Fleet Elements

by Walter Jon Williams

  The gentle scent of tea floated on the air while the music blasted a storm of emotion and tragedy into Sula’s ears. For the first time she found herself wondering what derivoo song could be made of her life.

  There was certainly enough material. One lover killed in the storming of Zanshaa High City; one lover deserting her for promotion, patronage, and the daughter of a high-ranking Peer; and another lover, long thought dead, now reappeared and trying to extort money from her. The Loves of Earthgirl, she thought. Less a song than a whole opera.

  But no, she thought, the most juicy material was something else entirely. Caro Sula lying dead of an overdose in her flat in Maranic Town, while her friend Earthgirl stepped into her place, into the privileged world of a high-status Peer, and to a guaranteed place at the Cheng Ho Academy followed by a commission in the Fleet. At the end of the song, she thought, she’d be standing defiantly over the body, holding aloft the pistol-shaped medical injector.

  Ridiculous, she thought. Her life would never make a song.

  And there would be enough tragedy tomorrow. Sula waited for the derivoo to finish her song and then turned off the music and tried to sleep.

  She dreamed about Caro Sula. For years she had dreaded the possibility that Caro would return to her nightmares, and now here she was, sweet and smiling, dressed in colorful summer silks and a sequined jacket, just like the clothes she’d worn in Maranic Town years ago.

  “Come on, Earthgirl,” she said. “I’ve got to meet a friend!”

  Sula didn’t want to go—she knew that horror would follow—but the dream compelled her to walk after Caro through the boutiques of the Arches, where Caro had spent so much time and money that last summer of her life. Caro’s platform shoes clattered on the tiles as she led Sula into a little bistro—the balding man behind the zinc counter looked familiar, though Sula couldn’t remember his name—and then Caro led Sula into an alcove and dropped into the lap of Gareth Martinez, who had been waiting on a lacy wrought-iron chair. He seemed pleased to find Caro sitting across his thighs. Caro put an arm around his shoulders and kissed him fiercely on the cheek. Her green eyes glittered.

  “I think he’s gorgeous, don’t you?” she said. She laughed and kicked out her feet, showing far too much leg. Martinez put one big hand on her smooth thigh.

  “Sit down, Earthgirl,” Caro said. “We’re going to be here a while.” She signed to the balding man. “Bring a lemonade,” she commanded.

  Sula sat on another wrought-iron chair and watched as Caro and Martinez kissed. Their kisses were greedy and ferocious, and Martinez’s hand slipped up Caro’s skirt. Sula crossed her legs in discomfort and shifted her weight on the chair. Caro tore herself away from Martinez’s kiss and looked at Sula.

  “Poor Earthgirl.” She sighed. “There’s no man for Earthgirl. What’s wrong?” She turned back to Martinez. “What’s wrong with Earthgirl?” she said again and kissed him.

  Now they were in Caro’s bedroom, on the rose-colored satin sheets Sula remembered. Sula sat on a corner of the bed, her legs still crossed. A lemonade had appeared in Sula’s hand, the glass dewed with condensation, the tips of her fingertips cold. Caro and Martinez were tearing off each other’s clothes. Lemonade tingled on Sula’s tongue.

  Half naked, Caro and Martinez caressed each other. Sula felt heavy and useless and glutted with arousal. Caro feasted on Martinez’s throat, her kisses marching down his chest. She looked up at Sula again, and sadness touched her features.

  “It’s sad that you can’t play with us,” she said. “But I know what will make you feel better.” She got on her hands and knees and crawled across the satin sheets toward Sula.

  “Don’t forget this,” Martinez said and handed Caro a med injector. Caro gave a mischievous smile, dialed in the dosage, and crawled to Sula.

  “Want some?” Caro said. She pressed the injector to Sula’s neck. “Want some, best sister?”

  She pressed the trigger, and the hiss was swallowed by Sula’s wakening scream.

  It was useless to lie to Terza, Martinez knew, pointless to try to ease her anxieties by painting an overoptimistic picture. She had access to all the official reports. She knew the odds.

  In his video letter he expressed as much confidence as he could get away with. “We’ve gamed it thoroughly,” he said, “and we’ll win. Our ships are as ready as they’ll ever be, and Tork seems not to have learned any new tricks. So whatever else may happen, you and Chai-chai should be safe. I have no intention of risking myself needlessly, but—” He restrained the impulse to shrug. “Well,” he said, “it is war. But please believe that I will do my level best to come back to you.”

  He took a breath. “I’m going to send a separate message to you intended for Yaling. I don’t know if you can get it to her—on a message missile, I suppose—but I don’t want her to see it until she’s old enough to understand. I’ll record it separately and send it along soon. In the meantime—” He looked at the camera with an expression he hoped could be read as sincere. “I’ll see you in a very little while.”

  He’d made notes for his message to Yaling, but on reading they all seemed foolish, so he improvised.

  “Hello, Yaling,” he said. “This is your father. I feel a little awkward recording this, because I don’t know when or if you’ll see it, or whether, when you view this, you’ll have any memories of me at all.” He breathed in. “I’m about to lead hundreds of warships in a battle against superior numbers, so there exists the bare possibility that you may never see me again—in person, I mean, not a recording.” He blinked. That was awkward, he thought, and he considered looking at his notes again, but decided against it.

  “I’m doing this partly because there’s no one else, and partly because I want to stop the violence that was started by Lady Tu-hon, Lord Tork, and the Gruum government in Zanshaa. That violence has been directed mostly against Terrans, and I’m fighting for the future of our species. If we’re beaten, you’ll have a very limited future ahead of you, and if we win—well—” He waved a hand. “You’ll have everything you deserve.”

  He paused to gather his whirling thoughts. “So please don’t ever think that your mother and I have abandoned you on some fool’s errand. I know I’ve been gone for months, but I’m here for your future, and I’m thinking about you all the time, and I have your picture in front of me every day.”

  He looked at his desk, where the images of his family bordered the display, and then looked up again. “I love you, Mei-mei, and you’ve never left my thoughts. If we never meet again—well—” He waved off the possibility with a flap of his hand. “Try not to forget me,” he said, “and I know I won’t forget you.”

  He ended the video with a move of his hand near the sensor, and then he slumped in his seat and wished he had a shot of Laredo whisky. Facing those feelings was hard, and he knew he shouldn’t be dwelling on thoughts of death in the hours before a battle.

  Yet those thoughts, he supposed, were inevitable.

  He considered the whisky again, then decided against it.

  Better a clear head, he decided, when facing odds of nearly two to one.

  Chapter 15

  “General quarters. Now general quarters. This is no drill.”

  The announcement had been repeating every minute for some time. Martinez thought the ship’s crew had probably got the message by now.

  “Communications test,” Martinez said. “Can everyone hear me?”

  Banerjee, Santana, Ricci, and Sula all checked in. “Right then,” Martinez said. “Everyone fire up.”

  He reached for the med injector in its pocket and dialed in his dose. There was a hiss close to his ear as he shot the pharmaceutical stew into his neck. Other hisses echoed off the walls of the flag officer’s station. Martinez saw that Sula hadn’t used her injector, and that her attention remained fixed on her displays.

  “Lady Sula?” he said. “You haven’t taken your meds.”

  “I use patches,” Sula said and twisted
her neck to show a patch in place.

  “Nonii,” Martinez said and then looked at her—haggard, her pale skin blotchy, her lower eyelids a line of red. “Are you all right, Lady Sula?”

  “Didn’t sleep well,” she said. “But I’ll be fine once things start.”

  “Nonii,” Martinez said again. It wasn’t as if he was going to send her to the sick bay. He needed her here even if she were dying of pneumonia.

  He reached above his head and drew down his displays to the locked position. He studied the picture while he shifted his shoulders within his suit, trying to find a comfortable position on his couch. He knew he’d be here for hours, he might as well relax while he could.

  He thought about putting on his helmet and decided he’d rather not be stuck inside it just yet. He’d be breathing sweat and stale air soon enough.

  “Main display, go virtual,” he said, and the bland box of the flag officer’s station faded while space blossomed in his mind, the long line of Tork’s fleet strung out across the darkness, their antimatter torches still pointed at him as they continued their deceleration. They’d pulled hard gees for two days to avoid overshooting, but now they were coming on more easily, a closing speed that would bring them into action in about an hour. Tork’s crews would have been punished by those gee forces during the deceleration, as well as being abruptly jolted into terror by missile ambushes and thrown about during evasive maneuvers.

  That might have made them angry. They might well be spoiling for revenge, Martinez thought, but that would require energy they might no longer possess.

  You know what’s going to happen, Sula had told them. They’d gotten a good idea of what she meant in the time since, and even now they might be staring at the Fourth Fleet as a songbird might stare at a prowling snake.

  He hoped so, anyway.

  The Fourth Fleet was decelerating as well, though at a mere .75 gravity, to allow Tork to overtake them. Even though both fleets were flying at a speed of around 0.17 c from Martinez’s point of view it looked as if Tork were advancing on a stationary target.

  The Second Battle of Shulduc, like the first, would be fought in an empty quarter of the system. The system’s gas giants were elsewhere in their orbits, and no asteroids or comets had made an appearance. Martinez might have preferred a more crowded combat zone to the emptiness, as that might have provided a greater opportunity for doing something clever, but he’d have to accept this empty space whether he liked it or not.

  Square in the middle of the enemy formation was Battleship Squadron One, directly opposite Perfection of the Praxis, which Martinez had placed as a decoy in the middle of the Fourth Fleet. He assumed that Tork would be unable to resist attacking the presumed flagship with his own, especially as his own battleships outnumbered Perfection three to one.

  Perfection of the Praxis and the two heavy cruiser squadrons supporting her—Division One of the Restoration Fleet—was under the command of Squadron Commander Conyngham, an officer Martinez had met only recently. Conyngham had spent the last war as a prisoner of the Naxids, captured on the first day of the rebellion, and his career had been permanently sidetracked. Despite uninspiring jobs and lack of advancement, he’d stayed in the service, and had helped Michi take the Fourth Fleet on the first day of the rebellion. He was a tall, elegant man with deep brown skin that contrasted with his white hair and goatee, and he had accepted his role with resignation.

  “As I understand my role,” he’d told Martinez when they’d met, “if I get killed, I’ll have done my job.”

  “You don’t have to get killed,” Martinez said. “You’ll be the butterfly dancing just outside the range of the kitten’s claws.”

  Conyngham laughed. “Perhaps you can advise me about the best way to get the largest, most ungainly butterfly in history to dance.”

  “Tork’s battleships won’t be dancing any better than yours.”

  Conyngham remained skeptical. “But he’ll have three dancing elephants to my one.”

  “We’ll all be outnumbered,” Martinez said. “Just try to think of it as a target-rich environment.”

  Still, Conyngham seemed resigned to making a target of himself, and Martinez hoped he transmitted this obliging attitude to his crews. If Conyngham mismanaged his force, the whole center of the Restoration line could collapse.

  Martinez watched as the Righteous Fleet continued its advance. Its line was longer than that of the Fourth Fleet, and it threatened to overlap the defenders—“Doubling” was the worst possible outcome, when the enemy wrapped the line and it was caught between two fires. Martinez issued orders to the van and rear divisions to stretch the line. The van consisted of Jeremy Foote’s division of three light squadrons, and the rear a two-squadron division under Chandra Prasad. The line didn’t have to be stretched as far as Martinez had expected, because of the four squadrons that Tork was keeping out of his line.

  So far, so expected. These were all maneuvers that Tork could have predicted. The preliminary to the battle was developing just as the Supreme Commander might have wished, the Restoration forces using tactics right out of Tork’s playbook and setting itself up to be crushed by superior numbers.

  Martinez scarcely had to give any orders at all. The Fourth Fleet had been drilling this battle every day for the last month, and everyone knew what to do. His directives would only be necessary once battle was joined and the situation teetered on the edge of chaos.

  He exited the virtual display, and the uninspiring sight of the flag officer’s station rose to his senses. He spun his acceleration cage around to face Ricci.

  “Lieutenant Ricci,” he said, “you might as well bring our solar missiles into the fight. Keep them in the sun on the approach, and make sure they have the latest information as to the location of the enemy. We don’t want them hitting our ships by mistake.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  The “solar missiles” were those Martinez had hidden near the system’s sun. They would keep the sun behind them on the approach in hopes that the Righteous Fleet wouldn’t detect their burning antimatter torches.

  Because of the length of time it would take the signal to reach them, and the even longer time it would take for them to reach the site of the battle, it would still be hours before they arrived.

  Martinez spun his cage again and observed Santana and Banerjee, both facing the wall displays. They were conversing in low voices, and he was reassured to hear no edge of alarm or panic in their speech. He spun toward Sula and found her lying motionless on her couch, eyes closed, her head tilted toward him, the med patch clear on her neck. He realized she had fallen asleep.

  Well, he thought, why not? A relaxed attitude to battle was probably a good thing.

  And no drooling, he observed.

  There wasn’t any point in waking her now. There was nothing for her to do until the action started.

  He went back into the virtual display, performed some calculations with the computer, then consulted the chronometer. He waited another eleven minutes before giving his next order.

  “Martinez to all ships. Commence turnabout maneuver at 10:08 hours precisely.”

  Which gave everyone a few minutes to get ready. Acknowledgments flashed onto his display. He reached for his helmet.

  “Might as well armor up,” he said and remembered the bolt that had almost fractured his skull his first time in the flag officer’s station. He put the helmet on and heard the hiss of circulating air. The scent of antiseptic and suit seals stung the back of his throat.

  Thirteen seconds before the scheduled maneuver, the alarm rang for zero gee. Martinez couldn’t help but look toward Sula and saw her shift slightly in her sleep. When the engines cut out and gravity vanished, she floated free in her harness and made a kind of glottal noise as her eyes flashed open. She scanned her boards in surprise, then relaxed as she discovered that the battle had progressed as planned.

  Martinez felt a shimmer in his inner ear as Los Angeles pitched end over end, then
stabilized with the engines facing the enemy. Another alarm rang for high gravities, and Martinez braced himself for what came next.

  The engines fired, and the bars of Martinez’s acceleration cage sang as six gravities punched him back into the couch. He dived into the virtual realm again and saw the Righteous Fleet receding as the Fourth Fleet sped away.

  What he hoped Tork would see was his enemies running away, and this was confirmed when the Righteous Fleet cut its deceleration, pitched over, and fired engines in pursuit.

  Martinez intended more than simply goading Tork into chasing him, because not all the Righteous Fleet’s crews could stand six gees’ acceleration.

  The Lai-own species were flightless birds, and they had retained the hollow bones of their ancestors. It was dangerous for them to accelerate at more than around two and a half gravities, and Martinez was hoping to compromise the enemy order by forcing the Lai-own squadrons to fall out of the pursuit.

  But in the meantime he, and everyone under his command, had to endure six gravities. His vac suit’s inner liner closed on his arms and legs to force blood to his brain. He grunted with every breath, and every time he inhaled it was like being punched in the abdomen. His vision, even that projected directly into his visual cortex, began to narrow.

  Through his narrowing vision he kept his attention fixed firmly on the enemy, and he saw gaps opening in the enemy line as Lai-own squadrons fell behind. Success! He would have exulted if all his energies weren’t directed toward keeping his lungs working.

  Tork would have done much better to have kept his fleet together and accelerated at a slower rate. After all, the Restoration Fleet had to fight somewhere between here and Harzapid, and Tork would catch it sooner or later.

  Martinez kept up the acceleration for another fifteen minutes, seeing the Lai-own squadrons—twelve of them, nearly a hundred ships—dropping farther and farther behind. By now the four reserve squadrons behind the line had passed them.