“No matter what happens on the Axtattle Parkway,” Sula said, “I think we ought to plan the destruction of the Great Destiny Hotel. Make a second truck bomb, drive it in the lobby some night, and blow every middle-rank administrator into low orbit. And the fuckers won’t be able to hide that—half the city could look out their windows and see it go up.”
A gust of wind brought a fine spray of water into Hong’s eyes. He blinked and held up a hand. “Difficult to get that stuff into the High City, with only the funicular and the one road.”
“That’s why you prepare the truck now,” Sula said. “I know you have teams in the High City, yes?”
Hong looked opaque. “You’re not to know that, Four-Nine-One.”
Sula, who had heard Lieutenant Joong complain that it was vexing to live around the corner from his old smoking club without being able to visit for a puff on the old hookah, simply shrugged.
Cool mist fell on her face. She and Hong moved out of the fountain’s range and Sula handed Hong a package.
“Coffee,” she said. “Highland, from Devajjo.”
Hong was impressed. “Where did you find it?”
Sula offered a private smile. “Military secret. But let me know when you need more.”
Through the modest scattering of radioactive dust that had once been a wormhole relay station, Chenforce passed from the Koel system into that of Aspa Darla. Koel was a bloated red giant, cool and eerily luminous, that squatted in the middle of its system like a tick swollen with blood, and the system was uninhabited except for the crews of the relay stations, all of whom had died in the last few days from the missiles fired by Michi Chen from Mazdan, before her ship had even entered the Koel system.
The reason the crews had to die involved Koel’s position as a hub, with four heavily trafficked wormhole gates. Squadron Commander Chen had decided she didn’t want the Naxids to know which wormhole she planned to use to leave the system, and so all means of communication between Koel and the outside were eliminated.
Martinez appreciated Lady Michi’s cold-blooded logic, but he regretted the wormhole stations. Not so much because of the Naxid crews, though he would have spared them if he could, but because the stations were in their own way vital.
It wasn’t just that the stations knit the far-flung empire together with their high-powered communications lasers, but they also kept the wormholes themselves from evaporating. Wormholes could destabilize, or even vanish, if the mass that moved through them was not eventually balanced by a similar mass moving the other way, and the wormhole stations were built around powerful mass drivers that could hurl through the wormholes colossal asteroid-sized chunks of rock and metal that would serve to balance the equation.
The stations’ function as a communications relay could be filled by parking a ship equipped with sufficiently powerful communications gear in front of a wormhole, but the act of balancing mass against mass was a problem not so easily solved. People were going to have to be careful moving through Protipanu and Koel for fear of endangering their route home.
That also was part of Michi Chen’s intent. Even though Chenforce had moved on, commerce through the wormhole junction would slow to a crawl as planners worked frantically to balance mass.
Chenforce’s accomplishments in Koel showed that the empire was more fragile than Martinez had suspected. The civil war could change its landscape permanently.
Not that any of Koel’s wormholes were in immediate danger. Chenforce had found sixteen merchant ships in the system and destroyed them all to prevent them from contributing to the Naxid economy and war effort. Some of the crews, seeing the missiles coming, had escaped in lifeboats, and some hadn’t.
There were going to be more ships in Aspa Darla, and a bounty of other targets as well. But there was no reason to destroy Aspa Darla’s wormhole stations, as Aspa Darla had only two wormholes. Everyone would know that Chenforce was headed from here to Bai-do.
As soon as Chenforce flashed into the system, Illustrious broadcast Michi Chen’s message to the ring stations on the two metal-rich planets Aspa and Darla.
“All ships docked at the ring station are to be abandoned and cast off so that they may be destroyed without damage to the ring. All repair docks and building yards will be opened to the environment and any ships inside will be cast off. Any ship attempting to flee will be destroyed. Your facilities will be inspected to make certain that you have complied with these orders. Failure to obey orders will mean the destruction of the ring.”
Four pinnaces were launched, and raced toward Aspa and Darla to perform these inspections in advance of the arrival of Chenforce. It would be some hours before the squadron received a reply, and in the meantime Martinez, strapped securely on his acceleration couch, watched the sensor displays in case a Naxid squadron turned out to be in the system.
The ships in the system were using radar, a sign that Chenforce wasn’t expected here, and there were already a vast number of details appearing on Martinez’s displays. Many ships flying in and out, all soon to be targets, and no fleet formations to be seen.
Martinez began to relax. This was likely to be a one-sided affair, another triumph, and triumph was all he asked of fate.
He glanced at his own displays and saw the seven ships of Chenforce grouped in a tight cluster—a standard, old-fashioned formation, as neither Martinez nor Michi saw any sense in revealing their dispersed tactical formations unless lives were at stake. At the center of the formation, protected by the others, was the damaged Celestial. The Torminel crew, aided by damage control parties from other ships, had performed prodigies of repair, and had surprised everyone by rescuing Captain Eldey and the others trapped in Command and believed dead. Celestial was able to maneuver with the rest of the squadron, but had lost one of its missile batteries, much of its defensive armament, and about a quarter of its crew.
Another message flashed from Illustrious’s transmitters.
“This is Squadron Commander Michi Chen to all ships in the Aspa Darla system. All crews are to abandon ship immediately. All ships in this system are to be destroyed. We will not fire on lifeboats.”
Missiles began firing shortly thereafter, to reinforce this order.
Time passed. It was becoming clear that the Naxids had no warships in this system.
“Message from Captain Hansen of Lord May, my lady,” said Lady Ida Li. “He…seems rather irate.”
Martinez saw a tight smile on Michi’s face. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll hear him.”
Lord May’s captain was a composition in scarlet: red hair, bristling red beard, red face, and bloodshot eyes that suggested Chenforce’s arrival had interrupted a bout of serious drinking. “Don’t kill my ship, damn you!” he boomed in a roaring voice that made Martinez wince and reach to turn down the volume on his earphones. “I hate the fucking Naxids, there was just no damn way to get out of their clutches till now! I’m heading for Wormhole One—just tell me where the fuck to go from there!”
Lord May was in fact the closest ship to Chenforce, outbound from the system to Koel, and looked right down the throats of the oncoming missiles.
Martinez watched the smile play over Michi’s lips. “I’ll answer that one,” she said, and then touched controls on her comm display and looked into the camera pickup. “Captain Hansen, you will set a course Koel-Mazdan-Protipanu-Seizho. If you deviate from this you will be destroyed. From Seizho you may wish to continue into the Serpent’s Tail, as Seizho is dangerously near the enemy. Message ends.” Then she looked up at Martinez. “Captain, will you tell Command to retarget that missile?”
Martinez felt a smile break out on his lips. “At once, my lady.” He had a feeling that Aspa Darla was going to be lucky for him.
Martinez’s equilibrium had been restored during the long crossing of the Mazdan and Koel systems. There had been no nightmares of Beacon’s loss, no lonely episodes of doubt or terror. The crew were cheerful, and the officers congratulatory, and gradually Martinez’s
fury at Beacon’s loss had faded. Even Captain Lord Gomburg Fletcher invited him to dine, alone without any of the other officers present, and endured Martinez’s accent for two entire hours without so much as a wince. Martinez tried to avoid being “clever,” on the theory that cleverness was what Fletcher would appreciate least. For the most part they discussed sports. Fletcher, like Martinez, had been a fencer at the academy.
After it was clear that no enemy warships lurked in the Aspa Darla system, Michi stood most of the crew down from action stations. Martinez rose from his couch with a growing optimism in his heart, and then a thought occurred to him.
“My lady?” he said. “Shall we send crew mail and dispatches with Lord May?”
Michi agreed, and the crew’s messages home, plus a brief message from Michi to the effect that they’d entered Aspa Darla after a journey from Protipanu free of incident, were coded and sent to friendly territory courtesy of Captain Hansen. Included was Martinez’s long serial letter to Terza, plus briefer messages to other members of his family, all save Roland, to whom he had very little to say.
Martinez had, some time ago, asked Michi to censor his mail personally on the grounds that it might contain Chen family business, and Michi had agreed with perfect amiability. There was no Chen family business in the messages, not unless Martinez’s speculation about the development of the Chen heir counted as business, but Michi did not complain, and Martinez was pleased that Fletcher wasn’t reading his messages.
At Martinez’s request Hansen sent recent news to Illustrious. The Naxid news videos trumpeted the fact that Zanshaa had fallen without a fight, though they lamented that “pirates in the employ of the renegade government” had destroyed its ring. Civil government was in the process of being established on Zanshaa, and would be throughout the empire as soon as the renegade government was hunted down and received their just desserts. The Naxids admitted to a hard-fought action at Hone-bar, but did not mention its results. Martinez found the omission annoying. Anyone used to living under the censorship would find it obvious enough that Hone-bar had been a Naxid defeat, simply from the fact no victory was mentioned.
They might at least have mentioned my name.
We are continually involved in attacking the enemy’s ability to make war, Martinez began in a new letter to Terza. There is little or no danger to ourselves, but great harm to the enemy’s economy.
I think of you constantly, and hope you are well.
Sparing Lord May was the only deviation from the plan that Martinez had devised for the Aspa Darla raid. The Naxid administrators of the two planets’ rings, with no force to stand between them and the oncoming loyalists, obeyed Lady Michi’s orders. All ships on the ring were jettisoned; the repair and construction bays were all opened, and ships under construction shoveled out into the vacuum. Antimatter missiles found all these targets as well as the ships moving in or out of the system, and by the end of the raid a hundred and three ships were destroyed. A few managed to accelerate through Wormhole 2 to Bai-do before loyalist missiles could find them, but Chenforce would catch them there.
Two pinnaces passed close to each ring, cameras trained on the open construction bays to make certain that Michi Chen’s stern orders had been obeyed. The pinnaces were recovered without incident at the far end of the system.
As Chenforce flashed past, another order was given to the Naxids. “You will broadcast the following message on all communications channels every hour until we leave the system. We will be monitoring your communications to assure compliance.”
The message featured Squadron Commander Chen sitting in her office, wearing her viridian dress uniform and gazing at the camera with solemn eyes.
“This is Squadron Commander Chen,” she said. “Loyalist forces operating under the authority of the Convocation and the Praxis have returned to your system. Do not believe rebel propaganda claiming the war is over. Loyalist forces are advancing into rebel areas and have already destroyed two rebel fleets at Hone-bar and Protipanu.
“We will be leaving your system soon in order to fight the rebels elsewhere, but please believe that we will soon return. Those who cooperate with the rebel government or military will be judged and punished. Those who remain faithful to the Convocation and the Praxis will be rewarded. Until the return of lawful government, good citizens will not cooperate with rebels and other enemies of the empire.”
The message was still being broadcast five days later, when Chenforce left the system.
SEVENTEEN
Cousin Marcia gave birth to a boy two days after Sula’s meeting with Hong. Weight was not mentioned. Sula already knew the Naxids were landing, because she’d heard the sonic booms rattle the windows as the shuttles came in, and had been counting.
The Naxids were coming down in groups of eight. If the shuttles were standard military type, each would carry eighty Naxids plus their gear, and the total would not land an armed force very quickly. They had probably brought in just enough shuttles to secure the ground termini of the space elevators so that they could send their main force down from the ring. Without the ring, this deployment was going to take quite a while.
After four trips, the sonic booms ceased. The former government had ordered the destruction of all suitable fuel stocks, and the Naxids presumably returned to orbit to refuel. Sula wished she knew how much fuel the enemy fleet brought with them.
She knew from her readings in Terran history that things such as ground-to-air missiles had once existed, and she longed for a battery of them. But the Fleet did not have such things, because the Fleet did not fight from the ground. And the police didn’t have them, either, because they didn’t need missiles to arrest criminals—and if there was civil disorder, well, either the police crushed the riot with their small arms or they called in the Fleet to turn the rioters into a cloud of raging plasma.
Team 491 sat in the small apartment at Riverside, the video a constant murmur in the background; news when it wasn’t Macnamara watching sports. The Naxids had decreed a full schedule of summer sports, diversion for a population suffering from spot shortages and the electricity ration, and Andiron was on top of the ratings and delighting its fans. Macnamara watched the games obsessively, crosslegged before a spread oilcloth on which he disassembled and cleaned the team’s weapons.
Spence stayed in the bedroom she shared with Sula and used the wall video to watch a long succession of romantic dramas. Sula tried to avoid overhearing any of the dialogue. She figured she knew pretty well how those romances turned out in real life.
Sonic booms rattled the windows again, sixteen landings altogether, and then the booms stopped. The Naxids had probably run out of whatever fuel they’d scavenged. Sula pictured Naxid constabulary pouring into some chemical refinery and demanding they alter their output.
Sula worked her way through three volumes of mathematical puzzles and a volume of history—Europe in the Age of Kings—before her comm chirped with a text message from Blanche for a breakfast meeting at 05:01 at the Allergy-Free Restaurant in Smallbridge, a district of the Lower Town. Sula looked at the message and felt her skin prickle hot with a sudden rush of blood. Trying to control the sudden urge to pant for breath, she rose from her seat and walked with care toward where her team waited, their eyes on her. Sula’s feet seemed to sink into the floorboards beneath her feet, as if she were walking on pillows.
“It’s tomorrow morning,” she said. “Nine hours from now.”
Mr. and Madame Guei held hands as they sat on the sofa, their eyes wide as they watched Action Team 491 turn their pleasant apartment into an ambush site. Their infant son dozed on his father’s lap, and their nine-year-old daughter, having rapidly grown bored with the three heavily armed soldiers who had appeared in their quarters before sunrise, played games on the video wall.
Sula had told the Gueis that they were allowed to do nothing else with the video wall, or any other form of communication in the house. They were particularly urged not to call the police. The act
ion team was there to fight Naxid rebels, not to interfere with their lives, but their lives would be interfered with if necessary.
The Gueis complied quietly. They seemed to comprehend easily enough that no one had given them a vote in whether their apartment was going to be turned into a battlefield.
The drive to the Axtattle Parkway was accomplished in the dead of night and without trouble. Due to the electricity rationing, there was very little activity on the streets at that hour. Somewhat to Sula’s surprise, they even found a legal parking space half a block from their destination.
Another team had arrived before them, had awakened the building manager, shown him their warrants, and had him surrender his passkeys. They now held the manager and his family incommunicado in one of the other apartments. One of the advance team let Group 491 into the building, and their team leader let them into the Gueis’ apartment, where they quietly woke the family, got them dressed, and assembled them in their front room.
Normally the teams might have taken positions on the roof, but the gabled mansard roofs common in the district did not permit such a thing. Not only was there no place to hide on the roofs, but a misstep would have pitched them all into the street below.
Once in the Gueis’ apartment, Team 491 opened their duffels and began their transformation into soldiers. On Sula’s head was a helmet with a transparent faceplate onto which combat displays could be projected, and she wore on her torso a midnight-colored carapace that would protect her against small-arms fire and shrapnel. Over it all was a cape that projected active camouflage: it was like a giant video screen that showed whatever was on the reverse side. The image wasn’t perfect, and tended to waver with the folds of the cape, but if she stayed still it would fool the eye even at close ranges, and there was a hood she could pull over her head.
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