Fleet Elements

by Walter Jon Williams

  Division Twelve had been equipped with the Shankaracharya sensor system, and Sula asked whether the operators had been able to detect a difference in their readings.

  “Hard to say,” Prasad said. “We see more detail in certain structures, but so far nothing that has to do with our mission. If we were Exploration Service ships scanning a newly discovered planet, or looking for asteroids or wormholes, we’d do very well. But aside from that one experiment you ordered, we lack data concerning how the sensors will behave in combat.”

  “Speaking of newly discovered planets, Lady Fleetcom,” Ikuhara said, “can you clarify what it is that Explorer found on its last expedition? I’ve heard they found an entire alien civilization that the Shaa wiped out in the far past.”

  Sula blinked in utter surprise. “I’ve heard nothing of the sort,” she said.

  “Our officers visit back and forth from ship to ship,” Ikuhara said. “And apparently some of the Exploration Service officers talked about it once they got some liquor on board—though of course I don’t know whether it’s even supposed to be secret.”

  “I should imagine it would be,” said Alana Haz.

  “Now that you’ve brought it up,” Sula said, “you’d better tell us what you’ve heard.”

  “Not much more than what I’ve told you,” said Ikuhara. He touched his wispy beard in a self-conscious way. “The planet is either called Garden or Lorkin—I’ve heard both. It’s suitable for settlement, a bountiful world, but it’s absolutely packed with old ruins that have been bombed to bits, and there are Shaa installations both in space and on the surface.”

  “Well,” said Prasad. She leaned back in her chair, a look of cynical amusement on her face. “It seems the Shaa were keeping secrets.”

  Haz looked thoughtful. “The Great Masters may have had good reason for keeping secrets, I suppose,” she said.

  Chandra Prasad snorted with laughter. “Because they fucked it up!” she said. “They fucked it so badly they blew up everything and left!”

  At that moment Sula found herself liking Prasad. Neither of them were afraid of raising uncomfortable possibilities.

  “What this means,” she said, “is that the annihilation of entire species was built into the empire from the beginning. It’s not something we’ve invented since the death of the last Shaa.”

  Vonderheydte was dubious. “Is that supposed to make us feel better?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Paivo Kangas. “Isn’t Severin using a character called ‘Lorkin’ in his puppet shows?”

  “That thing with the tentacles?” said Ranssu.

  “Ah. Hah,” Sula said. In Severin’s last few satirical programs, a being called “Lorkin,” supposedly a member of a recently discovered species, was always interrogating members of the Zanshaa government and trying to make sense out of their narcissistic, nonsensical replies.

  “I think that Squadcom Severin may have an agenda,” she said. “And I think we should avoid speculating until I have a chance to see Severin and ask him what it is.”

  It wasn’t that there weren’t other things to talk about. Sula spoke to the four captains she didn’t know and tried to draw out details of their careers. She wasn’t interested in the captains themselves, exactly, but she wanted to form an idea of what each might be good at, in case she had to make specific deployments or send someone on a special detail, and there was always the possibility that one might be promoted into a higher position of trust.

  It had to be admitted that the captains disappointed her—they seemed to be undistinguished mediocrities promoted into their places because they were the only officers available. They were probably suited well enough to their current assignments, but none struck her as the Fourth Fleet’s next tactical wonder.

  After the meal, when her guests were lingering over their desserts and their sweet trellin-berry liqueur, Sula brought up the way that Chenforce, with Chandra Prasad as tactical officer, had survived the ambush at Arkhan-Dohg. The Naxids had painted Chenforce briefly with a ranging laser from within the system, which served to light it up just as hundreds of missiles, accelerated to relativistic velocities, shot into the system through a wormhole gate. Chenforce had only seconds of warning, but managed to survive without a loss.

  “I was lucky enough to anticipate the attack,” Prasad said. Wine had relaxed her—she lay semireclined, one shoulder overhanging the back of the chair, the shoulder itself overhung in turn by her red hair. “I demonstrated how devastating the attack could be with an exercise, and then Lady Michi was good enough to alter our dispositions so as to be able to anticipate the arrival of the missiles.” She took a sip of her dessert wine and looked thoughtful. “Though of course the enemy were observing us as we advanced, and they saw us alter our dispositions. I’ve often wondered if they worked out why we shifted our formations and launched more decoys, and that suggested the attack to them. If I hadn’t run that exercise, they might never have attacked us.”

  “I’ve been thinking how best to make such an attack on Tork,” Sula said.

  A dry smile touched Prasad’s lips. “I’ve been thinking about sending you a memo about that very possibility.”

  Sula picked up her goblet of Citrine Fling and viewed the cloudy liquid as it rolled around the glass. “Well then,” she said. “We’d better conspire.”

  Chandra laughed. “Yes. I think we should.”

  It proved a fertile conspiracy indeed.

  “I think you’ll be pleased with the latest experiments,” Sula said. “I’ve been working up some ideas about your mobile reserves, and I think they can be used to give us local superiority if they can be brought into the battle at the right moment. I’m not sure when that is yet, but I’ll try to have an answer for you soon.”

  Sula was a good deal more relaxed than she’d been in her first dispatch. The masklike cosmetic was gone, and the bristling ramrod posture had eased somewhat. A cup of tea was visible on her desk.

  And now and then she allowed herself a smile. Martinez appreciated the smiles.

  Martinez viewed the message from behind his own desk, an inadvertent mirror image of Sula’s video likeness, only without a teacup and with Torminel wrestlers in the background.

  Sula continued her analysis of maneuvers, and afterward appended the daily status reports and forwarded any dispatches from Harzapid.

  “One other question,” Sula said. “Have you heard any information about what might have happened to Wei Jian? She’s overdue at Harzapid, but if the enemy had wiped her out, they’d be boasting about it.”

  Wei Jian had fled Magaria at the start of the rebellion with the fifty-five Terran-crewed ships of the Second Fleet, apparently bound for Harzapid, a five- or six-month journey along a wormhole route filled with barren and barely inhabited systems. Jian should have turned up at Harzapid by now, or at least sent word, but nothing had been heard from her. Martinez had heard nothing, either from Kung or any mention of her in enemy dispatches.

  Another fifty-five ships would be useful against Tork, Martinez knew. But they seemed to have vanished completely.

  “Message ends,” Sula said, and the orange end-stamp filled the screen.

  Martinez paged through the status reports and the messages from Harzapid, which all concerned matters of supply and the progress of the six cruisers under construction in Harzapid’s yards—some, apparently, by Naxids, as part of an arrangement that Sula had made before she’d left with the Fourth Fleet.

  A text from Lalita Banerjee appeared on his desktop. Urgent high-priority message from Kung just arrived. Will be added to your queue after decoding.

  Kung had been promoted to junior fleet commander on joining the Fourth Fleet, with seniority below that of Sula. This probably hadn’t pleased him, but Martinez hadn’t heard that he’d complained. That was why the Kung who appeared on the decoded video startled him.

  “The news of Lorkin is leaking through the Fourth Fleet,” Kung said. His face had reddened, and his broad mustache w
as unbalanced, one wing turned up, the other down. “This is provoking unwholesome and subversive discourse on the part of the officers, and now it’s oozing down to the enlisted. It may be too late, Fleetcom Martinez, but I’d recommend quarantining the Exploration Service ships at once, along with any other ship where these sorts of rumors are prevalent. Severin and Lady Starkey should be put under arrest.”

  The orange end-stamp flashed onto the screen. Lorkin? Martinez thought.

  He wondered if Kung was drunk. But even if he were, the message demanded a reply.

  Martinez buttoned his collar, faced the camera, and recorded his reply.

  “Thank you for alerting me to the existence of a problem,” he said. “I regret to say that I’m unfamiliar with the situation you describe. Perhaps you could send me more details.”

  Then he forwarded Kung’s message to Sula, with the title What the Hell?

  Severin’s sleeping cabin was cluttered with trunks, puppets, and puppet-making materials, with grotesque, cartoonish faces hanging off furniture or dangling upside-down from fixtures. The puppet stage had been set up in his neighboring dining room, and that meant that furniture from the dining room had been shifted to the sleeping cabin. There was only a narrow path from the door to the bed, but fortunately the narrow path was all he and Lady Starkey needed.

  “I’ll edit tomorrow afternoon, fleet exercises permitting,” Severin said. “And then you can let me know how you like it.”

  Lady Starkey grinned. “I could let you know in person,” she said.

  “I hope you will.”

  He thought the latest puppet satire one of their better efforts. It involved Lady Tu-hon, Lady Gruum, and Lord Minno all madly bribing one another, passing the exact same sum from one to the next while crowing about how rich they were getting.

  “Do we have a title?” Starkey asked. “How about The Science of Economics?”

  He kissed her. “Very nice.”

  She snuggled next to him, her head lying in the hollow between his head and shoulder. Severin’s bed was large for a single person, but cozy for two.

  “I should shift back to the Explorer,” she said. “We’ve got another fleet exercise scheduled just after breakfast, and I want to check with each department head to make sure we won’t embarrass ourselves.”

  Severin inhaled the warm scent of her hair. “You can stay a little longer,” he said.

  “Without embarrassment? I hope so.”

  Presumably everyone on Explorer and Expedition knew their captains were lovers, and that word would be spread through the Fourth Fleet as crew visited one another, but so far Severin hadn’t felt in the least embarrassed. There was nothing in law or custom against what he and Lady Starkey were doing. The Shaa conquerors had been bewildered by the variety and vigor of human sexuality, and in their perplexity had chosen not to privilege one hormonal prejudice over another, but instead laid down only a very few commonsense regulations, chief of which was a mandatory contraceptive implanted in every female at puberty. An adult female could have the implant removed at any time, but in the meantime was protected against both accidents and malice.

  That attitude was reflected in both the Fleet and the Exploration Service, and in ship designs that included “recreation tubes,” for which there was also another, more vulgar name. Severin and Lady Starkey both had private cabins and hadn’t required a tube, but the tubes were in frequent use by others, particularly in long voyages.

  The Exploration Service frowned on relations between officers and enlisted, and by superiors and their inferiors. It was difficult in the present situation to tell whether Severin or Starkey was of superior rank—Severin was Starkey’s superior in the Service, but in terms of social standing Lihua, Lady Starkey was a high-ranking Peer, and Severin a mere commoner.

  They were exploiting each other equally, Severin decided.

  Severin’s eyes drifted over the puppets and stage equipment, the dangling faces, stocking bodies, and limp hands. “I need to put everything away before the exercise tomorrow,” he said. “Can’t have the puppets slamming around in high accelerations.”

  “I’ll help you,” Starkey said.

  She slipped out of bed and the two of them, naked, began packing away the puppet gear. Lady Starkey, Severin observed, seemed to treat the puppets with genuine affection and folded their bodies carefully before putting them into their travel cases.

  Since his elevation to the officer caste Severin had enjoyed the company of a number of high-status women—most of them rich, restless, and married, by arrangement, to someone else—but his experience had never encompassed anyone quite like Lady Starkey. She seemed to find delight in so many things—not least the puppet and puppeteering—that his spirits rose simply by being in her company.

  He had become a puppeteer because he’d had an idea for a show and was then compelled to carry it out. He hadn’t allowed himself much of a choice in the business. The puppets themselves were a means by which he could produce the show economically, because he couldn’t afford actors or even professional puppeteers. They were tools that helped him realize his vision. But Lady Starkey seemed to love his tools for themselves.

  It would be misleading to describe Starkey’s affection for the puppets as “childlike”—she wasn’t anything like a child except, perhaps, in her capacity for delight. Severin wondered if anyone in either branch of her family had ever undertaken a hobby quite so out of the ordinary for Peers.

  There were Peers who had abandoned the life considered suitable for their station and had become actors or other performers, and they were roundly disapproved of when they did. But a puppeteer? That was unheard of.

  He watched Starkey pick up a sock puppet, brush some lint off its absurd face, then wrap it in gauze and pack it in its trunk. He admired both her care for the puppet and the play of muscle in her haunches as she bent over the trunk—thousands of hours of conditioning to withstand heavy gravities had produced muscles and haunches well worth admiring.

  “What would your family say if they could see you now?” he asked.

  She straightened and gave him a grin over her shoulder. “They’ll say whatever I tell them to. I’m the head of Clan Starkey, and if they say anything unpleasant they risk my displeasure.”

  “So they’re not hectoring you over—I don’t know—marrying some grizzled old Peer with two ex-wives, nine children, and a palace in the High City?”

  The grin broadened. “If they’re hectoring, I can’t hear them—most of them are in corners of the empire that our side doesn’t control.” She approached Severin and put her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were very close to his. “Why have you developed such an interest in my marriage prospects, Nikki?”

  He considered his words carefully. “I thought you might want to continue our double act after the war, if your family and the whole Order of Peers doesn’t object.”

  “Well.” She smiled. “That’s quite an offer. And my family has no say in the matter, because I’m Lady Starkey and I’m in charge.”

  “There’s the Hua side,” Severin said. “They hardly married your mother to your father without some expectation that you would marry higher still.”

  She narrowed her eyes and looked at him. “Is it marriage we’re talking about, Nikki?”

  Was it? He didn’t think he’d quite intended the discussion to take that direction. “If you want,” he said. “I won’t make you talk about it.”

  “Well,” she said. “I would be marrying higher. You’re the Service’s biggest hero now, never mind what happens in the war. You shut down a pulsar. You moved a wormhole. You saved Rol-mar from bombardment. No one else has ever done anything like that.”

  Severin tried to respond but found he’d somehow lost his words. Is that really me? he thought. He didn’t think of himself that way.

  He’d just encountered a series of problems and worked out solutions to them. That was all.

  “And another thing,” Starkey said. “If we win th
e war, we get to write the rules. So let’s win the war.”

  “All right,” Severin said. “Let’s do that.”

  He took her in his arms and kissed her. Her scent danced in his senses. The kiss grew fierce, and then became intensely interesting. The sleeve button of his tunic chimed to let him know there was an incoming communication.

  By the third chime he decided he’d better answer it, but then he had to find his clothing amid the disorder of his sleeping cabin and it took another few chimes before he located his tunic and slipped his arm into the left sleeve. “No picture,” he told the display. “Identify caller.”

  The chameleon weave on his sleeve formed the letters Junior Fleet Commander Lady Sula.

  “No picture,” he repeated. “Answer.” And then, just as Sula’s impatient face appeared on the display, he said, “How may I help you, Lady Sula?”

  Defense was a couple light-seconds out, so there was a moment before the response came.

  “Squadron Commander Severin,” she said. “I want you to report to me in person tomorrow, immediately after the exercise.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Sula’s intent eyes stared out of the screen for the four seconds it took for her response to reach him. “Why have you blanked the screen?” she asked.

  “I’m getting ready for bed, my lady.”

  “Is Lady Starkey with you? I contacted Explorer and was told she’s visiting you.”

  At the mention of her name Severin saw Starkey’s eyes widen in alarm.

  “Lady Starkey just left,” Severin said.

  “I want the two of you together,” Sula said. “I’ll leave a message with Explorer that she’s to join you tomorrow.”

  Severin wanted to ask what the meeting was about, but the orange end-stamp filled the screen before he could compose his question. In the sudden silence, he and Lady Starkey stared at each other.