Chapter 9
Bombardment of Los Angeles was in the middle of combat when a priority message arrived from Harzapid. “Your eyes only, my lord,” said Lalita Banerjee. “Your key is required to decode it.”
Martinez wore a vac suit and helmet, the better to repel any loose hardware that tried to knock him on the head. A glance at the battle plot told him he had a few moments before he would be required to make another decision. He pulled up the message onto his screen, decoded it from the command cipher, and then experienced a soft compression of his nervous system, not unpleasant, as Caroline Sula’s face materialized before his eyes. Her silver-gilt hair was pulled back from her drawn face, and a resentful fire seemed to glow behind her jade eyes.
“This message is to all squadron commanders and captains,” Sula said. “I regret to report that Fleet Commander Chen was injured this morning, the victim of a bombing. Two of her staff were killed. She is in the Fleet hospital in stable condition, but she’s lost a leg and it will be some time before she can resume her duties. A full recovery is expected in time. In the meantime I’ve assumed command of the Restoration forces here at Harzapid.”
Her tone was flat, but behind her words Martinez heard grim fury. “I wish to assure you that continuity of mission will be maintained,” Sula said. “I’ll leave it to you to decide when or if to inform your crews of this development, but if so, please emphasize that we are doing everything possible to track down the saboteurs and that we expect a resolution of the case very soon.”
The orange end-stamp filled the screen, and Martinez realized he’d forgotten to breathe. He pulled in air against one and a half gravities, then tried to come to grips with what Sula had just told him. Michi had lost a leg, and they would grow her a new one and attach it, but that would take time, and then there would be months of rehabilitation. So Michi was effectively barred from any active part in the war.
And now Sula was apparently in charge. But Martinez knew that she was far from the most senior captain on station, and he wondered if Michi, lying in her hospital bed, put Sula in command or whether Sula had staged some kind of coup.
It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.
“My lord,” said Prince Huang. “Recommend course shift to zero-four-four by zero-one-seven relative.”
Martinez shifted his attention to the tactical display. “Agreed,” he said. “Signal the squadron to begin the maneuver in one minute.”
“Zero-four-four by zero-one-seven relative,” repeated Aitor Santana. “Commence in one minute.”
Of course it was not a real battle. Los Angeles was engaged in a simulation for training purposes, with the computer playing the opposing forces as well as other friendly ships in the flagship’s squadron. The scenario was a simple one and would probably end with massive casualties on one side and the utter annihilation of the other.
It wasn’t a full-blown exercise, with Los Angeles maneuvering, firing its engine, and launching missiles—instead the cruiser was accelerating at a steady one point five gee toward Wormhole One. Simulated accelerations and movement were probably all the inexperienced crew could handle.
The heavy accelerations of the first ten days had been reduced, in part because it was now known where Foote and Rukmin actually were. There was an ideal place to ambush Rukmin’s force, and a lower rate of acceleration would see the Restoration forces there on time.
While he waited for the change of course to take place, Martinez let his thoughts return to the situation on Harzapid. He wondered how many other people were injured or killed by the bomb, and if it was as bad as the attack on the officers’ hostel, or as bad as the hostel attack could have been. Martinez knew there was censorship in place, and so he couldn’t trust any official casualty figures that had come out of Harzapid.
And he also didn’t know how to view Sula being in command. He called up the video again and looked closely at Sula’s shoulder boards, which showed her as a senior squadron commander. That was his own rank, and he felt thankful that at least he had seniority. Unless of course Sula was self-promoted, in which case she could further promote herself all the way to Supreme Commander and Vice-Ruler of the Universe.
Well, there was nothing Martinez could do about it from the swiftly receding Bombardment of Los Angeles, so he returned to the tactical problem he’d set for Los Angeles’s crew and began to plan when he would release his simulated missiles.
Two hours later, the exercise had ended—Martinez had been mildly gratified by Los Angeles and its simulated squadron having wiped out the simulated enemy while losing only half their number. The crew had secured from general quarters and were being given their supper. Much preferring the scent of sesame oil to that of his vac suit seals, Martinez finished a noodle dish in his dining room while reviewing video of the exercise.
At the end of the meal Alikhan appeared with a small glass of mig brandy and then began to clear the table.
“How do you think the exercise went?” Martinez asked him.
“I think the crew handled their panic fairly well,” Alikhan said.
Martinez nodded. “I suppose that’s the best we can hope for,” he said.
Alikhan cleared away the dishes and left Martinez contemplating his glass of brandy. There was a knock on the door, and Aitor Santana entered.
“Another eyes only message from Harzapid, my lord,” he said.
“I’ll take it.” Martinez froze the video and looked up at his signals lieutenant. “You did very well this afternoon, Lord Aitor.”
“Thank you, Lord Squadcom.” He hesitated. “I’ve learned a lot. Lieutenant Banerjee is a good teacher.”
Martinez thought he might as well turn pedagogue himself and ask for Santana to analyze the day’s experiment. “How do you think the exercise went, Lieutenant?”
Santana gave the question a few seconds’ thought before making his reply. “Very smooth, Lord Squadcom,” he said. “But the exercise wasn’t particularly challenging. Those weren’t real ships we were maneuvering.”
“True,” Martinez said. “But there were no significant errors, and that’s something we can be satisfied with. More challenging exercises will come.”
Once Los Angeles united with Carmody’s two squadrons to complete Division Two of the Fourth Fleet, more complex exercises would be possible, and all would be aimed at crushing Rukmin in an ambush.
“Well,” Martinez said. “I should view the message now. Thank you, Lord Aitor.”
Santana handed Martinez the envelope containing the message on its data foil, and Martinez deployed his squadron commander’s key to unlock the command cipher and view it.
Martinez found himself bewildered by the message. Though it originated in the fleetcom’s office, it was delivered by a female cadet Martinez had never met and ordered Los Angeles to fire two antimatter missiles toward Harzapid, one thirty-one seconds behind the other. The first would explode short of Harzapid, and the other would pass through the expanding plasma cloud, decelerate, and be recovered by another vessel. No explanation of the exercise was given.
The missiles were to be fired in just under sixteen hours, time enough for a query to be sent from Los Angeles, and a reply to reach him.
“Squadron Commander Martinez to Fleet Commander Chen, personal, eyes only,” he said. “I have been ordered to fire two live missiles toward our dockyard, which I find puzzling. I would be obliged if this order were confirmed. End message.”
He coded the message and sent it, and early the next morning received his reply from Sandra Yuen, one of Michi Chen’s staff. Yuen was a mess, with two black eyes, a splint on her broken nose, and a full assortment of cuts and bruises spattered across her face. Her message merely repeated the instructions from the first.
At least the order came from someone he knew. Dutifully Martinez fired the two missiles on schedule and watched as the first exploded and the second, presumably, didn’t.
What was that about? he wondered, but he clearly wasn’t going to
be told, and so he turned his attention to the more urgent matter of destroying Rukmin’s squadrons.
It was eleven days before Michi Chen felt able to resume her command of the Restoration. Most of her injuries had healed, and her new left leg was growing in a vat of nutrient solution in the Fleet hospital. Her stump had been slathered in a gel that would ready it for the attachment that would put Michi on her feet again.
During those eleven days, Sula had moved quickly and quietly. The test with live missiles had demonstrated the superiority of Shankaracharya’s sensor suite, and she had ordered enough for the entire Restoration armada. Unfortunately most conversions couldn’t be made right away—she had ordered all warships capable of flight to depart the station, because broadcasts from Zanshaa featured commentators raving about the antimatter attack on Chijimo and what was termed its “innocent civilian population.” Sula worried that Zanshaa might retaliate for Chijimo by sending a barrage that would wipe out Harzapid. Since she’d sent the ships on a trajectory toward Wormhole One, she ordered them to launch a barrage of decoys, and hoped that if Zanshaa decided to strike, the warships might be able to shoot a few missiles down, or that the decoys would absorb some of the barrage.
The warships, now on the move, would have to acquire their new sensor suites on the run, and that meant support ships would have to bring the new electronics from Harzapid, along with enough personnel to efficiently install them. Shankaracharya agreed to provide technicians.
Those warships remaining at the station were the two squadrons adapted to Cree crews, which required extra work because all displays had to be shifted from auditory to visual perception. During the course of their refit, they would receive the Shankaracharya sensor suite while still in dock.
Sula decided to equip support vessels with the new electronics and use these to supplement the warships, staying out of the battle while using their sensors to probe for the enemy. How they would actually accomplish this in practice was a problem yet to be worked out.
While all this was in train, two large immigration ships were requisitioned, then shifted from civilian to Fleet docks, while Naxid dockworkers, traveling in secret and under false names, were moved into them. Lord Nishkad, procurement specialist that he was, organized them into work parties, and they quietly went to work converting, arming, and loading support vessels that would be needed for the Restoration fleet to resupply and to extend its influence into enemy-controlled space. They also began to work in areas of the supply chain that were experiencing blockages due to lack of trained personnel.
After the Fourth Fleet had finished its conversion, Sula planned for it to begin an expansion. New warships would be laid down, and Terran and Naxid workers would compete to finish them ahead of schedule.
Fortunately there was money to pay for all this. Ming Lin had masterminded the first sale of stock from the Committee for Banking and Exchange, and it had gone well, buoyed by the fact that the economy of Harzapid was showing signs of robust growth. Once the regulations on bank reserves were eased, the banks could make loans and the recovery could begin in earnest.
In fact the recovery was progressing throughout the area controlled by the Restoration. The only element of the economy that was lagging was interstellar shipping, and that was because shipowners were worried that if they sent their vessels to Harzapid, the Fourth Fleet would requisition them for its own purposes.
As long as the money kept coming in, Sula concluded, she’d let Michi Chen worry about the merchant economy.
But now Michi Chen was seated in an aesa-leather chair in her new office at the Empyrean Hotel. Though the walls were paneled and the floors deeply carpeted, the place still smelled like a hospital. Michi wore a fleet commander’s viridian tunic, and a coiffeuse had arranged her hair while a cosmetician applied cosmetics. A desk had been wheeled up to her, in part to conceal the fact that below the waist she wore only a hospital gown, with her stump and her surviving leg propped on a footstool. The camera would show a poised, smiling commander receiving congratulations from her subordinates—but like most public relations, it was all a matter of angles.
Still, Sula thought that even without the cosmetic Michi looked better than she had twelve days ago. Enforced bed rest, proper nutrition, and a diet of fast-healer hormones and antibiotics had brightened her eyes and warmed her jaundiced complexion. Now, Sula concluded, Michi would be in much better condition to begin once again to work herself to death.
The Fleet public relations techs set up cameras and lights. Once the cameras began recording, Sula marched to Michi’s desk, braced in salute, and formally surrendered her temporary command to the head of the Restoration.
“Cut!” said the director. “Lady Sula, you stepped out of your light. One more time, please.”
Sula repeated her brief scene, but one of the cameras hadn’t triggered, and she had to do it again. This time there was too much noise from someone walking along the outside corridor; and the next, someone coughed at the wrong moment.
When the seventh take failed due to a technician tripping over a cable and plunging the room into semidarkness, Sula turned to the director.
“Which side are you on, anyway?” she demanded. “Has Tork sent you here to commit sabotage?”
The director stared at her wide-eyed. “Sorry, my lady!” he said. “I don’t—”
“Why don’t you make sure everything is working before we start?” Sula snarled. “And then tell everyone not to fucking move!”
“Ah—yes, my lady.”
The scene came out right on the eighth take, and then more scenes were shot as Roland Martinez, Lady Governor Koridun, and a parade of subordinates came forward to offer Michi their congratulations. Among them were the Kangas twins—Ranssu had been released from the hospital on the same day Michi was admitted, having only lost two fingers as opposed to a whole leg. Part of his face was encased in a protective sheath to hold his broken jaw in place, and to protect a skin graft, but he was already mobile. He’d decided against having his fingers replaced, which would delay his taking command of his frigate. “I only need one finger to push buttons,” he’d said, and waved a blithe hand. “Nonii.”
Following the congratulations ceremony came the medal ceremony. For their actions in defense of the officers’ hostel, Sula, Lady Alana Haz, the Kangas brothers, and Naaz Vijana received medals—Vijana remotely, since he was somewhere between Harzapid and Wormhole One in command of a light cruiser squadron. Sandra Yuen pinned the Medal of Merit, First Class on Sula’s tunic while Michi read the citation, and Sula idly wondered whether she’d decisively pulled ahead of Martinez in the medal race.
Not till she won the Golden Orb, she decided.
Other rewards were scattered about, to recipients not present: Spence and Macnamara, and various officers concerned with the hostel’s defense. Sula had made certain that the operator of the fire suppression boom, who had drenched the attackers with fire retardant, received the civilian version of the Award for Valor. That she was a Lai-own acting in defense of the Restoration made the award all the more important as propaganda.
After the ceremonies Michi was carried to her bed for a rest, and the various guests lunched in the hotel restaurant. Lady Koridun sat next to Sula and kept urging her to tell the story of the battle at the officers’ hostel, interrupted constantly by Lamey, who kept trying to sell Koridun on his planet-development scheme. Koridun, warned ahead of time by Sula, did her best to ignore him. Afterward Sula returned to Michi’s suite and found there Captain Kai, the Investigative Service officer who had been abused by Naaz Vijana for not finding Colonel Dai-por, the presumed mastermind behind the attacks. During her period of command Sula had received Kai’s reports and had realized that Vijana was mistaken.
Well, mostly mistaken.
Sula and Kai were called into Michi’s room to find her propped up in bed, her eyes bright, her hand comm in her lap. She was dressed in a luxurious embroidered bed jacket of silk, and the remains of her lunch sat on
a tray by her bedside. Elaborate bouquets of flowers were arrayed on either side of the bed and filled the room with their fragrance.
“Captain Kai wanted to report on the search for the bombers,” Sula said, “and I wanted to give you a briefing on some items too sensitive to have included in my formal report.”
“Sit, if you please,” Michi said, and her eyes turned to Kai. “Captain Kai first, I think. I have to say that my interest in the matter is very personal.”
Kai’s beefy face, as always, radiated confidence and reassurance. “Lady Sula already knows that we’ve located Colonel Dai-por and have been keeping him under surveillance for three days now.”
Michi seemed startled. “He hasn’t been arrested?”
“We’re keeping him under close observation, and monitoring his communications, to find out who he’s talking to while we map the extent of his organization.” His pleasing baritone nearly sang the words.
“There’s no way he can get away?”
“He was located in a rather remote resort area, occupying a hunting cabin in the off-season. There’s a lake on two sides of him, and only one road in and out. We’ve taken care to make sure he can’t get away on foot, and he doesn’t have a boat.”
In spite of Kai’s reassuring tone, Michi seemed a little suspicious. “And how is your mapping of this organization faring?”
“We’ve identified his couriers and tracked them on their rounds.” Kai grinned and seemed so pleased with himself that he was practically bouncing in his seat. “And he’s been—well—a little careless with signals communications. He’s got some false identities and comm accounts attached to those identities, and he knows the words that would get the automated security algorithms interested in his conversations, so he’s developed a crude substitution code, ‘cake’ for ‘bomb’ and so on. But really, he’s making too many calls and sending too many instructions. He should rely on couriers, but he’s too impatient.”
“I’m afraid he’s following the playbook I developed in the Naxid War,” Sula said. “He’s got a little bomb factory going, and he started with a store of weapons that he’s trying to expand with homemade weapons and ammunition. He’s trying to organize his group in cells, but of course all the Legion personnel know each other, so that won’t get him far until he starts recruiting outside his sphere.”
Fleet Elements Page 16