Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  For a moment she considered a starburst—a real starburst, each ship clawing for maximum distance from the others. That would reduce the chance of them all being hammered while cloaked in the plasma sphere, but on emerging they would have surrendered any advantages that Ghost Tactics gave them.

  No, she thought. Just try to get to the other side fast.

  She ordered all ships to blast through the plasma sphere at acceleration of ten gravities. The acceleration began as soon as they entered the plasma. Confidence groaned as the weight came on. An invisible hand began to close on her throat. She watched the radiation readings rise, and the hull temperature with them.

  Darkness encroached on her vision. She felt the pillow press over her face. Perhaps she cried out.

  An instant later the darkness seemed to fade. She was floating in her harness. A persistent, irritating tone sounded in her headphones. She tasted iron on her tongue.

  “I have command of the ship,” said a voice. Belatedly she recognized it as that of First Lieutenant Haz.

  Someone touched her arm, her throat. She flailed at him.

  “Are you all right, my lady?” There was an edge of panic in Ikuhara’s voice.

  Sula pushed him away. She heard the twanging sound as he rebounded off the bars of her acceleration cage.

  “Display!” she called. “Cancel virtual!”

  The limitless space of the virtual display was replaced by the soft lights and close confines of Command. Ikuhara, clumsy in his vac suit, floated over her couch. His face was a mirror of concern mingled with a touch of fear.

  Something dark floated in the air between them, something round and shiny like little marbles.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Sula demanded.

  “Acceleration canceled,” Ikuhara said. “Health risk to an officer.”

  At quarters the state of the crew was constantly monitored by detectors in their sensor caps. Any threat to the health of the crew—any cerebral hemorrhage, blood pressure spike, or heart malfunction—was monitored, and action taken in accordance with a preset program. If enlisted crew stroked out during a battle or even an exercise, it was usually the pulpy’s hard luck; but a threat to an officer could shut down the engines.

  “Who was it?” Sula said. She’d have him off her ship the second they could shuttle the invalid away to a nice safe desk job, preferably on the most distant planet available.

  Ikuhara’s expression suggested that he was suffering some gastroenteric malady. “You, my lady,” he said. “Your blood pressure was extremely high and—”

  “Right,” Sula said. “Get back on your couch, I’m fine now.”

  “You have a nosebleed, my lady.”

  She put a hand to her nose and felt the wet. A blob of blood detached itself from her nose and joined the others in the air, a formation of perfect spheres. She could taste the blood running—floating—down the back of her throat.

  “I’ll deal with it,” she said. She looked at the displays before her. “Haz!” she cried.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Light the engines! What is this insanity about cutting the engines completely during a battle, for all’s sake?”

  She groped for a tissue in the necessity bag webbed to the couch.

  “It was programmed, my lady.”

  “Engine startup in fifteen, my lady,” said Engineer First Class Markios.

  “Accelerate at three gravities.” Sula jammed a tissue to her nose.

  “I am in command, my lady,” Haz said in her ear. “Your blood pressure is still—”

  “It isn’t, and you’re not,” Sula said. “Three gravities, Engines.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Markios said smoothly.

  She enlarged her biomonitor display and saw that her blood pressure was returning rapidly to something like normal. Her heart rattled in her chest with fear, but at least it wasn’t in the process of giving her a stroke.

  This had happened to her once before, at First Magaria. There might, she thought with a burning resentment, be something wrong with her heart or its wiring that would make it impossible for her to stand high gees.

  Make it impossible to do her job.

  The engines caught and snarled. The droplets of blood in the air fell like hail, and spattered the breast of her vac suit.

  Gravities swung Sula’s couch through a series of decreasing arcs. Her blood pressure elevated slightly with the gravities, but within acceptable limits.

  Other lights flashed on her display. She enlarged them and saw a big radiation spike, then another.

  Somewhere in the radio darkness of the plasma bubble, missiles were finding targets.

  Martinez held his breath. Only six of the nine ships belonging to Light Squadron 17 had flown out of the great furnace of plasma and sundered matter that had concealed them for several nerve-wringing minutes. A glance at the shifting sphere dictated by the Martinez Method showed gaps in the formation. Sula seemed to have lost a third of her command.

  He wondered if Sula had been lost along with them.

  And then a seventh ship flew out of the great dissipating bubble. The others regrouped, adjusting their formation to their new number, arranging around the late arrival like a flock of angry geese around an injured comrade.

  Martinez sent out orders. He had isolated a pair of enemy and had them ready for the kill, but now he ordered Squadron 31 to shift in the other direction, toward Sula’s squadron and the enemy they were engaging. He wasn’t going to let the Naxids take advantage of the disorder in her squadron.

  The Naxids seemed startled by this unexpected movement, and scattered before his advance. The two ships he’d cut off were too isolated to take advantage of their sudden reprieve.

  Squadron 17, once it had resumed its formation, made a similar movement, toward him. It had likewise cut off a pair of enemy, and likewise ignored them.

  Martinez and Sula now found themselves with scattered enemy between their two fires. The two loyalist squadrons moved, dodged, fired. It was as if, without communicating with one another, they were moving in accordance with some higher version of Sula’s formula, one that encompassed the whole battle.

  Martinez felt a stream of astonishment and delight. It was as if he and Sula were reading one another’s minds.

  The ships darted like swallows.

  Sula had to be alive, he thought. No one else had the kind of genius that so thoroughly complimented his own.

  The combat was like a ballet.

  It was like telepathy.

  It was like great sex.

  Naxid ships flamed and died. The few that remained were scattered, and the loyalists could pick them off whenever they wanted.

  Only the converted transports and the squadron facing Michi was still putting up resistance. Michi was fighting the Naxid heavy cruisers, better armed and better able to defend themselves, and though she’d destroyed four of them, she’d lost two of her own.

  “Message to Captain Tantu,” Martinez said. “Take Division One and go after the converted transports. End message.”

  Division 1 was four ships, including the two light cruisers. Division 2 was five frigates, including Courage, and he was going to take it to Michi’s relief.

  After expressing brief thanks for having at least half of his old command back, Tantu ordered his ships into a heavy acceleration for the transports, regrouping into a separate Martinez Method formation as he went.

  Martinez swung his own five ships away from Sula’s squadron, rolling down on the Naxid heavies. Joy danced in his heart as he saw Sula detach four of her own ships and roll away from him with the remaining three, coming to Michi’s aid.

  The Naxid heavies didn’t last long, attacked from three directions and by superior numbers. After that, ignoring the few Naxid warships that still danced around the perimeter of the fight, all of Chenforce went after the converted transports with everything they had.

  The big ships didn’t last long either, particularly once they’d starb
urst. They were configured for offense, and their defensive abilities left a lot to be desired. In addition, Michi’s antiproton cannon kept blowing big chunks off them.

  After that, the remaining Naxid warships were hunted down, one after another, and dispatched.

  An anthem of triumph began to thunder in Martinez’s veins.

  Chenforce had lost four ships to the enemy’s forty. His Squadron 31 had lost none.

  In the course of the war, in the battles in which he’d either commanded a squadron or had an influence on the tactics, he had lost only one ship, at Protipanu.

  He was as proud of that as of the victories themselves.

  He didn’t count Second Magaria, where his advice had been ignored.

  Tork could have that one, if he wanted it.

  Before the last sphere of plasma had cooled and dispersed, Michi called for a simultaneous conference between herself and Chandra, Martinez, and Sula.

  Michi and Chandra looked weary but exultant in their virtual images, sagging in their vac suits but glowing with victory.

  Sula appeared spattered with blood.

  Martinez looked at her in shock. He remembered her appearance in bloody body armor after the Battle of the High City, and wondered if she’d decided to specialize in dramatic entrances.

  “Are you all right, Lady Sula?” Michi asked.

  “Yes. I had a nosebleed under high gee.”

  Sula’s tone was curt and dismissive. Michi changed the subject.

  “I need a report from all ships on the number of remaining missiles. I need to know if we can fight those three enemy ships that just entered the system.”

  “I happen to have the figures,” Sula said. “My ships’ magazines average nine percent of full capacity.”

  “My ships range between three and six percent,” Michi said. Her gaze flickered to Martinez. “And Squadron Thirty-one?”

  “Ah,” Martinez said, “I’ll check. But I don’t suppose our numbers are much better.”

  Michi looked grim. “If those three big ships are like the others, they’ll be able to fire off six hundred missiles in each salvo.”

  That, Martinez thought, was going to make fighting them very difficult indeed.

  Stupid to die, fighting a trio of improvised warships, just because you’re at the end of your logistical tether and you don’t have anything to shoot at them.

  “My lady,” he said, “may I suggest that you make your surrender demand extremely convincing?”

  Determination crossed Michi’s face. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll make it clear that if we’re fired on, Naxas burns. We’ve got enough missiles for that.” She looked at someone off-camera—presumably Chandra, because Chandra also looked off-camera.

  “I’ll want a list of the twenty-five largest cities on Naxas,” Michi said.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Better make it fifty. And I’d like demographic data as well, so we can be sure to pay special attention to smoking any Naxid neighborhoods.”

  Chandra hid a smile. “Yes, my lady.”

  Michi’s demand for unconditional surrender went out in the clear, both to Naxas and to the oncoming ships. It would be nearly three hours before Naxas could reply. Chenforce took aboard its surviving pinnaces, recovered the few missiles that hadn’t yet found something to blow up, and began repairing the minor damage taken by some of the ships in the fight.

  Martinez took a shower to wash off the scent of his suit seals and invited Captain Dalkeith to a celebratory dinner. That seemed fair, since after all he was dining in her cabin.

  “I wish I had your cook,” Dalkeith said in her breathless child’s voice. She looked at the black specks in her fluffy scrambled eggs, which Perry had laid on a bed of fragrant preserved seaweed. “Are those truffles?”

  Martinez didn’t know.

  He was back in Auxiliary Command at the earliest possible moment that Naxas could reply. No answer came, not even an acknowledgment.

  Minutes ticked by. The air in Auxiliary Command began to seem hot and close. The bodies of the crew, liberated from the confines of vac suits, combined to give the room a sour, combusted scent, all save Khanh, who wore far too much lime-scented cologne.

  Martinez heard chatter in the background as Chandra gave the weapons officers targeting information for the fifty largest cities of Naxas. He thought about how to fight those three big ships with their limitless supply of ammunition.

  “Squadcom wants another conference, my lord.” Falana’s fingers jabbed at the touch pads on his display.

  “I’ll go virtual.”

  The same three faces appeared in the display. Michi and Chandra looked scrubbed and refreshed, but Martinez didn’t spare them more than a glance. Instead he stared at Sula. She was breathtaking—beautiful and polished and perfect. She wore understated Fleet undress, and the dark sensor cap and its chin strap framed her face and made it seem to glow. Suddenly he could scent a phantom memory of her perfume.

  “I’ve given them an hour,” Michi said. Her angry voice snapped Martinez out of his trance. “I think that’s enough. We’ll launch our missiles for Naxas. Time the impacts for a hundred twenty minutes from now, so they can see it coming at them and have time to think about it.”

  “That will give them extra time to evacuate their cities,” Chandra pointed out.

  “The living will envy the dead,” Sula said. Her voice was hard.

  Martinez looked at her again, and wondered where that cold anger had come from. He knew her anger well enough, but he remembered it as hot. He remembered her as insecure, as clumsy in formal situations, as passionate in bed.

  Clearly she had learned a few new social strategies.

  “My lord!” Falana cried. “Message from Naxas!”

  The others must have been alerted at the same time, because they were all gazing off-camera.

  “Let’s see it,” Martinez said.

  His virtual space was invaded by the image of a young Naxid. He wore the brown tunic of the civil servant, and he stood alone and faced the camera with frozen dignity.

  “To Squadron Commander Chen,” he said, “greetings. I am Lord Ami Yramox, Secretary to the Assistant Minister of Right and Dominion, Lady Rundak.”

  Secretary to an assistant minister, Martinez thought. Yramox lived pretty far down the chain of command to reply to an ultimatum as crucial as Michi’s.

  “All my superiors have committed suicide,” Yramox said. “Before their deaths they instructed me to surrender to you all forces under the command of the Naxas government. We await your orders.”

  The Naxid spoke on, but he was drowned by the cheers now ringing from the walls of Auxiliary Command. Even Gunderson, who throughout the battle had spoken with a deliberate, sonorous calm, was bellowing with undisguised joy.

  Michi and Chandra were glancing left and right, off-camera, smiling, apparently enjoying a similar frenzied demonstration in the Flag Officer Station.

  Sula remained cool, gazing at the camera with her jade eyes. Apparently there was no spontaneous shouting permitted in her control room.

  A few hours later, when orders from Naxas reached the new arrivals, the three big Naxid ships began firing their missile batteries, hundreds and then thousands of missiles racing into the void. When they reached a safe distance, they exploded, a long series of bright expanding detonations, like fireworks celebrating the end of a long, bloody war.

  THIRTY-SIX

  There were a few hours for rejoicing, just enough time for the cooks to produce a feast and for the crew to drink to their own survival and that of their mates. The recreation tubes were very much in demand. Martinez dined with the officers of Courage while Alikhan packed his belongings, then he formally surrendered command of Squadron 31, and with it, his acting rank of squadron commander.

  He sent a farewell message to his captains, praising their record of enemy killed without a single casualty, then said good-bye to Dalkeith and the other lieutenants. He arrived aboard Illustrious to the u
sual formalities. The corridors echoed to the same sort of celebrations he’d just left. The party was just getting started when alarms began to blare, and everyone strapped in for more hours of heavy gee. In order to stay in the Naxas system and avoid shooting off into space, Chenforce had to lose delta vee, and that meant more days of bone-hammering deceleration.

  This was clearly unfair. The crews resented the fact that they’d just won the war but had to endure the heavy gees anyway.

  Martinez resented it too. He had just enough time to visit his cabin—he found the Holy Family undisturbed, still snug with their cat and their fire—and then he had to don his vac suit.

  Around them, as the gravities pressed the crew deeper into their couches, the peace began to take shape. The Fleet and the Convocation had worked out a plan ahead of time. Non-Naxid officials who—the last anyone heard—had been on Naxas were ordered by Michi to take command of the government, provided they hadn’t accepted jobs in the rebel administration. A disturbingly large percentage of them had and were disqualified. The remainder were not always the pick of the crop, but would have to serve till new administrators were sent out from Zanshaa.

  The Naxids seemed to accept the situation quietly, which was certainly lucky for those who so unexpectedly found themselves in charge. The presence of three squadrons armed with dozens of missiles seemed a good recipe for social order, and those most likely to lead a resistance had just committed suicide.

  The three Naxid converted warships, traveling too fast to decelerate completely, were ordered to proceed through one of Naxas’s wormholes, dock at another system, and surrender themselves there. Michi didn’t want them in the Naxas system, where they might tempt some unreconstructed Naxid into a misadventure.

  A consequence of the sudden victory was that all the wormhole stations were suddenly open. For the first time in a year and a half, nearly all parts of the empire were in communication with one another, the communication lines broken only here and there where a wormhole station had been blasted out of existence.

  Michi sent a brief report to Tork through the wormhole relay, the text wrapped in the Fleet’s most elaborate code in case the Naxids were inclined to eavesdrop. It mentioned the bare facts of the battle—victory, a loss of four warships for thirty-eight enemy, a friendly government soon to be in place—but carefully avoided any details, such as the dire lack of ammunition.