Fleet Elements

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Earthgirl!” he said. “Welcome to Harzapid!”

  “You welcomed me yesterday,” Sula said.

  Without waiting for an invitation Lamey dropped onto a chair. “True, I was there at the airlock with everyone else,” he said, “but we didn’t get a chance to talk.”

  Sula settled into another chair. “Well. Let’s talk then.”

  Lamey smiled. “Can I have breakfast?”

  “There may be some pastry left.” Macnamara was still hovering protectively in the room—he disliked Lamey even more than he disliked all Sula’s other male friends—and she sent him to inquire. He returned with two pastries on a plate. Lamey looked up at him.

  “Can I have some coffee?”

  “You can have tea,” Sula said. “It’s being brewed.”

  Lamey gave a contented, catlike smile and settled into his chair with his pastry. Macnamara withdrew to the doorway.

  “I’m on this committee with Roland Martinez and Lord Mehrang and some others,” he said. “We’re trying to give some political direction to what we’re doing. You have a lot of experience with committees in the Convocation, so I’ve arranged for you to join them. The next meeting is tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I’m not very good on committees,” Sula said. “I get outvoted on everything, and then I get blamed when what I didn’t vote for goes wrong.”

  Lamey took a delicate bite of his pastry. “That’s politics, Earthgirl. What did you expect?”

  “I know I didn’t expect to have to flee to Harzapid. Did you?”

  He shrugged. “I half expected I’d have to flee somewhere. But I never expected the economy to collapse and that my friends would get blamed for it.” He waved his hand with a pastry in it. “But we seem to have landed pretty well. All you have to do is win the war, and then our side will be in charge.”

  “Win the war,” Sula repeated. “I’ll work on it.”

  “So you’ll join our little committee?”

  “I’ll hate it.”

  “Unfortunately your questions in yesterday’s meeting knocked everyone on their ear—I heard about all that from Captain Vijana—and now you’re obliged to help find answers for them.”

  Sula rubbed the pad of scar tissue on her right thumb. “I’ll attend,” she said, “if Lady Michi doesn’t assign me some other work.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  Macnamara returned with Lamey’s tea, which he put on a side table by Lamey’s chair. Lamey thanked him, and Macnamara wordlessly withdrew.

  Sula studied the self-satisfied, superbly dressed man who sat across from her. They had first met on Spannan, when she had been a schoolgirl named Gredel, and Lamey had been a young linkboy in charge of a crew who earned their living through hijackings, gambling, drugs, usury, and violence. She had been seventeen—or fourteen in Earth years, a fact she knew because once she learned the formula for converting one to the other, she now did so automatically whenever anyone mentioned their age. Seventeen or fourteen, she was not so young that she couldn’t be a gangster’s girlfriend.

  She hadn’t been Lady Sula then, but a kid from the streets, different from the others only in the obsession with Terran history that resulted in her nickname of “Earthgirl.” And then Lady Sula—the real one—had turned up in their lives, blond and green-eyed and lost. Caro Sula burned through her money and her luck as fast as possible while buoyed by supplies of drugs and alcohol—and in the end she had, with a little help, suffered a convenient overdose.

  Gredel hadn’t spent her life on the streets without knowing when to take advantage of an opportunity. Caro Sula, suitably weighted, went into the river, and Gredel adopted a new identity, a new bank account, and a new accent, and had then gone to the Cheng Ho Academy and a career in the military. She’d assumed Lamey was dead—people in his line of work didn’t live long—but then two years ago he’d turned up at her door in Zanshaa with a scheme to make her a member of the Convocation, the empire’s supreme body.

  Lamey was the only person who knew that she wasn’t the genuine Lady Sula, and she was obliged to cooperate with his plans. They were in a pact of mutual annihilation, for while he could bring her down, she also knew enough about him to send him to the executioner.

  When she’d fled Zanshaa on Striver, she hadn’t told Lamey she was leaving—but then he’d hitched a ride here with the Martinez family aboard Corona. So—at least until she boarded a warship and went to battle—she and Lamey were in some kind of partnership again.

  Lamey took a sip of his tea. “I’ve got a new line,” he said. “I’m going to develop a planet.”

  “That’ll keep you busy for a few generations,” Sula said.

  “Esley,” Lamey said.

  “Ah. Hah.” Esley was the native world of the shaggy Yormaks, and until recently most of its surface had been reserved for the native inhabitants. Until the Yormaks had rebelled a few years ago, when most were killed and the survivors confined to small reserves. Now the vast empty world, under the patronage of Lord Mehrang, would be opened to settlement, but it was a cold world, with most of its water locked up in glaciers, and a lot of changes would have to be made before a suitable population of imperial citizens could thrive there.

  “I’m sure Lord Mehrang had plans for Esley,” Sula said. “And those plans are all on hold on account of the war.”

  “They’re on hold because financing has dried up,” Lamey said. “And the contractors who were going to do the work are blockaded. So—” Again he deployed his catlike smile.

  “So you’re putting together an organization to help him out?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you know about how to develop worlds?”

  Lamey laughed. “I don’t need to know anything. The Mehrang family has been sitting on the plans for generations, waiting for the Convocation’s permission to proceed. All I have to do is organize people into doing the work, and if I run into trouble, I can consult Roland.”

  Roland Martinez and his family owned the only companies in the empire with experience in developing new worlds, but all their assets were far away, except for those on Rol-mar, and those were tied up on what for all intents and purposes was a planetwide strike.

  Sula was reasonably sure Lamey was creating an organization devoted to diverting Lord Mehrang’s money into Lamey’s pocket, but then she didn’t know Lord Mehrang and didn’t care whether he lost his money or not. Lamey’s project might also keep Lamey too busy to harass Sula, so that would be a bonus.

  “I’m not supposed to be a part of this company, am I?” Sula said.

  “No,” Lamey said. “Not unless you want to be. But I’d be obliged if you’d talk to your rich friends about investing.”

  “My rich friends got left behind on Zanshaa,” Sula said.

  “Michi Chen’s about to put you in charge of dozens of officers with money,” Lamey said. He waved a hand and laughed. “There’s no better investment than a planet! That planet’s not going anywhere!”

  “Ask the people who invested in Rol-mar,” Sula said, “how secure they feel about their investment right now.”

  “Rol-mar is Roland’s problem,” Lamey said. He took a sip of tea, then leaned back in his chair. “We expect Terrans will invest in the war,” he said. “We’ll have to do that, for our own survival. But other species—with all the financial chaos going on, they’re going to be looking for safe places to put their money.”

  “I’m not sure about your timing,” Sula said, “but good luck with that. And I’ll be sure to mention you to my rich friends who happen to belong to other species.”

  “Lady Koridun, for instance,” said Lamey.

  Sula had no intention of letting Lamey anywhere near Lady Koridun’s money.

  “I’ll be sure to tell her everything about you,” she said.

  He laughed. “That’s my Earthgirl!” he said.

  After Lamey left, Sula went back into the kitchen and found Ming Lin looking once more at columns of figures on he
r portable display. She looked over her shoulder as Sula entered.

  “Is Braga serious about starting a company to develop Esley?” she asked. “In the current climate? To say the least, that’s going to be challenging.”

  “He’s not going to develop anything,” Sula said. “His company’s going to be a complete fraud.”

  Lin’s eyes widened. “Oh. Well.” She turned back to her figures and nodded. “That makes sense, then,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  Photos of Martinez’s family floated around the perimeter of his desk display: Terza with her harp leaning on her shoulder, gaze inward as she concentrated on her music; Gareth the Younger aboard Corona just a couple months ago, peering at a fish in one of the carrier’s tanks; and Martinez’s daughter, Yaling, who for her own safety had been sent with her aunt Walpurga to live with her grandparents on Laredo, the photo caught at her fifth birthday celebrations on Ensenada, before Michi launched her coup and communications between Harzapid and the rest of the empire had been slashed.

  Yaling, who had been sent to Laredo so that if Martinez and Gareth Junior were both killed, Martinez and Terza would still have an heir. Roland, the oldest Martinez brother, had insisted.

  Good of Roland, Martinez thought, to have so thoughtfully considered all eventualities.

  In the display, Martinez’s family gracefully orbited the Structured Mathematics Display, where he had been working out calculations relating to the escape of Jeremy Foote’s Light Squadron Eight from Colamote, along with the presumed pursuit of the two heavy squadrons from Zarafan. The original calculations that suggested Foote was in little danger, worked up by one of Michi’s staff, were sound as far as they went, but they showed evidence of haste. The suppositions on which they’d been based were sound, but alternate suppositions hadn’t been considered.

  The original calculations assumed that Foote would push his squadron at a constant acceleration of two gravities. Two gravities was hard on the crew, but not unendurable—but also it was unlikely a commander would keep up that pace for an entire twenty-nine-hour day. There would be breaks for meals, for bathing, for maintenance on hard-stressed ship systems.

  Martinez knew that Foote was a yachtsman, and a good one, accustomed to harder accelerations. Even with meal and bathroom breaks, Martinez thought Foote might push his crews harder and turn up sooner than the calculations indicated.

  But so might Rukmin and her two heavy squadrons from Zarafan. The calculations assumed that it would take Rukmin a day and a half to ready her forces for departure, and that would be very prompt for peacetime, but Martinez thought that Rukmin would be burning to avenge the two squadrons Foote had annihilated at Colamote, and get moving within hours, and burn hard once she got going. That Rukmin was a Torminel, considered the most pugnacious species under the Praxis, was another factor worthy of consideration.

  Martinez looked at his calculations, and then viewed his family as they silently orbited the display. He turned to the display on his left sleeve and called Michi Chen’s office. “I’m sending the fleetcom some figures,” he told the secretary who answered, “and then I’ll need to see Lady Michi in person.”

  “Well then,” said Michi. She glittered in her dress uniform, on her way to a formal supper. “I’m promoting you to senior squadron commander, and I’m giving you Bombardment of Los Angeles for your flagship, with Elissa Dalkeith for your flag captain. You’ve successfully worked together before, and I imagine you’ll do so again.” She looked up at Martinez. “Walk with me, please.”

  An aide handed her a billed uniform cap, which she tucked under an arm. She left her suite on Perfection of the Praxis and made her way to the elevator. Martinez followed a half-pace behind in a cloud of her floral scent, their footfalls absorbed by soft carpeting.

  “If Rukmin’s pursuing Foote,” Michi said, “you’ll need to wipe her out with few or no casualties on our side. We can’t afford casualties, and since you specialize in battles of annihilation, I’m going to have to trust that you’ll produce another one.”

  Martinez resisted the temptation to preen. The Martinez Method had been deployed in three battles, and each had produced spectacular one-sided victories even though Martinez hadn’t technically been in command at any of them.

  But now Martinez had jumped several grades in rank and had his first squadron command as well as permission to use his own tactics. He almost began to hope that Rukmin was on Foote’s trail.

  “I’m giving you Prince Huang as your tactical officer,” Michi continued.

  “Prince?” Martinez asked. “He’s from a world where they have princes?” Which, if true, would be surprising indeed, because anything suggestive of monarchy was forbidden. Authority under the Praxis was collegiate, shared primarily between Peers whose families had proved reliable over centuries. That’s why they were called “Peers,” for each was, in theory, the equal of all others, and each with proper training, doctrine, and attitude, capable of doing the same work.

  Martinez felt that the fact he was considered replaceable was in itself a complete critique of the theory.

  “‘Prince’ is his forename,” Michi said. “He’s a kind of cousin of mine, and he’s a genius.”

  “Ah.” Martinez didn’t quite know how to respond to this declaration. I’ll be the judge of that would have been an honest answer, but not tactful under the circumstances. Instead he said, “Is ‘Prince’ an allowed name?”

  “Apparently.”

  People were required to choose from a list of acceptable names when giving a name to their children, names without subversive content. There were no children named Freedom, and no Jesuses or Vishnus or Rebels. That was one reason why names tended to repeat themselves in families generation after generation—once you found a safe name, you felt free to reuse it.

  Michi reached the elevator and passed her command key over the sensor, which would cause one of the elevators to abandon any other duties and leap to the aid of the fleet’s commander.

  “He’s explained his tactical ideas to me,” Michi went on, “but I don’t quite grasp them. I think you’re in a better position to make sense of them.”

  What if they don’t make sense at all? Martinez wondered.

  Well, he thought. It’s not as if he’d actually need a tactical officer.

  He could do it all.

  Elevator doors opened and revealed an empty cage where the permanent floor, roof, and side paneling were yet to be installed. They entered.

  “Entry hatch,” Michi told the elevator, and the elevator began to ascend, girders, conduits, and crossbraces sliding past. Michi turned again to Martinez.

  “You—or more properly Dalkeith—will have the best crew I can give you, but at least half the officers and most of the enlisted will either be untried in their current positions, or brought out of retirement, or both—and you won’t have a full complement. But at least the rest of your command will be at full strength—Carmody and the other captains left the ring with complete crews, and if you need to, you’ll be able to shift your flag to another ship once you join them.”

  “Yes, Lady Fleetcom.”

  Maybe, he thought, he couldn’t do it all, not if it involved training a crew in addition to working up a battle plan and carrying it out.

  Still, he thought. Command of two squadrons—that made it a fleet, albeit the smallest fleet possible. And whether Dalkeith’s cruiser was quite up to the mark wasn’t going to change the outcome, which would be that Rukmin’s force would be ambushed, attacked, and annihilated.

  Nothing like another victory to pump our side’s morale, he thought. Not to mention enrage Supreme Commander Tork and tempt him into something ill-advised.

  Speaking of which . . .

  “Lady Fleetcom,” he ventured. “Are you planning on using the battleship as your flagship in the confrontation with Tork?”

  She gave him a sidelong look. “Why do you ask?”

  “Once the enemy finds the only battleship in our o
rder of battle,” Martinez said, “you’ll become the focus of the most savage attack Tork can mount.”

  “Well,” Michi said. “I think I know where you’re going with this, but since you’ve assigned me the role of naïve interlocutor, I’ll oblige you and respond as you expect, and I’ll say, ‘Shouldn’t a commander put herself in the position of maximum danger?’”

  Martinez looked at her. No one ever said she wasn’t smart, he thought.

  “I was planning to say that taking those sorts of risks should be someone else’s job,” Martinez said, “and that I’d put that someone in command of Perfection of the Praxis and use it to lure Tork into making an unwise attack on the wrong target.” He cleared his throat. “But if you would rather I say something else, I’ll oblige.”

  The elevator came to a halt, and the doors rolled open to reveal the battleship’s entrance hall, all polished pale marble, recessed lighting, and a dark-paneled desk intended for a polite receptionist, but now occupied by armed guards who stood ready both to direct workers to their assigned jobs, and to repel any attack. Michi stepped out of the elevator.

  “I don’t have time to think of something else for you to say,” she said. “But if, in between working up your new command and suffering through a long, brutal acceleration, you can work out a way to divert most of Tork’s attention onto this useless, half-finished barge, feel free to send me a memo.”

  She cast a smile over her shoulder as she walked toward the hatch, and then was gone.

  Martinez had been ready for months to assume command of something, so his storage space on Corona was filled with trunks and bags packed with the ridiculous amount of gear a commander was supposed to haul aboard his ship: uniforms, wine and spirits, coffee and tea, delicacies for the squadron commander’s pantry, monogrammed crystal wineglasses, large silver boats designed to hold a half-dozen champagne bottles submerged in crushed ice, decanters, silverware, plates, and place settings for a formal dinner of up to sixteen. Multiplied, as always, by the necessity of catering to the dietary needs of all the species under the Praxis—Torminel, who preferred their flesh raw, required scrapers, specialized tools for extracting marrow, and larding needles complete with lard, whereas the Lai-own liked picks designed to clean their peg teeth, and Daimong with their complicated mouth parts preferred their food made into small packages.