Fleet Elements

by Walter Jon Williams

  There was only a slight hesitation. “Yes, Lord Fleetcom.”

  The premiere was a genial man, gray haired, who had come back to the Fleet twelve years after retiring, and Martinez imagined that he ruled the wardroom with a benign, fatherly hand.

  Martinez realized that he was already saying good-bye to him.

  Next time, he mentally told Dalkeith, kill your own damn lieutenant.

  He saw that Huang was struggling with his webbing, trying to get out of his acceleration couch. He was inexperienced at moving in zero gravity and kept getting himself caught in the webbing or bouncing off the bars of the cage.

  “Sit down, Huang!” Martinez said, and then the acceleration warning sounded, an insistent whoop that warbled up and down the scale, telling the crew to get to an acceleration couch before the engines lit. Huang ignored it—he flailed free of the webbing, and then braced himself against two looping bars of the cage, and pushed himself off directly toward Martinez.

  “What the hell!” Martinez tried to shove Huang off, but his hands couldn’t quite clear his own acceleration cage. The cage began a slow tumble as Huang seized it, and then Huang was climbing into the cage, hands reaching for Martinez’s displays. If Huang couldn’t broadcast from his own station, he apparently intended to use his commander’s.

  “My lord!” Santana’s voice roared in Martinez’s headset. “Hold on, I’m coming!”

  Blazing fury ignited in Martinez. “No!” he said. “We’ll be under acceleration soon!” He tried to shove Huang away, failed, then tried a vicious punch to the floating ribs. Strapped in the couch, and lacking gravity, he was too cramped to throw an effective punch, and the vac suit absorbed much of his force. A new wobble was added to the cage’s spin. Huang was thrown against one of the bars of the cage, but he bounded back and reached for the displays again.

  “My lord!” called Santana.

  “Get out of there!” Martinez could barely hear his own voice over the whooping alarm. He punched again, failed to accomplish anything, and then doubled up in the cage, got the toe of one boot under the locking ring of Huang’s helmet, and then kicked as hard as he could. Huang hit the cage bar again and rebounded, but now he was perfectly positioned for a clean kick, and Martinez lashed out with every ounce of his anger. The cage went into a rapid spin. The kick hurled Huang headlong into a corner of the room just as the engines fired.

  Los Angeles didn’t go from zero to four gees instantly, but it happened quickly enough, and the floor rose to flatten Huang like a flyswatter crushing an insect. Huang’s helmet hit with a rattling thud. Martinez’s cage crashed to its deadpoint, swung, crashed again. Acceleration built, and Martinez found himself gasping for breath. Huang moved slowly, gathering himself, and then with slow determination pushed himself upright. He got one foot under him, the knee raised, and then looked ready to push himself to a standing position when the increasing gravity proved too much, and he slumped to the floor.

  “Good job, my lord!” Santana said.

  “Flag to Dalkeith,” Martinez gasped, forcing the word out from a rib cage now four times its own weight. He remembered that he was supposed to give all orders on video and triggered the camera. “Flag to Dalkeith,” he said. “When we go to a lower acceleration, page two constables to the flag officer’s station. I need to place an officer under arrest.”

  Dalkeith was too overcome by the fight for air to register surprise. “At once, Lord Fleetcom.”

  Martinez battled for breath and shifted to the more useful virtual display. The deluge of missiles hurtling toward Los Angeles was being thinned by defensive fire, and Martinez could assume much of that fire was coming from the rest of Squadron Twenty.

  The surviving missiles came on. Defensive missiles launched, joined by a swarm of defensive missiles from Squadron Twenty. Los Angeles was beginning to enter the effective defensive zone of the rest of the squadron, and Martinez was gratified to see rippling blooms of plasma in Los Angeles’s wake, detonations overlapping one another.

  Yet the detonations were getting closer, missiles dodging and spiraling to avoid counterfire, moving through the blooms of hot plasma to make their detection more difficult. Calculations sped through his mind.

  “Flag to Dalkeith,” he said. “Set defenses to automatic and increase to twelve gees for fifteen seconds.”

  He forgot to trigger the video that would confirm the order, but Dalkeith saw the sense of the order anyway, and the gravities began to increase. Each breath was a battle, and Martinez’s vision closed down, narrowing until there was only a constricted tunnel focused on a display that seemed very far away.

  He didn’t think he actually passed out; and when the gravities fell away, he felt relief surge through his body like a flush of hot blood mantling his skin. Four gravities had once been distressing, but now they seemed like an element of paradise. He waited for his vision to clear and tried to make sense of the display. Los Angeles was now entering the very midst of Squadron Twenty and might well shoot through and leave the rest behind. The other ships were maneuvering so as to form on the flagship and were in slight disorder as a result.

  Enemy missiles were still coming, leaping out of the plasma flowers that marked the deaths of other missiles. Martinez felt a burst of horror as he realized how close the missiles were. A drumfire of bursts reached toward Los Angeles like a giant finger thrusting at a point between Martinez’s eyes, the finger flying at incredible speed, and then Martinez’s display filled with fire, and the rest of the universe vanished behind a wall of superheated plasma.

  When the display went white, the first thing Martinez felt was relief. Los Angeles had not been annihilated, but a near miss had burned out every sensor on the ship. That was of little concern, because warships carried replacements, and these would be deployed as soon as the outside environment grew a little less fierce.

  What was far more important was that Los Angeles had survived. And as soon as the flagship replaced its sensors, it was time for Martinez to plan the battle’s endgame.

  “Flag to Dalkeith,” Martinez sent. “Reduce acceleration to conform to the rest of the squadron.”

  A couple of Torminel wrestlers climbed off Martinez’s chest, and he filled his lungs with a welcome breath of air. Automatic mechanisms replaced sensors on the outside of the hull, and the world slowly began to restore itself on the display. In Los Angeles’s wake a wall of cloud and fire obscured Rukmin’s ships, and through the electromagnetic hash he caught only glimpses of shadowy hulls and burning antimatter torches. Carmody and Foote continued their charge toward the enemy, hurling walls of missiles ahead of them. Both had starburst, their ships moving along the unpredictable paths of the Martinez Method. Carmody’s missiles were boring straight in, Martinez saw, but many of Foote’s missiles were taking a looping trajectory toward the enemy, hiding behind the cooling, expanding plasma shells created by the missiles fired by Rukmin and Martinez. Martinez was reluctant to give Foote credit for much of anything, but he had to think that was clever.

  “Lord Fleetcom? You called for us?” There was a respectful tap on his faceplate.

  Startled, Martinez let the virtual display fade from his optical centers and looked up to see a pair of Military Constabulary looming over him, large men bulky in their vac suits. The Constabulary were normally recognized by their red armbands and belts, but neither were suitable to their vac suits, so the belts and armbands were painted on.

  It took Martinez a moment to remember why the constables were here. He looked for Huang and saw him still crumpled on the floor. Martinez raised his faceplate and pointed at Huang.

  “Arrest that officer, please.” He spared a glance for the displays locked down in front of him and saw that the drumroll of missile bursts continued. He turned back to the constables. “We may have some violent maneuvers coming up soon. If you can get the prisoner on his feet, march him to confinement as quickly as you can. If he can’t stand, secure him in his acceleration couch. One of you take the spare c
ouch here, and the other should get to a couch as soon as he can.”

  The air outside his suit smelled hot, and Martinez wondered how far the hull temperature had been raised by the near miss.

  More than twice their normal weight, the two constables lumbered to Huang and tried to help him rise. Huang’s feet kept folding under him, so the constables gave up and heaved Huang onto his couch. Since he too was more than twice his normal weight, it was lucky that he was small, otherwise they might not have managed. As it was, it seemed as if one of the constables badly strained his back.

  Huang was secured to his couch, and one of the constables—the one with the strained back—limped to the spare cage, while the other plodded out of the room.

  “Two more enemy destroyed!” Lalita Banerjee could not contain her glee. “It happened while we were at twelve gees—the sensor operators have just gone back through the data!”

  “Starburst, my lord!” Santana’s words came fast on the heels of Banerjee’s report. “Rukmin’s starburst!”

  Martinez shifted back to his virtual display, and through the blaze of erupting antimatter he could see enemy torches pointed in different directions as the enemy ships flew from each other like bits of a bursting shell. By chance he happened to be looking directly at one of the enemy ships when it blew up, leaving a larger, brighter flare that briefly outshone the missile bursts.

  That’s eleven left, Martinez thought. At this rate Squadron Twenty might be able to finish the fight on its own.

  That would depend, however, at how Rukmin was managing her starburst, whether her ships were parting to operate on their own, or whether she was re-forming into the shifting, unpredictable array of the Martinez Method.

  It appeared that she wasn’t. Rukmin’s ships weren’t moving in any pattern that Martinez could detect.

  “My lord!” Santana’s tone was urgent. “Compliance has ceased acceleration!”

  “Query Captain Kim,” Martinez said, and then he turned on the video to record himself. “Flag to Squadron Twenty,” he said. “Re-form on Compliance.”

  The squadron buzzing around Compliance would mean bringing on a general engagement faster than Martinez had intended, but he had every confidence that he’d win it. He wasn’t going to sacrifice Compliance, not when he was on the verge of victory.

  “Captain Kim reports a hit on one of his engines,” Banerjee said. “He can’t fix it, and the engines are out of commission for the present.”

  It must have been an antiproton strike on the engine, Martinez thought. No enemy missile had come close.

  The zero-gee warning sang out, and the engines cut as Los Angeles rotated to a new heading, maneuvering to aid the helpless Compliance. The acceleration warning whooped up and down again, and then the engines kicked on. By chance Los Angeles was heading straight for the wall of fire that represented Rukmin’s squadron—which, Martinez calculated, would actually pass through Squadron Twenty in ten or twelve minutes.

  The battle didn’t last that long. The starburst had shattered Rukmin’s defensive cohesion, the missiles kept raining in, and the enemy ships were buried in fire. The end was swift, the surviving enemy wiped out in a matter of seconds, and then all the sensors could find were expanding, cooling plasma shells and aimless missiles searching for an enemy to attack.

  “Flag to all ships,” Martinez said. “Well done, and congratulations to all officers and crew. Recall all missiles and pinnaces. Division Two, shape your course for Shulduc Wormhole One and reduce acceleration to point five gee.”

  Reduced gee came as another relief to his bones. He saw Santana and Banerjee spinning in their cages with their arms uplifted, rejoicing in their victory and their survival.

  “Congratulations, Lord Fleetcom!” Santana said.

  The constable unwebbed and bounded in the light gravity toward Prince Huang, who remained motionless on his couch. His face, partly visible through the faceplate, was expressionless and fixed on the ceiling. The other constable arrived, and the two of them together marched Huang off to confinement. Martinez found himself without any comment on the matter. He’d deal with all that later.

  Division Two had spent weeks under heavy acceleration to get to Shulduc, and now they were going to have to go through the same amount of deceleration before they could begin their journey back to Harzapid. But this time there was no enemy at the end of the journey, but a friend: the sixty-three defecting ships of the Home Fleet, who had been heading to Harzapid for almost two months.

  Martinez wrenched off his helmet and stowed it in the net bag on the side of his couch. He looked at Santana and Banerjee, who were still grinning at each other.

  “I need to send a message to Fleet Commander Chen,” he said. “When you have a moment.”

  The two looked startled and a little guilty, and both returned their attention to their displays.

  “When you’re ready, Lord Fleetcom,” Banerjee said.

  “Fleet Commander Martinez to Fleet Commander Chen,” Martinez said. “I am pleased to report a complete victory at Shulduc over Squadron Commander Rukmin. The enemy lost sixteen heavy cruisers, and the Restoration suffered one ship damaged. All captains and ships performed to my complete satisfaction, and all deserve credit for this victory.” Except for your cousin Prince, he added mentally, and then finished his bulletin. “A more detailed report will follow. End message.”

  The message itself might be a little belated, for the Restoration-occupied relay station would have recorded the battle and forwarded it in real time to Harzapid. Martinez could imagine Michi and her staff sitting in a semicircle about a big wall display while missiles and explosions were reflected in their eyes.

  There’s your battle of annihilation, Martinez thought. That’s what you asked for, and that’s what you got.

  And then he thought, Tork’s fleet will be a lot harder.

  As Light Squadron Eight shot past Division Two on its way to Harzapid, Martinez called Jeremy Foote. He’d been waiting for Foote to contact him, a junior reporting to a senior, but then finally decided he was done with waiting.

  Martinez had climbed out of his vac suit, showered, and put on a fresh uniform before making the call. He spoke from his office while waiting for Alikhan to deliver his dinner.

  On video Foote appeared pale and wretched, with bruiselike purple blooms beneath his eyes, and new lines on his face. Though his ship was now under a very light deceleration he lay on his couch as if pasted there and unable to move. Even his cowlick had been beaten flat by hard gravities.

  “Congratulations on your survival, Captain Foote,” Martinez said. “Do you have a report or any other message I can forward to Fleet Commander Chen?”

  Even after two months of high gees, Foote’s High City drawl hadn’t lost any of its self-importance. “I haven’t had the chance to compose a report,” he said, “having been involved in a rather thrilling fight for existence.”

  “Glad I was able to help you with that,” Martinez said. “But now you can maintain a nice, gentle deceleration until you meet the rest of the Restoration fleet somewhere this side of Harzapid.”

  Foote raised an eyebrow. “Restoration?”

  “That’s us,” Martinez said. “The enemy is still ‘the enemy’ as far as I know.”

  “They’ll remain the enemy until they become the dishonored dead,” Foote said.

  “That’s the spirit!” Martinez grinned.

  “So Lady Michi is a fleet commander now,” Foote said. “I imagine you’ve been promoted as well?”

  “I’m a fleet commander, too. Feel free to salute me when next we meet.”

  Foote nodded. “I’ll make a note to do that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Martinez assured him, “you’ll get a promotion as well. And it will be based on merit, not the schemes of your high-placed relatives, so it will be deserved.”

  Foote’s mouth started to smirk, but he was too exhausted to fully carry it out. “I think all my promotions were deserved,” he said. />
  “It’s so endearing of you to believe that!” said Martinez. “If you want to send messages of your continuing existence to Fleet Commander Chen or anyone else, the relay station ahead of you is in friendly hands.”

  “I’ll do that. Thank you for your consideration.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll leave you to your well-earned rest. End transmission.”

  As the orange end-stamp filled the screen, Martinez grinned, reached for his crystal wineglass, and offered himself a toast.

  Having an advantage over a rival was a pleasure, but having a rival owe you his life was a sensation far more sublime.

  Chapter 11

  Martinez kept Division Two’s deceleration at a half gravity while ships were checked for damage and repairs were made, and anyone injured by high accelerations could be tended by one of the medics—or, if they were lucky, by an actual doctor. Compliance reported that it had lost a piece of one of its four main engine nozzles, possibly due to a flaw, possibly due to a strike by an antiproton weapon, but that its captain felt that with care it could limp along on its three remaining engines.

  In any case Compliance would require a visit to the Harzapid dockyards before it would again see action, and so Martinez ruthlessly raided the damaged cruiser for useful officers, warrant and petty officers, and a few of her more experienced enlisted. Dalkeith’s first officer had survived whatever cerebral accident had caused Los Angeles’s engines to shut down, and he and the other injured were transferred to Compliance for transport to Harzapid and treatment. The premiere was replaced officially by Dalkeith’s second officer, who had performed well, and her place was taken by a replacement from Compliance.

  Prince Huang, under guard, was shifted to a holding cell on the wounded cruiser. Martinez didn’t feel the need to see him off.

  After a day and a half of light gravity and general celebration, Martinez ordered everyone strapped in and worked his command up to three gravities’ deceleration. Compliance managed well.