“The way your squadron had to fight the enemy without support,” said Lady Koridun, “and still you destroyed so many enemy ships!” She waved a hand and flashed her fangs. “This festival should be for you, not for Lord Tork!”
“I won’t disagree with you,” Sula said.
War of the Naxid Rebellion had made Sula an empirewide celebrity, giving her a status with which she was not at all comfortable. But the documentary had also been a platform for her ideas and exposed Tork’s vindictiveness as well as the rift between the Fleet’s conservatives and innovators. Some of the viewers had taken sides on the issues, and even argued them out in public—which was unusual, since they weren’t officially entitled to an opinion.
And she had acquired fans, as any celebrity gathered fans and supporters. There was a group of amateur enthusiasts who dissected the battles and strategies of the war and who supported one officer or point of view over others. Apparently one of Sula’s admirers was Lady Koridun.
Sula grinned. “Would you care to join me?”
And so she passed a pleasant hour with Lady Koridun, whose brother, uncles, and cousins she’d had murdered. Rebecca Giove offered her own impressions of the Battle of Magaria, not very complimentary toward Lord Tork. Outside the pales of Sula’s box, Tork’s great show went on, bombastic entertainment interleaved with bombastic speeches. The soft spring day turned dark and chill, the black night sky cut by the silver arc of the antimatter ring. The penultimate speech came from the Lord Senior, who came onto the stage with his ceremonial red cloak billowing out behind him. Lord Saïd paused for a dramatic moment while gazing over his beaky nose at the audience, and then he began an address that compared himself with Tork, one in charge of the civil administration, the other the military, both engaged in a desperate conflict to save the empire. “But all my efforts would have been in vain,” he said, “had not the Fleet defeated the rebels in battle. And for that, I must give the Supreme Commander the supreme credit.”
I may be supremely ill, Sula thought.
Lord Saïd then introduced the guest of honor, who came out to the thunder of kettledrums, his expressionless face glaring wide-eyed. Tork’s Golden Orb was held firmly in his gray fist, and the silver buttons on his dress tunic glittered in the spotlights. Applause pummeled the air. Sula took her time rising to her feet and lifting her chin to the salute and was amused that Lady Koridun, who as a private individual was not obliged to stand, remained in her seat. Sula rocked back and forth on her heels to stretch her calf muscles as the applause went on, and when it began to die Tork gestured with the Orb, and the crowd resumed their seats.
Martinez must be pleased, Sula thought. His ovation had lasted a good deal longer than Tork’s.
“It was my honor to build and command the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance,” Tork said in his beautiful Daimong voice. “I led it to victory, but credit for the victory does not properly belong to me—it belongs to our ancestors, and to the Great Masters who in their wisdom gave us the gift of the Praxis. The Praxis gave us perfect government, good order, and a clear understanding of the lines of authority. Our ancestors bequeathed to us a faultless system of tactics that, properly employed, will guarantee victory in any circumstances. I was merely the ancestors’ instrument in defeating the rebels and restoring the authority of the Convocation.”
In that case, Sula thought, why are we celebrating a mere instrument? Why not just proclaim Ancestor Day?
“The rebels defied the Praxis,” Tork continued. “They defied the example of their ancestors, and the memory of the Great Masters.” Harsh overtones began to clang in his voice. “The rebels’ defeat was inevitable—at least once the genius of our ancestors was properly employed against them. For our ancestors, living directly under the Shaa, constituted the epitome of civilization, and the further we fall from their example, the more failure will plague us, and the more wretched we shall be.
“Let us in all cases condemn the vice of innovation.” Tork’s voice took on a braying quality. “Innovation may seem glamorous or exciting, and it may appear to solve a problem, but the glamor is false, the excitement misleading, and the solution of one problem will give rise to a host of new problems that mere innovation cannot solve. No—we must stand firm as a wall against such false solutions, and adhere without question to the perfection that is our heritage.” He made a violent gesture with the Orb. “Firm as a wall! Firm in our orthodoxy, and sheltered by the rampart of our righteousness! Down with novelty and innovation! Up with the spirit of the Great Masters! And most important of all, long live the Praxis!” He gestured again with the Orb, and his voice took on a metallic shriek. “Long live the Praxis!”
At that cry, rockets launched from behind the stage, their glittering trails forming a shimmering silver wall behind the Supreme Commander. The rockets rose above the stadium and then detonated, shooting brilliant, multicolored sparks across the night sky. Additional volleys of fireworks followed the first. The Torminel band marched out with kettledrums thundering. Lord Tork stood alone on the stage, the actinic flashes illuminating his tall, gangling body and glittering on his silver buttons. The tang of explosive scented the air.
At the climax of the display, rockets were launched from the entire circuit of the stadium, surrounding the spectators with pillars of shimmering light. Detonations boomed overhead, flashes illuminating the upturned faces of the audience. Multicolored lasers cut through the sky and created shifting geometric forms in the billowing firework smoke.
Lord Durward was bent over in his chair with his hands over his ears. The show had begun with explosions, Sula thought, and it would end with explosions.
The last barrage exploded overhead, and silence fell over the stadium. The scent of propellant and incendiaries drifted through the air like a light rain.
Sula’s ears rang. “I feel as if I’ve been made war on,” she said.
“Oh, I think you have been,” said Ming Lin. “That’s the beginning of Tork’s counterattack.”
Sula considered this. What could he do, really? she asked herself. But then a cold finger touched her neck as she realized that all Tork or his friends had to do was investigate her. She was vulnerable on too many fronts: her false identity, her association with cliquemen, the assassination of her superior during the war, and the deaths of so many Koriduns . . . she couldn’t possibly keep all those secrets, not if someone were truly looking into her past.
But who would know to look? Anyone who had shared her secrets was dead or had his own reasons for silence. Tork had no reason to investigate her when he could just use his authority with the Fleet to silence her. If he wished truly to make her vanish, he had only to assign her to a remote post in a distant reach of the empire, so far away that Zanshaa would never again hear her voice.
As her mind worked on the problem, she gradually became aware that Lord Durward was still bent over, his hands still clasped over his ears even though the fireworks had ended. She saw the shine of tears on his cheeks, and she leaned close to him and touched his elbow.
“Are you all right, Lord Durward?”
He shook his head, but he straightened, and he looked at her with brimming eyes. “It made me think of Richard,” he said.
“I understand,” Sula said. Lord Durward’s son had died in a blaze of fire all too reminiscent of the barrage of fireworks that had just thundered over their heads.
Lord Durward shook his head again. “That was all nonsense, wasn’t it?” he said. “Lord Tork’s speech. We can’t go back to the old ways now. It’s all changed. It’s all over.” He bent his head again, put his hands to his face, and began to keen, a strangled whine rising from his throat.
Panic fluttered in Sula. She never knew what to do in situations like these. Human warmth is not my specialty. She gestured to bring Spence to her side, and then she turned back to Lord Durward.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.
Durward made an effort to speak, and when the words
came they were hoarse. “Just water,” he said.
Spence had arrived, and Sula looked up at her. “Bring Lord Durward some water,” she said.
“Right away, my lady.”
Sula became aware of a half circle of her friends forming a wall between Lord Durward and the audience, the convocates and their guests, who were beginning to file out of the stadium. Standing, she saw the old Daimong sniper, the gun-crafter Sidney with his pipe, Lady Rebecca in her dress tunic, Macnamara and Ming Lin and Ashok Suresh and Master Clerk Ty-fran. All veterans of the Fleet or the Secret Army, all acquainted firsthand with death and terror, all acting now to provide a curtain of privacy, and a modicum of dignity, for one of the war’s victims.
Sula laid a hand on Lord Durward’s back. “We’ll wait for the crowd to leave,” she said, “and then I’ll take you home.”
The sound of raucous celebration echoed from the Fleet Club’s roof beams. Lieutenant Vonderheydte had to lean close to Martinez, and stand on his toes, in order to be heard. “Congratulations on your successful season, Lord Captain.”
“Thank you.”
“It was your best yet, in my opinion.” Lieutenant Vonderheydte turned to Kelly. “And yours too, of course.”
In the last year the Corona Club had scored a decisive victory over its rivals, with more points than in any previous season. Kelly had been the overall point winner, which helped to make up for her stolen win the previous season, and Martinez took second.
Though Martinez had been gratified by the result, he hadn’t found the season as satisfying as in previous years. Severin had been away, shaking down his new frigate Expedition. And Martinez had to admit that he missed Jeremy Foote, if only for the pleasure of thrashing him in one race after another. The other clubs had fielded weaker teams than usual, and while Martinez enjoyed winning, he preferred his opponents to provide more of a challenge.
“And you, Vonderheydte?” Martinez asked. “You’re not tempted to join us in the Corona Club?”
“I never was a pinnace pilot,” said Vonderheydte. “I’ll put up with high accelerations in the course of duty, but I’m not interested in undergoing high gee voluntarily.” Though he seemed pleased enough to be asked.
Vonderheydte—small, blond, fine-boned—had been a cadet on Corona during the perilous escape from Magaria following the Naxid revolt, where he had experienced plenty of high gees, and Martinez had promoted him to sublieutenant afterward. He had been raised to lieutenant automatically after two years and had spent much of the time since with the Third Fleet at Felarus—not aboard a ship, but as a functionary in the Fleet’s vast building program. That he’d been employed at all indicated that Tork hadn’t viewed him as too dangerously close to Martinez. But now the building program was coming to a close, and Vonderheydte was kicking his heels at the Commandery, looking for a new assignment.
The Fleet Club rang with the boisterous elation of its members and their guests. In the aftermath of Tork’s address and the exuberant fireworks finale, the members were happy to dispense with the service’s accustomed formality and settle down to enjoying themselves. The odor of tobacco, leaking out from the overcrowded smoking room, tainted the air. The bar was packed five-deep, and food was flying up from the kitchens as fast as it could be readied. Drunken junior lieutenants offered advice to senior officers, who were just drunk enough to listen. Officers using borrowed instruments improvised dance music in the reception hall, and despite the crowding at least a few people were trying to dance.
In various nooks and corners, reunions were taking place. Kelly and Vonderheydte hadn’t seen each other since they’d served together on Corona, and across the room Martinez had seen Elissa Dalkeith, who had been his flag captain, speaking with Khanh, who had been her first lieutenant. They, too closely identified with Martinez, had been unemployed since the end of the war.
I am a curse, Martinez thought. The price of his friendship was to lose all hope of advancement in the service.
“I’ll be heading to the Corona Club later,” Martinez said. “The drinks are at least as good, the food is better, and it won’t be as crowded. You’ll both be welcome.”
“Thank you, Lord Captain!” Vonderheydte was cheered. “I haven’t had anything to eat since noon. We were marched to our seats in the stadium, but the concessionaires were overwhelmed and out of food by the time I got hungry.”
“I’ll see you both later, then,” said Martinez. “I have to say hello to a few people first.”
Martinez made his way through the crowd toward Dalkeith and Khanh, but he was caught in a rush of Lai-own cadets charging the bar in a wedge formation, and when he extricated himself, he was seized by the arm, and a wet kiss was planted on his cheek. He turned in surprise to see a tall, long-eyed woman with hair dyed a metallic shade of auburn.
“Chandra,” he said, repressing the urge to wipe his cheek.
“Gareth.” Her eyes were bright. Her hands clutched his arm, and he felt her body’s warmth as she pressed up against him. “I applauded you like anything this afternoon! And I didn’t applaud Tork at all.”
“You’d better hope you weren’t seen by one of his minions.”
She barked out a laugh. “Won’t make any difference, I’m already on his list of unemployables. I was your lieutenant and Lady Michi’s tactical officer, after all.”
“Last I heard you were still Lady Michi’s tactical officer.”
“She’s been rotated into a desk job and doesn’t need a tactical officer anymore. No one else wanted me, so here I am, looking for work.”
Chandra Prasad had been a passionate, turbulent force aboard Illustrious when he was its captain, and her relationship with Martinez had been complicated by the fact that they’d had a passionate, turbulent affaire when they were both junior lieutenants. Each had cheated furiously on the other, though they disagreed about whose fault that was. Chandra was the most ardent, high-strung person he knew, and being in her company could be exhilarating, at least until exhaustion set in.
And now here they were, talking as intimates in front of a couple hundred witnesses. Martinez was glad that Terza hadn’t come to the Fleet Club and had instead chosen to attend a reception at the Oh-lo-ho Theater organized by her father.
A lie came easily to his lips. “I’d do something for you if I had a command of my own,” Martinez said. “But of course I’m even more in Tork’s bad books than you.”
“I thought you might have friends,” Chandra said. “You could write me a recommendation.”
“I could,” Martinez said. “But the only one who might be in need of a tactical officer is Pa Do-faq, and you can’t be the only Terran on a Lai-own ship.”
“I don’t have to be a tactical officer,” she pointed out. “I could serve as an ordinary lieutenant. Or conceivably be promoted to lieutenant-captain and given a frigate.”
“Let me contact you once I’ve had time to think,” he said. “I must know somebody.”
Somebody, he thought, at a faraway station.
The front doors crashed as they were flung open, and over mere seconds the room went from boisterous to absolutely silent, from chaos into disciplined order, and everyone was braced to attention. For Lord Tork had arrived, and he carried the Golden Orb.
In silence Tork entered the club, his expressionless black-on-black eyes panning left and right. Staff officers flanked him like wings. He marched past Martinez, then stopped and returned. The staff officers shuffled their formation to accommodate their chief’s movements. The scent of Tork’s dying flesh caught at the back of Martinez’s throat.
“Captain Martinez, you do not carry your Orb,” Tork said. His voice buzzed and crackled as if it came from a broken speaker.
“We are in an informal setting, my lord,” Martinez said.
Tork’s eyes again panned the room, then returned to Martinez. “Your reasoning is flawed,” he said. “This is a day to celebrate the Fleet in all its pageantry and greatness. You wear the full-dress uniform, and
part of that uniform is your Golden Orb.” Martinez could see mouth parts moving behind the fixed, parted lips. “This is the sort of undisciplined behavior I have come to expect from you, Captain Martinez. Take care that this does not happen in the future.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Tork stood facing him for another few seconds, as if weighing another reprimand, and then he turned to Chandra, weighed perhaps another comment, then spun about and moved deeper into the silent club, his staff forming and re-forming as he moved among the uniformed statues on the club floor.
“Turns a party into an inspection,” Chandra murmured. “That’s our Supreme Commander.”
“Maybe his title should be Supreme Killjoy.”
After another ten or fifteen seconds Tork released the crowd from attention, and Martinez decided it was time to leave. He could send messages to Dalkeith and Khanh inviting them to join him at the Corona Club in Grandview.
“I’m escaping while I can,” he told Chandra, but he had barely taken two paces through the crowd before he found himself facing a dark-furred Torminel with the shoulder boards of a senior squadron commander on his vest. “Lord Altasz,” he said.
“Martinez!” said the squadcom. “Your Coronas gave us a good season!”
“Thanks in part to you, my lord,” Martinez said. “You were good enough to sponsor Sodak into the club, and she had a very impressive debut year.”
“I had better hopes for the Ions,” Altasz said. “But we’re still in a rebuilding phase. Next year I hope we’ll give you a run for the trophy!”
“I hope so, my lord.”
“Say, Martinez,” Altasz said. “I wonder if what I’ve heard about the Chee Company is true.”
Martinez felt a warning tingle somewhere in the back of his brain. “What have you heard, Lord Squadcom?”
“That you were connected somehow with that Cosgrove rascal, and now that he’s gone smash, you’re overextended and in trouble.”
The Accidental War Page 16