamarullah was putting his squadron through the same old stodge.
Do-faq had placed his bet in history’s sweepstakes, and the bet was on Martinez.
Martinez felt the glow in his heart for days.
As if the Battle of Hone-bar had somehow liberated the frigate from a month-long jinx,Corona performed flawlessly in Kamarullah’s maneuvers. The glow in Martinez’s heart brightened.
Reviewing the recordings of Do-faq’s experiment, Martinez felt the pulse of triumph along his nerves, a sense that this might be the start of something sensational, that might in fact be perfectly brilliant. Squadron Commander Do-faq obligingly sent Martinez a recording of his maneuver, one that included tracks of the virtual missiles the ships had “fired” during the exercise, and recordings of the equally virtual defensive laser and antiproton fire. Even though the firing had been simulated, they seemed to suggest that the looser, flexible formation gave a decided advantage to the side that used it.
Immensely cheered by this, Martinez turned his mind to another set of recordings entirely, the recordings he’d made of Kamarullah’s communications during the battle, those in which he questioned Martinez’s judgment and tried to take command of the squadron. There were a number of things Martinez could do with the recordings. He could, for instance, send them to the Fleet Control Board along with a complaint, which he was reasonably certain would result in the end of Kamarullah’s career.
He could erase the messages, which would be the generous thing to do. Kamarullah was already an object of hilarity as the man who superceded a successful commander in the hours after a battle: was it quite so necessary for Martinez to push him over a cliff as well?
Or he could simply leave them where they were, in the recordings of the battle that he would in time turn into Fleet Records Office. The messages would become part of the official record, where they would be found by anyone interested in the battle and with the proper access. There might well be repercussions for Kamarullah’s career at some point, but Martinez’s finger wouldn’t be so conspicuously on the trigger when Kamarullah went down.
Martinez debated the matter with himself for some time. He didn’t like Kamarullah, but he told himself to put personal feelings aside.
Though personal feelings aside, hestill didn’t like Kamarullah.
If he sent the messages on to the Fleet Control Board, that would be a deliberate act aimed at finishing Kamarullah for good and all. Kamarullah would remain in the service—officers were desperately needed—but he’d be stuck in a desk job somewhere and he’d never see promotion. Martinez couldn’t help but be satisfied at the picture.
But what would happen to Martinez? He would become known as the sort of officer who blew up other officers’ careers. Kamarullah might have friends or patrons in the service who would be in a position to take revenge on his behalf.
On the other hand, if he erased the recordings, would Kamarullah be grateful? Would he use his influence to help Martinez advance in the service?
Martinez thought not. If Martinez erased the recordings, Kamarullah would continue in command of Light Squadron 14, though it was likely that—if Do-faq’s report offered anything like justice—Martinez would be promoted out of the squadron, either to another ship or to a squadron command of his own, and then he wouldn’t have to worry about Kamarullah again.
Martinez looked at his options, his uncertainty tipping the balance one way, then another.
And then he asked himself the question: If we were in combat, would I feel safer if Kamarullah were in charge?
The answer to that question came very quickly, with a chill and a start of horror.
He would keep his ammunition against Kamarullah in case it looked as if Light Squadron 14 might actually engage the enemy under Kamarullah’s command.
But otherwise he would make no move. He would see what developed in reaction to his success at the Battle of Magaria.
And, until then, he would enjoy Kamarullah’s silence.
It was four days before Kamarullah ordered another maneuver, and during that time both he and Martinez were privileged to witness a series of daily experiments by Do-faq’s squadron. Again Kamarullah’s maneuver was a standard exercise out of the textbook. AgainCorona distinguished itself with a flawless performance.
It was afterward that Kamarullah dropped the bombshell. In a message to the captains of his squadron, Kamarullah in a toneless voice read an order from the Fleet Control Board, requi
ring all ships to Zanshaa to dock at Zanshaa’s ring, at which point both officers and enlisted would debark and be replaced by fresh crews.
“Are theyinsane?” Martinez wanted to shriek. To replace the only crews in the whole fleet with experience of victory and replace them by people who knewnothing? Admittedly the squadron’s crews were beaten down from their month of acceleration, but the Control Board was throwing away all his men had learned.
And they were throwing awayMartinez! The only officer who had given them a victory! What could those people be thinking?
On receipt of the message, Martinez stalked to his office and sat in seclusion with a bottle of brandy, but two swallows made him realize he was too angry to spend his time wallowing in misery. He locked the bottle back in its cabinet and instead dictated and sent an angry letter to his brother, Roland.
He doubted it would do any good, but Roland was at least a safe custodian of his rage.
“And here are the two affidavits testifying to my identity,” said Sula. She produced the documents, written as law required on special stiff paper that would remain legible in the archives for at least a thousand years. She handed the papers to Mr. Wesley Weckman, the glossy young man who managed the trust department of the bank where Lady Sula’s funds had been kept since the execution of her parents.
Now that she had reached her majority at the age of twenty-three, it would normally require only a signature and a thumbprint to release the funds, but the pad of Sula’s thumb had been burned away during an accident with one of theDelhi ‘s heat-exchange pipes shortly after the Battle of Magaria. Testament from higher authority was therefore required.
Weckman glanced at the signatures. “Your commanding officer,” he said, “and…” His eyebrows lifted. “Lord Durward Li. Well, they should know you if anyone does.” His eyes turned to Sula. “Of course, it’s a bit redundant after all your appearances on video.”
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