Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  Carmody looked uncertain. The conversation had taken another unexpected turn.

  “Ah—perhaps not.” Probably not even Carmody knew what he meant by this answer.

  “I was able to use Ghost Tactics because I knew that Lord Tork wanted me dead anyway. I had nothing to lose. Whereas you—if you act to prevent a slaughter of your own crews, you may earn the Supreme Commander’s undying enmity. But if you don’t use Ghost Tactics, your command could be slaughtered, and you with it.”

  Carmody’s face did that little dance again. Sula tried to keep her smile hidden behind her eyes.

  Of the many possibilities raised by her words, Carmody decided to focus on what was probably the safest.

  “Ghost Tactics?” he asked.

  “I’ll send you the formula, and the lecture I prepared for the squadron.” She smiled. “Even if you choose not to use them, at least you’ll be able to understand what the other captains are talking about.”

  Michi demanded surrender, and Magaria gave it. The Naxid fleet, possessing more choice in the matter, did not. It wasn’t clear whether the enemy commander was still Dakzad, since no one responded to Michi’s ultimatum.

  Probably Dakzad was dead, Martinez thought. He hadn’t tried to argue ideology or give Michi orders.

  Michi put Magaria in the charge of Junior Fleet Commander Jinja, who had been captured there on the first day of the rebellion and held in a prison on the surface ever since. She also ordered all Naxid military and security personnel to surrender their arms and evacuate the ring.

  Martinez didn’t envy Jinja his job. The only forces he had were those that were captured with him, four or five thousand military to police several million Naxids.

  Altasz and the stay-behind force would help, though. Altasz, along with his missiles, to keep everyone on the planet and the ring compliant and obedient.

  Martinez wondered if his old shipmates from Corona were well. Fahd Tarafah, his old football-crazy captain, and his premiere Koslowski, the talented goalie. And Lieutenant Garcia, the only other officer to believe that the Naxids were going to rise. At a crucial moment she had slipped him her lieutenant’s key, which allowed him to enable Corona’s weapons and permitted his escape.

  He sent messages to them all to let them know that Corona had survived and was in the system. There was no answer, so perhaps proper communications weren’t working yet, or the old Coronas had been moved to another planet.

  He checked on his friends and lovers. Lady Elissa Dalkeith’s Courage had been lightly damaged, and would be part of the attack force. Vonderheydte’s cruiser had suffered severely and would remain in the Magaria system, but Vonderheydte had survived and seemed reasonably cheerful. Cadet Kelly, in her pinnace, had survived the strike that wiped out her shipmates, and was taken aboard Sula’s Confidence. Martinez could only hope that Sula and Kelly didn’t spend their time exchanging stories about him.

  Ari Abacha’s Gallant had done very well as part of Sula’s Squadron 17. Shushanik Severin’s Exploration Service frigate Scout had been heavily damaged and would need dockyard repairs. Severin had survived with a broken collarbone.

  Illustrious sent off repair parties to aid other ships. Some of them came back shocked at the carnage they’d seen. Martinez kept busy devising exercises for the squadron that Michi had promised him.

  The two derelict ships turned out to be friendly. One had lost all its engines to antiproton weapons, and its crew was taken off by the other, which was barely able to maneuver.

  Tork sent off a missile carrying his official report. It would accelerate to relativistic velocities between Magaria and Zanshaa, then broadcast its coded contents to the capital.

  The attack force sorted itself into its new formations and began exercises to accustom each ship to maneuvering with its new comrades.

  Two thousand missiles arrived in the system and, defanged by the proper codes, began braking at speeds that would have pulped any human. The weaponers spent several harried hours recovering missiles before the fleet narrowed its trajectory to pass the wormhole.

  Still in the inflatable body cast, still on the flagship that was feebly decelerating in an attempt to claw its way back toward Magaria’s ring station, Tork issued a last ringing command.

  “In the past, under the Shaa and the Praxis, the empire existed in a state of harmony and perfection. Your ancestors were a part of that harmony. It is your task to restore the lost perfection of the empire by cutting out the imperfect and disharmonious element.

  “Prove yourselves worthy of your ancestors! Fulfill the perfection they have bequeathed to you! Purge yourself of irregularities and innovations! Long live the Praxis!”

  The Orthodox Fleet flashed through Magaria Wormhole 5, and at that instance became Chenforce. Martinez felt his heart sing a chorus of thanksgiving. Chenforce had been lucky for him.

  He had his squadron now, and Tork was far behind.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  A few hours after passing the wormhole, Lady Michi shifted Captain Carmody’s Splendid to Cruiser Squadron 9, which put Sula back in charge of Squadron 17.

  Martinez happened to witness Michi’s communication to Carmody, and was struck by how relieved Carmody seemed to have escaped squadron command.

  “Please understand,” Michi said, “that this reassignment is meant as no reproach to yourself. I will put a note in your file to that effect.”

  “Very kind of you to say so, my lady,” Carmody said. “Truth to tell, I never understood what a heavy cruiser was doing in a light squadron in the first place, and…”

  Carmody seemed to lose track of his conversation.

  “And?” Michi prompted.

  Carmody blinked. “Oh. Well. Lady Sula is—quite an extraordinary person—isn’t she?”

  Martinez concluded that Sula had managed to bring Carmody to a state of terror in an unusually short time. He figured the only reason Tork wasn’t afraid of her was that he lacked the imagination.

  Martinez himself had no time to be terrified. He was shifting to Light Squadron 31 in a few hours, with the rank of Acting Squadron Commander.

  He had a final breakfast with Acting Captain Fulvia Kazakov and gave her the combination to his safe. His belongings and his portrait were packed. He had Buckle give him a final haircut so he could make the best possible impression on his new officers.

  In his address to the crew of Illustrious, he told them how privileged he felt to have commanded them in battle and how proud he was of them. He said that his current assignment was temporary and that he would be back after Lady Michi finished off the Naxid fleet once and for all.

  He heard the cheers ringing down the corridors. Smiling, carrying the Golden Orb, he made a royal progress to the airlock, where he met his servants and the cadet, Falana, who would act as his signals officer. He stepped aboard Daffodil for the journey to Squadron 31.

  As the airlock door swung shut, he heard one rigger turn to another and say, “There goes our damn luck, off to that useless undeserving set of buggers.”

  He stepped aboard Lieutenant Captain Lady Elissa Dalkeith’s Courage twenty minutes later, to the usual honor guard, the silent row of officers, and a jaunty recording of “Our Thoughts Are Ever Guided by the Praxis.”

  Dalkeith had been his premiere on Corona. She was middle age and gray-haired, and had been languishing as a very senior lieutenant until Faqforce’s victory at Hone-bar had put all Martinez’s officers into the spotlight. She had been lucky enough to be promoted to Lieutenant Captain after the battle, when Martinez’s star was at its height but before Lord Tork and his clique had decided to drag that star down by main force.

  “Welcome to Courage, Lord Captain,” she said. Martinez was surprised, for about the hundredth time, at Dalkeith’s voice, the high-pitched piping lisp of a child.

  “Happy to be aboard,” he said.

  He shook her hand and was introduced to her officers, then escorted to his quarters.

  Courage was a large frigate, wi
th twenty-four missile launchers in three batteries, and was enough like Corona that Martinez was surprised when he came across the occasional difference. Frigates had no quarters for flag officers aboard, since light squadrons were usually commanded by the senior captain rather than a designated squadron commander. As he had once displaced Kazakov from her quarters on Illustrious, he now displaced Dalkeith, who displaced her first lieutenant, and so on down the line.

  More annoying was the fact that Courage had no Flag Officer Station. Martinez would command Squadron 31 from Auxiliary Command, from the couch normally used by Dalkeith’s first lieutenant, who was supplanted—again—to one of the engine boards, where she would monitor the ship’s condition from a reconfigured station. Since the premiere—whose name was Khanh—had little to do in combat other than wait for Dalkeith to die, the inconvenience was not crucial.

  Nor were the sleeping arrangements going to be much of a disadvantage to anyone. Martinez knew he wouldn’t have much chance to sleep in the bed he’d taken from Dalkeith—that Michi was planning a series of heavy accelerations—and suspected he’d be doing most of his sleeping on his acceleration couch.

  Martinez left Alikhan and Narbonne to stow his belongings, procured a cup of coffee from the kitchen, and headed for Auxiliary Command. His new aide, Cadet Lord Ismir Falana, contacted the captains of Squadron 31 while he inhaled the coffee aroma and took his first sip.

  Martinez met them in virtual, four rows of three little portraits. Of his twelve captains, four were Terran, two Daimong, four Torminel, and two were survivors from one of the Fleet’s rare Cree squadrons. The Cree were not a species much tempted by the military life. Once they could be persuaded to join, they served aboard ships modified with displays that made use of their superb hearing and deemphasized their poor vision. A Terran in a Cree control room would find it a dark place filled with maddening sonic interference and white noise.

  Supposedly the Cree all slept piled together in a heap, officers in one stateroom, enlisted in heaps of their own. This was what they did at home, except at home the females were part of the piles too. The females were unintelligent quadrupeds and were rarely allowed on ships. The males were unintelligent quadrupeds for their first years of life, but then straightened and grew large brains.

  Nature was odd, especially where the Cree came from.

  “Welcome to you all,” Martinez said. “I am Captain Lord Gareth Martinez, and I have been assigned by Lady Michi Chen to take command of this provisional squadron. I suppose some of you might be surprised to find me in charge of the squadron, and you wonder how I am qualified to command such a group of experienced officers.

  “First, I’m an honors graduate of the Nelson Academy. I worked hard as a cadet and a lieutenant, and served on shipboard as well as on the staff of Fleet Commander Enderby. I won the Golden Orb by rescuing Corona from the Naxids.

  “And then,” he said, “I married your squadcom’s niece.”

  He looked from one blank face to the next.

  “You may laugh,” he said.

  Only the Cree seemed to find this amusing. Martinez decided he might as well surrender his career as a wit.

  “I expect we’ll be working very hard,” he said. “I have been ordered to work up this squadron in a new system of tactics.”

  “We’re defying the Supreme Commander’s express orders?”

  This from Captain Tantu, the Daimong commander of the light cruiser Vigilant. By virtue of his seniority, Tantu had commanded the squadron until now.

  “The situation has changed, my lord,” Martinez said smoothly. “The Supreme Commander is out of contact, and we’re following the enemy so closely that it’s unlikely a conventional battle will develop. Lady Michi feels that we should look into different tactical options—those employed at Protipanu, for instance.”

  What Tantu thought of this was hidden behind his expressionless Daimong face. Those faces that Martinez could read seemed intrigued.

  “The wise worm learns from the worm-eater,” said one of the Cree.

  “And the tree rejoices in the night rains,” said the other.

  Martinez looked at them. “Ye-es,” he said.

  “My lord?”

  One of the Terran captains looked at him with a question poised on her lips.

  “Yes, my lady?” he said.

  “Is this the Foote Formula we’ll be learning?”

  He smiled. “No. Something better than that.”

  “Ghost Tactics?” lisped one of the Torminel.

  Martinez paused for a moment of surprise, in which he deduced that the White Ghost had given their tactical innovations a name that reflected glory on her and left him out of the picture.

  Well, he thought. One good turn deserved another.

  “Not quite,” he said. “We’re going to practice the Martinez Method.”

  Sula was pleased to have her squadron again, though she was sorry at the effort she’d wasted on Carmody. She had to wonder which way he would have jumped in the end.

  Still the point of the spear, she and Confidence raced on the track of the enemy. The Naxids had gained something like twenty hours on their pursuers, and Michi wanted to narrow the distance.

  Sula approved. Like Michi, she wondered what it was the Naxids were retreating to, and whether there were reinforcements speeding to Naxas or already there.

  Whatever the Naxids planned, timing had to be a crucial element. And the faster the loyalists pursued, the more the Naxids would be forced to advance their timing, straining ships and crew and equipment. The more the enemy were stressed, the more likely they were to make mistakes.

  Maybe those reinforcements—if they existed—wouldn’t turn up in time.

  The price of wrecking the Naxids’ timing was enduring a three-gravity acceleration at least fifteen hours per day. The rest of the time was spent in drills and experiments, working the squadron’s two new ships into the pattern. The only people excused from the drills were the cooks, who produced the meals that the crew gobbled at their action stations.

  Michi Chen gave her ships one hour of free time each day, when the acceleration was reduced to one gee and no drills were scheduled, time that allowed people to leave their couches, stretch, and empty the waste collection bags from their vac suits. Never a pleasant job, the crowding at the toilets and waste disposers now made it worse. Sula rejoiced in her private toilet and her private shower. She wasn’t prepared to share them with anyone.

  She hardly had to abuse her new captains at all. They had seen what she’d done at Second Magaria, and all were now believers in Ghost Tactics.

  She meet Martinez in virtual conferences with Michi and other officers. She was civil. He was civil. He reported progress with his squadron. So did she. Everyone was learning fast, under the pressure of imminent combat. Sula wanted them all to learn their moves before the constant pounding of heavy gravity made them stupid and careless.

  There were three systems between Magaria and Naxas, a swollen red giant, a blue-white star boiling off angry radiation, and a neutron star surrounded by the wreckage of a planetary system it had destroyed in a great supernova. The systems were mostly barren, and when the two fleets entered them, their population doubled or tripled.

  Chenforce pressed the Naxids and narrowed the distance. The Naxids didn’t respond to the loyalists’ increased acceleration until five hours had gone by, and then they matched their pursuers’ acceleration without trying to increase their lead.

  On the second day, on an hour when Chenforce had reduced its acceleration, the Naxids sent a swarm of pinnaces, shuttles, and other small craft to ferry crew away from one of their ships. Michi saw what was happening and ordered a fast, hard burn in pursuit. The Naxids finished their evacuation and raced away. When they were a safe distance from the abandoned vessel, they blew it up with a missile.

  One of the damaged Naxid ships hadn’t been able to stand the increased pressure that Michi Chen was applying. That left the enemy fleet with twen
ty-nine. Sula approved.

  The pursuit went on. Sula peeled med patches off her neck and applied new ones. She ate badly and slept badly, her dreams choked with asphyxiation and blood. Casimir called to her from his pilfered tomb.

  Once, she felt his warm touch on her skin. She reached to take his hand, and found that the hand wasn’t Casimir’s, wasn’t long and thin, but broad and blunt-fingered, the hand of Martinez—and she woke, eyes wide and staring at the man who touched her, and he wasn’t Martinez but the almost-Martinez, Terza’s son, who gazed at her in malicious triumph from beneath his heavy brows…and then she woke again, heart lurching against her ribs, and saw the glowing pastel displays of Command and the crew drowsing at their stations while Haz in Auxiliary Command conned the ship.

  Both fleets were going to have to decelerate in order to have a hope of maneuvering in the Naxas system. Until they arrived at the turnover point where the deceleration would normally start, Michi continued her accelerations. The Naxids continued to flee before them. Michi was going to wreck the Naxids’ schedule past all repair.

  Sula began to think that Michi should continue the accelerations regardless. Press the Naxids to the point where it was impossible for either side to maneuver in the system, only to flash through it on their way to the next wormhole. The Naxids would have to accept straight-up combat this side of their home planet in order to keep Chenforce from blasting the place en route to somewhere else.

  She contacted Michi and made this suggestion. Michi said she’d take a few hours to think about it, and a few hours later sent Sula a message saying she’d decided against the idea.

  “We don’t know what’s there,” she said. “Going in slower gives us more time to work out our options.”

  Sula shrugged with shoulders three times their normal weight. She concluded that Michi probably had a point.

  Chenforce rolled and began its deceleration. The Naxids rolled and decelerated as well. Due to the delay in rollover, gee forces were heavier than during the accelerations. Sula felt as if the big hand of the almost-Martinez had clamped on her throat. Her heart raced to erratic surges of panic. She fought against the fear. In the shower, she scrubbed herself with perfumed soap to scour off the sour odor of spent adrenaline.