Conventions of War def-3

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Conventions of War def-3 Page 11

by Walter Jon Williams


  The chef gave a sour nod. “Exactly. I’d say that’s a good advertisement for how things are going to be.”

  “Do we get a free dessert?” Spence asked.

  “Not this early, you don’t. Be off, I’ve got work to do.”

  The door to the cargo compartment hummed shut on electric motors. Macnamara made certain the cargo door was locked and joined Sula and Spence in the cab.

  “Lots of cocoa left,” he told Sula. “What’s it for?”

  “Samples,” Sula said. “We’ll be spending the day visiting other restaurants. Some in the High City.”

  A good place to gather information, she thought. And they’d contact coffee shops and tobacco clubs as well.

  Spence, tucked in the cab between Sula and Macnamara, turned to Sula. “Lucy,” she said, “are you still ‘Lucy’ when we’re on these deliveries? If we use that name in front of people we don’t know, that’s a clue to your cover identity. Gavin and I can fall back on our code names and go by Starling and Ardelion, butyour code name is four-nine-one, after our team. We can’t call you that.”

  “No, you can’t.” Sula glanced over the street, the people moving in the shade of the gemel trees that were bright with their white summer blossoms. From the shadows she heard the echo of a name, and she smiled.

  “Call me Gredel,” she said.

  That night, with the reflected rays of Shaamah glowing on theju yao pot and One-Step quietly passing copies ofResistance on the pavement outside, she wrote with her stylus on the modestly intelligent, glowing surface of her table, producing an essay on how to organize a loyalist network into cells. She threw in every security procedure she could think of, from code names to letter drop procedures.

  She realized that she had done part of her job already. Copies ofResistance were being passed from hand to hand along spontaneously formed, informal networks. For her purposes the networks already existed: all she had to do was professionalize them.

  The unsuccessful networks would be caught and killed, she thought. All taking bullets meant for her.

  The successful networks she would hope to contact later-so they could be killed by other bullets when she needed them.

  TEN

  Martinez set the wall video to the tactical display, but he didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. He couldn’t stay in his seat: he was compelled to pace, and march, and conduct imaginary conversations with every officer on the ship.

  By the time Alikhan came in with his dinner, he’d worked himself into a near frenzy. “What’s happening?” he demanded the instant Alikhan entered. “What are people saying?”

  With a series of deliberate gestures Alikhan put the covered plate in front of Martinez and arranged his napkin and silverware. Then he straightened and said, “May I close the door, my lord?”

  “Yes.” It was all Martinez could do to avoid shouting the word.

  Alikhan quietly closed the door and said, “Lady Michi asked Dr. Xi to report to her. He did so. Then she asked for Captain Fletcher, and he reported to her as well.”

  “Any notion of what was said?”

  “No, my lord.”

  Martinez found himself grinding his teeth. He very much wanted to know what Fletcher said to the squadcom.

  “How are the petty officers taking it?” he asked.

  “They’re huddling with one another, talking quietly.”

  “What are they saying?”

  Alikhan straightened with quiet dignity. “They’re not speaking much to me, my lord. I’ve not been aboard very long. They’re talking only to people they know they can trust.”

  Martinez drummed his fingers on his thighs in frustration. Alikhan quietly uncovered Martinez’s plate, revealing a rehydrated filet drizzled with one of Perry’s elaborate sauces. Martinez looked up at him.

  “Do they think the captain’s mad?” he said.

  Alikhan considered the question for a moment before answering. “They don’t understand the captain, my lord. They never have. But mad? I don’t know what a doctor would say, but I don’t think the captain fits any definition of madness a petty officer would recognize, my lord.”

  “Yes,” Martinez said. The answer depressed him. “Thank you, Alikhan.”

  Alikhan withdrew. A few moments later Martinez looked at his plate and discovered that his food was gone. Apparently he’d eaten it, though he couldn’t remember doing so.

  He thought about inviting the lieutenants for an informal meeting aboardDaffodil. Or the premiere lieutenant, Kazakov, to a dinner. To talk, and perhaps to plan for eventualities.

  But no. That might call Fletcher’s attention to his lieutenants. Because of his position on Michi Chen’s staff, Martinez was one of the few people aboardIllustrious that Fletcher couldn’t legally kill. The lieutenants weren’t so lucky. If Fletcher suspected Kazakov of plotting with Martinez, then Kazakov might be in jeopardy.

  Martinez sipped his glass of water, flat and tasteless from its trip through the recyclers, and then called Alikhan to clear the table. Just as Alikhan was leaving, Martinez’s sleeve comm chimed.

  “Martinez,” he answered, and his heart leaped to see the squadcom’s face on the display.

  Now, he thought, Michi would call him to a conference, and the two of them would work out something to do about Fletcher.

  “Lord Captain,” the squadcom said, “I’d be obliged if you’d arrange a squadron maneuver-an experiment, rather-in three days, after we pass Termaine.”

  Martinez fought down his surprise. “Yes, my lady. Do you want any kind of experiment in particular?”

  “Just make sure it lasts at least a watch,” Michi said. “We don’t want the squadron to get rusty.”

  “No, my lady.” He paused for a moment in hopes Michi would open the subject of the killing, and when nothing was said, he hopefully asked, “Do you have any other requests, my lady?”

  Michi’s tone was final. “No, my lord. Thank you. End transmission.”

  Martinez gazed for a moment at the orange end-stamp on his sleeve, then blanked the display.

  Chenforce hadn’t had a maneuver since before Bai-do, so it was probably time to shine the squadron’s collective skills. The ships would be linked by communications laser into a virtual environment and fight a battle against an enemy force, or split into two divisions and battle one another.

  Maneuvers in the Fleet, traditionally, were highly scripted, with the outcome determined in advance and the ships and their crews rated on how well they performed the tasks they were assigned. Michi, however, had requested an “experiment,” a type of maneuver that Martinez and Squadron Commander Do-faq had developed after the Battle of Hone-bar. In an experiment, the outcome of the maneuver was not determined in advance, and the ships and their commanders were free to improvise and experiment with tactics. It was a measure of Michi’s generosity that she was willing to permit this: most commanders would have insisted on knowing they were going to win ahead of time.

  What was perhaps more important under the current circumstances was that while the maneuver was going on, Fletcher would not be conducting inspections, and thereby not be tempted to execute subordinates in passing.

  Nor could Fletcher conduct an inspection while Chenforce flew by Termaine in two days. Everyone would be at general quarters for ten or twelve hours while they waited to see if Termaine would attempt resistance.

  That left tomorrow, still a routine day in which the captain was free, if he desired, to conduct an inspection. Martinez wondered why Michi hadn’t ordered a maneuver then as well as three days hence.

  Perhaps, he thought, Michi was giving Fletcher a test. One more dead petty officer and she’d know what steps to take.

  He looked at the naked winged children that had been painted on his office walls, and he wondered at the mind that could both commission such art and plan a cold-blooded killing.

  Martinez threw himself into planning the experiment. He altered the composition of the forces several times and modified the fine
details obsessively. It was a way to avoid thinking about Fletcher, or remember Thuc falling with a fan of scarlet spraying from his throat.

  That night, he wore a virtual headset and projected the starscape from outsideIllustrious into his mind, hoping it would aid his sleeping mind in achieving a tranquility that had eluded him all day. It seemed to work, until he came awake with his heart pounding and, in his mind, the black emptiness of space turned to the color of blood.

  Breakfast was another meal eaten without noticing the contents of his plate. He dreaded hearing the businesslike sound of heels on the deck, Fletcher and Marsden and Mersenne, marching to his door to summon him to another inspection.

  Even though he half expected the sound, his nerves gave a surprised, jangled leap when he heard it. He was on his feet and already half braced when Fletcher appeared in his open door, wearing full dress, white gloves, and the knife in its curved, gleaming scabbard.

  “Captain Martinez, I’d be obliged if you’d join us.”

  Cold dread settled over Martinez like a rain-saturated cloak.

  “Yes, my lord,” he said.

  As he walked to the door, he felt light-headed, possessed by the notion that everything from this point was predestined, that he was fated to be a witness to another inexplicable tragedy without being able to intervene, that within an hour or two he would again be reporting to Michi Chen while somewhere in the ship crew scrubbed blood from the deck.

  Once again the captain wanted him as a witness. He wished Fletcher had just brought a camera instead.

  Again Fletcher’s party consisted of himself and two others. One was Marsden, the secretary, but Mersenne had been replaced by Lord Ahmad Husayn, the weapons officer. That told Martinez where the party was going, and he wasn’t surprised when Fletcher took a turn two bulkheads down and headed through a hatch into Missile Battery 3.

  Gulik, the rat-faced little master weaponer, stood there braced along with his crew. Once more Martinez watched as Fletcher conducted a detailed inspection, including not just the launchers and loaders, but the elevator systems used to move personnel along the battery, the large spider-shaped damage-control robots used for repairs during high-gee, when the crew themselves would be strapped in their acceleration couches and barely able to breathe or think, let alone move. Fletcher checked the hydraulic reservoirs of the robots, inspected the radiation-hardened bunker where the weaponers would shelter in combat, and then had two missiles drawn from their tubes. The missiles were painted the same green, pink, and white pattern as the exterior of the ship, and looked less like weapons of war than strange examples of design, art objects commissioned by an eccentric patron, or perhaps colorful candies intended for the children of giants. The captain dusted them with his white-gloved fingers-he expected missiles in their tubes to be as clean as his own dinner table-then had them reinserted and asked Gulik when the loaders had last been overhauled.

  At last Fletcher inspected the weaponers themselves, the line of immaculately dressed pulpies, arranged in order of rank with the petty officers at the end.

  Martinez felt his perceptions expanding through the battery, sensing every last cable, every last switch. He seemed hyperaware of everything that occurred within that enclosed space, from the scent of oil on the elevator cables to the nervous way Husayn flexed his hands when the captain wasn’t looking to the sheen of sweat on Master Weaponer Gulik’s upper lip.

  Gulik stood at the end of the line, properly braced. Fletcher moved with cold deliberation up the line, his practiced eyes noting a worn seam on a coverall, a tool inserted in its loop the wrong way around, a laundry tag visible above a shirt collar.

  Martinez’s nerves flashed hot and cold. Fletcher paused in front of Gulik and gazed at the man for a long, searching moment with his deep blue eyes.

  “Very good, Gulik,” Fletcher said. “You’re keeping up your standards.”

  And then Fletcher, incredibly, turned and walked away, his brisk footsteps sounding on the deck, his knife clanking faintly on the end of its chain. Martinez, head swimming, followed dumbly with the rest of the captain’s party.

  Out of the corner of his eye, as he stepped over the hatch sill, he saw Gulik sag with relief.

  Fletcher led up two companionways, then turned to Martinez.

  “Thank you, Captain,” he said. The superior smile twitched again at the corners of his mouth. “I appreciate your indulging my fancies.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Martinez said, becauseYou’re welcome wasn’t quite the effect he was after.

  Martinez went to his office, sat behind his desk and thought about what he’d just seen. Fletcher had called him to witness an inspection at which nothing unusual had occurred.

  Fletcher makes scores of inspections every year, Martinez thought. But he’s only killedone petty officer. So how eccentric was that?

  An hour or so later Lieutenant Coen, Michi’s red-haired signals officer, arrived with an invitation to join the squadcom for dinner. Martinez accepted, and over a cup of cold green melon soup informed Michi that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred at the morning’s inspection.

  Michi didn’t comment, but instead asked about the experiment in two days’ time. Martinez outlined his plans while frustration bubbled at the base of his spine.

  What are you going to do?he wanted to ask. But Michi only spoke about the war game, and then of the flight past Termaine the following day.

  At the end of the meal he was more baffled than ever.

  That night he came awake out of a disordered dream to find himself floating. He glanced at the amber numerals of the chronometer that glowed in a corner of the wall display and saw that it was time for a course reorientation around one of the Termaine system’s gas giants, a final slingshot that would send Chenforce racing past the enemy-held planet.

  Martinez watched the seconds tick past, and then the engines fired and his mattress rose to meet him.

  Two hours later Alikhan woke him with a breakfast of coffee, salt mayfish, and one of Perry’s fresh brioche. Afterward, Alikhan began assisting him into his vac suit in preparation for the walk to the Flag Officer Station.

  Everyone on the ship knew the hour at which general quarters would be called, and most were now struggling into their vac suits, or would be shortly.

  The suit checked its own systems and displayed the result on its sleeve display: all was well. Martinez took a last sip of coffee, then took his helmet from Alikhan and dismissed him to go to quarters, where he’d don his own suit with the aid of another weaponer.

  Martinez clomped down the corridor, awkward in the suit, and dropped down two decks to the Flag Officer Station. Michi was already present, along with her aides Li and Coen. Michi stood with her back to him, her helmet off, her hair tucked into the cap that held her earphones and the projectors of the virtual array. The unfixed chin strap dangled on her shoulder. Her head was bent and one hand was pressed over an ear as if to hear better.

  Even in the bulky suit Martinez could see the tension in her stance. “Stand by,” she said, and swung around to him, her face a mask of furious calculation. He braced.

  “My lady.”

  “I need you to take command ofIllustrious immediately. Something’s happened to Captain Fletcher.”

  “Has he-” Martinez began.Run amuck with a kitchen knife, perhaps? He couldn’t seem to find a way to phrase the question tactfully.

  Michi’s words were clipped and curt, nearly savage. “There’s a report he’s dead,” she said. “Now get to Command and take charge before things go completely to hell.”

  ELEVEN

  Martinez marched into Command with his helmet under his arm and confusion warring with frustration in his heart.

  “I am in command!” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Per the squadcom’s orders!”

  Heads turned, faces peering at him from over the collars of their vac suits. Chandra Prasad looked at him from the command cage. A lock of her auburn hair curled across her forehea
d from under her sensor cap.

  “Captain Martinez is in command!” she agreed.

  Martinez stepped toward her. “Lieutenant,” he said, “do you wish to confirm with the squadcom?”

  Amusement touched the corners of her mouth. “I just got off the comm with her, Lord Captain. She told me you were coming.”

  Martinez sensed the drama that had marched in with him begin to deflate.

  “Very well,” he said.

  Chandra tipped her couch forward and rose to her feet. “Course two-two-five by zero-zero-one absolute,” she reported. “Accelerating at one gravity, and are currently moving at.341c. Our closest approach to Termaine will occur in approximately a hundred and ten minutes. We are not yet at general quarters.”

  “Sound general quarters then,” Martinez said.

  “General quarters!” Chandra called.

  The alarm began to chime. The command crew reached into the net bags attached to their couches, pulled out their helmets, and began to lock them onto the connecting rings of their collars.

  Chandra paused with her helmet halfway over her head. “My position at quarters is normally at signals,” she said.

  “Take your position then, Lady Chandra.”

  “Yes, my lord.” As she walked by him she lowered her voice and said, “Your luck’s holding, Captain.”

  Martinez shot her a murderous glance, but she’d already passed. He took his seat, the couch swinging with his weight as he webbed himself in. He reached above his head for the command display and locked it down in front of him.

  He donned his helmet, and at onceIllustrious turned more distant. All the noise in Command faded-the creak of the acceleration cages, the bleating of displays trying to call for attention, the distant rumble of the ship’s engines. More apparent was the hiss of the air inlet and the polyamide scent of the suit seals. Martinez turned on his suit microphone and tuned to the channel he shared with the signals station. “Comm,” he said. “Test, test.”

  “I hear you, Lord Captain.”

 

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