Chapter 19
“Am I imagining things,” Sula asked, “or is your father-in-law soused?”
Martinez narrowed his eyes and took another look at the video. Lord Chen certainly seemed off his stride, uncomfortable in his hooded leather chair, his eyes continually darting off-camera as if seeking the approval of an invisible watcher. Chen had put on weight and his face was puffy, which wasn’t surprising if he’d been under house arrest for the last ten months. Alone and separated from his family, even the ones he disliked, might have left him with no company but his wine cellar.
“I am . . . ready,” Lord Chen pronounced with deliberation. “I am prepared to do my utmost to help bring about reconciliation and the end of the war.” After which he looked offscreen again, as if for approval.
“I can’t really tell,” Martinez said. “He might be a little too conscious of being watched.”
“He’s got to know that we know,” Sula said.
Because of course Lord Chen was recording this under the supervision of the people who had been holding him as some kind of prisoner. Whatever he said would be with their permission. Everyone knew that.
What the video told the Restoration was that Lord Chen was alive and had not been obviously mistreated. And judging by what he said or did not say, it would also be possible to tell how much information had been given to Chen, or to the local population. Judging by his words, he either didn’t know much or was forbidden from saying anything.
“I should also like to send greetings to my family and friends,” Chen continued. “Please let them know I am well, and wish them the very best.”
The orange end-stamp filled the screen. Sula looked at Martinez. “I still think he was drunk,” she said.
“You’re probably right,” Martinez decided.
He had increased the polarity of the windows to darken the room while they watched the video, and now he gestured at his desk to bring in the full outside light. He had, Sula thought, adapted well to Trie-var’s imperial style, the Residence with its grand vista of the Boulevard of the Praxis, the vast desk, and the echoing marble floors. Flowers in tall glossy celadon vases filled the air with sweet aroma. The hand-painted tiles on the wall showed bright alloy abstract designs on a background in which dark blue wave forms alternated with waves of an even darker blue—and the shining alloy echoed the silver buttons on Martinez’s tunic, while the deep blues were a dark halo behind him and seemed to make him all the brighter by contrast. From his thronelike chair he could sweep the room with a glance. The disk of the Golden Orb shone at his throat.
Sula thought the room suited the commander of the Fourth Fleet, and the ruler—for all practical purposes—of the Zarafan system.
Martinez inhabited those roles well. Once he had stepped out of Bombardment of Los Angeles, away from the claustrophobic quarters of the ship on which he’d lived for months, it was as if he’d given himself permission to expand. He’d strolled toward Trie-var’s reception committee with his hands empty of weapons, his presence enlarged by an aura of majesty that seemed to grow as he walked. The armed Terrans pouring out of the ships behind him, swinging wide to surround Trie-var’s party, seemed almost secondary, Sula included.
“I’m Fleet Commander Martinez,” he’d told Trie-var in a perfectly conversational tone. “Tork’s failed. His ships are gone, and the war is over. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for your surrender, though I assure you any confinement will be brief.”
Sula’s heart had nearly burst with admiration.
Since then Martinez had managed to retain a degree of grandeur. The shock of Second Shulduc’s losses seemed to have faded, and he was now beginning to congratulate himself for his victory.
Sula made a point of reinforcing this self-expansion. She wanted Martinez in control, and she wanted him ready to lead the charge on Zanshaa, and to defy his family.
A pity that Roland’s arrival would soon turn Martinez’s role into that of lackey, a role he would share with Sula and everyone else in the Fourth Fleet. Roland would arrive in three days or so: his launch was in the system and was making ferocious deceleration burns on its track to Zarafan.
Sula sat on a straight-backed armchair across a corner of Martinez’s desk. She turned her body slightly to make more room for her sidearm—she was going to have to get used, once again, to going everywhere armed. He turned from Lord Chen’s video to her. “Fortunately,” he said, “our other friends have been a little more . . . present.”
The Zanshaa government, which Sula suspected was compliant only to prove they hadn’t executed their high-ranking enemies, had so far sent videos of Saïd, Martinez’s brother-in-law Oda Yoshitoshi, and Fleet Commander Pezzini. Lord Convocate Oda had cheerfully offered compliments to the forces of the Restoration. Pezzini had been in a bad temper and had denounced things generally—but then that was characteristic of his behavior at all times and places. Lord Saïd, the former Lord Senior, had spoken in thoughtful, well-formed, complex sentences that seemed so artificial that Sula wondered if he were somehow transmitting a message in cipher—though she’d been over a transcript thoroughly and was unable to find any hidden meaning. Saïd had spoken of the difficulties in assembling a quorum of the Convocation, which was not normally in session at this season—and this was crucial, because if the Zanshaa government was to be toppled according to the forms of the Praxis, it would have to be by vote of the Convocation.
Sula had the impression that, behind his maze of words, Saïd knew of the destruction of Tork’s fleet, but thought it unwise to speak this knowledge out loud.
“If Lady Gruum and the others delay the assembly of the Convocation,” Sula said, “we’ll have no choice but to go to Zanshaa after all.”
“They only need the Convocation to elect a new government,” Martinez pointed out. “The old government can simply resign. And if I were Gruum, I’d be negotiating terms for the resignation with Saïd right now.”
“If her allies will let her. Tu-hon is a murderous fanatic, and if I were Gruum I’d be afraid of her.”
“All the more reason to make sure Tu-hon has no power.”
Sula laughed. “She has the Fleet.”
“The Fleet’s power is nothing compared to ours.”
“True. But what Tu-hon has is enough to dominate Zanshaa until we arrive. And also—” She made a gesture that encompassed all space from horizon to horizon. “In the last war the government—our government—fled Zanshaa. When the Naxids took Zanshaa, it became an anchor around their necks. How do we know the government isn’t fleeing right now?”
“The Naxids took the capital and thought the war was over,” Martinez said. “We won’t make that mistake.”
“Won’t we?”
“Nonii.” Martinez spoke firmly.
“Roland won’t decide to pause at the capital and continue negotiations from the high ground?” she said.
Imperturbably, Martinez raised an eyebrow. “I will dissuade him.” He was getting very good, Sula decided, at being a proconsul.
“I’ll look forward to that,” she said.
“In the meantime,” Martinez said, “we have some decisions to make about our new recruits.”
Terrans had been swarming onto the ring with the intention of volunteering for service to the Restoration. Forty percent of these were veterans, or crouchbacks on active duty who had been sent to the planet on leave or who were active in noncritical duty. The rest were young, enthusiastic, and untrained. Martinez and Sula had been trying to screen them for talents they might begin to use right away—accounting, logistics, transport—and move them into critical positions from which non-Terrans, for safety’s sake, had been furloughed. Even though none of the local non-Terrans had threatened to evolve into a local version of Colonel Dai-por, Sula still thought it better to keep non-Terrans away from antimatter, weaponry, crucial ship systems, and the food supply.
But even these duties absorbed only a certain number of the new Terran recruits. The rest
were zealous, eager, and bored, a dangerous combination. Drunken fights, vandalism, attacks on other species, and general mischief were becoming common in the areas adjacent to the dockyard, sometimes even in the docks themselves, and were diverting the Military Constabulary from more important duties. Something had to be done to get the situation in hand.
Sula had decided to shift some of the superannuated officers and petty officers, those too old or injured to ship out on a warship, and put them in charge of training. The large transport ships, including the big immigration ships stalled at Zarafan by the war, would be designated as training schools. She called up the plan on her hand comm and explained the plan to Martinez.
“I have only one question,” Martinez said. “No . . . two really. First, is this the best use of our veterans? And second, wouldn’t it be a better use of our resources to send the untrained recruits home?”
Sula shrugged. “We’re going to need to rebuild the Fleet after all its losses. This will give the Fourth Fleet a head start, and a reserve of trained personnel we can use to occupy Zanshaa’s ring.”
He smiled, and she felt a warm pleasure blossom beneath her sternum. “Case made,” he said. “I’ll leave you to implement it.”
Sula nodded, picked up her hand comm, and rose. “Anything else?”
“I have supper with the squadron commanders tonight,” Martinez said. “After which—” He waved a hand. “I’ll be drunk.”
“I can handle drunks,” Sula said.
“I thought you could,” he said and gave her a little wave as she left the office.
She greeted Lalita Banerjee at her desk in the outer office, then took the stairs down to her own office on the first floor. One of the Military Constabulary, marked by his red belt and armband, braced and brought his rifle to the salute. She passed into her own office and sent for tea.
She’d been longing for tea that hadn’t been sitting in a ship’s pantry for nine months, then Shawna Spence had visited a shop near the dockyard and found fresh first cuttings from estates on the planet below. Spence had bought the shop’s entire supply, and now Sula savored the bright, coppery taste of the tea every day.
A modern Guraware tea set had been found in storage, and Spence brought the pot in on a tray, along with a cup and saucer, and a pitcher of cane syrup. Sula thanked her, prepared the tea, and inhaled the fragrance before taking a sip. A warm sense of contentment began to shimmer in her senses. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this relaxed.
She had plenty of work, but the work wasn’t desperate or urgent, and if she didn’t complete it on time, she wouldn’t kill her friends or allies through negligence. She had survived the largest battle in imperial history and done her part to win it. Her remaining enemies would scatter like dust motes before a broom.
All of which was excellent reason for her buoyant state of mind, though she couldn’t hide from herself the knowledge that the real cause of her benign mood was Martinez.
She had been deliriously happy with Martinez once, nearly ten years ago, a period that had lasted two nights and part of a third before he’d suggested getting married, and she’d been delighted until he mentioned the Peers’ Gene Bank, where she would be required to make a donation of her DNA. Which, she knew, would expose her as an imposter. When she hesitated, Martinez had demanded an explanation, and then she’d taken an angry, fatal misstep and blown the relationship to bits.
She’d regretted her blunder within hours and showed up at Martinez’s door to beg his forgiveness, only to be told that he’d just become engaged to Terza Chen. This revelation had sent her into such a dark, despairing spiral that she’d volunteered for a stay-behind unit in Zanshaa, as close to a ticket to suicide as she could find. Instead of getting herself killed, she’d captured the High City and become queen of Zanshaa, at least until one of Tork’s appointees replaced her.
Sula sipped her tea from Guraware soft-paste porcelain and compared that time to this. She had now been with Martinez for two months, not two nights, long enough that spending their free hours together had begun to seem normal, maybe even routine. His evolution into the grand figure she’d seen in his office had been partly her doing. The Gene Bank was no longer an issue—after the High City victory, she’d commandeered the bank long enough to replace all Sula DNA with her own.
Viewing her own situation, she had finally decided that she was happy. Happiness was a sufficiently unfamiliar emotion that it prompted a degree of suspicion, and she found herself probing her own mental state in a way that was alien to her. Finally she’d decided simply to accept happiness in the same way that she accepted the aroma of her tea, as something that infused her life and being.
Nothing stood in her way but Terza and the family’s relationship with the Chens. Martinez seemed to accept as inevitable the cutting of his ties with Terza and the Chen family. He cared about his children, one of whom would become Lord or Lady Chen after Terza, but he seemed resigned to having to make arrangements about their future.
As for Sula, she wasn’t looking forward to being a stepmother, but she supposed she could put up with his brats if she had to. She would much rather Terza kept them.
Carefully, not spilling a drop, Sula refilled her teacup. She added cane syrup, then raised the cup to her lips and sipped.
Bliss.
The dining room in the Residence of the Lord Commander of the Dockyard was far larger than that of Los Angeles, and so the division commanders were encouraged each to bring a guest. Most brought their flag captains, premieres, or tactical officers. Severin brought no one. Ranssu Kangas brought his brother. Chandra Prasad brought Vonderheydte. Interesting, Martinez thought.
Chandra and Vonderheydte seemed hyperaware of each other as the officers mingled before supper, alert to each other’s presence even when they weren’t near each other, their relationship as plain as if a smoldering line were drawn between them in the air. Martinez wondered if anyone had observed a similar line drawn between himself and Sula, and he couldn’t help but suppose that people had.
In Chandra, he decided, Vonderheydte had almost certainly met his match.
Poor Marietta, he thought.
In the tight-knit group he recognized that released, relaxed state that he felt in himself. They had all survived battle, and each had looked death in the face and triumphed. They had won the war, and now it was up to the politicians to create the peace.
All things seemed permitted now.
The only individual who seemed not to participate in the prevailing cheer was Naaz Vijana. “Rivven and An-dar are free in the system while we’re tied to Zarafan’s ring,” he told Martinez. “They could attack us and hurt us badly.”
“We’d have plenty of warning,” Martinez said. “Their orbit isn’t close to us at all, and our ships are still on alert.”
“They could be communicating with Zanshaa through the wormhole,” Vijana said.
The crews at the wormhole stations hadn’t yet been replaced by Severin’s Terrans, so that was possible. “What could they say?” Martinez asked. “Any information they could transmit would just confirm that we’ve won, and the Zanshaa government’s lost.”
Nevertheless he decided to emphasize security in his remarks before the dinner. “We should remind ourselves that the war isn’t over yet,” he said. “Our ships need to remain on constant alert. Terrorists might attack our forces on the ring, as they did in Harzapid. Missiles may be sent through the wormholes in some last-second suicide ploy. There might be enemy squadrons at large that we don’t know about.” Vijana excepted, his officers stared at him blankly, as if he’d just said something just a little beyond their grasp. He cleared his throat. “In the next few days we’ll be running drills based on these possibilities, so prepare your crews.” With a degree of relief he reached for his cocktail and raised it. “Enjoy yourselves tonight, friends!” he said.
As Marivic Mangahas’s food began to roll out of the kitchen, Martinez felt himself lapse into the same p
leasant unconcern with which he looked at everything these days. He’d won the war, the details of the peace were up to Roland, and he was spending nearly every spare moment with the woman who had never completely left his thoughts for the last ten years. His life was tranquil and gratified and absolutely glutted with love. Even he had trouble taking his own alerts and exercises seriously.
When the last course was cleared away and the last toast was drunk, the group mingled again, and people said their good-byes and made their way out, past the guard where they could collect their sidearms and make their way into the street. Martinez poured himself a parting glass of wine and found himself standing next to Vonderheydte, who stood nearby holding a half-empty glass. Martinez held out the decanter. “A refill?”
“Yes. Thank you, Lord Fleetcom.”
As he poured he glanced at Vonderheydte and saw exhaustion drawn across his delicate features. Charitably, he decided to attribute this to the war and not to Chandra.
“I hope you and Chandra are happy,” he said.
Vonderheydte brightened, and his weariness fell away. “She’s wonderful, my lord!” he said. “I’m ecstatic! This time it’s the real thing!”
“I’m happy to hear it,” Martinez said. “But what’s going to become of Marietta? She left her husband and children to be with you.”
Defiance flared in Vonderheydte. “I’m fighting for her,” he said. “And her husband. And her children. I’ll keep fighting till everybody wins.”
Martinez nodded, then hesitated. “She has enough money, does she?”
“Oh yes,” Vonderheydte said. “When we planned our escape, we sent everything in her accounts to Harzapid.”
“Well then,” Martinez said. He felt he really hadn’t the moral right to press this any further, not with Sula in his bed and a wife and son in Harzapid.
“Cheers, my lord.” Vonderheydte raised his glass. Martinez raised his own.
“Cheers.”
A few moments later he encountered Chandra. “I feel as if we should both look across the room at Vonderheydte,” he said, “and then I’d say something world-weary and cynical, and we’d both nod. But I’m really not in the mood.”
Fleet Elements Page 37