Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  Sula reached for her hand comm and turned it to a news channel.

  “The Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis,” she heard, “has decreed that the city of Remba was to be destroyed for multiple acts of rebellion against the Peace of the Praxis. A single missile has been fired by the Fleet as it passed close to Zanshaa. No more attacks are contemplated. The population of surrounding areas are urged to return to work and to act normally.”

  Remba…Sula’s head whirled. Remba was a smallish city on the outskirts of the greater Zanshaa area. There was no significant resistance to the Shaa there that she knew about. In fact, because she didn’t know if other cities on the planet shared Zanshaa City’s immunity, she had discouraged assassinations and bombings outside of the capital, and told recruits there to confine themselves to intelligence gathering and nonlethal forms of sabotage.

  Sula put her hand comm away and rose to her feet. “It’s over,” she told Macnamara. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The Cree began unsteadily to rise to his feet. Sula helped him. He turned to her, the big ears pricked forward. Sula felt a strange throbbing in her bones as the Cree gave out a subsonic sonar cry.

  “You are she,” the Cree said, his voice intent.

  “If you say so,” Sula said.

  The Cree leaned closer. “You are the White Ghost,” he said. His voice was a fierce whisper.

  Sula felt an eerie thrill run up her spine at the unfathomable words. Her thoughts seemed jumbled and she couldn’t manage a response.

  She turned to Macnamara. “Let’s go.”

  They brushed dust off the standing two-wheeler, rolled it off the sidewalk, and moved through the stunned and slow-moving traffic. The Cree stood in the doorway without speaking and sent sonar throbs after her.

  White Ghost, she thought.

  She met with Casimir and Julien that night, in a room off the kitchen of a restaurant in Riverside. With its cheap furniture and plastic tablecloths, it was a place set aside for employees to eat, and it smelled of garlic and rancid cooking oil. Despite the owner’s proven loyalty, Sula swore she’d never eat there again.

  “It was a warning,” Julien said. He gave a wolfish smile. “They didn’t dare hit Zanshaa, but they hit a city close enough so that everyone here could see it and feel the fear.”

  “They’re trying to terrorize us,” Casimir said. He looked at Sula. “Do we feel terrorized?”

  Sula didn’t bother to answer. The Naxids had struck at the city’s population of six hundred thousand, and used a missile without the usual tungsten jacket so there was no fireball—the shock wave had caused some damage, but almost all the casualties were from the radiation attack. There were radiation treatments available, but the guards had been ordered to turn people away from the hospitals.

  “They’re going to have a depopulated city they can give to their clients,” Julien said. “That’ll buy a lot of friends.”

  “I want the ratfucks who did this,” Sula said.

  Casimir laced his long pale fingers together. “We all do,” he said. “But they could all be in orbit for all we know.”

  Sula’s eyes shifted to a picture on the wall. Behind decades of dirt and cooking grease was a heavily retouched shot of the High City, the sky too brilliant a green for reality, the buildings too bright.

  “The Naxid Fleet wouldn’t do this on its own,” she said. “It was their damn committee that ordered this. And they’re where we can get them.”

  “All of them?” Casimir raised an eyebrow. He reached for a glass of the cheap sorghum wine the landlord had poured for them. “We can get at a few, I suppose. Our contacts in the High City can provide their location. But they’re all well-guarded, and any escape route is going to be—”

  “All of them,” Sula said. Her mind had been caught up in the whirlwind of the idea. “And I’m not talking about knocking them off one by one. Let’s make a clean sweep of them. Get some antimatter and blow them right off their rock.”

  Julien was amused. “Where are we going to get antimatter?” he asked. Only the military and the power authorities had antimatter, and in each case it was heavily guarded.

  “And how are we going to put together a delivery system?” Casimir asked. “This is outside Sidney’s area of expertise.”

  So they discussed other possibilities. Truck bombs, if they could get one close enough. Catapults hurling bags of fertilizer explosive. “We could build a cannon,” Sula said at one point. “We won’t need the carriage or anything, just the barrel. We build it on the roof of a building, under a shed or something so it’s not obvious. Then we bore-sight it on the room where their committee meets, and blow them to bits with one shell.”

  By then the others had drunk enough sorghum wine to make this seem both plausible and hilarious. They discussed the idea for an hour before breaking up.

  By the time Sula and Casimir reached their safe house, her mood had sobered. When he came into the room from the shower—she always made him shower before bed—he found her sitting on a chair holding the ju yao pot that she’d rescued from her old apartment. She looked at her dark, distorted reflection in the crackled surface, and her fingers slid blindly over its contours.

  Casimir stepped up behind her and put his long hands on her shoulders. She put the pot on a scarred old table, took one of his hands in her own and brushed against the knuckles with her cheek.

  “Do we really know what we’re doing?” she said. “Those people in Remba—they died because of what we did. Tens of thousands of them. And tonight we met to plan more trouble, and for all we know, another city will be destroyed as a result.”

  His fingers clasped hers. “The Fleet will come soon,” he said.

  “In that case,” Sula said, “what’s the point of what we’re doing? The war will be decided off the planet.”

  “We’re killing Naxids. I thought that’s what you wanted.” One long pale hand caressed her hair. “I never expected to live as long as Sergius,” he said. “I always thought it would be torture and the garotte before I was thirty. If you and I die together in this war, it doesn’t change anything for me. It’s better than dying alone.”

  Tears burned her eyes. She rose from the chair and pressed herself against him, inhaling the scent of soap and his wine-scented breath. His arms came around her.

  “Don’t be sad,” he said. “The Naxids are afraid of us. That’s why they hit Remba.”

  Her hands formed fists behind his back. “I want it to mean something,” she said. “I want to do something the Fleet can’t do even if they bring a million ships to Zanshaa.”

  “Build your cannon.” There was laughter in his voice. “We’ll blast their committee and their Convocation halfway to the ring.”

  His words brought a rising sense of steadiness to stand against her confusion. She leaned on him as if he were a wall and wiped the tears from her eyes.

  Fighting the hot swelling that had lodged in her throat, she said, “The original plan called for an army to hold Zanshaa. The government decided not to build an army, but we’ve built one now. Let’s do something with it. Let’s take the High City.”

  Again he seemed vastly amused. “Take the High City? Why not?”

  Angered flashed through her at the laughter that danced behind his word. “Don’t condescend,” she said.

  “Condescend?” He pulled away, and she saw an answering anger that smoldered in his eyes. “We’ll take the High City. Fine. Or we’ll build a cannon. Fine. Or we’ll do something else. I don’t care. But whatever we do, let’s do it and stop asking ourselves questions.”

  She looked into the dark eyes for a long moment, then pressed her mouth to his.

  A strange, unexpected happiness pulsed through her blood. I am home, she thought, home after all this time.

  Home amid the war, with its chaos and instability, its danger and terror. Home in this safe house, with its old, dingy furniture. Home in Casimir’s arms.

  She tore her lips away from the k
iss. Calculations were already spinning through her mind.

  “Yes,” she said, “we’ll take the rock, and kill them all.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Chenforce flashed through the wormhole to join the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance in their orbit around Chijimo’s star, and were promptly met by a massive flight of missiles, roaring toward them like a hellish blood tide bent on slaughter—and then the missiles reversed, decelerated, and hovered alongside the newcomers like sheep dogs escorting the flock to their pen. Chenforce recovered them all to fill their depleted magazines.

  Six days later Chenforce joined the Fleet proper, slotting into the loose formation between the flag squadron and the next astern, and were met by tenders sent out from Chijimo with supplies of fresh food, liquor, and delicacies for the officers. Even the antimatter stores were topped up, though the ships could still run for years on the antihydrogen already in their fuel reservoirs.

  With the arrival of Chenforce, the Orthodox Fleet now constituted twenty-eight ships, half of them newly built and crewed. It was the largest collection of loyalist ships since the Home Fleet had launched for Magaria.

  After a few hours in which the crew of Chenforce luxuriated in reasonably fresh fruit and vegetables only partially compressed by acceleration, Supreme Commander Tork ordered Michi Chen, all captains, and all first lieutenants, aboard his flagship, the Judge Urhug.

  Martinez and the others spangled themselves in dress uniforms and then visited Dr. Xi for spray bottles of a concoction that would deaden their senses of taste and smell—an entire ship crowded with Daimong was a formidable terror to the senses.

  The party waited in Daffodil till the last plausible minute before casting off and making their way to the flagship. Martinez noticed that the other Terran and Torminel captains had likewise delayed their arrival.

  At the airlock, a Daimong chorus cried out a song of joyous welcome. The sound was both deafening and magnificent, but a disturbing odor of decay was already clawing its way up the back of Martinez’s throat. One of Tork’s staff lieutenants took the new arrivals along corridors strung with wire and conduits to Tork’s suite, where everyone from Tork on down braced to salute Martinez’s Orb.

  The table was a clear plastic over a metal framework, and the chairs were plastic too, curved for the comfort of the Daimong anatomy. The metal walls were painted a bilious shade that Martinez could only think of as government green, and ornamented with photos of Tork ancestors, framed degrees and certificates that Tork had been awarded at various points along his career path, and pictures of ships that Tork had commanded.

  It was a far cry from the luxurious flagships of the recent past, with their parquet floors, custom artwork commissioned by well-known painters and designers, and exquisite hand-made furniture. Judge Urhug had been built quickly, sprayed with the cheapest paint available, and filled with mass-produced furniture just intelligent enough to hang onto the floor in the event of weightlessness. The urgency of war permitted little else.

  “Take your seats, my lords,” Tork said. Strips of dead flesh dangled from his face. His fixed expression seemed fierce, but his voice was a mellow chiming, like distant bells.

  Martinez laid the Golden Orb on the table before him and perched gingerly on a chair more suited to the narrower Daimong frame. The ghastly smell was now clogging the back of his throat. He cleared it and took a sip of the water that had been provided in each place.

  “I have reviewed Squadron Commander Chen’s report,” Tork said, “as well as reports filed by the individual captains. I am compelled to observe that the record of Chenforce is like no other I have ever encountered.”

  At these words Martinez felt a certain optimism rise. Perhaps Tork had mellowed in the last months. Perhaps the success of the raid had convinced him to look on Chenforce as an example to the rest of the Fleet.

  “Chenforce has destroyed many of the wormhole relay stations on which our civilization depends,” Tork said. “It has destroyed a planetary accelerator ring and killed many, perhaps most, of the inhabitants of Bai-do. Aboard the flagship we find officers—including the captain!—killed by the crew, murderers who were permitted to run free and to continue their vicious activities for months before paying for their crime. These same enlisted crew were involved in a continuous string of felonies, extortions, and a treasonous partnership with Naxid rebels. We even have evidence of cult activity aboard the ship, sure evidence that the officers did not properly indoctrinate the crew in their responsibilities to the Fleet and to the Praxis.”

  Tork’s voice began in as a melodious chiming but built to a furious abrasive monotone, a harrying strident tone that grated on Martinez’s nerves and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Anger flared like a raging fire under his high collar.

  “I have to ask myself,” Tork continued, “if these are proper acts of war. Certainly a pirate might boast of wormhole stations destroyed, of the annihilation of a planet, of murder and his allegiance to cults. But are these proper activities for a Peer and an officer?”

  He moved his pale bald head to stare at the officers before him.

  “I make no judgments,” he said. “I was not at the scene. I tell you only that no such activities will be permitted in the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance. We do not attack planets. We do not attack helpless crew in relay stations. We exist for one purpose only, and that purpose is to engage the enemy fleet in battle—in proper battle—and by destroying them, to end the war that divides the empire. No deviations from this single task will be contemplated or permitted.”

  He jabbed at the transparent surface of the table with his long fingers.

  “We will engage the enemy and beat him by using the formations and methods that were bequeathed to us by our ancestors, ancestors beside whose greatness we exist as mere shadows. None of the deviant tactics that killed Fleet Commander Kangas will be permitted. The Fleet will exercise proper tactics, properly applied, and these tactics will guarantee victory.”

  He leveled a finger along the table, pointing at each officer in turn. “There will be no premature starbursts, my lords! Any formation wishing to starburst must receive the permission of the Supreme Commander before executing the maneuver.”

  Again the voice rose to a nerve-scraping pitch.

  “All that is important is known! All that is perfect is contained in the Praxis! All innovation is deviation from the Supreme Law! No deviation is permitted!”

  “I never expected to be called a pirate by my own side,” Michi said as Daffodil left Judge Urhug’s airlock.

  “He makes no judgments,” Martinez said.

  And, he thought, Tork might at least have mentioned that they’d vaporized over two hundred enemy merchant vessels, putting a permanent crimp in the Naxid economy, and finished the twenty or more warships that, the Fleet, wouldn’t have to fight at Zanshaa.

  “Well,” Martinez said, “we can at least practice the new tactics on our own. We don’t have to tell Tork everything we do.”

  But that wasn’t the case. The next day, Tork broke up Chenforce. The light cruiser Celestial, damaged at Protipanu, was sent to the yards at Antopone for repair. The other light cruiser and the frigate were sent to a newly created light squadron. The two Torminel cruisers were made part of an all-Torminel division, and the two remaining Terran ships became the nucleus of the spanking new Cruiser Squadron 9, to which were added the three survivors of the Home Fleet, also crewed by Terrans, three new-built Terran ships that had not yet arrived at Chijimo, and the Bombardment of Delhi, a badly damaged Magaria survivor under repair since the battle.

  The lone Daimong cadet—the survivor of the Beacon, lost at Protipanu—who had been haunting Illustrious since the battle, was brought aboard Tork’s flagship; probably, Martinez thought, to be debriefed about any deviations that might have been practiced on Michi’s flagship during his time aboard.

  At least Michi commanded the new squadron, so Illustrious remained the flagship.


  It was impossible to practice any new tactical system for the simple reason that Michi and Martinez could not trust their subordinates not to rat them out to Tork. Chenforce had been a highly cohesive force, united by victory and by a faith in their commander. Michi could have run forbidden exercises within her old command and stood a reasonable chance that none of her subordinates would inform Tork of their activities. But no such trust existed within Cruiser Squadron 9. Neither Michi nor Martinez dared to suggest any prohibited experiments to the new arrivals.

  “Tork’s doing this deliberately,” Michi told Martinez. “He’s trying to isolate everyone he feels he can’t trust, and surround them with strangers.”

  “Let’s hope he’s not isolating contagion, but spreading the virus instead,” Martinez replied.

  Tork kept his new formations busy with daily exercises, all drawn from the old playbook. Martinez thought Tork’s staff must have been working twenty-nine hours per day planning out the scripts. Every move was planned in advance; every maneuver, every missile fired, every casualty. Ships were judged not on how well they did against an enemy, but on how well they obeyed instructions.

  For anyone who had experienced the new-style, free-form experiments that Martinez, Michi, and Do-faq had created, Tork’s maneuvers were agonies of frustration. Anyone who had ever been in an actual battle, Martinez thought, would have observed that real combat didn’t follow anybody’s script, and seen what a useless waste of time Tork’s maneuvers were.

  But Tork hadn’t ever been in an actual battle, or in one of Martinez’s experiments. The maneuvers continued, one after another, all dreadfully familiar. Martinez could only hope that Tork had an intellectual equal on the Naxid side.

  He had to admit, however, that the maneuvers were atleast giving the new ships practice at basic maneuvers. Their quality, marked by hastily trained crews under newly minted officers, was in general wretched. Even he, as a brand-new skipper aboard the newly crewed Corona, hadn’t been as hapless as these officers.