Fleet Elements

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Can we see some video of Striker?” Sula asked, looking over Martinez’s shoulder.

  “That was Lady Sula,” Martinez explained. “Can you send us video of the Striker?”

  Hui hesitated. “Ye-es. Stand by.” She switched channels and began giving instructions to someone off-camera.

  There was a lengthy pause in which Martinez shifted the image to one of the wall displays, and then the image shifted to the darkness of space, with Striker whirling like a pinwheel against a background of stars. “Oh no,” Sula murmured.

  Damage was plain to see, with parts of the ship torn or melted and open to space. The energies that had blasted through the ship would have annihilated anyone they encountered, but theoretically people in hardened bunkers, like the weaponers’ shelters, might have survived, as Abacha had survived in Command. Martinez and Sula studied Striker’s whirling image for a quarter of an hour, then tried to mate salt and pepper shakers in hopes of imagining ways of getting the two cruisers grappled in order to moderate its uncontrolled motion and search the ship for survivors.

  “No,” Sula concluded finally. “It can’t be done.” Striker could prove fatal to Staunch, the collision so damaging that Hui’s ship would be sent to a dockyard for repairs or even destroyed.

  “Agreed,” Martinez said. “Captain Hui?”

  After an interval, Hui appeared onscreen. “Yes, Lord Fleetcom?”

  “We concur,” Martinez said. “You can’t do anything for Striker. You have permission to destroy Striker, and then return to your squadron.”

  Six seconds later, they watched as Hui’s face registered a mixture of sadness and resolution. “Yes, Lord Fleetcom,” she said. “At once.”

  The orange end-stamp filled the screen. Martinez sighed, turned off the wall screen, and turned to Sula. “Well,” he said. “We’re now down to seventy-seven ships.”

  She put her arm around his shoulders, something she hadn’t been able to do with Hui and assorted signals personnel watching. “I’m not very good at offering comfort to people,” she said, and put her head on his shoulder.

  “You’re doing just fine.”

  Her green eyes turned up to him. “My own comfort comes from—I don’t know—things that happen to be beautiful.”

  “You have your porcelain collection,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And Marivic Mangahas’s cooking.”

  She laughed. “Yes.”

  “I have very little beauty around me,” he said, “only pictures of Torminels wrestling.”

  “You should have brought something with you.”

  He looked at her. “I have something beautiful now.”

  She dropped her eyes. “But I’m still rubbish at comforting people.”

  He put his arms around her. “You just need to try a little harder.”

  They kissed for a long moment. Their earlier encounter had been fast and urgent, the collision of two desperate and hungry people; but this kiss seemed almost reflective, perhaps profound. It was like the difference between street food and a wine tasting.

  After a pleasing few moments, Martinez suggested they retire to his sleeping cabin.

  “I hear it has an untidy bed,” Sula said.

  “It does,” he said.

  “We can make it even more untidy.”

  “I hope we will,” Martinez answered.

  They did. Locked in a complicated embrace, looking into the subdued green fire of her half-closed eyes, he wondered where their lost ten years had gone.

  Here, he thought. They’re right here.

  Chapter 18

  Alikhan hadn’t regained consciousness, but his color was better, and he seemed to lie comfortably under his viridian Fleet-issued blanket. His eyes were slitted very slightly open, as if he were silently supervising the medical bay, but his eyes were motionless behind the lids. A neck brace still held his chin high, and over his hair he wore a net of detectors that gave a picture of the interior of his skull.

  The brain bleed had been controlled. Broken bones were strapped or splinted. Lacerations had been glued back together. Save for the uncomfortable fact that he hadn’t awakened, Alikhan was healing.

  His appearance seemed wrong, but that was because when the attendants had washed his face, the wax he used to curl his mustachios had washed out, and the mustachios now lay flat against his cheeks.

  Martinez touched the cool skin of his shoulder. “Well,” he said, “you won’t be seeing Zanshaa for a while. We’ve decided it’s better not to subject you to the high gees and maneuvers necessary to get to Zanshaa, so we’ll be transferring you to one of the ships heading for Harzapid. They’ll be burning at one gee or less for the entire journey, and you’ll be in a hospital sooner than if you stay with Los Angeles.”

  Martinez waited for a few seconds, half expecting Alikhan to respond, but the silence was broken only by the shuffling of one of the ward’s attendants as he passed by Alikhan’s station.

  “I’ll be supervising your transfer to make sure they won’t drop you,” Martinez added, “and—”

  He fell silent as an alarm began to chatter. He looked wildly at the displays behind Alikhan’s bed and saw cursors drawing jagged pictures on their screens. He had no idea what that meant but terror touched his nerves.

  The attendant who had just passed bounded back on the run as more alarms began to sing. The attendant took one look at the displays and said, “You should leave, my lord. It’s about to get very busy in here.”

  Martinez backed away reluctantly, and the doctor knocked against his shoulder as she ran to Alikhan’s side. Other aides arrived, and Martinez shifted to a far corner of the medical bay, where he stood next to a cart filled with cleaning supplies that tinged the air with the scent of disinfectant.

  There was frantic activity around Alikhan involving the deployment of more remote detectors, a cart of surgical equipment being rolled to his side, and an oxygen mask that, when placed over his face, automatically sent tubes crawling down his trachea. Alikhan’s chest began to rise and fall to a rhythm not his own. The doctor reacted swiftly to each development without having to run checklists in her head. Electrodes were applied to the chest, and the doctor called out commands to increase the voltage.

  The activity lasted only a few minutes. Martinez could tell from the slump of the doctor’s shoulders that the brief battle was over. The alarm still wailed up and down his nerves, blocking the sadness he knew would come as his adrenaline ebbed.

  The aides began to disassemble Alikhan’s station, retrieving the equipment and breaking it down. The doctor walked slowly to Martinez. He saw no sympathy in her eyes, but something closer to frustration and anger.

  “I’m sorry, Lord Fleetcom,” she said. “It was an intraparenchymal bleed—in the brain stem. The bleed wrecked the vagus nerve, which regulates breathing and blood circulation. There was nothing anyone could have done. For all intents and purposes, he was dead by the time I reached him. I could have kept him on the respirator, but the heart had already stopped and there was no point.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Martinez said. He looked over her shoulder at Alikhan, motionless and unnaturally pale on his bed.

  “I’ll send you an official report and a copy of the death certificate,” she said. “I’ll append video of the bleed as seen by the sensors.”

  “I don’t think I’d care to view it,” Martinez said.

  “I’m staff, I’m not in your chain of command,” the doctor said. “I have my own superiors who want every casualty documented.”

  “Well,” said Martinez. “Do what you must.”

  Three hours later came the double funeral, Alikhan and the other weaponer who had died in the same accident. The bodies would be shot out an airlock and burned to atoms by the cruiser’s fiery tail. Both had been placed in viridian-green body bags. Martinez had found Alikhan’s medals in a box in his sleeping cabin and made sure the box was placed in the bag. He felt he heard Alikhan’s voice. Some days I t
hink I would do better to remain here on the ring . . .

  Yes, Martinez thought. Absolutely.

  The other weaponer who died in the battle was a volunteer. Martinez hadn’t talked him on board the warship, like he’d strong-armed Alikhan aboard Los Angeles against Alikhan’s better judgment.

  The airlock atrium was small and held only a few people, officers and a delegation of senior petty officers with mustachios brandished like weapons. Video cameras broadcast the ceremony for any of the crew who wished to watch. Martinez stood at attention next to Sula. Dalkeith, in charge of the ceremony as ship’s captain, read the funeral service in her child’s voice, ending with the words, “Life is brief, but the Praxis is eternal. Let us all take comfort and security in the wisdom that all that is important is known.”

  Never had Martinez taken less comfort in that phrase.

  Dalkeith turned to the petty officer standing by the airlock. “Proceed, Miss Srisuk.”

  Lights blinked above the airlock as its air was evacuated, then a hum as the outer door opened. Srisuk touched a code into her hand comm, then turned to Dalkeith and braced.

  “The airlock is empty, Lady Captain.”

  Dalkeith gave a signal and the ship’s speakers began to intone the melancholy opening chords of Seekrin’s “Elegy.”

  “The service is complete,” Dalkeith said. “The funeral party is dismissed.”

  People braced, then began to drift away. Martinez thanked Dalkeith, then looked at the crowd congregating around the elevator and decided to take the stairs. He turned to Sula. “Join me in a climb?”

  “Why not?”

  The helical staircase, one of two that connected the engine control rooms aft to the docking probe station at the bow, was narrow and steep here, not the grand wood-paneled and brass-railed magnificence it became on the officers’ decks. Martinez’s legs worked the stairs mechanically, plodding upward. Sula followed.

  “I’m sorry about Alikhan,” she said. “I didn’t know him well, but he seemed a fine gentleman.”

  “He was.”

  “At least he died trying to help the ship. I don’t think he would have liked one of those homes for retired petty officers.”

  “I don’t suppose he would,” Martinez said. “But he wouldn’t have ever had to go to such a place—I would have gone on employing him at home.”

  Martinez found himself breathless as he wound upward. His exercise routine emphasized muscle building to counter high gravities, and at home he’d add a cardiovascular component. But on the ship he’d mostly been fighting real gravities, and aerobics were difficult to manage in the confined quarters and with his schedule.

  He decided to start taking the stairs whenever possible, just to get his wind back.

  “I’d feel better,” Martinez said, “if I weren’t hosting a dinner party later today.”

  “We’ll feel better once it’s over, that’s certain.”

  The dinner was a social necessity. Around Martinez’s wedge-shaped table would be all the surviving division and squadron commanders, including the defectors Rivven and An-dar. It would be the first chance Martinez had to gauge their attitude toward the Restoration, and to gauge as well his other commanders’ attitude toward the defectors. He could only hope that Vijana wouldn’t be openly hostile.

  They came to a landing, and the scent of lemon polish told Martinez he’d arrived in the glossy paneled quarters of the officers. A broader set of stairs opened in front of him. Martinez checked his sleeve display.

  “Apparently I have over a hundred messages to deal with,” he said.

  “You can route some of them to me,” Sula said. “You need a secretary now more than a tactical officer.”

  “If you’re willing.” He headed for the broad, brass-railed stairs, then looked over his shoulder at her. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll see you at dinner,” she said. “And again, I’m sorry about Alikhan.”

  “Me, too.” At least, he thought, Alikhan had no family, and so Martinez would be spared the agony of writing condolence messages to his wife and children.

  He would have to write enough of them in the days to come.

  Severin gave a dinner to remember the dead. His squadron of eight ships had lost three, along with all their crews. He set places at dinner for the three lost captains, with a candle and a photo next to their plates.

  He couldn’t bear to look at a picture of Lady Starkey for the length of a dinner, and so instead of using a photo, he wound a Lorkin puppet around the candlestick.

  Puppetry is pain, he thought.

  At the beginning of the meal he offered a toast to the dead, which his captains solemnly echoed. With the exception of the one woman who didn’t drink, the others had seconds or thirds on their cocktails, then began gulping wine. They were more uneasy than Severin under the gaze of the dead and were bolting their alcoholic anesthesia as fast as they decently could.

  Severin led his captains into a discussion of how they thought the empire would change after the war and found they hadn’t spared a great deal of time considering the problem. If anything, they expected the postwar period would be just like the prewar period, with a stable government under Lord Saïd, and nothing else changed except for the execution of certain members of the Gruum government.

  “But if nothing changes,” Severin said, “how do we keep something like this war from happening again? We’ve had two wars in ten years; what’s to stop a third from breaking out?”

  There were few answers. “Maybe we need the Shaa again,” one captain said. “I mean, not the Shaa, obviously—but someone in that role.”

  “The Naxids tried to make themselves into the Shaa,” another pointed out. “We didn’t follow them.”

  “Who has the authority to become the Shaa?” Severin asked. “If a group declared themselves the next Great Masters, who would respect that? Who would obey them?”

  The first captain spread her hands. “I can’t say.”

  “I can,” said another. He was perhaps a little more drunk than the others. “If the new Shaa are us—that is, the Fleet.” He hesitated, remembering his host. “And the Exploration Service, too, if you like.”

  “So we should run things from now on?”

  “We have the missiles.” The officer spoke defiantly.

  “The Shaa didn’t have the missiles,” said another officer. “People obeyed them anyway.”

  “They had the missiles at the start. They used them on Lorkin and so on.”

  The dinner reached no conclusions, but then Severin hadn’t really expected it to. The stability of the empire was a problem that had so far found no solution.

  The lack of a solution didn’t deter Severin. He was very good at solving problems.

  What he was beginning to realize was that his officers were wrong. More of the same wasn’t going to work. What the empire needed was complete change. The Peers were going to have to step aside, or be pushed to the side, and another power was going to have to take over.

  Who that might be, Severin didn’t know. But he planned to be a part of it.

  Lady Koridun’s blue eyes shone as they gazed from the video screen. She wore the formal purple robes of a planetary governor, with their gold-and-scarlet brocade, and her gray-and-sable fur was glossy. Behind her was a window showing Harzapid’s night sky, with the arc of the planet’s ring shining against the darkness.

  “Congratulations on your sublime victory, Lady Sula,” she said. “One of the Fleet officers here showed me the recordings and explained how you’d won, and I was delighted when I recognized your tactics. Catching the enemy between two fires—you did that on the Striver, of course. So I’m sure that was your contribution as tactical officer.”

  The mobile reserves had been Martinez’s idea, but Sula decided there was no point in disillusioning Lady Koridun on the point. Koridun’s hero worship was refreshingly simple, and good for Sula’s morale besides. She raised her glass of Citrine Fling and silently toasted her friend a
nd supporter.

  Lady Koridun’s eyes ticked toward something out of the frame, and then back in. A nervous habit, Sula supposed.

  “I want to talk to you about your friend Hector Braga,” Koridun said. “He’s been using your name to raise investments for his development company, and Ming Lin has been telling everyone that he’s not being truthful. This, ah—disagreement—has reached Lord Mehrang, who has asked the authorities for an investigation to find out if he’s being defrauded.” Lady Koridun plucked at something on her desk. “I thought I should ask you for clarification before I proceed. Are you in business somehow with Mr. Braga? Do you have any information that could be of use in the investigation? Please reply as soon as possible, and in the meantime—congratulations again for your victory at Shulduc.”

  Sula sipped at her drink, carbonation tingling against her nose, and considered. She replied to Lady Koridun and labeled the message personal and private.

  “I am not in business with Hector Braga,” she said, “and I haven’t invested in his business. I don’t know what’s going on exactly, but I know that Mr. Braga is a friend of Roland Martinez, so perhaps we ought to be cautious.” She tried to give an impression of someone who’s just had a very bright idea.

  “Is there some way you can quietly get Mr. Braga out of the way?” she asked. “Not charge him with a crime, and not subject him to any kind of interrogation, but hold him in custody long enough for the controversy to die down? That might satisfy most of the parties involved. We really all have much more important things to do than deal with this, don’t you think?”

  There, Sula thought. Keep Lamey on ice for a while, until the Fourth Fleet stood over Zanshaa, and nothing Lamey could say or do would matter. After which he could retire to Spannan with Lord Mehrang’s money and live quietly ever after.

  Squadron Leader Rivven was short for a Daimong, below Martinez’s height. His immobile gray face was frozen in an attitude of pale indignation.

  “Twelve years ago I won two thousand zeniths on the yacht races at Felarus,” he said in a melodic tenor. “I was celebrating my luck with my friends at the Cosmos Club, and Tork was at the next table. He told us that we were being too noisy and ordered us—ordered us!—to be silent until he had finished his supper.” His vocal apparatus made a disgusted buzzing sound. “That was Tork! He knew nothing but how to step on people’s joy.”