The Praxis

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Yes, my lord. Still negative. I can go to the captain’s office and repeat the procedure.”

  “No, I’ve got to accelerate.”

  “If you can give me two minutes, I can at least get the equipment there. When acceleration starts, I can jump in the captain’s rack. It won’t be as comfortable as a proper acceleration couch, but it’ll serve.”

  For the couple hours of life that remains to us, Martinez thought.

  “Very good,” he said. “You’ve got two minutes.” And broke transmission.

  “We’ve cleared the ring,” Eruken reported.

  “Pilot, zero our momentum.”

  “Zero our momentum, my lord.”

  “Two minutes to acceleration. Mark.”

  “Mark two minutes to acceleration,” Mabumba said, but Diem raised a hand, like a boy at school asking permission to leave the classroom.

  “My lord?” he said. “I’ve been looking at your plot and, ah…” An exaggerated grimace distorted his thin, pale face, as if he were anticipating being whacked on the head for his presumption. “It’s illegal,” he said. “You’re—We’re—flying far too close to the ring for safety.”

  Martinez looked at him and tried to don his omnipotent face. “But am I actually going to hit anything?”

  “Ah…” In confusion, Diem stared at the plot. “Not…not as such, no. No collisions. Just all sort of…of proximity problems.”

  “Then we’ll stick to the plan, Diem.” He turned to the engineer’s station. “Mabumba, give the crew a one-minute warning.”

  “Very good, my lord.” Again the warning wailed, and Mabumba’s voice boomed through the ship. “One minute to acceleration. One minute.”

  In one minute, Martinez thought, I am either going to be a hero or the greatest criminal in the Fleet since Taggart of the Verity.

  “Everyone take their meds.”

  He reached for the med injector stowed in a holster below his chair arm, and shot into his carotid a drug that would keep his blood vessels supple and help prevent stroke during high gees. The others in Command did the same.

  “Eruken, withdraw radar reflectors.”

  “Radar reflectors withdrawn.” The composite, resinous hull of Corona wasn’t a natural radar reflector, and in order to make navigation and traffic control easier, the frigate carried several radar reflectors. Martinez figured there was no point in making a target out of himself.

  “Twenty seconds to ignition,” said Mabumba.

  “Engines, fire on the navplot’s mark,” Martinez said.

  “Firing on the navplot’s mark, my lord.”

  “Ten-second warning, pilot.”

  Again the warning screeched up and down the scale. Martinez could feel his blood thunder in answer.

  “By the way, Navigator,” he shouted over the alarm, “you might as well kill that proximity alarm now.”

  Then a giant boot kicked him in the spine as the engines fired, and Corona was on its way.

  ELEVEN

  An officer may order the immediate death of a subordinate under which circumstances?

  On recommendation of a duly appointed Court of Inquiry.

  When the subordinate is found in arms against the lawful government.

  When the officer possesses evidence that the subordinate is guilty of a capital crime.

  Under any circumstances.

  Sula touched her writing wand to the fourth and correct answer, then touched the icon that called for the next question. She knew that military law was so draconian, there was little room for error or laxity of interpretation.

  She also knew that military law was a lot less draconian in practice than in theory. There were relatively few captains who went around offhandedly whacking the heads off their subordinates, because in theory every citizen was the client of a patron Peer whose duty it was to supervise their welfare. While from experience Sula knew that many Peers couldn’t be bothered with such duties, it nevertheless remained a possibility that if a Peer felt that one of his clients had been treated unjustly, he could make inquiries and cause trouble, and the result could be a suit in civil law that might drag on for decades. Captains who wanted to punish a subordinate severely would cover their backs by appointing a Court of Inquiry, and though they were not obliged to follow a court’s recommendations, they usually did if they wanted to avoid problems later on.

  Sula sped through the next few questions secure in the knowledge that she was doing extremely well on the exams. Military law was her weakest subject barring interpretation of the Praxis, and so far the questions weren’t difficult.

  A first definitely seemed within her grasp.

  She tapped the butt end of her wand on the screen as she contemplated the next problem, which had to do with jurisdiction among the various military and paramilitary organizations on a ring station outside the military base proper, and then the door to the exam room banged open.

  “Scuuuuum!”

  Sula could thank years of conditioning for the fact that her mind continued to gnaw on the problem even as she leaped to her feet, chin high, throat bared.

  “My lord?” The Daimong proctor seemed more flustered than the cadets. “Why are you—”

  The intruder was Terran, and wore the uniform of a full captain. “We have an emergency situation,” he said. “The exams are canceled. All Fleet personnel are to report to their stations. Those who have no current assignment are to report to Ring Command, Personnel Section.”

  “But my lord—” the Daimong protested.

  “Now, scum!” The captain’s order was directed toward the cadets, not the exam proctor.

  The cadets crowded for the exit. The problem of jurisdiction slowly faded from Sula’s mind, and she looked about her with growing astonishment.

  The proctor appeared not to know what to do. She was making attempts to contact someone on her desk comm, but seemed to be having no success.

  Emergency situation, Sula thought, and then ran to the changing room to get out of her robes and into her uniform. Despite the buzzing speculation of the other cadets, her mind was still trapped in the pattern of exam questions.

  Examinations for lieutenant, she thought, have been canceled for the following reasons:

  On the whim of a superior officer.

  Because we say so.

  Lieutenants’exams have never been canceled.

  The correct answer, of course, was the third.

  Lieutenants’exams have never been canceled.

  Which meant that whatever was going on, it was big.

  Corona ducked and darted and sped along the southern edge of Magaria’s ring, the slim form of the frigate obscured by the brilliance of its blazing tail of annihilated matter. Martinez felt himself pressed deeper and deeper into the acceleration couch, spreading into the supportive gel like a piece of putty pressed into a mold. The weight of the pistol was a fierce pain digging into his right hip.

  He may have blacked out as acceleration approached ten gravities, but Corona didn’t stay at such speed for long, just enough to achieve escape velocity once it was time to dodge out from the ring station and onto a course for Magaria Wormhole 4.

  He was using Magaria’s ring for cover, knowing that the Naxids would never dare fire at him for fear of hitting the ring. And when it was time to break cover and dash for the wormhole, he kept the rim directly between Corona and the Naxid squadrons.

  Corona’s acceleration dropped to six gravities, which was misery for the crew, not because they lost consciousness, but because they retained it, and with it the discomfort of the ship’s desperate, blazing acceleration.

  Eighteen minutes into Corona’s escape, Martinez finally heard from the Naxids.

  “Urgent message via communications laser, my lord.” Vonderheydte’s words came into Martinez’s earphones. “From Ring Command.”

  The comm laser was necessary to punch a signal through Corona’s hot plasma tail. “Tell them to stand by, I’ll speak in person,” Martinez said.


  “Very good, my lord.”

  “Are the intership radio channels still jammed?”

  “No, my lord. Jamming dropped about two minutes ago, with the Coronas ahead three to one.”

  Martinez smiled, and then his smile faded as he realized why the jamming had ceased. Seizure of the non-Naxid squadrons was complete, and it was no longer necessary to prevent the target ships from signaling their distress.

  Corona was truly alone now, in a hostile system.

  He counted out two minutes—two more minutes in which the inevitable was delayed—and told Vonderheydte to patch Ring Command onto his displays. He waited until the winking light on his console told him he was being recorded.

  “This is Martinez,” he said.

  His display showed that his interlocutor was a Naxid in the uniform of a senior captain, whose speech was delayed only slightly by the message crossing the distance between them.

  “Lord Lieutenant Martinez,” the Naxid said, “I am Senior Captain Deghbal, commanding Magaria Ring. You have departed the ring without permission, and engaged in reckless maneuvers that have endangered your ship and the station. You are ordered to return at once.”

  “I thought Captain An-Char commanded the ring station,” Martinez said.

  “Captain An-Char is unavailable.” The words were spoken after a slight hesitation. “I am in command of the ring. You are directed to return.”

  “Can you can assure me that Lord Lieutenant Ondakaal is under arrest?” Martinez said. “He opened fire on my airlock guards and wounded one of them. He said that our ship was to be boarded and we were all to be killed.”

  Deghbal reared slightly at this, and Martinez knew that his barefaced lie had caught the Naxid completely by surprise.

  Anything to confuse the Naxids and get Ondakaal in trouble, he thought. And more important, to delay. Delay. Delay had to be his chief object now.

  “Everything is now under control,” Deghbal said finally. “There is no reason to be alarmed. You may return Corona to her berth.”

  Martinez took a deep breath against the gravities that sat on his chest. “Lord Escap,” he said, “I have been instructed by my captain not to permit anyone aboard the ship without his express order. Can you get me that order?”

  Anger added force to Deghbal’s reply. “Your captain’s permission is not necessary! My order alone should be sufficient!”

  Martinez did his best to look as if he was seriously considering this line of argument. He gave the camera a plaintive look. “Well, Lord Escap,” he said, “I would really like my captain’s order on this.”

  “I am your superior officer! You must obey my orders! If I am not obeyed, there will be unfortunate consequences for both your ship and yourself!”

  Martinez wondered if anyone had ever actually disobeyed one of Deghbal’s orders before. Probably not. He hoped he could profit by Deghbal’s unfamiliarity with disobedience, and again tried to look as if he were pondering the escap’s words. Then he hardened his face into what he hoped was a kind of dim-witted, stubborn resolve.

  “I want Captain Tarafah’s order,” he said. “I trust him to know what’s actually going on.” And then he frowned at the camera. “End transmission.”

  I am enjoying this too much, Martinez thought, but still he pictured Deghbal cursing at the orange End Transmission symbol appearing on his displays. Then he wondered if he’d overplayed his hand, if Deghbal would be angry enough simply to order a barrage of missiles to pursue Corona until the frigate was destroyed.

  He looked toward Tracy and Clarke, who were monitoring the sensor screens, and said, “Screens, if you see missile tracks, let me know fast.”

  Pinned by acceleration on their tandem couches, they rolled their heads toward him in wide-eyed surmise—though not related, so far as he knew, they looked very much alike, being dark-haired, broad-shouldered young women—and then turned their heads quickly back to their displays.

  Martinez paged Alikhan, this time using the ship’s system rather than his sleeve display, a convenience that enabled Martinez to use his headset mic rather than having to talk into his sleeve button. Alikhan’s own sleeve button showed nothing but the ceiling in Tarafah’s cabin, the only view available as Alikhan lay in the captain’s bed under six gravities.

  “Did you have any luck?”

  Alikhan’s voice showed the strain of the gravities he was laboring under. “I got the gear to the captain’s cabin, my lord. But all I had time to do was search his desk—no luck there.”

  “If I slow our acceleration to two gravities, do you think you could handle the—the gear?”

  “I could, my lord.”

  “Right. End transmission.” He raised his voice to carry to Eruken. “Engines. Reduce acceleration to two gravities.”

  “Very good, my lord.” Plain relief dripped from Eruken’s words. The ferocity of the acceleration eased, and Corona’s frame groaned with the release of strain.

  “My lord?” Vonderheydte’s query came into Martinez’s headset. “May I have permission to use the toilet? I was drinking coffee while I was censoring the mail, and—”

  Martinez grinned. The commonplace trumped the dramatic every time. “Permission given,” he said. “Transfer the comm displays to my board while you’re gone. Be careful.”

  Moving under two gravities was like walking with another person on your back. Sprains and breaks were common, and Martinez couldn’t afford injured personnel. Corona’s “doctor”—actually a pharmacist second class—was also the team doctor, and had been left behind on Magaria.

  But he didn’t want the crew in Command to pee all over themselves either.

  “Who else needs the toilet?” Most of the hands went up. High gees were hard on bladders.

  Come to think of it, Martinez thought, he could use the toilet himself. He made a general announcement to the ship’s company that people would have some time to make ablutions, again with care.

  If Corona survived the next few hours, he’d put the crew into vac suits, with the necessary sanitary appliances built in.

  Four crewmen had rotated in and out of the toilet before Alikhan reported in. “I’ve got the safe open, my lord. No luck.”

  Black anger descended on Martinez. This failure had very possibly killed everyone. “Search the room,” he said. “Then his office.”

  “Very good, my lord. Does he have a safe in his office?”

  “I don’t know. If there is, you’ll know what to do.”

  Martinez was last in rotation for the toilet. Stooped with the weight of gravity, he had just shuffled back into Command when the next transmission came from Ring Command. “It’s the elcap, my lord!” Vonderheydte proclaimed cheerfully, as if in the belief that Tarafah’s mere electronic presence would straighten out all misunderstandings and solve all Corona’s problems.

  “Stand by,” Martinez said. He lowered himself gently into the couch, released the cage to gimbal to a more comfortable position, then lowered the displays to lock in front of him.

  Martinez wondered if he shouted Where is your captain’s key? at some point in the conversation, whether Tarafah would have the chance to answer before the rebels flattened him or switched off. He wondered if Tarafah would even consider giving him the answer to the question.

  And he wondered that if he so much as asked the question, would he be confirming Ring Command’s worst suspicions and immediately trigger a salvo of missiles aimed in Corona’s direction.

  He decided he’d better not ask.

  “Martinez here,” he answered.

  Tarafah glowered at him from the display, which jerked and bobbed a little. It was probably someone else’s sleeve camera, since Tarafah was wearing sweats and had no sleeve rig of his own. Martinez heard crowd noises in the background. Tarafah was somewhere indoors, with institutional decor, and his voice echoed off the hard walls—probably he was in one of the rooms or corridors beneath the football stadium.

  “What’s this I hear
about you launching Corona and going like a skyrocket all over the ring?” Tarafah demanded.

  Delay, Martinez thought.

  “I hear the Coronas are ahead three to one, my lord,” he said. “Congratulations, first of all—your careful planning is bearing fruit.”

  “It’s four to one now,” Tarafah said. A touch of vanity tinged his anger.

  “Sorensen to Villa to Yamana to Sorensen to Digby—and goal. Brilliant, my lord.”

  “Thank you,” Tarafah grudged. “But I’ve got to get back to the team—we don’t want the Beijings to get another goal in the final minutes.”

  “Yes, my lord. I’m sorry you were asked to leave the game.”

  “My ship.” Tarafah’s eyes narrowed. “What about my ship?”

  “Armed Naxids tried to board the Corona, my lord. I had to get her out of dock.”

  Tarafah gave a dismissive look. “That’s been explained. It was a surprise inspection.”

  “They were armed, my lord,” Martinez said. “Why do inspectors need guns? And they were storming every ship on the station. Forty of them to every ship. Naxids. Only Naxids. With guns.”

  Tarafah’s eyes cut away, to something or someone out of frame, and then back.

  “Was it a Naxid who brought you the information, my lord?” Martinez inquired gently. “Are there Naxids with you now?”

  Tarafah hesitated, and then his look hardened again. “Of course they’re Naxids,” he said finally. “They’re from Fleet Commander Fanaghee’s staff.” His tone turned accusing. “You’ve got the fleetcom involved, Martinez! Do you know how vast this is?” A loud cheer roared up from the nearby crowd, and impatience crossed his face. “I’ve got to get back to the game. Now you turn Corona around and get back to the station—everything will get straightened out once you get back.”

  Martinez’s heart sank. This, he thought, is the precise moment at which any of this stops being fun.

  “You’re saying this freely?” he asked. “Under no duress or compulsion?”

  “Of course,” Tarafah snapped. “Now get Corona back to the rim and we’ll get everything settled.”