The Sundering def-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  To his second-in-command, Gruust, who was strapping himself into the acceleration couch before the comm board, he said, “Gruust, prepare for transmission.”

  And then he turned to his chief engineer, and could not stop the blissful smile from breaking out on his lips. “Begin the engine startup sequence. And let’s get some heat in here.”

  The squadron commander led Chenforce from her own hardened Flag Officer Station more or less at the cruiser’s center of gravity: she was the fulcrum of the ship literally as well as metaphorically. Martinez, as her tactical officer, sat facing her in a separate acceleration cage: another cage behind her held her two signals lieutenants and a fourth a warrant officer who monitored the state of the ship.

  Two bulkheads separated the squadcom from Captain Fletcher, who sat in a separate command station forward, with a full staff of lieutenants and warrant officers to controlIllustrious and its weapons. Auxiliary Command, aft, was in the charge of Lieutenant Kazakov, who would only be called upon to issue an order if her captain were killed.

  Fletcher had done his best to ornament the unpromising material of the Flag Officer Station: he’d made the little boxy room seem larger by employing murals that made the station seem to be part of a vast pillared hall through which citizens of the empire, dressed in antique fashions and armed with nets and spears, pursued fantastic animals. The illusion, however, was spoiled by the large surface area that had to be devoted to the various navigation and weapons displays, and around which the little sentients and beasts were forced to vault or climb. In all, the room had to be considered one of Fletcher’s lesser efforts.

  Ignoring the hunters and prey on the walls, Martinez kept his eyes fixed on his tactical displays, for all that there was very little on them. Protipanu was a brown dwarf so faint as to be nearly invisible to human eyes, and earlier in its history, as a red giant, had consumed its inner planets and demolished others through gravitational stress. The result was a lot of asteroids, with the four surviving planets quite far out, and at the moment widely scattered. These were gas giants, with some of their outer atmosphere blown away but with their heavy cores still intact.

  Chenforce was heading toward the nearest of these, Pelomatan, intending to swing around it on the way to another planet, Okiray, and on to Wormhole 3 and the transit to Mazdan. It had been possible to plot a course directly from one wormhole to the next, but both Martinez and Lady Michi had rejected that notion because the roundabout route gave more options in the unlikely event that any enemy warships were still in the system. Because Chenforce had decelerated so much since leaving Zanshaa, the transition to the next wormhole would take nearly eight days.

  “Message!”The astonished cry came from Coen, the red-haired signals lieutenant. “Incoming message!”

  “Where from?” Michi demanded. “The wormhole station?” The squadron had just blasted past the station, which had been out of touch with its counterpart at Seizho since the wormhole had been moved out of alignment. It was barely possible, Martinez supposed, that the Naxids had ignored the useless station and that loyalists were still occupying the place.

  “No.” Coen put a hand to the side of his helmet, as if it would help him hear better. “The message is coming by comm laser from an asteroid, and it’s in the clear. It’s supposed to be from a Warrant Officer Severin of the Exploration Service.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Martinez said, and then winced for forgetting he wasn’t in charge and anticipating his commander.

  Coen didn’t wait for Michi to confirm the order, but sent the message to everyone in the Flag Officer Station. A miniature Severin appeared in a corner of Martinez’s display, a shaggy-haired, bearded man in the blue uniform of the Exploration Service. Martinez enlarged the image as the man began to speak.

  “This is Warrant Officer First Class Shushanik Severin to any incoming warship,” the bearded man said. “My crew and I were assigned to the station at Wormhole Two when the rebellion broke out. When the frigateCorona transited the system to Seizho, Captain Martinez warned me that a Naxid squadron was following within hours. I therefore ordered the wormhole moved seven diameters off the plane of the ecliptic, and then loaded my crew into the lifeboat and grappled it to an asteroid. Since that time, we’ve been powered down and keeping the enemy under observation.”

  The bearded man leaned toward the camera, and his voice took on urgency.

  “My lords,the Naxids never left Protipanu! The original eight warships have been reinforced by two more, and they have scattered approximately a hundred and twenty decoys throughout the system. Our observations have been updated every hour, and I am appending a standard navigation plot with the latest information. The positions are a bit approximate, since we’d give ourselves away if we used radar, and have been forced to use our visual detectors to look for engine flares and then do a bit of interpolation, but we’ve been accurate in the past.”

  Martinez could see that Severin’s breath turned to mist as it left his lips. “We will be standing by to answer any questions, though we request permission to leave for Seizho as soon as possible because, ah, the Naxids are bound to notice us now, and we are unarmed and helpless.

  “We are standing by. This is Warrant Officer Severin.”

  “Message from Captain Fletcher, my lady.” This was Lady Ida Li, the other signals lieutenant and a distant relation of the Lord Richard Li who had been engaged to Terza before the war. “The captain suggests the message may be Naxid disinformation.”

  “I don’t believe so, my lady,” Martinez said. He looked at the image of Severin, who was now wrapping himself in a silver thermal blanket. “I remember Severin fromCorona ‘s passage through the system. This is the man.”

  He’s had his ass frozen to that rock for five months, he thought in disbelief. And I believe that is frost I see on his mustache.

  “Tell Captain Fletcher,” Michi told Li, “that Captain Martinez has encountered Mr. Severin before, and vouches for him.”

  Which was not quite what Martinez had said, but Martinez knew better than to correct his superior.

  “Comm, reply to Mr. Severin’s message,” Michi said. “Acknowledge, and tell him to stand by.”

  “Acknowledge Severin’s message,” Coen repeated. “Tell him to stand by. Shall I give him permission to evacuate the system?”

  “Yes,” Michi said. “Why not?”

  “I’ve checked the attached file,” Coen said. “No viruses or other sabotage software.”

  Martinez loaded Severin’s file into the tactical computer, and the near-empty Protipanu system blossomed with bright images, all attached to little identification labels giving course, speed, and class of vessel. There were far too many to take in at once. Martinez decided a virtual display would be more useful, and at his command the vast spaces of Protipanu’s system blossomed in his mind. He sat at the central point of the brown dwarf and looked with care at the distant fires that orbited him.

  The supposed enemy squadron was two-thirds of the way across the system, partway between the Olimandu and Aratiri gas giants. It was moving in the same circle around Protipanu as Chenforce, and if it accelerated, it would eventually come up on Chenforce from behind, perhaps after four or five days.

  Other icons identified as decoys were scattered throughout the system, some orbiting Protipanu in one direction, some in the other. All of them were echeloned to look like enemy squadrons, and if Severin’s estimates were correct Chenforce was going to be encountering one of them head-on in about fourteen hours.

  The problem was that there was no real confirmation for any of this. Chenforce’s radars had yet to reach any targets and return with information. If Severin’s information were in fact Naxid disinformation, Martinez had no way of knowing.

  Martinez let the virtual solar system fade from his mind and delivered his analysis to the squadron commander.

  “If we increased acceleration we could probably make Wormhole Three before the Naxids could stop us,” he said.
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  Michi shook her head. “No. I’m not going to strike out on this mission with an enemy force right on our tail. I want to beat them right here, at Protipanu.”

  Martinez looked into her dark eyes and felt a stirring in his nerves.To our hunt.

  “Very good, my lady,” he said. He looked at the plot on his display, then put it on the wall display for both of them to see. “If Severin’s right about the location of the enemy it will be days before we engage, but I can see one decision we’re going to have to make fairly soon.” He manipulated a pointer on the display to indicate the supposed decoys they would encounter in fourteen hours. “Do we behave as if we already know these are decoys, or as if they’re real ships? We’d use a lot more missiles on real ships.”

  Michi’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the advantage to putting on a pretense that we think they’re real?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Martinez admitted. “It depends on how they plan to use their decoys.”

  Michi considered. “We have some hours to think about it,” she said. “Let’s see if Severin’s information is confirmed.”

  “Transmission!” Coen called. “Radio transmission, from Wormhole Station Two.” He frowned at his display. “What we’re getting is fragmentary and low quality. And it’s coded.”

  Sent by radio instead of powerful communications laser, the message was having a hard time getting throughIllustrious ‘s radioactive tail. The Naxids in the wormhole station were broadcasting to everyone in the system rather than to an individual ship.

  “Send the message to cryptographic analysis,” Michi said. “It’ll give them some practice.” She looked at Martinez. “Which raises another issue,” she said.

  “Yes, my lady?”

  “We’ve got to destroy all three wormhole stations. I don’t want any information getting to the Naxid fleet command about the tactics I’m going to use.”

  There was a brief silence as Martinez thought of the crews of the stations watching the missiles racing toward them, the speeding death they could do nothing to stop. “Very good, my lady,” Martinez said. “Shall I ask Severin to confirm that the relay stations are all occupied by the enemy?”

  “Blow Station Two first,” Michi said. “They’vealready shown they’re the enemy.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Martinez transmitted the order to Husayn, Fletcher’s weapons officer, and then—when Fletcher broke in asking for confirmation—informed the captain that the live-fire order had come from the squadron commander.

  Martinez enlarged the communications board on his display, with its picture of the bearded Severin puffing out steam as he sat at his acceleration couch waiting for his engine start-up sequence to conclude.

  “Mr. Severin,” he transmitted, “it’s very good to see you again. This is Captain Martinez, tactical officer for Squadron Commander Chen. I would advise you to remain at your present location until the plasma cloud near Wormhole Two has dispersed, and in the meantime to get your crew into their hardened shelter. Right now, however, I’d like your confirmation that all wormhole stations have been occupied by the Naxids.”

  Severin was already several light-minutes from the squadron, so it was some time before Martinez saw him turn from a conversation with someone off-camera, and stare with quick attention at the incoming transmission. At first there was a moment of pleased apprehension—Martinez assumed he’d been recognized, and felt a touch of vanity at Severin’s reaction. Then Martinez saw Severin’s moment of puzzlement, followed by alarmed concern. Severin gave a quick glance to another display, presumably to confirm that the missile was on its way—which in fact it was, though it wouldn’t have shown on Severin’s display as yet.

  “Captain Martinez,” he said, “welcome back to Protipanu. The pleasure of this meeting is all mine, believe me. Your message is understood and we’ll take shelter. All wormhole stations were occupied by the enemy, so far as we can tell. We’ll stand by for any further—” His eyes darted to the other display again. “I can see your missile has been fired. We’ve got to halt our countdown and get all our spare rations and gear out of the hard shelter, so good luck to you and yours. We’ll remain standing by.”

  Martinez smiled. The tiny radiation shelter on a lifeboat was designed to hold the crew in very close quarters during a solar flare emergency, not a very likely occurrence in the vicinity of a brown dwarf like Protipanu. Apparently Severin had been using his shelter as a butler’s pantry.

  There was quite enough time to clear the shelter out.Illustrious ‘s missile had to counter the momentum imparted to it by the squadron before it could begin to claw its way toward its target, and everyone involved was going to have plenty of warning, even the Naxids.

  Martinez called up his weapons plots, and let the computers calculate trajectories for a moment. Then he turned to Michi.

  “My lady squadcom,” he said, “Station Three is clean across the system and it’s probably too early to start shooting at it. But we can most likely take out Station One before the Naxid squadron learns the missiles are on the way and takes effective countermeasures. The station is relatively close to us, and if the enemy are where Severin says they are, they won’t have time to fire countermissiles. They’re going to have to use lasers, and at that range, if our missile is jinking, they’ll have to be very lucky to hit it.”

  Michi nodded. “Transmit the order, then. Let’s make it two missiles, just in case.”

  Martinez contacted Husayn again and gave the order. There might be enough warning, he thought, for the Naxids to escape through the wormhole if they had a lifeboat like Severin’s, and then he wondered at his squeamishness at killing the station crews. They were rebels, of course, and deserved death almost by definition. At Hone-bar his orders had killed thousands of enemy, and it hadn’t occurred to him to hesitate. Yet something in him shrank at the thought of the crews’ helplessness, at the fact that they’d see their death coming for hours in which they could do little but watch their oncoming extinction.

  So, he asked himself, he would feel better about killing them if they could only shoot back? There did not seem a high survival value attached to this strategy. The entire empire had been built on using massive force against helpless populations, and was now convulsed by a civil war in which thousands, millions, even billions could die. Martinez told himself that he should get used to it.

  Lady Michi didn’t seem troubled by these considerations. She unbuckled her webbing and rolled her cage forward to plant her feet on the deck.

  “It doesn’t look as if anything very exciting is going to happen for several hours,” she said. “I’m going to stretch my legs and get something to eat. Lieutenant Coen,” to the signals lieutenant, “tell the squadron that this would be a good time to feed crews in shifts.” She looked at Martinez. “Monitor the situation till I return, Captain Martinez. Let me know if there’s any change.”

  “Very good, my lady.”

  He let the thoughts go and busied himself with his displays. Over the next couple of hours flights of vehicles winked into existence on the screens as theIllustrious radars began to confirm elements of what Severin had told them. Severin’s data indicated these were all decoys, though their behavior didn’t prove anything one way or another.

  Before Lady Michi returned, Station 2 was engulfed by an antimatter fireball. Martinez decided that this didn’t qualify as sufficiently exciting news to disturb her, though he reported it verbally, half an hour later, when she returned.

  “Thank you,” she said, showing little interest. “Anything else?”

  Martinez showed her the displays. “The Naxid squadron should be realizing we exist about now.” He looked at her. “Do you suppose they’ve been ordered to Zanshaa, to meet the advance from Magaria? Or to Seizho to block the hypothetical escape of our hypothetical Home Fleet? If that’s the case, we may just exchange places like a couple of dancers and then go about our business.”

  Lady Michi seemed intrigued by this idea. “When will we find ou
t?”

  “They’ll burn past Aratiri in twenty minutes or so. Either they’ll carry on toward Wormhole Two, or swing toward Pelomatan after us, but we’re not going to get to see what they do for a hundred or so minutes after that.”

  “Interesting.” She put a hand on her acceleration cage and lowered herself into her couch. “Have we heard from Mr. Severin?”

  “No, my lady, but he was well outside the deadly range of the blast.”

  “I want to put him in for a decoration. Freezing out here for five months was a brave and noteworthy thing, and he did it on his own initiative.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Martinez considered this. “But how are we going to let the Fleet know of the recommendation? We’ll be out of touch for months. Severin may have to carry his own recommendation home with him.”

  Michi frowned. “That won’t look good, will it? Showing up at the Seizho ring station and saying, ‘By the way, I’ve earned a medal’?” She let go of the acceleration cage and let the couch swing to its neutral, reclined position. Somewhere a bearing squeaked. She pulled down her displays to the locked position in front of her.

  “Well then,” she said. “Since the Exploration Service is under Fleet control for the duration of the war, we may as well take advantage of the fact. Inform Mr. Severin that he’s just received a field promotion to full lieutenant.” She turned to her signals lieutenants. “Li, call up the appropriate document. I’ll sign it and send a facsimile to Severin.”

  Martinez watched this display of privilege and patronage with surprise and a degree of awe. Severin was a commoner, and commoners were rare in the officer corps. Rarer still was a field promotion. Martinez didn’t think there had been one in centuries.

  Martinez triggered his comm display. “Mr. Severin,” he said, “this is Captain Martinez. Squadron Commander Chen wishes me to inform you that in return for your gallantry and enterprise you have just received a field promotion to full lieutenant.” Thegallantry and enterprise was his own addition, but he thought it sounded good.