The Accidental War

by Walter Jon Williams

  Amusement touched Terza’s lips. “And if we’re bored, we can stage yacht races.”

  He looked at her. “I suppose we can hope the cruise is boring, yes?”

  She looked away. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose we can.”

  Martinez glanced again at the brass plugs on the walls, each marking a bullet fired in anger. Until a few hours ago, they had been an interesting item of decor, but now they seemed an omen.

  Sula left the Nicotiana Smoking Club and took her first welcome taste of fresh air. Hope I can get the smoke out of these clothes, she thought. She walked away from the club brushing at the sleeves of her jacket, and taking one grateful gulp of air after another.

  She was going to need a shower.

  She was so offended at Lord Inspector Snow’s trapping her in a room filled with tobacco smoke that it took a while for his message to sink into her mind. Ships being moved to where they could be captured and disarmed. Trials and torture. The human race labeled as criminals and rendered defenseless.

  There is no situation so terrible, she decided, that Tork can’t make it worse.

  She wondered if it could be called mutiny if it were the head of the Fleet leading it.

  And then, as she walked toward the Garden of Scents, her old wartime reflexes suddenly invaded her perceptions, the habits she’d acquired while hiding underground during the Naxid occupation, when she was known as the White Ghost. Sula found herself making abrupt, random turns at intersections, covertly examining the other pedestrians on the street, looking in shop windows in order to use the reflection to check for anyone tailing her, and keeping a mental tally of automobiles and small trucks to note if they kept reappearing. She had just been enrolled in a conspiracy that the authorities would find subversive, and there was no way she could know that Lord Ivan Snow hadn’t already been denounced or discovered, and that anyone meeting him would be incriminating herself. If she were being followed, she might have to sprint for safety, something that would be difficult insofar as she was one of the most recognizable Terrans on the planet.

  No one seemed to be keeping her under observation, though. Which was no guarantee that she wasn’t, but it was enough to allow her to walk to the funicular, descend to the Lower Town, and from there walk to the Petty Mount and her home. The instincts of the White Ghost remained alert as she walked, and it was the White Ghost, rising to consciousness, who began a series of calculations that she continued once she arrived, and while she was taking her shower.

  The first thing she did after showering and changing clothes was to log on to the Records Office through the back door she had built during the Naxid War. She hadn’t had occasion to use it since the war, and she wasn’t sure it would still be there, but the Records Office computer hadn’t been upgraded or altered, and Sula began to create new identities for herself, as well as for Spence and Macnamara.

  Time to put Action Team 491 back in commission, she thought.

  Macnamara walked into her study when she was thus engaged and asked if she’d like a pot of tea.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said. “By the way, we’re going to have to go underground for a while. I’ll have your new identity ready in a few minutes.”

  There was only the briefest hesitation before Macnamara’s reply. “Yes, my lady. Shall I inform Spence?”

  “Yes. And start to consider how and what we’re going to pack. Necessities only, I’m afraid.”

  “Right away, my lady.”

  Sula paused for a moment to appreciate Macnamara’s virtues. He was a fine shot with rifle or pistol, reasonably competent in the kitchen, and sufficiently anonymous to disappear into a crowd. He was a little overprotective, certainly, but he would do his best with every assignment, either shadowing a target, serving a cocktail, or burying a dead Koridun. And, more importantly, keeping his mouth shut about the latter.

  While Sula was busy with the Records Office computer, she could feel the White Ghost active in some other level of her consciousness. So when she finally finished crafting the new identities, she found herself busy checking means of getting to Harzapid and the Fourth Fleet. There would be no passenger vessels traveling directly to Harzapid for some time, but a huge immigrant ship was leaving Zanshaa’s ring for Chee after embarking thousands of new settlers. While it stopped at Zarafan to take on more passengers, Sula and her party could transfer to another, smaller cargo-passenger vessel heading for Harzapid. The immigrant ship would be leaving in six days. That gave her a deadline.

  Next Sula followed the list the White Ghost had made and began looking up officers who might be available for a very long trip out of town. At the head of the list were Haz, Giove, and Ikuhara, lieutenants from Sula’s last command, Confidence. They had been contaminated by their association with Sula and had been unemployed since the war. Haz, she remembered, had got promoted to lieutenant-captain due to family influence, but he’d never got a command, and now he was here with the others, kicking at the doors of the Commandery looking for a job.

  She looked for other old acquaintances and found Senior Captain Linz, who had commanded a frigate in Sula’s Light Squadron Seventeen. She had been promoted after the war and commanded a cruiser but was now an inspector of replacement parts and foodstuffs destined for Fleet bases and ships—hardly the most stimulating of assignments.

  Sula began making calls. A reunion of the officers of Confidence was definitely in the cards.

  “What,” Sula asked, “would be the effects on the economy of another war?”

  Ming Lin looked at Sula in concern. “What sort of war?” she asked.

  “Let’s be optimistic and say it’s somewhat smaller than the last one.”

  Sula and Lin were having one of their regular meetings, over tea, in Sula’s office. Lin wore her student’s gown and managed not to look even remotely like a successful author.

  The Convocation was not in session, and most convocates were away, but their offices were still open and handling routine business. The fundamental prisonlike gloom of Sula’s inner office had been relieved with flowers and gleaming porcelain, and Sula was amused that Lin’s rose-pink hair was echoed by a display of dianthus and hibiscus blooming behind her on a shelf.

  The clove-like scent of the dianthus complemented the aroma of the tea, which had a subtle taste of almond that survived even when diluted by Sula’s usual dollop of cane syrup. Sula sipped her tea deliberately while Lin considered Sula’s question. When Lin spoke, her voice was cautious.

  “Would there be, for example, battles and raids involving the Fleet?”

  “Let’s say there are.”

  Lin nodded, more to herself than to Sula. “Civic disruption on the surfaces of planets?” she asked.

  “We’ve already got that.”

  “It could get worse,” Lin said.

  Sula nodded. “It probably will,” she said.

  “If warships get blown up,” Lin said, “they will have to be replaced. Shipyards and shipbuilders will get contracts. And there will be more contracts for supplies, replacement parts, and so on. Shipyards are almost at a standstill now, because nobody knows how hard Tu-hon’s tax will fall on commerce, or when, or if it will at all—so if you expect their business to pick up, they’d be a good investment now.”

  “Yes.”

  “But of course if the shipyards are destroyed in the war,” Lin continued, “your investment will be destroyed as well.”

  Sula sipped her tea and nodded.

  “Large government expenditures will benefit certain industries and supply chains and will supply a boost to the economy—but really, if the spending is confined to the Fleet, it won’t create that much wealth across the board. And if the Fleet is interdicting commerce between worlds, and destroying ships and supplies, that will significantly hamper any recovery. So you might consider investing in some rather basic things, like food, food packaging, and food distribution, because people will need food whether there’s a war or not.” She raised her cup of tea to her li
ps, then lowered it. “And, you know, water. Because people need that, too.”

  During the Naxid War, Sula had bought stocks of chocolate and coffee, items that she knew would become scarce on Zanshaa. Buying into ordinary food suppliers had not occurred to her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Again Ming Lin raised her cup, then let it fall again. It rattled in the saucer.

  “My lady,” she said carefully, “do you know something I don’t?”

  Sula looked at her. “I believe I just told you.”

  The cup rattled in the saucer again. Lin put the saucer on the side table with a trembling hand.

  “Do you know when it’s going to start?” she said.

  Sula put her own saucer down and leaned back in her office chair. Pneumatics sighed.

  “I advise you to leave Zanshaa. A promotional tour for your book, say.”

  Lin blinked. “I can’t afford that.”

  “I’ll pay for it,” Sula said.

  “I—” Lin raised a hand to her throat. “When? Because I’m supposed to defend my dissertation.”

  “When?”

  “Something like twenty days from now.”

  “You’ll have to leave before that, if you’re going.”

  Lin’s dark eyes began to search the shadowy corners of the room, as if she could find an answer there. “I don’t know,” she said.

  Sula let the breath sigh from her lungs as she considered her words. “If it helps you make up your mind, you should remember that you’re a known associate of one of the Terran criminals, and that you’ve written a book that contradicts the story that Gruum and Tu-hon are spreading about the causes of the decline.” She restrained a savage laugh. “They might well decide you need silencing, one way or another.”

  Ming Lin straightened in her chair, her spine erect. “It seems I have little choice.”

  “I’ll make the arrangements,” Sula said. “You should pack, and you shouldn’t tell anyone you’re going away. Once we’ve left Zanshaa, you can send your regrets to your dissertation committee.”

  Lin offered a rueful smile. “They may not forgive me.”

  “They will have more important things not to forgive,” Sula said.

  Lin’s look darkened as she puzzled that out, then she shook her head. “When am I leaving, then?”

  “I’ll let you know. And you may trust that the message will come at the last possible second.”

  Lin reached for her saucer. “I suppose that if I am going underground,” she said, “I’ll be safest going with you.”

  Sula sipped at her own tea, found it cold, put it down. “I’m sorry if I surprised you,” she said. “Sometimes I forget that not everyone has been expecting this for years.”

  Lin seemed puzzled. “Years? How long exactly?”

  “Since the end of the last war, in the Year of the Praxis 12,483. I remember telling Gare—telling Captain Martinez that we’d be at war again within six years. I seem to have been overpessimistic by three years.”

  Lin seemed intrigued. “Why did you think there’d be another war? The Naxids were beaten pretty comprehensively.”

  “Because we still have a government that could permit something like the Naxid War in the first place.” Sula warmed her cup with tea from the pot. “They have no way to prevent a conflict from starting.” She stirred more cane syrup into her cup. “The convocates were set up in the Convocation to follow policy set by the Great Masters, not make policy themselves,” she said. “They were reasonably good at that, that and sucking up to the Shaa. But they’re not good at making decisions, or questioning themselves, or coping with changed circumstances. They’ve been hopeless at dealing with the economic crisis, and they’ve allowed something like the Steadfast League to spread right under their noses.” She spread her hands. “So—we’ll be on the run soon.”

  Lin nodded, her expression bleak.

  “Be sure to pack something nice to wear,” Sula said. “We’ll be going first class.”

  Lin stared at her. “Wars seem to have improved since I fought in the last one.”

  Sula sipped her tea and smiled. “At least the accommodation will be better.”

  The reunion of Confidence’s wardroom took place at Julien Bakshi’s restaurant. Sula was known there, and the maître d’ welcomed her and showed her into the private room she’d booked. The Cree chef hustled in to explain the latest features of the menu. As the afternoon progressed, it was difficult chasing off the highly attentive staff so that Sula could deliver her message.

  Rebecca Giove was her usual kinetic self, and the perpetually youthful Pavel Ikuhara had grown a little mustache in hopes of looking more mature. It wasn’t working. The big surprise, however, was in discovering that her former premiere lieutenant, Lord Alan Haz, was now Lady Alana. This sort of transformation was uncommon among the Peers, who worried that it might interfere with their primary duty of reproduction, but apparently Lady Alana had sufficient resources and independence to flout tradition.

  The metamorphosis was clearly a work in progress. Lord Alan had been a big, square, hearty young man, with a robust manner, a commanding baritone, and an exquisite set of tailored uniforms. Lady Alana’s dress sense remained, for her Chesko frock was elegance itself and artfully de-emphasized her mesomorphic frame; but the personality that had seemed natural had now become studied, and the voice a mere whisper until she forgot herself, and the baritone boomed out over the table. In her tall heels, she towered over everyone else in the room.

  Sula waited until the meal was over, and brandies and coffee had been delivered, before she told the others why she’d brought them together.

  “It’s time for us to leave Zanshaa,” she finished, speaking into the stunned silence. “We’re going to be needed elsewhere.”

  “Where?” asked Giove.

  “You don’t need to know that now. But you’ll each be traveling under another identity, just in case anyone is looking for groups of Fleet officers moving from one place to another.”

  Lady Alana stared at the table, her expression troubled. “I don’t know if I dare go.”

  Sula looked at her. “Why not?”

  “I’ve got a wife and three children in Zanshaa City. I can’t leave them behind, not with things as they are.”

  So apparently Haz had done his reproductive duty before beginning his conversion. And he’d remained married through the transformation, which Sula was inclined to think was unusual.

  “Can your family come with you?” Sula asked.

  “Yes, but—” Haz searched for words. “The children are small. I don’t think they’ll be able to travel under cover identities. They won’t remember who they’re supposed to be.”

  “In that case,” said Sula, “you and they can travel under your own names. A single officer shipping with her family is unlikely to set off alarms. Just remember that you don’t know any of the rest of us.”

  Lady Alana still looked worried, but she nodded. “That seems possible,” she said.

  Sula gave Ikuhara and Giove envelopes with their new identities, prepared ahead of time. “Memorize all the details,” she said. “Do not bring any other form of identification.”

  “Very good, my lady!” said Giove. She sounded as excited as a child running free after a day at school.

  “Another thing,” Sula said. “Are there any other officers we might contact? We need people we can absolutely trust, officers who can leave at a moment’s notice, and who will be useful in combat—no glits, no high decorative Peers—we’ll need fighters.”

  “Do you know Naaz Vijana?” Giove said. “They promoted him after Esley, and promised him a cruiser, but the ship’s not been built yet. I think a subcontractor went bankrupt, or something.”

  Vijana, Sula remembered, had been the officer who had obliterated the Yormak Rebellion. Ruthless, she supposed, and a proven fighter, but his combat experience was hardly conventional.

  Though maybe an unconventional fighter was exact
ly who they needed.

  “Should you contact him?” Sula asked. “Or should I?” Giove said that she would do it.

  Lady Alana mentioned a lieutenant who had served in one of the other Terran ships in Sula’s squadron and volunteered to contact him.

  Ikuhara touched his sparse mustache. “Are we looking only for officers? Maitland and Markios are both living on the ring, and currently unassigned.”

  Warrant Officer Maitland was a sensor specialist, and Markios, Engineer First Class, had been in charge of the engine station in Confidence’s Command center.

  “Very good,” Sula said. “We’ll need experienced specialists.”

  “I’ll have to go to the ring to contact them.”

  “As soon as possible, then.” She looked at the clock on her sleeve display. “If you’ll pardon me,” she said, “I have another appointment.” She looked from one to another. “Pack and be ready to leave on a few hours’ notice. Don’t tell anyone what’s about to happen, not unless he’s one of the people we discussed.” She looked at Lady Alana. “Don’t tell your family anything, Lady Elcap. Just tell them you’ve got an assignment and they have to depart immediately.”

  “They may not understand,” Lady Alana said.

  “Understanding isn’t important,” Sula said. “What’s important is that we all leave when we can.”

  She went from the private dining room to Julien Bakshi’s private office on the second floor. Julien had just arrived—he was practically nocturnal—and his bodyguards knew Sula and let her enter. Julien had been fighting the war for weeks, his Bogo Boys ambushing members of the Steadfast League, and sometimes being ambushed in return.

  He accepted Sula’s news with a nod. “We’ll be getting weapons out of storage, then,” he said. “I suppose we might have to arm half the Terrans in Zanshaa City.”

  “I’ll see you when we take the city again,” Sula said.

  They embraced. His hair pomade had a repellent fruity scent, and it took an effort of will for Sula to hold him close.