The Praxis

by Walter Jon Williams

  “When eight missiles were heading for us?” Kelly laughed. “I’m as devoted to the regs as anyone, but devotion can only go so far.”

  Alive! Martinez thought. Joy bubbled through his blood like champagne.

  He joined Kelly in the elevator that took them to Command deck. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks for working so well with me.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, and then added, “my lord.”

  The elevator stopped and Martinez began to step out, then hesitated. Wild impulse fluttered in his chest. “I don’t mean to offend,” he said, “but would you like to drop another deck with me and, ah, celebrate our survival?”

  The recreation chambers were one bulkhead below their feet. Kelly looked at him in surprise. “Aren’t our tummies a little full right now?” she said.

  “You could get on top,” Martinez explained. “I wouldn’t have my weight on you that way.”

  She barked a short, incredulous laugh, and gazed out of the elevator to the corridor outside, as if expecting an audience for this surprising comedy routine. “Well, Lord Lieutenant,” she said, “I have a guy on Zanshaa, and it seems Corona’s going back there.”

  “I understand.”

  “And it’s a bad idea to get involved with a senior.”

  “That’s wise,” Martinez nodded.

  She looked up at him. Her black eyes glittered and her broad grin was still plastered to her face. “You know what?” she said. “The hell with all that. We’ve already broken all the rules.”

  “That’s right,” Martinez agreed, “we have.”

  The “biological recreational chambers”—so infamous outside the Fleet, and the subject of endless jokes both inside the Fleet and out—originated not in the lustful mind of some Fleet holejumper, but as an unstated confession of bewilderment by the Great Masters themselves. The Shaa, after their conquest of Terra, were perplexed by the varieties of sexuality displayed by their new conquests, and had wisely made no attempt to regulate any of its variety. Instead they’d insisted, in the most unsentimental, practical way, on minimizing the consequences: every Terran female had to be given a contraceptive implant at some point during her fourteenth year. Any woman having reached twenty-two, the age of maturity, could have the implant removed at any time by a physician, while younger women required the permission of a parent or guardian. The number of unwanted children, though not eliminated altogether, was at least brought within manageable levels.

  The Fleet’s attitude toward sexuality was even less sentimental, if possible, than that of the Shaa. Though officially the Fleet claimed it didn’t care who coupled with whom, customs had developed over the centuries to restrain at least a few of the crew’s impulses. Division chiefs were discouraged from relations with their subordinates, because of the danger of coercion or of playing favorites. Relations between officers and enlisted were likewise discouraged, at least if they belonged to the same ship—Martinez’s connection with Warrant Officer Taen was well within the Fleet’s range of tolerance. And relations between the captain and any of his crew was not only considered a violation of custom, but bad luck as well.

  A loophole served the officers, however, since they were allowed servants, with whom recreationals were unlimited. But this happened less often than an observer might expect: Martinez suspected that living with a paid companion in the close confines of a warship was too much like the least attractive aspects of a marriage—all the boredom and constraint of living intimately with a person one simply couldn’t escape, and all without the relaxation and charm of getting away from routine to visit a lover in her own place.

  Corona had eight recreation tubes, two of them forward and reserved for officers. Martinez properly logged himself into the recreation chamber so that Vonderheydte could page him if he was needed. Martinez was expecting missile launches or some other emergency any second, and there was little time for preliminary caresses or endearments. He was surprised at the desperate quality of his own desires, the unexpected fury of his lust. Kelly mirrored his urgency, lost in explosive pleasure nearly from the start, clutching at him with the little red-knuckled fists at the end of her long, slim forearms. Alive! he thought. Alive!

  Afterward, with Kelly’s head resting on his chest, he wondered how long he dared remain here, how much he should permit himself to relax. He badly wanted to remain in the small tubelike room scented with the odors of clean sheets and the distant undertaste of disinfectant, to close his eyes, and to let the muscles bruised with high gravities relax into the mattress under the light weight of half a gravity. And he wondered how many of the other recreational tubes on the ship were occupied at that moment, with other crew celebrating their escape from death.

  It wasn’t a call from Command that brought him to full alertness, but a nearby crash, a sound like the contents of an overfull closet spilling out. A crash that was followed immediately afterward by a long, bellowing laugh.

  Well. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Martinez dressed, left the tube, and followed the laughter to the captain’s cabin, where he found Zhou and Knadjian, along with their partner in crime, Ahmet. All three were stinking drunk on the captain’s liquor, and Zhou was sprawled on the floor, far beyond speech or movement.

  “Hey there, Lieutenant!” Ahmet said with a wave. “Come join us!”

  Sex wasn’t the only form of celebration, Martinez reminded himself.

  At Martinez’s orders, they’d broken into everything in search of the captain’s key, and that apparently included the captain’s liquor store. Once released from duty for a meal, they’d made their way back to where they knew they could drink themselves into a coma.

  Martinez paged Alikhan. “Get these people to couches, strap them in, and make sure they’re not in a position to touch a single control,” he said. “Then find every bottle of liquor on this ship, give it to the cooks, and see that it’s put under lock and key.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  “That includes the stuff in my cabin. And in Garcia’s.”

  “Yes, my lord. I’ll be there directly.”

  Martinez rejoined Kelly briefly, and found her dressed and pulling on her shoes. He gave her foot a grateful squeeze—leaning into the tube, it was the only part of her he could reach—and thanked her, with all the sincerity he could muster, for joining him.

  “It’s not like I didn’t have fun,” she said.

  Martinez returned to Command, waited the few moments it took Kelly to return, then ordered everyone into vac suits for some sustained acceleration. It was best to put distance between them while the Naxids were inactive, he thought.

  It took ten minutes or so for the three inebriates to be stuffed into their suits and strapped down, and a little longer for the cooks to secure the galley. Then Martinez ordered increased acceleration, to four gees this time—his tummy, he realized, was a little full for six gravities to sit on it.

  Hours passed. Martinez spent his time obsessively studying the displays, watching Magaria’s ring on its slow rotation about its planet, speculating about the Naxids’ lack of activity.

  “My lord,” Tracy reported from her station. “Judge Kybiq has increased acceleration.”

  Kybiq was the cruiser that Fanaghee had placed en route to Wormhole 1, blocking Corona’s escape to Zanshaa.

  “Heading for the wormhole?” Martinez asked as he paged through the various displays to find the one that showed Kybiq.

  “No, my lord. Its heading is for Barbas”—the planet next out from Magaria, a sort of failed gas giant, huge, with a solid core and an atmosphere of furious storms. At the moment, its orbit placed it nearly between Magaria and Wormhole 1, which led to the most direct route to Zanshaa. For the next several months Barbas would be convenient for a slingshot maneuver, by which traffic outbound from Magaria would pick up speed by slinging themselves around it en route to the wormhole.

  “Any alteration in course?”

  “No, my lord.”

 
Martinez found the Judge Kybiq on his display, and as he stared at it, he felt a nervous little suspicion begin to grow in his mind. Why was the Naxid cruiser increasing its speed for the wormhole? Why was it suddenly so urgent to head to Zanshaa?

  A few minutes with the plotting computer confirmed his suspicions. Kybiq had been accelerating out of Magaria for three days, and it was traveling faster than Corona even though its accelerations hadn’t been quite so brutal. It was possible that the cruiser could swing around the near side of Barbas and hurl itself for Wormhole 1.

  It was equally possible, and a good deal more probable, that Judge Kybiq could make a slight, last-minute alteration of course, then slingshot itself around the far side of Barbas and head for Wormhole 4 and an interception of Corona.

  The navplot computer did the math. Depending on how fast Kybiq accelerated, it would be three to five days before it could make its slingshot, and then another eight or ten days before the interception. Martinez plotted the worst-case scenario. How hard would he have to accelerate to beat the cruiser to the wormhole?

  Not bad. To beat the Kybiq by half a day, even if the cruiser advanced at chest-crushing acceleration, Corona would only have to average a constant 3.8 gees for the next fourteen days. He was exceeding that now, and he’d set the pace before he even knew he was in a race.

  He didn’t want the Naxids to know he was on to their trick, however, so for the next three days he kept to a regular schedule: accelerating a steady four gees except during mealtimes, when he reduced to a single gravity; with occasional, regular bursts of up to six gees three times a day, for half an hour each time. His body ached, and his ligaments made popping and crackling sounds whenever he moved, but Corona’s crew was staying the course, if not precisely thriving.

  By the time Kybiq screamed through its turn around Barbas, subjecting its suffering crew to accelerations in excess of eleven gravities while it was in the planet’s gravity well, Corona had a comfortable lead, and Martinez pulled even farther ahead by increasing the duration of the six-gravity bursts. Kybiq increased its acceleration, but Martinez was able to increase his own proportionally in order to maintain his lead—no matter what the cruiser did, it was going to lose the race, and Martinez took what comfort he could from the knowledge that however much he and his people were suffering, the Naxids’ sufferings were worse.

  The acceleration was a dreary grind, however. His body ached and his mind felt dulled. His sleep was uneasy, with suggestive and distasteful dreams, and his waking hours filled with the leaden weight and unwashed stench of his own body.

  Martinez knew the Naxids had surrendered the race when they opened fire again. The ships around the ring station fired 190 missiles, and then, sometime later, Kybiq fired two salvos of thirty-two each and then cut its acceleration, giving up the race officially. The barrages were well-planned this time, each missile taking a separate track to converge on the Corona, from many different angles, within the space of about an hour. By the time they encountered the runaway frigate, they’d be traveling much faster than attacking missles had on the first day, and would be much more difficult to hit.

  Martinez had over two days in which to plan his defenses. He, Kelly, Alikhan, and other technical-minded crew conferred, ran simulations, conferred again. Martinez began firing his defensive barrages when the missiles were five hours out, and the results simplified things when it came time to use the lasers.

  By this time he was too tired to care much how it all turned out. The wild elation of the first day’s escape had faded beneath the relentless crush of gravity, and it seemed that death would be a release from weariness and the constant struggle simply to breathe. The display filled with a confusing overlay of explosions and clouds of deadly radiation. He and Kelly and anyone who felt qualified crewed one of the defensive lasers, with the rest turned to automatic: Corona was surrounded with its own spiderweb of light, each radial line terminating in an explosion. When in doubt, Martinez launched missiles.

  The fight went on for hours while the Naxid missiles vanished one by one in sheets of flame and fountains of angry gamma rays. More missiles flew through the expanding, opaque clouds, and had to be located and destroyed. Corona’s powerful radars hammered out, trying to locate the dodging, weaving parcels of deadly antimatter. The missiles crept closer and closer. Countermissiles leaped off the rails. Lasers flashed in the darkness. Martinez fired, wiped sweat from his eyes, and sought wildly on the displays for another oncoming warhead, certain that he was missing something—but then he heard a tired whoop from Kelly, who was looking at him with a faded version of her once-brilliant smile, and he realized he’d won, that the missiles were finally gone and that he and the Corona were free.

  He ordered the ship to decelerate to half a gravity and that a meal be served. He further ordered the spirit locker opened and gave everyone, even his three troublemakers, a shot of their favorite poison. They cheered him; wearily, but they cheered him. Exhausted pride glowed in his breast at the sound of their massed shouts.

  There was no question of a recreational with Kelly: they were both too weary.

  Fifteen days and four hours after departing Magaria station, Corona entered Magaria Wormhole 4 and made an instantaneous transit to the Paswal system. The frigate had twenty crew counting her lieutenant commandant, and thirty-one missiles left. She was traveling just short of twotenths of the speed of light, and could expect to dock at Zanshaa’s ring in about another month, depending on how hard Martinez wanted to press her acceleration and deceleration.

  Right now he didn’t want to press anything. He sent his report via comm laser to the wormhole relay station on the far side of the system, showered himself clean, reduced gravity still further, to a tenth of a gee, and floated to sleep in his own bed for the first time since he’d stolen Corona, fifteen days ago on the Festival of Sport.

  TWELVE

  Captain Lord Richard Li was a witness to the moment that saved Zanshaa and the Home Fleet. Fleet Commander Jarlath, trying to get to the bottom of construction delays at the ring dockyard, had called a meeting of dock administrators, civilian contractors, and the officers of ships building and in refit, but his temper rose at the vague answers he received from the administrators and the contractors.

  “Do you know your own business or not?” Jarlath finally demanded. The fur on his face stood erect, obscuring his facial features beneath the bristle and making him look like a hairbrush with two huge shaded eyes. The slight lisp, caused by his having to speak around his fangs, became more sinister than comical. “Why have the estimates been exceeded for Destiny and Recovery? Why can I receive no firm date for the completion of work on Dauntless and Estimable?”

  No firm dates or answers were given. All these things sort of depend on other things was the best answer the commander of the Home Fleet received, which happened to be the same answer Lord Richard had been getting since his appointment. His ship was full of noise and workmen, the stink of hot metal and the booming rumble of steel wheels on the big slabs of plastic temporary flooring, but nothing seemed to be any closer to completion than the day he’d arrived.

  Lord Richard had been receiving hints of impatience from the private firm he’d hired to decorate the officers’ suite, to install his new hutch, cabinets, and bar, to lay in his bathroom the lovely rough slate tiles that Terza had chosen for him, and to paint the hull, pinnaces, and missiles in his personal colors, a sublime burgundy red accented subtly with stripes of purple. The firm couldn’t start until the rebuild was finished, and now they were making ominous noises to the effect that if these delays continued, they might have to postpone work for months due to other commitments.

  This was far too alarming. Lord Richard had thought the new fleetcom ought to have some idea how his dockyard was run. “I simply don’t have the seniority to get so much as a single answer from these people,” he’d told Jarlath. “But they’ll have to answer to you.”

  Now he watched as the commander of the Home Fleet disc
overed that he didn’t have the seniority either.

  “I’m calling in the auditors!” Jarlath snarled as he walked down the rim road to the skyhook terminus. “There’s got to be thieving going on. It’s only pride in the service that keeps me from calling the Legion of Diligence!”

  Jarlath made an eye-catching picture as he stalked down the rubberized roadway. He had bleached his fur white in order to avoid the heat of formal mourning garb, and was dressed only in white trunks and a vest, both piped with service green and heavy with badges of rank. His powerful legs and broad haunches propelled his round-bottomed body with purpose and energy, all now directed toward clearing up the mess in the dockyards.

  Lord Richard Li had reason to feel pleased with himself. He was already picturing to himself the bath aboard Dauntless, the slate tile, the gleaming fixtures of porcelain and copper, steam rising from the scented water as he lowered himself into the tub…and then Jarlath saw Senior Squadron Commander Elkizer, and brought Lord Richard’s pleasant fantasy to an end.

  The leader of the Naxid heavy cruiser squadron stood with a group of officers and senior enlisted personnel before the massive airlock door that led to Jarlath’s own flagship, Glory of the Praxis. Elkizer gestured at the airlock, his chameleon-weave jacket flashing the red-on-black patterns of his beaded scales.

  Jarlath saw his subordinate and marched toward him. One of the Naxids saw the fleetcom coming and alerted Elkizer, and Elkizer’s four-legged body spun in place, two legs advancing forward, two in retreat, and then braced to attention. One last pattern flashed on the chameleon-weave jacket. Jarlath paused in surprise, then put his head down and marched to Elkizer again.

  “What do you mean, ‘dupe’?” he asked.

  Lord Richard was surprised at Jarlath’s words, though his surprise was nothing compared to that of Squadron Leader Elkizer, who swayed backward in astonishment, his back bent like a bow. “I beg your pardon, Lord Fleetcom,” he managed. “I did not use that sign.”