Or as if they were running away.
Martinez began pulling on his vac suit. He could anticipate what would happen next.
He was proved correct. Tork ordered the Orthodox Fleet to accelerate and match the enemy’s velocity.
The problem was, Tork couldn’t catch up. The Naxids had nine hours’ head start before the light of their torches reached the Orthodox Fleet. And Tork couldn’t accelerate as fast as the enemy, because the Lai-own, with their hollow bones, would not stand accelerations of greater than two and a half gees. Tork would either fall behind or would have to leave his Lai-own formations behind.
Martinez, locked into his suit with the scent of suit sealant and the stink of his own body, watched from his captain’s chair as the enemy pulled ahead. Tork would never be able to bring about his decisive, orthodox battle. Instead he’d fall into the Naxids’ wake as he swung around Zanshaa, and even then could only fight an engagement if the Naxids’ reduced acceleration and permitted Tork to overhaul them.
Martinez couldn’t imagine why the Naxids were racing for Zanshaa with such urgency.
The reason was revealed when a radio message, sent in the clear, arrived from Zanshaa. He heard Master Signaler Nyamugali’s surprised intake of breath as she viewed the message, and then a chuckle.
“You’d better view this, Lord Captain.”
Martinez himself gave a gasp of surprise as the image resolved on his display and he saw Caroline Sula in all her brilliant beauty. Blood flashed hot in his veins as he viewed the pale skin, the flashing green eyes, and the familiar curl of sardonic amusement at the corner of one lip.
“This is Lady Sula, Governor of Zanshaa,” she said, “to the commander of the loyalist fleet. What took you so long?”
Martinez was able to listen in on Sula’s conversation with Tork because her communications were in the clear-she didn’tpossess a code, not even a simple one. So he learned early on that Sula, commanding something called the secret army, had seized the High City of Zanshaa and the entire Naxid government. The report was buttressed by video feed of Lady Kushdai signing articles of surrender in the Hall of the Convocation, and of some dubious-looking fighters lounging around public buildings.
That wasmy idea, Martinez thought. He had originally submitted a proposal to raise an army to hold Zanshaa until the Fleet could come to the city’s rescue, but he supposed that raising an army after the city was captured by the enemy counted as the next best thing.
Tork, whose response was of necessity also in the clear, was brusque.
“This is Lord Tork, Supreme Commander of the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance. Lady Sula, you will execute all traitorous rebels immediately by hurling them from the High City. Otherwise, hold the city and stand by for further orders.”
Martinez thought about this for a moment, then contacted Chandra Prasad in the Flag Officer Station.
“Does it strike you,” he said, “that Tork was griped to discover that Sula jumped the gun and won a battle on her own before the Orthodox Fleet could fire a single weapon at the enemy?”
“She may have won the only battle anyone’s going to fight for Zanshaa,” Chandra responded. “If you ask me, I think the enemy’s running for it.”
Which was exactly what the Naxids were doing. Three and a half days later the enemy raced past Zanshaa without firing a missile at Sula or anyone else, and accelerated on a path for the Vandrith gas giant. Once there, they could slingshot on to Wormhole 3 and away to Magaria-or, conceivably, whip around Vandrith to race past a number of other gas giants and back into the system again. The rationale for this last seemed scant.
Tork made an effort to catch the Naxids before it was too late. All non-Lai-own warships were ordered into punishing accelerations, charging in to engage the Naxids even with inferior numbers, but the Naxids just pushed their own accelerations in order to stay ahead. Both sides fired missiles at long range, to no effect.
Martinez spent the accelerations on his couch with gravities lying on him like a pyramid of wrestlers, all elbows and hard muscles; and though he tried to concentrate on the dull facts represented by his tactical display, the image of Sula kept rising in his mind. Her reappearance had been so startling, so dazzling, so unforgettable, and it seemed to have burned itself into his mind like a laser stitching a picture on his retinas. Over and again he conjured the emerald eyes, the hint of mischief in the corners of the lips, the silver-gold hair. Other images floated to the surface of his thoughts: Sula in bed, a flush of excitement mantling the pale skin; Sula at the breakfast table, licking jam from her lips; Sula on the dark street by the canal, walking away from him, her heels rapping on the pavement as she left him standing helpless in the scorched ruins of his love.
A startling fact overshadowed it all. His brilliant lover had somehow made herself Queen of Zanshaa, put the Naxids to flight, and upstaged the Supreme Commander and the entire empire.
With regret, he realized that this meant she was hardly likely to beg his forgiveness.
Eventually Tork gave up the pursuit. He ordered the entire Fleet to decelerate prior to a slingshot around Vandrith that would put them in a wide orbit around Zanshaa’s sun, then broadcast a general message to all flag officers and captains.
Tork’s flesh was a more sickly gray even than usual. Strips of skin hung from his brow and chin. He clearly hadn’t been holding up well under acceleration.
“My lords,” he declared, “the primary mission of the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance has been completed. We have driven the Naxid rebels from Zanshaa. Unfortunately we have been unable to bring their fleet to battle-that inevitable triumph will have to wait for another day.
“Certain officers have suggested that we pursue the Naxids until we can engage them.”
Martinez raised an eyebrow-hehadn’t been one of those officers. He preferred to delay any pursuit, and hope in the meantime that Tork would drop dead or be replaced.
“The Naxids are retreating onto their supports,” Tork continued, “just as we did when we withdrew from Zanshaa. The farther the Naxids retreat into rebel-controlled space, the greater the number of reinforcements will be able to join them. I do not wish to commit this fleet to a pursuit deep into enemy territory, to an engagement where, at an unknown location, against an unknown number of enemy, our own reinforcements will be unable to locate us and in the meantime to leave the capital without defenders.”
A tone of finality came into Tork’s voice. He knew perfectly well that he was speaking for history as well as to his officers, and his voice rang like bells tolling down the long line of generations. Martinez could only admire the effect.
“Legitimate government will be restored to the capital,” Tork went on, “and the rebel leadership punished. The Orthodox Fleet will be reinforced to even greater numbers, and then will advance on the enemy. Our victory is assured.The truth of the Praxis will prevail! ”
Depressed rather than inspired by the Supreme Commander’s words, Martinez climbed out of his vac suit and dragged himself to his cabin for a cup of coffee and a quick meal. The crew, he thought, would not be pleased-they had been ready for the final battle, had steeled themselves for victory or death, and now would discover that both triumph and annihilation had been indefinitely postponed and that they would have to stay in orbit around another damned star, going in dreary circles for months while waiting for the war to start again…
He knew he wouldn’t enjoy it either. His son would be born on distant Laredo beforeIllustrious would leave Zanshaa, and might well have spoken his first words before he ever laid eyes on the child that had been named for him.
Plus there would be bruising decelerations for the next few days, as the Orthodox Fleet prepared to swing around Vandrith for the defense of the system.
No one was listening to his advice.
It seemed like Sula was having all the fun.
After sending her first message to the arriving loyalist Fleet, Sula shouldered PJ’s rifle and le
ft the Commandery for the Ministry of Wisdom. It would be hours before the new arrivals received her message, and hours again before a reply would arrive, and there were many things she needed to do.
And she knew sheneeded to occupy herself. The more things that occupied her, the less time she would have to think of Casimir lying bloodless on the cold tile floor of the morgue.
As she crossed the boulevard to her headquarters, she could smell the dust of the New Destiny Hotel that covered every surface and formed little drifts in the gutters. She heard the snap of fire, and over it the sound of turbines. She looked up. A coleopter was floating over the High City, moving very slowly from east to west.
So far as she knew, the Naxids didn’t have any flying warcraft-since no one had fought a terrestrial battle in thousands of years, there had been no need to build any-but improvisations were possible, and at least one person on the Naxid side was thinking in the right direction.
Contemplating antiaircraft defense, she hopped up the steps of the ministry and passed beneath an ornate bronze portal into her headquarters. As she entered her improvised command center-she’d taken a large meeting room, with onyx walls and a brilliant mirrored ceiling-Macnamara and Sidney leaped to their feet and braced. Others stared at them, then at Sula. She looked back expectantly. Eventually they shambled into something resembling a proper salute.
“As you were,” she said finally. “Try to remember you’re in an army.”
“My lady,” Macnamara said, “may I introduce the staff.”
Macnamara seemed to have chosen well. The majority were communications techs, and many were very familiar with the High City. Sidney had called some people he knew, people who ran businesses and understood how to organize small groups, and set about molding all the newcomers into something resembling a proper staff.
Sula’s first priority was to announce to the world at large that the loyalist fleet had arrived and would shortly be demolishing the Naxid ships on which the rebels relied for their protection. The announcement, she hoped, might serve to moderate any Naxid response.
Her next task was to assemble an order of battle and to locate the parts of her army that had disappeared. To that end, she sent people out into the city to find units and tell them to report in.
The next task was to make certain that all possible avenues into the city were covered, including all possible routes by which an enemy could climb the cliffs. The coleopter was scouting the city for a reason, and Sula was determined that it would find no unguarded area.
She placed units as well as she could, working with her maps, but knew she would have to make a personal inspection later. She looked down at her map, at the Gates of the Exalted, where the turrets of the antimatter guns were marked on the map in pencil.
“I want to get the antimatter guns out of those turrets,” she told Macnamara. “The rebels must have other antimatter guns, and the turrets are just targets waiting to be blown up.”
“You want me to do that now?”
“Yes.”
“I could put other guns in the turrets. Some of the machine guns we captured.”
“Good idea. Do that.”
Her comm chimed with a report from Julien. The Naxids were charging up the funicular again, and being wiped out again.
She knew they must have been reinforced substantially, because this time they came in greater numbers and with greater determination. This didn’t get them any farther, however, it just left them with larger piles of corpses.
As the assault faded away in blood and failure, Sula looked up to find a young Lai-own in the brown uniform of the civil service knocking politely at the door.
“Yes?”
The Lai-own came in and braced. “Enda Far-eyn, my lady,” she said. “I work in the Office of the Censor. I have a report to make.”
Sula looked up at the Lai-own and wondered why the guards passed a censor to see her. “Go ahead,” she said.
“At the Office of the Censor we receive a copy of every electronic transmission made on nonmilitary channels, my lady,” Far-eyn said. “Including those made by the Naxids.”
“Ah. Hah.” Sula cursed herself for an idiot. “I can use that.”
Indeed she could. Naxid officials on the High City had been calling for help ever since the battle began, and since most of them were at home or in a hotel when the action started, few if any had access to dedicated, encrypted military communications systems. They were calling on the regular state comm system, and the censor’s office had not only logged all the calls, but with the press of a few touch screens was usually able to pinpoint the comm unit from which the message had been sent.
Once the Naxid officials had been located, Sula sent out units to take them prisoner and add them to the growing collection of enemies in the courtyard of the Convocation. A few escaped capture, but when confronted, none resisted.
Far-eyn also managed to locate the official who had been ordering the suicidal assaults up the funicular. He was the assistant commander general of the police, and he was holed up in the Imperial Hotel.
“Let’s not cut his communications,” Sula said. “Ilike the orders he’s giving.”
Macnamara returned to report that he’d succeeded in swapping out the remaining antimatter guns. Two were now mounted on trucks, to use as a reserve, and two were emplaced in palaces overlooking the funicular and the Gates of the Exalted.
“I’ve hidden them well, my lady,” he reported. “The Naxids shouldn’t be able to see them the way they can spot the turrets.”
Which didn’t mean they couldn’t be destroyed, just that the Naxids would have to go to greater effort.
“Is the coleopter still scouting us?” Sula asked.
“It flew away.”
“If it comes back, try to knock it down with the antimatter guns.”
“My lady!” One of the staff, a young Torminel with sharp, fierce fangs, looked up from the comm display in the room’s large table. “It’s the Commandery! They say the Naxid fleet has begun to accelerate!”
The Naxids, Sula found, were piling on the gees, heading for Zanshaa at a bruising speed. Since they didn’t need to change velocity in order to fire missiles at Zanshaa, Sula suspected they were in fact fleeing the system.
“That’s what we’ll tell the world, anyway,” she decided.
The announcement was duly made on every video and audio network. Sula wondered how many of the announcements were getting through to the outside world, how many relays the Naxids had succeeded in shutting down. It might be that only the city of Zanshaa was receiving the broadcasts by now.
She didn’t sleep that night, instead making inspections of her units and shuffling reserves around. A good thing, she thought. Any sleep would be filled with Casimir and Caro and blood.
Lord Tork’s reply to her greeting arrived two hours before dawn, and Sula considered the Supreme Commander’s terse order to execute her prisoners. The hostages were her only guarantee of good Naxid behavior-not that it seemed to be working-and she’d hoped to interrogate them, a task for which up till now she had no time, and for that matter no interrogators but her own amateur army.
“Right,” she said. “Pick three minor functionaries out of that pack and chuck them off the rock at first light. Make sure it gets video coverage. We’ll point out on the broadcast that if the Naxids are naughty, more members of their government are going to get a chance to find out whether or not they can fly.”
First light, however, provided other distractions. The Naxids had been planning another major attack up the funicular, the plans for which were overheard by Far-eyn in the Office of the Censor; and this attack was supposed to be preceded by an attack by the “air element.” Sula alerted her reserves and moved the two mobile antimatter guns to cover the funicular.
The air element arrived first, cargo craft with machine guns mounted in the cargo doors. These made slow passes over the south cliff of the acropolis, the guns hammering the area around the funicular.
After a number of misses, antimatter guns shot down two of the craft and the rest withdrew.
The attack itself was the usual bloody failure.
After the firing died away, Sula summoned a camera crew and walked to the Convocation, where two Naxid convocates and a captain of the Naxid fleet, previously chosen by Macnamara, were bound and thrown over the terrace to shatter on the stones below.
“Executions will continue as long as the rebels refuse to honor the instrument of surrender signed by Lady Kushdai,” Sula told the camera, and then dismissed the camera crew and took a walk along the terrace. The metal furniture was adapted to the Naxid physique, and the umbrellas were bright against the gray stone of the Great Refuge. The air was crisp and cool, and the sky had turned its usual deep green. Most of the columns of smoke that had been rising from the city the previous afternoon were gone. The city was very still.
Sula put a hand on the smooth, cool surface of the granite terrace wall and looked out over the rooftops. The streets between the buildings were deep, shadowed canyons, and as far as she could see, were absolutely empty. People were keeping their heads down, or watching their video walls for the latest bulletin, or both.
If there were Naxids keeping watch on this part of the cliff, they were hidden.
She knew they had to be down there somewhere. Naxid police were probably arriving by the thousand at the train stations, and sooner or later they were going to think of something more imaginative to do than charge up the funicular.
She considered this and decided that it probably didn’t matter. Her forces and reserves were sufficient to contain any threat to her perimeter. All she had to do was hold out long enough for the Naxid fleet to flee the system, and she suspected the High City contained enough food to keep the army eating for that length of time.
She would have liked to stay on the terrace awhile, perhaps with a sweetened, syrupy tea and a cream-filled brioche, but the Convocation’s food service seemed to have been disrupted. She returned to the Ministry of Wisdom and was told that she’d just had a call from the Commissioner of Kaidabal, who wanted to negotiate his surrender.
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