Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  He remained awake for the countdown that started engine number one, and made certain that the new turbopump was performing up to specs before calling for Alikhan to bring him his nightly cocoa.

  “What are they saying now, Alikhan?” Martinez asked.

  Alikhan was looking with great disapproval at Martinez’s shoes, spattered with engine coolant and the muck of the heat exchange room.

  “Francis is furious,” he said. “She was planning on retiring after the war, and now she’ll have a much smaller pension.”

  Martinez held his cup of cocoa under his nose and inhaled the rich sweet scent. “So she’s gathering sympathy then?” he asked.

  Alikhan drew himself up with magisterial dignity and dropped the soiled shoes into their bag. “Fuck her,” he pronounced, “she put the ship in danger. You could have cut her throat, and maybe you should have. As it is, you hit her where she hurts. With Francis it’s always about money.”

  “Right,” Martinez said, and concealed a smile. “Thank you, Alikhan.”

  He swallowed his muscle relaxant, then slid into bed and sipped his cocoa while he looked at the painting of the woman, child, and cat.

  Day by day, Illustrious was becoming his ship, and less something that belonged to Fletcher, or the petty officers, or the Fourth Fleet. Today had been an important step in that process.

  Another couple months, he thought pleasantly, and the cruiser would fit him like a glove.

  Chenforce made a high-gravity burn around Arkhan-Dohg’s sun and hurled itself for Wormhole 3, its presence marked by the radioactive dust that had been its relay station. No Naxid missiles barred their way.

  On the other side of Wormhole 3 was Choiyn, a wealthy world with five billion inhabitants and considerable industry. Four uncompleted medium-sized warships, large frigates or light cruisers, were cast adrift from its ring and destroyed, along with half a dozen merchant ships that had been unable to clear the system in time.

  No Naxid attack threatened, but to be safe, Michi vaporized all the wormhole stations anyway, lest they provide tracking data to the enemy.

  Martinez was busy with drills, inspections, and minutiae. Rao, Francis’s replacement, produced revised 77-12s that corrected Francis’s elisions, and Martinez’s inspections showed that Rao’s data were not in error.

  Cadet Ankley, who had been made Acting Lieutenant after Phillips’s suicide, spectacularly lost his temper when an inspection of his division had turned up some chaotic inventory, and had to be returned to the ranks of the cadets while Cadet Qing was promoted in his place.

  This failure was balanced by Chandra Prasad’s success. Her exercises had Chenforce pelted by relativistic missiles from all directions, and also compelled the squadron to confront a wide variety of Naxid attacks, the enemy converging on Chenforce from various headings and with a wide variation in velocity. It was a big surprise when a virtual Naxid squadron starburst to mirror Martinez’s new tactics, and Chenforce had a murderous fight on its hands that ended in mutual annihilation. The sting of this humiliation stayed with Martinez for some time, but eventually he concluded that if the war went on long enough, the Naxids were bound to adopt the new tactics or something like them, and that the Fleet should be ready with countertactics.

  If only he could think of some.

  After Choiyn came Kinawo, a system that featured a main-sequence yellow star orbited by a blue-white companion so furiously radioactive that the system was bereft of life except for the crews of a pair of heavily shielded wormhole stations, both of which were quickly destroyed. Chenforce would transit Kinawo in six days and then enter El-Bin, a system with two habitable planets, one heavily industrialized and the other covered with grazing, herdsmen, and their beasts.

  El-Bin also had four wormholes, each of which offered a different possibility. Which meant that El-Bin was the last possible place to make a certain decision, and whatever way that decision went, it would effect the outcome of the war.

  Martinez invited Lady Michi to supper the night before the squadron was to transit to El-Bin. He had Perry pull out all the stops and prepare a ham, a duck that had been preserved in its own fat, and dumplings stuffed with cheese, smoked pork, and herbs. When Michi arrived, he greeted her with cocktails, pickles, and cheese huffers. She seemed undefinably different, and more attractive. Studying her, he decided the difference was the hair. She still wore it at collar length, with straight bangs across the forehead, but somehow the style suited her more now than in the past.

  “You’ve changed your hair,” he said, “but I can’t work out how.”

  She smiled. “Buckle. Since he doesn’t belong to Captain Fletcher anymore, I thought I’d take advantage of his availability.”

  “He’s done a splendid job. You’re looking very well.”

  She patted her hair. “Now that Buckle’s on staff, I think you’ll find some more attractive crew walking about the ship.”

  “I’ll look forward to that.”

  Martinez sat Michi at the place of honor in the captain’s dining room and had Alikhan open a bottle of wine. The plates arrived, each served by Narbonne in its turn, and Michi was impressed by the vast quantity of food that kept rolling out of the kitchen.

  “I won’t keep my good looks for long if I eat all this,” she remarked.

  “I’d be alarmed for you if you ate everything,” Martinez said, “but I can have Perry prepare a package of leftovers for you. He’d love it, I’m sure—score points against your cook.”

  “I’d rather not have my cook in a mood to poison me, thanks all the same.”

  Over coffee and fried ice cream they began a discussion of that morning’s exercise, in which Chandra had set a pair of converging Naxid squadrons on a virtual Chenforce.

  “Prasad is proving useful,” Michi said. “I’ve completely changed my mind about her.”

  “Yes?”

  “Before I took her on staff, I thought I disliked her. Now that I’ve had a chance to work with her closely, I realize that I hate her guts.” She scowled, her brows meeting. “She’s ambitious, she’s unscrupulous, she’s tactless, and she’s ill-bred. But she’s too good, damn it. I can’t get rid of her.”

  Martinez didn’t disagree with this estimate, and though he was pleased at having unloaded Chandra onto his superior, he felt it would be tactless to show it.

  “I’m sorry she’s so turbulent,” he said.

  “I have to wonder what Kosinic saw in her,” Michi muttered.

  Martinez stared at her. “Kosinic and Chandra were…?”

  “Yes. It began over a year ago, when Kosinic first joined my staff and Prasad had a job on Harzapid’s ring. I’m not sure it continued after Kosinic was wounded, because that’s when Prasad came aboard and began her relationship with the captain.” She scowled. “I suppose Kosinic lacked the strength of character to resist her.”

  Martinez feigned a fascination with his coffee cup. Is Chandra killing all her ex-lovers? he wondered, and then wondered whether the one guard outside during the night watches was enough.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  Michi raised an eyebrow. “Do you think so? I think it’s squalid.”

  “No reason it can’t be both.” Surprise about Chandra and Kosinic swam through his mind, and then he wondered about Michi’s reaction to the business. Perhaps she’d had a little crush on her young protégé? With an effort he pushed speculation to the side. He had other things in mind.

  He looked at Michi. “I have some ideas, my lady, of a tactical nature.”

  A delicate smile touched her lips. “Yes? This supper isn’t purely social then?”

  “I hoped to show you a pleasant evening in exchange for having to listen to my ideas—well, idea, there’s only one.”

  “The dumplings have made me generous. Go on.”

  Martinez took a deliberate sip of his coffee, the bitter taste welcome after the sweet dessert. He put his cup carefully in the saucer. “I’d like to make the case for an attack on
Naxas.”

  Michi smiled. “I was wondering when you’d suggest an attack on the enemy capital. I was making little bets with myself about it.”

  “The Naxids have fifty warships in their fleet,” Martinez said, “and we know that forty-three of them were in the fleet that took Zanshaa. That leaves seven at Magaria and Naxas combined. There was a small squadron of five ships at Naxas at the beginning of the war, and I’d bet they’re still there. I’d also be willing to bet they haven’t been reinforced.

  “Chenforce has seven ships, though admittedly Celestial was damaged at Protipanu and can’t fight at full efficiency. Our magazines are depleted by about a third, but we have new tactics, good morale, and a tradition of victory. One attack at Naxas can overwhelm the defenders and put the enemy government at our mercy. It might be the winning stroke.”

  Michi gave a long sigh. “You have no idea how tempting you make it all sound.” She placed her hands flat on the table before her, fingers extended. “But we don’t know that the enemy government is still on Naxas. It might well be in transit to Zanshaa.”

  “That’s a risk,” Martinez admitted.

  “Plus it’s not as if the Naxids don’t know where we are. They may have sent reinforcements to Naxas. Even if we get there first and defeat the five ships, a rescue force may still arrive, and we’d have another fight on our hands, with magazines running empty from the previous fight.”

  “Yes.”

  “And of course they may have completed some of their new ships and sent them to Naxas. And we might not be lucky. And of course my orders specifically order me not to go to Naxas.”

  “True.” Martinez nodded.

  She peered at him from beneath her bangs. “You have no answer to these objections?”

  Martinez felt a sigh building somewhere in his diaphragm, and he suppressed it. “I don’t, my lady.” Because he had considered all these points himself, and all together the objections were formidable.

  Michi seemed disappointed. “I was hoping you would. Because I’ve been thinking about Naxas for some time.”

  Martinez groped for words. “I don’t have logic on my side,” he admitted. “All I have is the sense that we should go to Naxas. It seems to me that we could knock off five enemy ships at a fairly small risk. And then, if the Naxids don’t give up, we could leave and complete our return journey.”

  Michi looked at her hands again. “No. Too many unknowns. We’ve had a very successful raid thus far. If we were unlucky at Naxas, we’d not only hand the enemy a victory—and our own side would have no way to know what happened to us—but we’d be altering the Fleet’s strategic plan.” She looked at him, amusement in her dark eyes. “And since you’re the unacknowledged author of the Fleet’s strategic plan, I presume you’ll want to maintain it.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Martinez felt a constriction in his chest as a mental calculation reached its inevitable conclusion. “In that case,” he said, “I feel obliged to raise the possibility of doing to the Naxids what they tried to do to Chenforce. Accelerate some missiles to relativistic velocities and use them to hammer Naxas. We could bring the ring right down on the heads of their government.”

  Michi shook her head again. “That wouldn’t end the war,” she said. “That would just widen it. The Naxids would feel obliged to use the same tactic, and I don’t want to see the rings at Harzapid and Zarafan and Felarus come down.”

  Martinez felt his breathing slowly ease. “That’s a relief,” he admitted. “I felt that the option should be mentioned, but I can’t say my heart was behind the recommendation.”

  “Yes.” Michi sipped her coffee. “If I’m going to have to destroy our civilization in that way, I’d much rather it be a result of a direct order from a superior, and not something I did on my own.”

  Martinez smiled, but he wondered exactly how readily Michi would obey such an order. She’d been ruthless enough in other areas.

  Uncomfortable with this line of thought, he allowed further calculation to spin through his mind. “Well,” he said, “if we’re not going to the Naxid home world, it seems to me that we should do our best to convince the enemy that Naxas is exactly where we’re going.”

  “You have a suggestion, I take it?”

  “There are four wormholes in El-Bin. We’ll be entering the system through Wormhole One. If we exit the system by way of Wormhole Two, we’d be on the direct route for Naxas, and Wormhole Three takes us eventually to Seizho by way of Felarus, which is a very long route. We actually want to take Wormhole Four, which will begin our loop to rejoin the Home Fleet.

  “At present, our course takes us directly from Wormhole One to Wormhole Four, minus a bit of dodging to avoid hypothetical missiles. But if instead we loop around El-Bin’s sun, it might look to the enemy as if we’re intending to slingshot for Wormhole Two and Naxas. And if they’re indeed sending reinforcements to their home world, that’ll keep them heading for home under high gees just at the moment when Naxas is no longer under threat.”

  “Wrong-foot them a few days more,” Michi murmured. “Yes, I’ll do that.”

  After that the conversation descended into trivialities, and eventually Michi yawned and rose and thanked him for dinner. He walked with her to the door and she surprised him by putting an arm around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder.

  “If you weren’t married to my niece,” she said in his ear, “and if I didn’t actually like her, I’d make an adulterer out of you right now.”

  Martinez tried not to let his mouth fall open. “I’m sure it would be delightful,” he said finally, “but on Terza’s behalf I thank you.”

  She gave him a smile from under one cocked eyebrow and made her way out. Martinez waited for the door to close, then walked to the nearest chair and sat down heavily.

  We have all been on this ship too long, he thought.

  The voyage continued. Chenforce entered El-Bin and made its deceptive swing about its star, all crew strapped into their couches and unconscious through a ten-gee deceleration. Whether the maneuver fooled the Naxid command into diverting ships wasn’t apparent until two systems later, in Anicha, where Chenforce stumbled on a host of merchant ships, all in desperate flight. Anicha, it turned out, was where the Naxids had diverted their merchant ships, getting them out of the way of the presumed showdown at Naxas.

  Chenforce destroyed 131 ships at Anicha and more in the next system, where some had managed to flee.

  The great ship slaughter at Anicha was an exception: for the most part, Illustrious settled into a routine, inspections and drills and musters. The officers invited one another to dinner parties, but behind the gaiety was a kind of weariness. It was clear that everyone had been on the ship too long.

  Martinez now found the 77-12s perfectly reliable. Because they gave him ways of knowing his ship, and because Illustrious was performing so well in the squadron exercises, he reduced the number of inspections and hoped the crew were grateful. He also sometimes abandoned the full-dress formality: on occasion he arrived at an inspection in Fleet-issue coveralls and crawled into conduits and access tunnels, places where Fletcher would never have gone lest he soil his silver braid.

  Fletcher had polished Illustrious to a high gloss but hadn’t really known his ship. Even with his frequent inspections, he could only guess at the real status of the ship’s plant and systems. He saw only the surface, and never knew what rot might be concealed by a thick layer of polish.

  Martinez was learning his ship from the inside out. He would inspect every pump, every launcher, every conduit. He would make Illustrious his own.

  He worked hard. His wrist healed. He still sometimes woke to the phantom scent of Caroline Sula on his pillow.

  Every so often he met with Jukes to discuss the new designs for Illustrious. He was beginning to get used to the idea of his ship as a gaudy personal banner, as far away from Fletcher’s concept as possible.

  In the meantime, Jukes painted his portrait. The artist had wanted t
o create the portrait electronically and print it, but Martinez desired a proper portrait, with paint on canvas, and Jukes complied with weary grace. He put an easel in Martinez’s office and worked there, preferring more obscure hours.

  His portrait was romantic and lofty, Martinez in full dress, the Orb in one hand, his gaze directed somewhere over the viewer’s right shoulder. The other hand rested on a tabletop, next to a model of Corona. Behind him would be a picture-within-a-picture, a portrait of Illustrious blazing into battle. Jukes seemed to think the picture-within-a-picture device was clever. Martinez didn’t understand why exactly, but saw no reason to contradict the other’s professional judgment.

  There was some discussion whether the portrait of Illustrious should portray the ship in its current form, with Fletcher’s abstract color scheme of pink, white, and green, or in the bolder style they planned for Illustrious after the war.

  Martinez put off making the decision, but eventually decided to use Fletcher’s color scheme. Should he win any glory in the war, it would be with Illustrious in its current appearance, and that would be what he wanted to commemorate.

  Besides, he thought, there was no reason to stop at just one portrait. The redesigned Illustrious could be immortalized another time.

  Martinez began to notice at musters and inspections that the crew looked obscurely more attractive. Kazakov came to dine one day with her hair down rather than knotted behind her head, and Martinez was struck by how good-looking she was.

  Buckle, it seemed, was working his magic as a hair stylist and cosmetician. Even Electrician Strode’s bowl haircut seemed more shapely. Martinez called Buckle to his cabin for a haircut, and had to admit that the result was an improvement.

  He made Jukes repaint the portrait to include the more attractive hair style.