The Sundering

by Walter Jon Williams

  Martinez spoke through clenched teeth, wishing he could lock eyes with Shankaracharya and convey to him the full measure of his annoyance. “Message to squadron. Cease acceleration at—” He looked at the chronometer again, and saw that his original time had expired “25:35:01.”

  “25:35:01, my lord.” There was a pause while Shankaracharya transmitted the message. And then he said, “Messages from the other ships of the squadron, lord elcap, reporting enemy engine flares. Do you wish the coordinates?”

  “No. Just acknowledge. Engines.” Martinez turned to Warrant Officer First Class Mabumba, who sat at the engine control station. “Engines, cut engines at 25:35:01.”

  “Cut engines at 25:35:01, lord elcap.”

  “Shankaracharya.”

  “My lord?”

  He had deliberately waited for his junior lieutenant to acknowledge before he spoke. He didn’t want this message to go astray. “Message to Squadron Commander Do-faq via the wormhole station. Inform him of the presence of ten enemy ships just entered the Hone-bar system. Give course and velocity.”

  “Very good, my lord. Ten enemy ships, course, and velocity to the squadcom.”

  Corona couldn’t communicate directly with Do-faq, not with the wormhole in the way, but there were manned relay stations on either side of the wormhole, all equipped with powerful communications lasers. The stations transmitted news, instructions, and data through the wormholes, and strung the empire together with their webs of coherent light.

  The low-gravity warning blared out, the engines suddenly cut out, and Martinez floated free in his straps. His ribs and breastbone crackled as he took a long, deliberate free breath. He saw Vonderheydte at the weapons board casting him a look, and then Mabumba at the engine control station.

  Mabumba was one of the original crew who had helped Martinez steal Corona from the Naxid mutineers. So were Tracy and Clarke, the sensor operators. Navigator Trainee Diem—now promoted Navigator/2nd—sat where he had during the escape, and so did the pilot, Eruken. Both had been joined by trainees.

  Cadet Kelly, who had acted as weapons officer in the flight from the Naxids, had been returned to her original job of pinnace pilot, and was presumably now sitting in Pinnace Number 1, ready to be fired into action. Vonderheydte had replaced her in the weapons cage, again with a trainee to assist, and Shankaracharya had taken Vonderheydte’s original place as communications officer, backed up by Signaler Trainee Mattson.

  These were the most reliable personnel he had aboard, along with Master Engineer Maheshwari in the engine department, another veteran of Corona’s earlier adventures. Martinez regretted extremely the fact that Kelly wasn’t a part of his Control staff. He didn’t relish her chances in what was to come—only one pinnace pilot had survived Magaria, and that had been Sula.

  It wasn’t just Kelly he’d have to look after, though, it was all of them. And not just the personnel aboard Corona, but the other ships in his squadron.

  And then it occurred to him that many of Corona’s people didn’t yet know they were about to engage the enemy, only those here in Control and presumably those with Dalkeith in Auxiliary Control.

  He had better tell them.

  “Comm: general announcement to the ship’s personnel,” he said, and waited for the flashing light on his displays that indicated he was speaking live throughout the ship.

  “This is the captain,” he said. “A few minutes ago we entered the Hone-bar system. Shortly after passing through the wormhole, sensors detected the flares of a squadron of rebel warships entering the system through Wormhole Number Two. We have every reason to believe that within a few hours we will be heavily engaged with the enemy.”

  He paused, and wondered where to go from here. At this point a brilliant commander would, of course, inflame his men with a flood of dazzling rhetoric, inspiring them to feats of courage and radiant daring.

  A less than brilliant commander would make an address of the sort Martinez was about to deliver. He made a note to himself that, if he survived the coming fight, he’d assemble a stock of these sorts of speeches in case he ever needed one again.

  He decided to stress the aspect practical. “With Squadron Commander Do-faq’s force, we will have a decisive advantage in numbers over the enemy. We have every reason to anticipate success. The enemy force will be crushed here, at Hone-bar, and the Naxids’ plans will be wrecked.”

  He glanced over the control room crew and saw what he hoped was increased confidence. He decided to follow with unabashed flattery. “I know that you are all eager to come to grips with the enemy,” he continued. “We’ve trained very hard for this moment, and I have every confidence that you’ll do your duty to the utmost.

  “Remember,” getting on to the rousing finish, “the comrades we’ve already lost, killed in battle or taken prisoner by the enemy on the first day of rebellion. I know that you’re anxious to avenge your friends, and I know that when the Naxids’ captives are finally liberated, they’ll thank you for the work you’ll do this day.”

  From the reaction of the control room crew—the chins lifted in pride, the glitter of determination in their eyes—Martinez thought he’d done well. He decided to quit while he was ahead and ended the transmission.

  That left only the enemy to deal with. He looked again at the display, ran a few calculations from current trajectories. Corona’s squadron, after a month’s acceleration, was traveling just in excess of a fifth of the speed of light. The Naxids were faster, coming on at 0.41c. They could stand higher accelerations than the Lai-owns of Do-faq’s heavy squadron, or perhaps they’d been in transit for a longer amount of time.

  And then Martinez realized what the enemy squadron was, and what they were doing here, and the entire Naxid strategy dropped into his mind like a ripe fruit fallen from the tree.

  These ten enemy ships were the squadron that had originally been based at the remote station of Comador, and were heavy cruisers under a Senior Squadron Commander named Kreeku. On the day of the rebellion, they’d simply left Comador’s ring station and burned for the center of the empire. It had been assumed they were heading for the Second Fleet base at Magaria, but the Comador squadron hadn’t taken part in the battle there. The Fleet had assumed this was because they hadn’t arrived yet, but perhaps they’d always been intended to go someplace else.

  Any ship traveling from the empire’s core to the Hone Reach had to travel through Hone-bar’s Wormhole 3—if another route existed, it hadn’t been discovered. Kreeku had all along been intended to cut the Hone Reach off from any loyalists and secure it for the Naxids.

  “Comm,” Martinez told Shankaracharya, “message to the squadron, copy to the squadcom. We are facing Kreeku’s squadron from Comador. End message.”

  “Kreeku’s squadron from Comador. Very good, my lord.”

  Martinez told his display to go virtual, and the Hone-bar system expanded in his skull, all cool emptiness with a few dots here and there representing Hone-bar’s sun and its planets, the wormhole gates, and little speeding color-coded icons with course and velocity attached.

  Since the arrival of the Naxids the merchant vessel Clan Chen had increased its acceleration and was fleeing the system as fast as the bones of its crew could stand. Martinez could confidently assume that the Naxids, who would not know of Martinez’s arrival for another four hours, would continue their course toward Hone-bar’s sun, and by now would have traveled a little short of two light-hours’ distance. They would travel an equal distance before they would see Martinez’s engine flares, and then their blissful ignorance would end.

  There would be many hours after that for the battle to develop, and it would pass through a series of obvious stages. Martinez should begin decelerating and let Do-faq’s eight heavier ships enter the system and join him. Do-faq could then confront the enemy with sixteen ships to the Naxids’ ten, and engage on favorable terms. With the loyalists swinging around Soq, and the Naxids coming around Hone-bar’s sun, the two squadrons would be
meeting each other almost head-on, in one of those blazing collisions that Martinez had seen in records from the Battle of Magaria. At the end of which a few loyalist survivors would pass through the fire and into victory.

  All Martinez’s instincts protested against this scenario. Though he had every reason to believe that Kreeku would be annihilated, he would probably take at least half of Faqforce with him. The whole scenario reeked of useless waste.

  There had to be some way to make better use of the loyalists’ advantages.

  And of what, Martinez asked himself with full, careful deliberation, did these advantages consist?

  Numbers and firepower. Eight frigates and light cruisers in Martinez’s Light Squadron 14, plus Do-faq’s eight heavy cruisers, against ten heavy cruisers. An advantage sufficient to crush the enemy, but not decisive enough to avoid casualties.

  Surprise. The enemy wouldn’t know of Martinez’s arrival for another four hours. But that advantage wasn’t decisive, either, because it would take the opposite forces a lot more than four hours to engage.

  And…

  Another surprise. Because the enemy didn’t need to know of Do-faq’s squadron at all.

  Martinez’s pulse thundered in his ears. He called up a calculator and began punching in numbers.

  “Vonderheydte!” he called out. “Shankaracharya! Get out your lieutenants’ keys! Hurry!”

  In order for Corona’s world-shattering weaponry to be deployed, three out of its four most senior officers had to turn their keys at the same moment. Martinez feared he’d already lost too much time.

  He was currently carrying his captain’s key on an elastic band around his neck. He yanked off his helmet—blind, since he was still in virtual—and scrabbled for his collar buttons. He told the computer to cut the virtual environment, then yanked the key, shaped like a narrow playing card, from his tunic and thrust it into the slot on the display.

  Vonderheydte, after a similar struggle with his clothing, slid his own key into his slot. “Key ready, my lord.”

  From the comm cage behind him, Martinez heard only a quiet, “Let me help you with that, my lord” from Signaler Trainee Mattson, followed by the chunk of a helmet being twisted off its collar ring. Then, after a few seconds in which Martinez’s nerves shrieked in impotent agony, he heard Shankaracharya say, “Damn these gloves!”

  There was another ten-second eternity before he heard Shankaracharya’s, “Key ready, my lord.”

  Martinez tried not to scream his commands at the top of his impatient voice. “Turn on my mark,” he said. “Three, two, one, mark.”

  From his position he could see Vonderheydte’s weapons board suddenly blaze with light.

  “Weapons,” Martinez said, “charge missile battery one with antimatter. Prepare to fire missiles one, two, and three on my command. This is not a drill.” He turned to Eruken. “Pilot, rotate ship to present battery one to the enemy.”

  “Rotating ship, lord elcap.” Martinez’s cage gave a shimmering whine as the ship rolled.

  “Display: go virtual.” Again the virtual cosmos sprang into existence in Martinez’s mind. With his gloved hands he manipulated the display controls to mark out three targets in empty space between his squadron and the enemy.

  “Weapons,” he said, “fire missiles one, two, and three at the target coordinates. This is not a drill.”

  “This is not a drill, my lord,” Vonderheydte repeated. “Firing missiles.” There was a brief pause in which Martinez’s nerves involuntarily tensed, as if expecting recoil. “Missiles fired,” Vonderheydte said. “Missiles clear of the ship. Missiles running normally on chemical rockets.”

  The missiles had been hurled into space on gauss rails—there was no detectable recoil, of course—and then rockets would take them to a safe distance from Corona, where their antimatter engines would ignite.

  “My lord.” Shankaracharya’s voice in Martinez’s earphones. “Urgent communication from Captain Kamarullah. Personal to you, lord elcap.”

  Martinez’s mind whirled as he tried to shift from the virtual world, with its icon-planets and plotted trajectories and rigorous calculations, to the officer who wished to talk to him.

  “I’ll take it,” he said, and then Kamarullah’s face materialized in the virtual display, and at offensively close range. Martinez couldn’t keep himself from wincing.

  “This is Martinez,” he said.

  Kamarullah’s square face was ruddy, and Martinez wondered if it was the result of some internal passion that had flushed his skin or an artifact of transmission.

  “Captain Martinez,” Kamarullah said, “you have just fired missiles. Are you aware that you can’t possibly hit the enemy at this range?”

  “Main missile engines ignited,” Vonderheydte reported, as if to punctuate Kamarullah’s question.

  “I don’t intend to hit the Naxids with these missiles,” Martinez said. “I’m intending to mask a maneuver.”

  “Maneuver? Out here?” Kamarullah was astonished. “Why? We’re hours yet from the enemy.” He gazed at Martinez with a fevered expression, and spoke with unusual clarity and emphasis, as if trying to convince a blind man, by the power of words alone, that he was standing in the path of a speeding automobile. “Captain Martinez, I don’t think you’ve thought this out. As soon as you saw the enemy, you should have given the squadron orders to rotate and start our deceleration. We need to let Squadron Commander Do-faq join us before we can engage.” His tone grew earnest, if not a little pleading. “It’s not too late to give up command of the squadron to a more experienced officer.”

  “The missiles—” Martinez began.

  “Damn it, man!” Kamarullah said, his eyes a little wild. “I don’t insist that I command! If not me, then stand down in favor of someone else. But you’re going to have your hands full managing a green crew without having to worry about tactics as well.”

  “The missiles,” Martinez said carefully, “will mask the arrival of the squadcom’s force. I intend to keep the existence of the heavy squadron a secret as long as I can.”

  Astonishment again claimed Kamarullah. “But that would take hours. They’re bound to detect—”

  “Captain Kamarullah,” Martinez said, “you will stand by for further orders.”

  “You’re not going to attempt any of your—your tactical innovations, are you?” Kamarullah said. “Not with a squadron that doesn’t understand them or—”

  Martinez’s temper finally broke free. “Enough! You will stand by! This discussion is at an end!”

  “I don’t—”

  Martinez cut off communication, then pounded with an angry fist on the arm of his couch. He told the computer to save the conversation in memory—there had better, he realized, be a record of this.

  And then he stared blindly out into the virtual planetary system, the little abstract symbols in their perfect, ordered universe, and tried to puzzle out what he should do next.

  “Comm,” he said. “Message to Squadron Commander Do-faq, personal to the squadcom. To be sent through the wormhole relay station.”

  “Very good, my lord. Personal to the squadcom.”

  Again Martinez waited for the light to blink, a little glowing planet that came into existence in the virtual universe, and he said, “Lord Commander Do-faq. In my estimation, our great advantage in the upcoming battle is that the enemy do not yet know of the existence of your squadron. As we approach the enemy, I will fire missiles in an attempt to screen your force for as long as possible. I will order Light Squadron Fourteen into a series of plausible maneuvers in order to justify the existence of the screen.

  “If you agree with this plan, please order your force onto a heading of two-nine-zero by zero-one-five absolute, as soon as you exit the wormhole, and continue to accelerate at two gravities. This will allow you to take advantage of the screen I have already laid down.”

  He looked at the camera and realized that he should perhaps soften the effect of having just given an order
to an officer several grades superior in rank.

  “As always,” he said, “I remain obedient to your commands. Message ends.”

  He fell silent as the recording light vanished from the virtual display, and as he thought of the message flying from Corona to Do-faq through the power of communications lasers, a deep suspicion began to creep across his mind. He began to wonder what might happen if his messages to Do-faq weren’t getting through. If, somehow, the wormhole relay stations were under the control of the enemy.

  The only thing that made his suspicions at all plausible was that the arrival of the Naxid squadron shouldn’t have been a surprise. The station on the far side of Wormhole 2 should have seen the Naxids coming hours ago, and reported to the commander of Hone-bar’s ring station, who in turn should have relayed the information to Do-faq, whose arrival he’d known for the better part of a month. In fact, there should have been a long chain of sightings, all the way from Comador.

  Why hadn’t the information reached him? he wondered. Had half the Exploration Service joined the rebels?

  If it had, and if his messages to Do-faq hadn’t got through, he’d better order that his last two messages be beamed just this side of the wormhole, so that Do-faq would receive them as he flashed into the Hone-bar system.

  He was on the verge of giving the order when Shankaracharya’s voice came into his earphones. “Message from Squadron Commander Do-faq via Wormhole One station. ‘Yours acknowledged. Light Squadron Fourteen to head course two-eight-eight by zero-one-five absolute and commence deceleration at four point five gravities.’”

  “Acknowledge,” Martinez said automatically, while panic flashed along his nerves. Do-faq’s order was in response to his first message, and would send Martinez’s squadron on a wide trajectory around the Soq gas giant, wide enough to permit Do-faq’s ships to take an inside track, closer to the planet, to make up some of the distance between the two squadrons.

  The order was perfectly orthodox and sensible. Unfortunately it wasn’t compatible with the plan of the battle as Martinez had mapped it out in his mind.