“He’s done a splendid job. You’re looking very well.”
She patted her hair. “Now that Buckle’s on staff, I think you’ll find some more attractive crew walking about the ship.”
“I’ll look forward to that.”
Martinez sat Michi at the place of honor in the captain’s dining room and had Alikhan open a bottle of wine. The plates arrived, each served by Narbonne in its turn, and Michi was impressed by the vast quantity of food that kept rolling out of the kitchen.
“I won’t keep my good looks for long if I eat all this,” she remarked.
“I’d be alarmed for you if you ate everything,” Martinez said, “but I can have Perry prepare a package of leftovers for you. He’d love it, I’m sure-score points againstyour cook.”
“I’d rather not have my cook in a mood to poison me, thanks all the same.”
Over coffee and fried ice cream they began a discussion of that morning’s exercise, in which Chandra had set a pair of converging Naxid squadrons on a virtual Chenforce.
“Prasad is proving useful,” Michi said. “I’ve completely changed my mind about her.”
“Yes?”
“Before I took her on staff, I thought I disliked her. Now that I’ve had a chance to work with her closely, I realize that I hate her guts.” She scowled, her brows meeting. “She’s ambitious, she’s unscrupulous, she’s tactless, and she’s ill-bred. But she’s too good, damn it. I can’t get rid of her.”
Martinez didn’t disagree with this estimate, and though he was pleased at having unloaded Chandra onto his superior, he felt it would be tactless to show it.
“I’m sorry she’s so turbulent,” he said.
“I have to wonder what Kosinic saw in her,” Michi muttered.
Martinez stared at her. “Kosinic and Chandra were…?”
“Yes. It began over a year ago, when Kosinic first joined my staff and Prasad had a job on Harzapid’s ring. I’m not sure it continued after Kosinic was wounded, because that’s when Prasad came aboard and began her relationship with the captain.” She scowled. “I suppose Kosinic lacked the strength of character to resist her.”
Martinez feigned a fascination with his coffee cup.Is Chandra killing all her ex-lovers? he wondered, and then wondered whether the one guard outside during the night watches was enough.
“Interesting,” he said.
Michi raised an eyebrow. “Do you think so? I think it’s squalid.”
“No reason it can’t be both.” Surprise about Chandra and Kosinic swam through his mind, and then he wondered about Michi’s reaction to the business. Perhaps she’d had a little crush on her young protege? With an effort he pushed speculation to the side. He had other things in mind.
He looked at Michi. “I have some ideas, my lady, of a tactical nature.”
A delicate smile touched her lips. “Yes? This supper isn’t purely social then?”
“I hoped to show you a pleasant evening in exchange for having to listen to my ideas-well, idea, there’s only one.”
“The dumplings have made me generous. Go on.”
Martinez took a deliberate sip of his coffee, the bitter taste welcome after the sweet dessert. He put his cup carefully in the saucer. “I’d like to make the case for an attack on Naxas.”
Michi smiled. “I was wondering when you’d suggest an attack on the enemy capital. I was making little bets with myself about it.”
“The Naxids have fifty warships in their fleet,” Martinez said, “and we know that forty-three of them were in the fleet that took Zanshaa. That leaves seven at Magaria and Naxas combined. There was a small squadron of five ships at Naxas at the beginning of the war, and I’d bet they’re still there. I’d also be willing to bet they haven’t been reinforced.
“Chenforce has seven ships, though admittedlyCelestial was damaged at Protipanu and can’t fight at full efficiency. Our magazines are depleted by about a third, but we have new tactics, good morale, and a tradition of victory. One attack at Naxas can overwhelm the defenders and put the enemy government at our mercy. It might be the winning stroke.”
Michi gave a long sigh. “You have no idea how tempting you make it all sound.” She placed her hands flat on the table before her, fingers extended. “But we don’t know that the enemy government is still on Naxas. It might well be in transit to Zanshaa.”
“That’s a risk,” Martinez admitted.
“Plus it’s not as if the Naxids don’t know where we are. They may have sent reinforcements to Naxas. Even if we get there first and defeat the five ships, a rescue force may still arrive, and we’d have another fight on our hands, with magazines running empty from the previous fight.”
“Yes.”
“And of course they may have completed some of their new ships and sent them to Naxas. And we might not be lucky. And of course my orders specifically order menot to go to Naxas.”
“True.” Martinez nodded.
She peered at him from beneath her bangs. “You have no answer to these objections?”
Martinez felt a sigh building somewhere in his diaphragm, and he suppressed it. “I don’t, my lady.” Because he had considered all these points himself, and all together the objections were formidable.
Michi seemed disappointed. “I was hoping you would. Because I’ve been thinking about Naxas for some time.”
Martinez groped for words. “I don’t have logic on my side,” he admitted. “All I have is the sense that we should go to Naxas. It seems to me that we could knock off five enemy ships at a fairly small risk. And then, if the Naxids don’t give up, we could leave and complete our return journey.”
Michi looked at her hands again. “No. Too many unknowns. We’ve had a very successful raid thus far. If we were unlucky at Naxas, we’d not only hand the enemy a victory-and our own side would have no way to know what happened to us-but we’d be altering the Fleet’s strategic plan.” She looked at him, amusement in her dark eyes. “And since you’re the unacknowledged author of the Fleet’s strategic plan, I presume you’ll want to maintain it.”
“Yes, my lady.” Martinez felt a constriction in his chest as a mental calculation reached its inevitable conclusion. “In that case,” he said, “I feel obliged to raise the possibility of doing to the Naxids what they tried to do to Chenforce. Accelerate some missiles to relativistic velocities and use them to hammer Naxas. We could bring the ring right down on the heads of their government.”
Michi shook her head again. “That wouldn’t end the war,” she said. “That would just widen it. The Naxids would feel obliged to use the same tactic, and I don’t want to see the rings at Harzapid and Zarafan and Felarus come down.”
Martinez felt his breathing slowly ease. “That’s a relief,” he admitted. “I felt that the option should be mentioned, but I can’t say my heart was behind the recommendation.”
“Yes.” Michi sipped her coffee. “If I’m going to have to destroy our civilization in that way, I’d much rather it be a result of a direct order from a superior, and not something I did on my own.”
Martinez smiled, but he wondered exactly how readily Michi would obey such an order. She’d been ruthless enough in other areas.
Uncomfortable with this line of thought, he allowed further calculation to spin through his mind. “Well,” he said, “if we’re not going to the Naxid home world, it seems to me that we should do our best to convince the enemy that Naxas isexactly where we’re going.”
“You have a suggestion, I take it?”
“There are four wormholes in El-Bin. We’ll be entering the system through Wormhole One. If we exit the system by way of Wormhole Two, we’d be on the direct route for Naxas, and Wormhole Three takes us eventually to Seizho by way of Felarus, which is avery long route. We actually want to take Wormhole Four, which will begin our loop to rejoin the Home Fleet.
“At present, our course takes us directly from Wormhole One to Wormhole Four, minus a bit of dodging to avoid hypothetical missiles. But if ins
tead we loop around El-Bin’s sun, it might look to the enemy as if we’re intending to slingshot for Wormhole Two and Naxas. And if they’re indeed sending reinforcements to their home world, that’ll keep them heading for home under high gees just at the moment when Naxas is no longer under threat.”
“Wrong-foot them a few days more,” Michi murmured. “Yes, I’ll do that.”
After that the conversation descended into trivialities, and eventually Michi yawned and rose and thanked him for dinner. He walked with her to the door and she surprised him by putting an arm around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder.
“If you weren’t married to my niece,” she said in his ear, “and if I didn’t actuallylike her, I’d make an adulterer out of you right now.”
Martinez tried not to let his mouth fall open. “I’m sure it would be delightful,” he said finally, “but on Terza’s behalf I thank you.”
She gave him a smile from under one cocked eyebrow and made her way out. Martinez waited for the door to close, then walked to the nearest chair and sat down heavily.
We have all been on this ship too long,he thought.
The voyage continued. Chenforce entered El-Bin and made its deceptive swing about its star, all crew strapped into their couches and unconscious through a ten-gee deceleration. Whether the maneuver fooled the Naxid command into diverting ships wasn’t apparent until two systems later, in Anicha, where Chenforce stumbled on a host of merchant ships, all in desperate flight. Anicha, it turned out, was where the Naxids had diverted their merchant ships, getting them out of the way of the presumed showdown at Naxas.
Chenforce destroyed 131 ships at Anicha and more in the next system, where some had managed to flee.
The great ship slaughter at Anicha was an exception: for the most part,Illustrious settled into a routine, inspections and drills and musters. The officers invited one another to dinner parties, but behind the gaiety was a kind of weariness. It was clear that everyone had been on the ship too long.
Martinez now found the 77-12s perfectly reliable. Because they gave him ways of knowing his ship, and becauseIllustrious was performing so well in the squadron exercises, he reduced the number of inspections and hoped the crew were grateful. He also sometimes abandoned the full-dress formality: on occasion he arrived at an inspection in Fleet-issue coveralls and crawled into conduits and access tunnels, places where Fletcher would never have gone lest he soil his silver braid.
Fletcher had polishedIllustrious to a high gloss but hadn’t really known his ship. Even with his frequent inspections, he could only guess at the real status of the ship’s plant and systems. He saw only the surface, and never knew what rot might be concealed by a thick layer of polish.
Martinez was learning his ship from the inside out. He would inspect every pump, every launcher, every conduit. He would makeIllustrious his own.
He worked hard. His wrist healed. He still sometimes woke to the phantom scent of Caroline Sula on his pillow.
Every so often he met with Jukes to discuss the new designs forIllustrious. He was beginning to get used to the idea of his ship as a gaudy personal banner, as far away from Fletcher’s concept as possible.
In the meantime, Jukes painted his portrait. The artist had wanted to create the portrait electronically and print it, but Martinez desired a proper portrait, with paint on canvas, and Jukes complied with weary grace. He put an easel in Martinez’s office and worked there, preferring more obscure hours.
His portrait was romantic and lofty, Martinez in full dress, the Orb in one hand, his gaze directed somewhere over the viewer’s right shoulder. The other hand rested on a tabletop, next to a model ofCorona. Behind him would be a picture-within-a-picture, a portrait ofIllustrious blazing into battle. Jukes seemed to think the picture-within-a-picture device was clever. Martinez didn’t understand why exactly, but saw no reason to contradict the other’s professional judgment.
There was some discussion whether the portrait ofIllustrious should portray the ship in its current form, with Fletcher’s abstract color scheme of pink, white, and green, or in the bolder style they planned forIllustrious after the war.
Martinez put off making the decision, but eventually decided to use Fletcher’s color scheme. Should he win any glory in the war, it would be withIllustrious in its current appearance, and that would be what he wanted to commemorate.
Besides, he thought, there was no reason to stop at just one portrait. The redesignedIllustrious could be immortalized another time.
Martinez began to notice at musters and inspections that the crew looked obscurely more attractive. Kazakov came to dine one day with her hair down rather than knotted behind her head, and Martinez was struck by how good-looking she was.
Buckle, it seemed, was working his magic as a hair stylist and cosmetician. Even Electrician Strode’s bowl haircut seemed more shapely. Martinez called Buckle to his cabin for a haircut, and had to admit that the result was an improvement.
He made Jukes repaint the portrait to include the more attractive hair style.
There were more disciplinary problems among the crew now, fights and occasional drunkenness. They also had too little to occupy their time. It would have taken only thirty-odd people to con the ship from one place to another, and another thirty weaponers to manage the fighting. The rest were partly for redundancy’s sake, in the event of casualties, and many of the crew were intended to support the dignity of the officers, acting as their servants; but mainly crew were needed for damage control. In an emergency, hundreds of pairs of well-trained hands might be needed to keep the ship alive. The rest of the time the officers had to invent work for them, cleaning and spit-polishing, playing parts in rituals and ceremonies, and performing and reperforming routine maintenance.
Everyone, officers and crew alike, were growing tired of it all.
Still, beneath the weariness, Martinez began to sense an undercurrent of optimism. Chenforce was returning to the Home Fleet, and once there, would move on the enemy at Zanshaa and retake the capital. The crew were anticipating the war coming to its conclusion, and with it, the end of all the monotony.
Even the danger of a merciless enemy had begun to seem preferable to the endless repetition and routine.
One night, Martinez sipped his cocoa and looked at the mother and the cat and the infant in his red pajamas. It seemed to him that the Holy Family, whoever they were, had things pretty easy. They had their fire, their beds, their comfortable middle-class clothing, a child that was well-fed and well-clothed, enough food so they could spare some for their cat.
There was no indication that they had to worry about unknown killers skulking outside their ornate painted frame, or coping with a sudden relativistic barrage of antimatter missiles, or whether reports given them by others had been yarned.
By the time he finished his cocoa, Martinez began to feel envy for the lives of the people in the painting. They were simple, they were Holy, they were carefree.
They were everything a captain wasn’t.
TWENTY-TWO
Perhaps, Martinez thought, it was the boredom induced by the long days of the ship’s routine that had led him to think about the killings again. After mulling it over for several days, he asked Chandra to come to his office in the middle of one long, dull afternoon.
“Drink?” he asked as she braced. “By which I mean coffee.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Sit down.” He pushed a cup and saucer across his desk, then poured from the flask that Alikhan habitually left on his desk.
A rich coffee scent floated into the room. Chandra sat expectant, eyes bright beneath the auburn hair.
“I wanted to ask you about Kosinic,” Martinez said.
Chandra, reaching for the coffee, pulled back her hand and blinked in surprise. “May I ask why?”
“Because it occurred to me that all our thinking about the killings has been exactly wrong. We’ve been looking at Captain Fletcher’s death and trying to reason bac
kward about what might have motivated it. But Kosinic’s death was the first-hewas the anomaly. Thuc’s death followed from his, and I think Fletcher’s followed as well. So if we can just work out why Kosinic was murdered, everything else will fall into place.”
Chandra frowned as she considered this reasoning, then gave him a searching look. “You don’t think it’s all down to Phillips and the cultists?”
“Do you?”
She was silent.
“You knew Kosinic best,” Martinez said. “Tell me about him.”
She accepted the remark without comment, then reached for the coffee and considered her words while she fiddled with the powdered creamer;Illustrious had long ago run out of fresh dairy. She took a sip, frowned, and took another.
“Javier was bright,” Chandra said finally, “good-looking, young, and probably a little more ambitious than was sensible for someone in his position. He had two problems: he was a commoner and he had no money. Peers will mingle with commoners if they’ve got enough money to keep up socially; and they’ll tolerate Peers who have no money for the sake of their name. But a commoner with no money is going to be buried in a succession of anonymous desk jobs, and if he gets a command, it’s going to be a barge to nowhere, an assignment that no Peer would touch.”
She took another sip of her coffee. “But Javier got lucky-Squadron Commander Chen was impressed by a report on systems interopability that happened to cross her desk, and she took him on staff. Javier wasn’t about to let an opportunity like that slide-he knew she could promote him all the way to Captain if he impressed her enough. So he set out to be the perfect bright staff officer for her, and right at that moment war broke out and he was wounded.”
She sighed. “They shouldn’t have let him out of the hospital. He wasn’t fit. But he knew that as long as he stayed on Chen’s staff he could have a chance to do important war work right under the nose of an important patron-and of course by then he was in a perfect rage to kill Naxids, like all of us, but more so.”
“He had head injuries,” Martinez said. “I’ve heard his personality changed.”
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