Martinez sent Kung the latest news. “I’ll also send you our latest codes and ciphers, but I’ll wait until an enemy-held relay station isn’t directly behind you.”
Through that station, the enemy had just heard for the first time the results of the Battle of Shulduc. There was no reason to keep it secret any longer, and Martinez hoped the news might damage enemy morale.
Since the Righteous Fleet for Suppression of Dissension wasn’t going to show up any time soon, Martinez ordered Division Two to reduce its deceleration. His ligaments crackled as they broadcast their relief.
Thirty hours later Kung and Martinez came close enough to have something like a normal conversation.
“I’m sending you recordings of the Shulduc fight,” Martinez said. “I hope they’ll be useful to you.”
“I’m sure they will be,” said Kung. “We’ve been drilling the Foote Formula ever since we left Zanshaa system, but it’s always useful to see the formula being applied.”
Inwardly Martinez winced at the mention of Foote.
“I see you’re not accompanied by The Sublime Truth of the Praxis,” Martinez said. Sublime was the battleship built for Terran crews on Zanshaa’s ring.
“It wasn’t complete, and we couldn’t take it,” Kung said. “But we wrecked it good and proper before we left. Destroyed every piece of electronics, smashed every working part on the engines, and punched holes in the hull. It’ll be months before they can get it in service again.”
“Very good work, my lord. Were the other battleships complete?”
“They are by now,” Kung said. “I’m sure Tork is commanding from Battle Squadron One, for all it has only three ships now. I don’t know whether the Second Fleet’s battleship was ready or not—I rather think not.”
“Do you know if Tork has developed any doctrine for use of the battle squadron?”
“None that he ever articulated to me.”
Martinez wasn’t surprised. He had always assumed that the battleships had been Tork’s vanity project, the floating palaces in which he could parade his own grandeur.
“We also took every Terran-crewed support vessel with us,” Kung added. “So we have a full complement of tenders, supply ships, and courier vessels.” That explained the large number of ships with Kung, many of which Martinez had first mistaken for decoys.
“Excellent, my lord.” Martinez was beginning to feel intimidated by Kung’s unblemished record of success and annoyed by his method of announcing it.
“Along the way,” Kung said, “we also plundered Zarafan. Wrecked the dockyards, stole all the military supplies, and took every ship we could crew or that was willing to join us.”
“Congratulations, my lord.”
“The ships I detailed for that work are some distance behind us,” Kung said. “Please don’t shoot at them when they come through the wormhole.”
“I’ll do my best not to.”
“When we beat Tork, any enemy survivors will have to run all the way to Zanshaa to resupply,” Kung said. His benign expression was beginning to look more like self-satisfaction.
“I’m not planning on there being any survivors,” Martinez said.
“By the way, Lord Gareth,” he said, “I see that you’re calling yourself ‘fleet commander’ these days.”
“Lady Michi Chen was kind enough to promote me,” Martinez said.
“But yet—” Kung seemed to be making some kind of thoughtful internal calculation. “Yet I have always been superior to you in rank. Not your fault, of course, but—”
So that was what this litany of self-praise was about, Martinez thought. Kung was angling for command of the Fourth Fleet and was hoping to so impress Martinez with his accomplishments that Martinez would be intimidated into stepping down.
“So,” Kung said, apparently drawing some kind of conclusion, “if I were to give you an order . . . ?”
“I don’t believe your lordship has any reason to give me one,” Martinez said.
“Hmm. Really?” It had to be admitted, Martinez thought, that Kung’s well-groomed performance, pretending all this analysis was spontaneous, was really quite superb.
“You can take this up with Lady Michi, of course,” Martinez said. “But before you do, you might want to ask yourself a question: How many battles have I won? Because when I ask myself that question, the answer is three, with a fourth won by the Martinez Method though I was not present.” Martinez thought that perhaps it was his turn to offer a little self-satisfaction. “Whereas,” he continued, “I know you had a desk job in the last war.” He smiled, then added, “Not your fault, of course.”
“Well, Lord Gareth,” Kung said, carefully avoiding speaking Martinez’s rank aloud. “You have certainly given me a great deal to think about.”
“Please give my best regards to Lady Michi when you speak with her,” Martinez said. “And we have a whole series of dispatches, along with mail, that I hope you will transmit to Harzapid when you have the chance.”
“Of course, my lord.”
Nothing, Martinez thought, like putting a rival in the role of postman.
A few hours later, Division Two finally ended its long deceleration, and began its acceleration in the direction of Harzapid. Nothing really changed—the ships flipped but were on the same bearing, and acceleration and deceleration felt alike to anyone having to endure them. But this time the acceleration was less ferocious, and the crews all got a chance to sleep without having to fight for every breath.
It was eleven days later, when Division Two finally entered a system that had a friendly transmission link to Harzapid, that Martinez received Michi’s transmission about his new tactical officer. He stared at the screen for a long time, and then was aware that his mouth was hanging open, and closed it.
This is going to be awkward, he thought.
Chapter 12
Nikki Severin had been advancing the Restoration’s controlled wormhole network as quickly as he could, sending out shuttles full of armed Exploration Service crews to the relay stations to relieve the existing crews. Martinez and Division Two had moved beyond the relay station network after Shulduc and had gone out of communication, but since then the network had grown, Martinez was now one system out from Toley, and should again be in communication with the Restoration.
Time, Sula thought, to face the enemy.
She wore full-dress uniform, with the high collar, the double row of silver buttons, and her junior fleet commander’s shoulder boards. She wore more cosmetic than usual and wished she could have used more to create a perfect mask to hide behind.
Sula sat upright behind a desk that smelled faintly of lemon polish, with the camera directly in front of her. Behind the camera her wall screen showed the notes she’d made for her transmission. She hadn’t written a speech, exactly, but she’d put her talking points on the screen. She didn’t want to miss any points and have to send a follow-up message as a kind of embarrassing appendix.
“Junior Fleet Commander Lady Sula to Fleet Commander Martinez, personal and private,” she began, then paused. Begin, she thought, with the disclaimer. “I’d like to make it clear that I did not seek the job of tactical officer. This was Lady Michi’s idea, ordered over my objections.
“I’d also like to state that I have no intention of wearing staff tabs on my collar. A junior fleet commander is not on anyone’s staff.”
Set out the terms, she thought. Then get to the actual message.
Martinez watched Sula, stiff and formal and expressionless, behind her desk. His chest seemed to be full of flapping butterflies. Ablaze with resentment, the emerald-green eyes bored straight into him.
“I’m enclosing the records of all the exercises I’ve been running with the Fourth Fleet,” she said. “The earlier records are full of inexperienced crews learning their jobs, so if I were you, I’d look at the later ones.” She took a breath. “The results are not encouraging. Fighting odds of nearly two to one, we can hurt the enemy badly, but eventua
lly we’re overwhelmed. Even if we win, we’re so badly damaged that we’d have a hard time mustering the numbers to advance to Zanshaa.”
Great news, Martinez thought. He was half reclined on his bed, fresh from his morning shower and drinking his breakfast coffee. Large pictures of his family, Terza, Gareth the Younger, and Yaling, were arranged to obscure the erotic contortions of the Torminel on his walls, and they added a pleasing note of domesticity to his decor.
He wasn’t looking at his family. He was looking at Sula. He wasn’t thinking domestic thoughts, either.
“One thing we’re learning,” Sula said, “is that our initial dispositions are critical. Our fleets are now so large that shifting deployments on the run is next to impossible. This was even more obvious once Kung’s forces joined ours—our fleet is increasingly difficult to maneuver.” She raised a hand. “Of course, with double our numbers, that problem will be even greater for Tork. Once the engagement starts, he’ll be stuck with whatever disposition he starts with. If we could work out ways to increase our maneuverability, we could try to take advantage of his static positions.”
She took a breath. “We can make certain assumptions about Tork’s intentions. He’ll come in slow and deliberately, as he did at Magaria. And because they worked for him once, he’ll use the same tactics he used at Magaria. And he won’t care what tactics we use, because he’ll know that his tactics are right and ours are wrong, and he won’t think beyond that. But his officers might”—she made a fist and shook it, once, at an invisible enemy—“so if Tork lets them off the leash they could really fuck us.” Sula let the fist fall to her desk. “So we have to make sure that Tork stays in control of his forces up until the very end. And that means we have to keep Tork alive—he should be the last person to die in the entire Home Fleet. And we should also give him what he’s looking for—we should deploy our forces in the most conventional way possible, and then change it up and hope he can’t react quickly enough.”
It wouldn’t be hard to find Tork amid his vast battle fleet, Martinez thought. His flagship would be a part of Battleship Squadron One, and the battleships would be looking for the enemy flagship so that Tork could thrash the rebellion out of Michi Chen in person.
Which meant, Martinez realized, that Tork would be going after Perfection of the Praxis on the assumption that it would be Michi’s flagship. He wouldn’t know that Michi wasn’t with the Fourth Fleet, or that Martinez would be commanding from Bombardment of Los Angeles. Which in turn meant that Perfection of the Praxis might be used to lure Tork into a deadly mistake.
Sad, Martinez thought, for whoever was commanding Perfection. Conyngham, wasn’t it?
“So we use Perfection as a decoy,” Martinez said, in his reply to Sula later that morning. He imitated Sula’s style of on-camera delivery, wearing full dress with the disk of the Golden Orb around his neck, and recording from behind the desk in his office, with its background of Torminel wrestlers. “We’ll have to make it look good by supporting Perfection with a couple squadrons of heavy cruisers, but if we do it right, we can draw Tork and his battleships out of position. And then Perfection won’t engage, just keep pulling away . . . and in the meantime we can concentrate on the rest of the Home Fleet and wreck them.”
He could see it, and he knew that Sula, when she received the message, would see it as well. Every time they had worked together—on developing the Method, on fighting at Naxas—their minds fell into an eerie synchronization, even if they were in separate star systems. Different as their personalities were, their brains saw some kinds of problems in complementary ways.
“As for the difficulty maneuvering such a large fleet,” he said, “try experimenting with mobile reserves to give us some flexibility. But what I’d like to start working on now are ways to keep Tork and the Home Fleet under pressure. Constant small ambushes, the same sort that Chenforce encountered at Arkhan-Dohg in the Naxid War. That will mean setting up radars and lidar ahead of time, preferably unmanned, because if they had people on board it would be suicide for them. I’m afraid you’re going to have to organize that, because I don’t have the resources out here. Understand?”
He knew that she would understand. He knew that she would be superb at this.
Tork wasn’t going to know what hit him.
Lamey gave an earnest look at Sula through the video screen. “I hope you’re telling your rich officers about the investment opportunities available to them,” he said. “‘Investment as solid as the mountains of Esley.’ That’s our slogan.”
Oh, Lamey, Sula thought. She could only shake her head. At Harzapid he had a whole planet of possible victims, and he wanted the Fourth Fleet, too?
“Seriously, Earthgirl,” he said. “I could use some help. Mehrang’s getting on my back about lack of progress, and I’m cut off from my own sources of funds at Spannan.” He grinned. “I’ll offer you a twenty percent commission on any investments you bring me.”
Sula snorted, then took a sip of her honey-sweetened tea while considering how best to reply. I’m not going to recommend dubious investments to anyone I count on to preserve my life might well express her feelings, but an inner voice suggested that she shouldn’t take the risk of making Lamey angry. He knew too much about her, and though he couldn’t denounce her without running a risk of being denounced himself, he might in his anger let something slip.
Your job is raising money, my job is fighting a war. Still too blunt, she decided.
She was trying to phrase another rebuff when her cuff button chimed, and Lieutenant Ricci’s face appeared on her sleeve display. “Message from Fleetcom Martinez, my lady,” he said.
“Is it in my queue?”
“As soon as it’s decoded, my lady.”
“Right. Thank you.”
She forgot about Lamey and looked at her message queue. Another few dozen messages—“Personal and private”—had appeared since she’d answered Lamey’s message. She sighed.
The flagship was currently receiving in excess of twelve thousand messages every day, messages from subordinates, from Harzapid, routine reports, urgent queries about supplies or dispositions or clarification of a ship’s part in the next maneuver. Most of these could be handled in a routine manner by members of the staff or the signals department, but still a disturbing number of Sula’s subordinates seemed unable to resolve even minor problems without guidance from the flag officer in command.
She was looking forward to Martinez’s arrival, if only because then all the correspondence would be directed to him, and she could take a rest.
The decoded message from Martinez popped up in her queue, and she triggered it.
Use Perfection as a decoy. Mobile reserves. Ambushes.
Oh yes. Her heart shifted into a faster rhythm, and she tasted metal on her tongue, as if she’d completed a circuit in her head. Scenarios unfolded themselves in her mind, and she saw the battle complete, from the opening moves to Tork’s blazing destruction.
Sula picked up a stylus and jotted notes to herself on her desk display, and then she wondered who she could call on to help her ideas come into better focus.
There was a knock on her office door, and Spence entered, carrying Sula’s dress uniform on a hanger.
“Your guests are on their way,” she said. “You need to dress for dinner.”
Another damned dinner, Sula thought. She reviewed the guest list and found them all uninspired.
“Right,” she said, rose from behind her desk, and began to unbutton her undress tunic. “Let’s get this over with.”
She’d forgotten Lamey entirely.
Before the war broke out, Martinez’s sister Vipsania had produced a video documentary, The War of the Naxid Rebellion, which had been broadcast throughout the empire on her own Imperial network. The video succeeded in turning Martinez into a celebrity, and Sula into a public hero.
Sula had assumed the video was intended solely to glorify Martinez and his family, but to her surprise it provided actual h
istory, as well as going to some effort to track the contributions of individuals to the victory over the Naxids. Sula’s contribution to the new tactics had been acknowledged, and Chandra Prasad had been given credit for anticipating the Naxid ambush at Arkhan-Dohg.
Prasad had been promoted to squadron leader and now commanded Division Twelve, the two light squadrons that hadn’t finished their conversions when the rest of the Fourth Fleet departed Harzapid. Division Twelve had finally completed its modification from Cree- to Terran-crewed ships and had pulled hard gees to catch the Fourth Fleet. Now that she’d arrived, Sula invited Prasad to a welcoming supper, along with half her captains. The other half would have to wait for another occasion, or for Defense to install a much larger dining room.
Lady Chandra Prasad was a Martinez protégée, and Sula knew her only casually from when they’d encountered each other on Harzapid’s ring. She had a pointed chin and long dark eyes and braced at the hatch with her shoulders flared back, her long hair—a bright, highly artificial shade of red—turned to a scarlet halo by a light behind her in the airlock.
“Welcome, Squadcom,” Sula said. “Will you introduce your captains?”
Sula already knew the small, delicate Vonderheydte, another Martinez protégé, and again wondered if he’d managed to sneak Marietta Li aboard his Declaration frigate. Of course she knew the Kangas twins and saw that Ranssu wore gloves, presumably so as not to call attention to his mutilated hand. The fresh skin on his cheek stood out by virtue of its not being as weathered as the rest of his face. The improbably youthful Lieutenant-Captain Lord Pavel Ikuhara had served with Sula on the Confidence and later helped capture the Striver on its way to Harzapid. He had grown a goatee in an attempt to look more mature, but instead he looked as if a child had scrawled over the lower half of his face with a crayon. The other three captains were middle-aged lieutenants promoted out of retirement. Sula introduced her own Captain Haz and led the others to dinner, sitting them at the wedge-shaped table in the wedge-shaped room. Spence and Macnamara poured wine and served starters of cashment flavored with tart chuchu berries.
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