Fleet Elements

by Walter Jon Williams

  Trying to ignore that presence, she looked at the murky murals on the walls, plump-bottomed Torminel grappling, snarls on their faces. “Are those wrestlers?” she asked.

  “Squadron Leader Lokan was a martial arts enthusiast,” Martinez said. “His trophies are still in the office.”

  “I saw those grapplers on the wall behind you when I viewed your dispatches, and I couldn’t quite make out what they were. I wondered if it were some kind of pornography.”

  “That’s in the bedroom,” Martinez said.

  “Really?”

  “I’m afraid so. May I offer you something to drink?”

  She turned to Alikhan, standing politely by the kitchen door. “Mineral water will be fine,” she said.

  “My lady.” Alikhan bowed and withdrew to the pantry.

  “Lady Sula,” Martinez began. “I wonder if we might discuss how best to employ your staff.”

  As a captain she was entitled to four servants, and as a division commander a pair of staff signals specialists to help her send and receive orders. But a tactical officer was normally on a fleet commander’s staff and wouldn’t need staff of her own.

  “Ricci and Viswan have been handling the signals traffic for the Fourth Fleet,” Sula said. “They’re experienced and know what they’re doing.”

  “May I employ them in the same assignments?” Martinez asked.

  It was pleasant of him to ask her permission. He could have just drafted them into his entourage.

  “Yes,” she said. “By all means.”

  Alikhan returned with mineral water and poured it into Sula’s crystal wine goblet.

  “I’m discovering that the signals traffic here is overwhelming,” Martinez said. “How have you been coping?”

  Sula spread her hands. “I haven’t. I sent out instructions to send only urgent and imperative messages, but it seems that ‘urgent and imperative’ includes news of malfunctioning laundry facilities and complaints from half-trained officers about other half-trained officers assuming some privilege to which they aren’t entitled.”

  “Not to mention half-trained captains trying their best to poach qualified personnel from other ships,” Martinez said.

  Sula shrugged. “Except for your division and Foote’s squadron, everyone’s understaffed. It’s to be expected.”

  “I’m thinking of—Oh, thank you, Alikhan.”

  Alikhan handed out starters, some kind of fritter served alongside a little bowl of sauce. Sula looked at hers with suspicion—by this point in the voyage, fresh food had run out, and the cooks were usually running out of imagination. But the fritters turned out to contain eggs that had been preserved in some way that turned them bright blue and that gave the eggs a sharp, vinegar-like taste that contrasted well with the richness of the fried batter and the semisweet sauce.

  Sula was savoring the first bite when Martinez spoke again.

  “I’m thinking of putting restrictions on the number of messages. Say five each day, not counting messages sent during the exercises, and sent by commanding officers only.”

  “They’ll resent it,” Sula said. “And that’s still over twelve hundred signals per day.”

  “But when they complain, it will be to Michi, not to me.”

  Sula was amused. “I’m sure she’ll be grateful for all the signals. It’ll show she’s needed.”

  Strange that the first conversation they’d had in years dealt with such a pedestrian topic. Yet that was probably for the best. Their relationship had been equal parts ecstasy and catastrophe, and it was better that their words carefully threaded between the two.

  They talked about inconsequential Fleet business for a while, and for the first time Dalkeith spoke, offering opinions on some officers she’d served alongside. Since these ideas confirmed Sula’s own judgment, she found herself conceding to Dalkeith a measure of sagacity.

  “By the way,” Sula said, “I’m on the verge of recommending that we break up Division Twelve.”

  “Chandra Prasad’s light division?” Martinez was surprised. “Why?”

  “To make better use of the frigates’ superior sensor suites. We might want to spread them out through the Fourth Fleet rather than concentrate them in a single place.”

  Martinez seemed to be probing this idea carefully. “How are these sensors superior?”

  She tried to suppress her smile as she spoke. “They’re made for the Exploration Service by your brother-in-law, Nikkul Shankaracharya.”

  Sula had half hoped that Martinez might explode with rancor and indignation, but he took the news without visible emotion.

  “Well,” he said. “Good for Nikkul.”

  “I didn’t know whether I was allowed to mention his name.”

  Martinez waved a hand. “I knew Sempronia would break with PJ sooner or later. She ran away prematurely, but it was never my idea that she marry PJ.”

  “She seems to think otherwise.”

  “My idea wasn’t for her to marry, it was to fake an engagement. But then she ran off with Nikkul, and Walpurga married PJ in her place, and that was completely insane.”

  “It got PJ killed,” Sula said.

  Martinez considered this. “My understanding is that PJ got PJ killed.”

  “There was a reason he wanted to die.”

  Are we having an argument now? Sula wondered. That didn’t take long.

  Dalkeith watched them with an expression that mingled surprise and horror, her blue eyes leaping from one speaker to the next as if she were watching a game of tennis played with a live grenade. Seeing her, Sula wanted to laugh.

  I remember you and Martinez from the last war, Haz had said. When you seemed to like each other. Perhaps at this moment that very thought was going through Dalkeith’s mind.

  I guess we are having an argument, Sula thought. But she knew it wasn’t just about PJ Ngeni, it was about all the history she and Martinez shared now boiling up around them, ready to vaporize them both.

  Martinez tilted his head and regarded Sula. “You liked PJ?” he said.

  “I did,” Sula said. “He was the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met, but I liked him.”

  “I did, too, for all I didn’t want him for a brother-in-law.” Frowning, he nodded to himself. “His family considered him disposable. He was a pawn to be used, handed off to inferiors, and certainly by the time he was dragged into marrying Walpurga he must have worked that out.”

  A pang touched Sula’s heart. She also had used PJ, used him as a spy and his home as a base from which to launch her attacks on the Naxids, and then when he was of no further use, she let him do what he’d probably wanted to do all along, which was to die. He’d taken a rifle and gone to the war. He hadn’t lasted five seconds.

  Maybe we’re not having an argument, Sula thought. It looks like we just decided to blame the Ngeni family.

  “Chandra won’t be happy,” said Martinez, “that you want to break up her division.”

  Which was a shrewd way of skating away from the shared tension, Sula thought. Good for Martinez.

  “Chandra won’t object if she gets another division out of it,” Sula said. She explained that what she had in mind was a straight swap, in which Prasad would lose one of her squadrons in exchange for another. “We can station the new divisions some distance from each other, so the sensor suites can cover as much extent as possible.”

  She had considered splitting up the squadrons and assigning one or two ships to each of the other formations, but thought it would be too disruptive to a force that would be engaging the enemy in a matter of weeks.

  “I’ll give the idea my consideration,” Martinez said. “But I’d like to see data on these sensor suites.” An idea struck him. “Is that why I was requested to fire two missiles in the direction of Harzapid? To provide data?”

  “That’s correct,” Sula said. Clever of him to put that together, she thought.

  Alikhan quietly refreshed the party’s glasses, whisked away the starters, and la
id down platters before them. The scent of coconut milk rose in the air.

  “Your fish, my lord and ladies,” he said.

  Sula contemplated the platter with pleasure. Her own cook had efficiently produced all those dinners in his little kitchen, but his repertoire was limited, and the pantry had been stocked in an unimaginative way. By now fresh vegetables were all gone, and everything came out of cans or the freezer. Sula’s meals had grown repetitious, particularly those where she was hosting a large party, with roasts and sauces followed by roasts and sauces. Nothing like this sweet-smelling fare of coconut and spices.

  Perhaps, she thought, her chef could learn a few things from Martinez’s cook.

  The talk turned inconsequential until dessert, ices made with honey-sweetened melon, when the subject of the Lorkins came up.

  Lorkin and its vanished inhabitants were no longer a secret in the Restoration Fleet. Lady Starkey had delivered a video documentary about her discoveries, a somewhat expanded version of the video she’d shown to Roland back on Harzapid, and this had been broadcast to the Fourth Fleet. So while ships’ crews were still talking about the Lorkins, at least their speculations were based on what was known. Though what was known was little enough, and probably the speculations were no less wild than before.

  Still, some officers like Kung were appeased by the release of the information. Though Sula suspected that Kung would rather have just shot or beheaded everyone who knew anything about Planet Trouble.

  “If the Great Masters were human,” Martinez said, “one could conclude that they botched whatever they were trying on Lorkin, panicked, killed everything in sight, and then out of shame or embarrassment wrote it out of history. But that’s if they were human, which they weren’t.”

  “That’s very diplomatic,” Sula said.

  “I’m practicing for Kung,” Martinez said. “I’ve invited him for supper tomorrow. I hope you’ll join us.”

  “I was planning to stay away from formal suppers for a while,” Sula said. “It’s half what I’ve been doing, and the other half is responding to messages, and what I’d really like to be doing is thinking of ingenious ways to deploy the fleet.”

  “There are only three people in the Fourth Fleet with the rank of fleet commander,” Martinez said. “It would be a good thing to get us all in the same room.”

  “I’ve had Kung to dine myself,” Sula warned. “It’s worse than having to endure Jeremy Foote for a whole evening. Kung’s as dull as a doorknob, and you’ll have to be careful to hide your yawns.”

  “You can amuse yourself by watching me do that,” Martinez said. “Won’t you come?”

  “How can I resist?” Sula laughed. “Kung’s got his own way of eating, you know.”

  “Really? It’s . . . it’s not disgusting, I hope.”

  “No, it’s just . . . strange. When he picks up some food on his fork, he tilts his head back and opens his mouth. The fork then has to do a kind of swooping movement to lodge the food in his mouth properly. But the thing that makes it a little eerie is that even though his head is tilted back, his eyes remain directed straight at you.” She demonstrated with her dessert spoon, her eyes flared and fixed on Martinez. “And of course that huge mustache makes him look even more uncanny.”

  “That is too unsettling,” Martinez said. “Please don’t do it again.”

  “You’re going to have to sit opposite Kung and see it again and again. You might as well get used to it.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  Sula was startled to realize that over the course of the dinner she had managed to relax in Martinez’s company and seemed to be having a pleasant time.

  What surprised her more than anything was that she was less shocked by this discovery than she imagined she’d be.

  In her video image, Ming Lin looked as if she’d aged ten years, her face drawn, her lower eyelids red-rimmed. Her pink-tipped hair had been replaced by a practical brown bob combed over her ears. Her crooked nose no longer looked jaunty or sinister, but a reminder that she was too harried and discouraged to care what she looked like.

  Running the economy of a rebel empire wasn’t easy, or so it appeared.

  “Lady Sula,” Lin said. “I hope your work goes well. I don’t want to take up too much of your valuable time, but I’d like to say—if you haven’t heard—that we’re growing the hulls of six cruisers here at Harzapid, and that the . . . the allies . . . that you’ve brought into the dockyard are doing their work very well. The cruisers are ahead of schedule, and after they’re done, we can lay down even more.”

  The fragrant odor of her tea drifted through Sula’s office as she viewed the video message. She was aware of the cruisers, of course, but it was good to know that Lin thought her alliance with the Naxids was working well.

  Lin paused for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve been hearing from your friend Hector Braga, but I think you should know that he’s claiming to potential investors that you’ve put a lot of money into his Esley development scheme. I’m inclined to doubt his word since you’ve told me that his scheme was an outright fraud, but I thought I’d better hear from you before I spoke out on the matter. Please let me know at your earliest convenience.”

  There was another hesitation, and then she said, “I don’t think I’ve really had a suitable time to thank you for all the opportunities you’ve given me, and the chances you’ve given me to help during the crisis—” A smile broke across her face. “Crises,” she corrected. “I don’t know if you fully realize the scope of what I’ve been able to do, but it’s improved the life of tens of millions, and it’s all down to your support. So thank you.” She smiled again. “End message.”

  Sula basked in the pleasure of Lin’s thanks for a moment, and then realized, She thinks I’m going to die.

  Ming Lin could read a balance sheet better than most, and she knew the odds against the Fourth Fleet. And of course even if the Fourth Feet somehow beat the odds, they wouldn’t manage it without taking heavy casualties, and Sula might not survive even a victory.

  So Ming Lin had decided to offer her thanks to a doomed woman, while she still had the chance. And of course if the Fourth Fleet lost the war, Lin wouldn’t survive Sula by more than a few months, so the thanks were sent from one doomed woman to another.

  This revelation was powerful enough to keep Sula from thinking about anything else for a long while, and then she gave a start as she remembered the message had really been about Lamey. She took a sip of her tea, then recorded an answer.

  “Thank you for thinking I’d want to know what Braga is up to,” she said. “And thanks also for your kind words of appreciation. We’re all so busy that the civilities often escape us, and it probably hasn’t escaped your attention that I’m not very good at civilities in the first place.”

  She gazed at the camera for a moment, choosing her words, and then spoke. “You should feel at liberty to tell people that I haven’t invested a fraction of a minim in Hector Braga’s development plan. At this distance from events,” she added, “I don’t care to say more. Just feel free to make the correction when necessary.”

  And maybe Lamey won’t get so angry he’ll denounce me.

  Though she was running out of hope where Lamey was concerned. He had mistimed his criminal venture, and the results of fraud were going to catch up to him earlier than he’d expected.

  For the first time Sula wondered if it were possible simply to make Lamey disappear. But she didn’t have the friends on Harzapid who could make that possible: Macnamara and Spence were with her on Los Angeles, and the Secret Army veterans were back on Zanshaa, where they were probably fighting for their lives.

  But still. It deserved some thought.

  The following morning Sula marched into the flag officer’s station in her vac suit and swung herself into the acceleration couch assigned to the tactical officer. In her ungloved hand she held an envelope containing the foil with the parameters of the day’s exercise.<
br />
  She slotted the foil into one of her displays and reached into a pocket for a med patch to do her prep for high gravities. She ignored the pistol-shaped med injector holstered on the side of her couch, because each time she held one in her hand her heart lurched and her hands began to tremble. The sight of injectors brought back a memory she never wanted to revisit.

  Sula peeled the backing off the patch and stuck it to her neck.

  Sula didn’t know if Martinez had a policy for how thoroughly an officer in the flag officer’s station had to suit up, so she had brought her gloves and helmet in a mesh bag even though she hated wearing them. She particularly loathed the helmet, which obliged her to exist alone in a closed space with only the sound of her breath and the stench of the suit for company. When she was obliged to wear a helmet, she kept the visor up unless someone with seniority told her to close it, and up till now she’d been the one with seniority.

  Martinez entered trailing a faint astringent aroma of aftershave. He wished Sula a good morning and went to his own acceleration couch in the center of the room. He wore his helmet with the faceplate up, and she took that as permission to keep her own helmet open. Martinez’s staff followed, the maternal-looking Banerjee and the scowling Aitor Santana, who looked like a particularly ferocious bouncer displaced from his dive bar. One of her own signals lieutenants, Ricci, followed and took the fifth and last couch in the room.

  This would be Martinez’s first attempt to maneuver the entire Fourth Fleet, two hundred fifty-six warships not counting the “Fleet Train” of support ships stretching all the way to Harzapid. Sula knew how difficult it was to wrangle all those ships, having done just this job for the last few months while Martinez was off with the Division Two.

  The exercise was intended to test Martinez’s idea of mobile reserves, the questions being how large the reserves would be, and how and when to commit them to the fight.

  “Communications test.” Martinez’s voice sounded through her headset. Sula winced at the volume and nudged it down. “Can everyone hear me?”

  Everyone in the room checked in. “The simulation is loaded and ready,” Sula said.