Fleet Elements

by Walter Jon Williams

  As a reason for defecting with his entire squadron this seemed absurd, but Sula supposed she should be grateful that such a trivial slight could produce such profound consequences.

  “And his order to board all Terran ships!” Rivven continued. “What madness!” He turned to Martinez. “And all because you got such an ovation at the anniversary celebration for the Battle of Magaria! Tork was burning with jealousy! I’m sure that was the cause of all this!”

  Martinez seemed uncomfortable. “I’m not sure whether to consider myself flattered,” he said.

  “Flattered? No.” Rivven made a gesture of finality with one flat hand. “You should be honored. Tork hated only those with real talent.” He turned his round black eyes to Sula. “The way you flayed him in that broadcast, Lady Sula! You satirized his vanity—and he had no answer, because it was true! You predicted that Tork’s fleet would be whittled away ship by ship, and that’s exactly what happened!” He raised his drink to his immobile lips and thumbed the spout to pour a dollop of mig brandy into his mouth. “I assure you that there were a great many officers who wished themselves back in Zanshaa, or who talked among themselves of defection. But they hadn’t the courage to do it, and they died along with Tork’s cause.”

  Rivven’s monologue had been going on for the length of the dinner. He drank mig brandy and related anecdotes demonstrating his own superior judgment and character, while his colleague An-dar spoke little and nibbled intoxicating thu-thu pastilles.

  Chairs and tableware suitable for Daimong and Lai-own had been brought from storage. The officers’ chefs had collaborated on the dinner: Sula’s cook prepared the little packets of delicacies suitable for a Daimong’s mouth-parts, while Mangahas and the wardroom chef put together the rest, including the thu-thu pastilles and sauces suitable for the Lai-own palate.

  Impeccably groomed, Lord Jeremy Foote sat at the far end of the wedge-shaped table, speaking little and maintaining an attitude of easy superiority. Chandra Prasad sat with arms folded, one foot tapping the floor with impatience as she endured Rivven’s self-important monologue. Alana Haz seemed almost carefree, happy to have survived, as did Ranssu Kangas, who had been promoted to acting squadron commander on the death of his senior. Conyngham’s hair seemed whiter, and his face more lined, than before his epic fight with Battleship Squadron One.

  Opposite Haz, Nikki Severin sat in glowering silence while anger simmered behind his eyes. At least he seemed not to be directing that anger at anyone in the room, but—now that Tork was dead—at the enemy in general. Sula thought that there would be no more puppet shows for some time—Severin’s sense of humor seemed to have died with Lady Starkey.

  Naaz Vijana, on the other hand, did not bother to hide his hatred of the non-Terrans, but glared at them openly, as if daring them to practice their treachery here. Fortunately he’d been placed at the far side of the table, next to Jeremy Foote.

  A jolly little meal, Sula thought. Anger, impatience, superiority, hatred, suspicion, and deep mourning, all in an overcrowded room. She figured that Martinez should keep the intoxicants in circulation and hope for the best.

  She poured herself more tea and added cane sugar syrup.

  By now it was clear that the numbers of the Fourth Fleet would stabilize at seventy-seven warships. Two ships thought derelict had turned out to be salvageable and were now on route to Harzapid for refit, along with sixteen more ships that had been badly damaged. Spare crew were being shifted to the remaining fifty-nine warships, which were continuing their half-gravity deceleration until repairs were completed, after which they would accelerate to Zarafan, Zanshaa, and the end of the war.

  The Shaa had made their empire by force, Sula thought. She and the Fourth Fleet would do the same. By now it seemed inevitable that they would stand in the sky above the capital and dictate to the Convocation—they would send certain people to prison, to interrogation, to execution; and they would put their own allies in charge of the imperial bureaucracy and the security services. Most of these people would be Terran, at least at first, but the other species would soon regain their former status as they proved their loyalty to the new regime.

  But once the Fleet began dictating the new arrangements, how could they stop? Sula didn’t see it. What’s wrong with being military dictators? she’d asked Roland. He wanted to attempt a return to something like normality, but Sula didn’t understand how that could be accomplished.

  Once they employed the threat of force—of annihilation—how could that threat ever be removed?

  “I wonder, Squadcom Rivven,” Martinez was saying. “When did Tork last communicate with Zanshaa?”

  Sula refocused her attention. Someone other than Rivven was speaking.

  “Tork sent a missile from Toley,” Rivven said. “I suppose it announced that your command was offering battle, but that the battle would be in Shulduc or somewhere beyond. For myself, I wonder if he was candid about our losses to that point.”

  “I doubt it,” said An-dar. “He would never have sent a message to report anything less than a triumph.” He clacked his peg teeth in emphasis.

  “You have the ciphers he would have used, yes?” Martinez said. “I’m wondering if we can send a misleading message to Zanshaa.”

  Rivven’s voice turned to a purr. “Reporting a victory that never happened?”

  “Report of a victory might increase the persecution of our friends,” Martinez said. “I was thinking of something . . . more ambiguous.”

  Sula saw Martinez’s point at once. “A qualified victory,” she said. “Something that forced the Restoration to retreat, but that failed to wipe us out.”

  “Yes,” Martinez said. “And heavy casualties in Tork’s command. Defections, perhaps. Tork’s determination to continue an unwise pursuit.”

  “Make it clear Tork might be running into a trap,” Sula said. “We might want people in the government to start wondering if Tork might lose,” Sula said. “We want them to start quietly making plans concerning what to do in the event of a Restoration victory.”

  From Rivven came a dulcet chime of approval. “Excellent!” he said. “I think I know just what’s needed.”

  The Daimong vocal apparatus was infinitely flexible, and Rivven was able to give an imitation of Tork so perfect that only a careful electronic investigation could discover it was a fabrication—and Sula couldn’t imagine why anyone would order that investigation.

  The script had largely been written over the supper table, with wine flowing and the officers’ sadness and mourning transformed into hilarity. The more absurd ideas had been rejected—there would be no attacks by a Lorkin fleet—and the end result was a plausible rant in which Tork admitted to a hundred and five prebattle losses due to “treachery and surprise attacks,” and then a further hundred thirty in a battle in Shulduc, this counting three squadrons that had defected to the Restoration during the course of the battle. As these squadrons had been commanded by Lai-own and Torminel, Tork ordered that the Investigative Service, along with the Intelligence Section, begin an investigation of all Lai-own and Torminel officers, their friends, and their families to discover if they had pro-Restoration sympathies.

  “After all, why should only Terrans be abused?” Chandra Prasad pointed out. “Let other species be persecuted for a change.”

  According to the report of the pseudo-Tork, the results of the battle were a victory for Tork. Losses for the Restoration were “vast,” but “a disturbing number have escaped through the wormhole leading to Harzapid.” Tork would reorganize his fleet and pursue, but in the meantime would send fifty-nine badly damaged ships to Zanshaa for repairs under the command of Squadron Leader Rivven. Tork trusted that victory would buoy the morale of the Righteous Fleet, which had suffered from constant bombardment of propaganda insisting that the Zanshaa government was corrupt, untrustworthy, and using the Fleet to hide its own misdeeds.

  The report was deliberately vague on the number of Restoration ships killed, which Sula hoped
would make Zanshaa uneasy. And if they added up Tork’s admitted losses, and included the fifty-nine ships needing repair, they would discover that Tork had lost more than half of the Righteous Fleet in pursuit of his inconclusive victory, and was now plunging onward, with a fleet low in morale and threatened by defection, in pursuit of an unspecified number of escaping enemy.

  Sula figured this was exactly the sort of thing that might cause the elite of Zanshaa to reconsider their political choices.

  The supper broke up when Martinez and Sula took Rivven off to Martinez’s office to record the message without the background clatter of silverware and clinking glasses.

  “I’ll listen to it again tomorrow morning,” Martinez said, “and if I can’t think of any way to improve it, I’ll send it to Zanshaa.”

  Pleasure burbled in Rivven’s tones. “I think this was an inspired idea, Lord Fleetcom.”

  “And an inspired performance.”

  Martinez and Sula escorted their guests to their shuttles and sent them on their way, then summoned the personnel elevator for the ride to the officers’ decks. Martinez gave her a look.

  “Would you care to join me for coffee?”

  Sula smiled, then shook her head. “I’m too tired,” she said. “Listening to Rivven was exhausting.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?”

  The elevator door whirred open, and Martinez brandished his commander’s key at the detector in order to gain access to the officers’ levels. The doors whirred shut.

  “Besides,” Sula said, “there’s a picture of Terza on the wall of your sleeping cabin. I prefer not to make love while your wife watches.”

  Martinez blanched. “I, ah—I’ll take care of that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sula kissed Martinez’s cheek as she left the elevator, then went to her own cabin pleased with herself.

  Every so often, she thought, she should remind Martinez who was really in charge. That this time she was using him, not the other way around.

  The next time Sula visited Martinez’s sleeping cabin, the portrait of Terza was nowhere to be seen and had been replaced by drawings made by Gareth the Younger. Sula supposed that under the circumstances she couldn’t object.

  The message missile from the pseudo-Tork was sent on to Zanshaa. The Fourth Fleet gradually increased its acceleration to a full gravity. The ships, even with their hasty repairs, managed the acceleration without inflicting further damage on themselves. Gravities were increased to one and a half for certain hours, though there were always a few hours of reduced gravity for the fleet commander and his tactical officer to use as they pleased.

  The damaged ships bound for Harzapid accelerated in the opposite direction and soon vanished through Shulduc Wormhole Two, though not before Martinez plundered them for experienced officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted. Graduates of the Harzapid training schools would make up their numbers while they were under repair.

  Unless they were making repairs, Martinez gave the crew as much liberty as he could. The crouchbacks’ lives were relaxed, without the drills and exercises that had occupied so much of their time. They’d proved themselves in combat, and they had earned a small indulgence.

  Though not where conduct was concerned. Captains reported an uptick in disciplinary problems. After months confined aboard ships, and following a battle of annihilation, the crew felt they were entitled to some misbehavior, and so drunkenness and fights and what the service referred to as “insolence” was on the rise. Martinez privately urged lenience.

  After all, he was up to some bad behavior himself.

  Michi Chen’s congratulations arrived eight days after the battle, the amount of time Sula’s signal took to reach Harzapid and the reply to work its way back through the chain of relay stations. “The victory was brilliantly executed,” she said. “But then I never expected anything less.”

  At Michi’s words Martinez felt the tug of vanity lifting his chin and filling his chest. He was alone in his office, and suddenly he wanted Sula with him, to share the triumph that had begun to blaze in his heart. He sent a copy of the message to her, with a note that said, “This is something that belongs to the two of us.”

  Then he released Michi’s message to the Fourth Fleet.

  “With your permission, Lord Fleetcom.” Gavin Macnamara, Sula’s servant, appeared white-gloved in the door of Martinez’s office, bearing his midday meal on a tray.

  “Of course,” he said.

  The meal was a chicken stewed in tomato sauce, something that could be made easily out of cans. With all the visiting back and forth within the Fourth Fleet Martinez was finding himself at the center of too many elaborate meals, so he was trying to eat simply when he was alone.

  Macnamara placed his plate, goblet, and carafe of water on Martinez’s desk, efficiently though without Alikhan’s careful precision. Glancing up, Martinez thought he detected a degree of disapproval in Macnamara’s expression.

  “I think Macnamara knows about us,” he told Sula when she arrived, a few minutes later.

  “I’m sure the whole ship knows,” Sula said. “Maybe the whole Fourth Fleet by now.”

  He didn’t think he cared to think about that, even though he knew that keeping a relationship secret on a warship was like trying to hide a Hunhao sedan in a wardrobe.

  Sula flipped her uniform cap toward his desk and managed to drop it neatly on his water carafe. She was glowing, her emerald eyes alight. Martinez hoped that he was the cause of that glow, but he suspected Michi’s message had more to do with it. He rose, took her in his arms, and kissed her.

  “I don’t think Macnamara approves,” he said.

  “He thinks you’re going to leave me and break my heart,” she said. She looked at him at close range, her warm forehead pressed to his, her eyes searching his. “You’re not, are you?”

  “Not a chance,” he said and kissed her again.

  A day later another message arrived from Michi, and as Martinez watched it he felt the glow of victory fade. He called for Sula to join him.

  This time she didn’t throw off her cap, but walked in with a grave expression. “What’s wrong?”

  “Take a seat and watch this.”

  He put the video on a wall screen. Michi appeared, her face somber. “Gareth, I’m about to give you some instructions, and I imagine you won’t like them.” She paused after that ominous beginning, then took a breath.

  “The political leadership has decided that the Fourth Fleet should stop at Zarafan,” she said. “As you’ve won such a crushing victory over Tork, they’re hoping that the situation can be resolved politically, without Terran ships appearing over the capital and forcing a peace at gunpoint.” Her shoulders moved as if she had begun to shrug, then thought better of it. “If the political effort fails, you’ll be ten days from Zanshaa, and with full magazines and rested crews.”

  She took a breath. “Roland is already heading toward you in an Exploration Service shuttle, accelerating as fast as he can. Your task, after you secure Zarafan, will be to put him in contact with the political leadership in Zanshaa, then stand by for whatever happens afterward. You’ll be going to Zanshaa, one way or another. Written orders will follow, but I thought I’d better warn you ahead of time.” Her look softened. “You’ve done brilliantly, Gareth, you and Lady Sula, but maybe it’s time the military took a step back and let the politicians do what they do.”

  The orange end-stamp filled the screen. Sula let out a long exhalation, and Martinez realized she’d been holding her breath for some time.

  “Are they crazy?” she asked.

  “I think they might be.” He shook his head. “My only consolation is the thought of Roland spending weeks under heavy gravities.”

  “Even if he were squashed flat as a platter, that wouldn’t be consolation enough.” Sula turned to look at him across the corner of his desk. “Perhaps we could simply ignore the order,” she said. “We know the local situation and they don’t.”


  Martinez felt his mind spin. “Split the Restoration?” he said.

  Sula offered a wry smile. “Months ago I asked what was wrong with our becoming military dictators. Roland and the others didn’t have an answer, but after a while I thought that maybe Roland’s problem with the military being in charge is that Roland isn’t in the military.”

  “The military doesn’t know that much about running an empire,” Martinez said.

  Sula shrugged. “Could we be worse?”

  Martinez considered this. “I think we could. Because we’d be in violation of the Praxis, which means that few people would be behind us. They’d do what we ordered so long as we were pointing a gun at them, and the second we weren’t, they’d bash us on the head.” He looked at Sula. “Isn’t this what the Naxids tried? And what was your response to them?”

  Her lips twitched in amusement at Martinez neatly turning her argument. “I was helped to no end by the Naxids themselves,” she said, “who made a lot of mistakes that you and I wouldn’t make.”

  “Well,” Martinez said. “There’s a lot of time between now and the time we’ll have to start decelerating for Zarafan. We can try to change minds back on Harzapid.”

  “I’ll send my protests in,” Sula said. “You can send yours. No doubt they’ll be filed wherever such protests go.”

  He sighed. “I’ve been on this ship for seven months now, the rest of Division Two has been on weeks longer, and Foote longer still. The Fleet isn’t like the Exploration Service—our ships weren’t designed for crews to live in transit for more than a few months. Maybe we all need a rest at Zarafan.”

  “We could rest at Zanshaa. It’s only ten days farther on.”