Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  If the enemy advanced, Kangas would have no choice but to fly before them, surrendering any systems the Naxids chose to threaten. But the Naxids didn’t seem to be interested in advancing. They remained at Zanshaa, guarding the capital while their government sank its roots into the soil below. They seemed confident that the remaining loyalists would surrender.

  But the loyalists had no intention of surrendering. More than half the loyalist fleet, Chenforce under Michi Chen and Light Squadron 14 under the Torminel Squadron Commander Altasz, plunged on separate raids into rebel-held systems, there to demonstrate that while the rebels might have the capital, the rest of their domain wasn’t safe.

  The strategy of abandoning the capital and defending nowhere while building forces and raiding into enemy territory was referred to as the Chen Plan. In fact the plan had been developed by Captain Martinez and Lady Sula, but neither of them were sufficiently important or free enough from controversy to deserve having the Fleet’s strategic aims named after them. So Lord Chen, who had first presented the plan to the board, had his name appended to it, and his career would rise or fall with its success.

  While Tork managed the business of the Fleet, while Kangas orbited Chijimo with his outnumbered force, while warships were building on many worlds, while the representatives of the Investigative Service bickered over fine points of interpretation with their rivals in the Intelligence Service, while the Naxids occupied the capital and Lord Chen’s sister and son-in-law advanced with their squadron into the unknown, Lord Chen occupied himself sending messages to his friends on Antopone.

  It would be such a relief to see them again.

  So much for my clever disguise, Sula thought. Blond hair dyed black, green eyes turned brown, pale skin darkened, and she couldn’t even fool someone of PJ Ngeni’s…extremely localized intelligence.

  PJ had recovered his equilibrium somewhat, and the reflexes of a man of fashion came to the fore. “You must let me give you dinner at my club,” he said.

  Sula dropped PJ’s arm and indicated her gray coveralls. “We’re not exactly dressed for it, PJ,” she said.

  He touched his little mustache. “We’ll order in, then.”

  Sula felt a nervous giggle flutter like a butterfly in her abdomen. The jolt of adrenaline that had followed PJ’s blurting of her name was followed by an equally powerful impulse to break the tension with laughter.

  “I don’t think you should be seen with us,” Sula said through her breaking smile. “We’re wanted by the Naxids. If you’re caught with us, you’ll be tortured and killed.”

  PJ waved a hand. “Oh,” he said, “that.”

  Lord Pierre J. Ngeni was a tall, slim, elegant man, not quite middle-aged, with a long balding head and clothes of a modish cut. It was generally believed he’d wasted his inheritance on the usual dissipations available to members of his class, and now—for a Peer—he was poor, and living largely on the charity of his clan.

  Sula knew PJ because he’d once been engaged to Gareth Martinez’s sister Sempronia. This, Martinez had clearly explained to her, had been a sham engagement, yet another of Martinez’s attempts to clamber from his obscure provincial origins into the cream of Zanshaa society. An engagement to a member of his patron clan, the Ngenis, would guarantee access for Martinez and his siblings to the highest levels of the city. After Martinez and his family had won access, Sempronia would be at liberty to discover, to her horror, that PJ had led a scandalous life, and then break the engagement.

  The chief fault of the plan was that PJ Ngeni, himself, had never realized his engagement was a travesty. He’d fallen in love with Sempronia, who in her turn had rebelled at the very idea of a burlesque engagement and run off with one of Martinez’s lieutenants. The resulting scandal had threatened to unhinge the relationship between the Ngenis and Clan Martinez, and another sister entirely had been offered as a family sacrifice. PJ traded a farce of an engagement for a mockery of a marriage.

  Since the Martinez family had sensibly cleared out before the Naxids arrived, as had the Ngenis, the fact that the new bridegroom had been left behind did not speak well for PJ’s conjugal condition.

  “We’ll bring in a nice dinner,” PJ continued amiably, “and open a bottle of wine. Oh—sorry—I forgot you don’t drink.”

  “PJ,” Sula said, “what are you doing here?”

  PJ shrugged. “I volunteered to stay behind and guard the family’s interests on Zanshaa,” he said. “Not that there are very many interests left, barring some property. But we still have clients here, and some old servants that we’ve pensioned off, and I’m doing my best to look after them.” He looked at Sula, then glanced over his shoulder at Macnamara. “Do I know your friend?” he asked.

  “I don’t believe so. Call him Starling.” Which was Macnamara’s code name.

  PJ was amiability itself. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Starling.”

  Macnamara gave a terse nod. “My lord.”

  PJ hesitated as he peered along the street. “If I’m going to give you dinner,” he said, “we should be walking in the, ah, the other direction.” He pointed the way they had come.

  “You’re staying in the Ngeni Palace?”

  “The palace is closed. The servants have been dismissed, and the pensioners sent to our place in the country. I’m in a guest cottage.”

  “No cooks? No servants?”

  “Someone from an agency comes in to clean. And I either eat at one of my clubs or call for delivery from a caterer.”

  Sula looked at Macnamara, who gave her an equivocal look. Up to you, Sula read.

  “It sounds safe enough,” she ventured. She turned to PJ. “Go ahead of us, please. If we walked together it would look odd.”

  PJ was bemused but led the way. He passed his smoking club again and then crossed the boulevard, where he led them past the Makish Palace. Sula tried to amble casually along, and as she passed the palace she paused to shift her toolbox from one hand to the next. She paid as much attention to the abandoned palace next door as she did to her target. From the name inscribed in a sunburst over the doorway, Orghoder, Sula assumed the empty building had been built by a Torminel clan.

  The Ngeni Palace wasn’t on the Boulevard of the Praxis, but several streets behind, backed against the gray cliffside for a stunning view of the Lower Town. The palace itself was tall, faced with veined pink marble, and nearly a cube, with a huge glass-fronted, barrel-vaulted hall visible from the street. PJ didn’t enter the palace, but took them around by a side entrance, then past a huge old banyan tree that looked as if it might have been standing on the High City since the dawn of time.

  His “cottage” was three stories tall and probably had twenty rooms, but PJ seemed only to be living in a small part of it. He ushered his guests into a parlor, one with a view of the flagstone terrace that overlooked the Lower Town. PJ went to the comm unit concealed in a dramatic commode of arculé wood, ordered dinner for three from a caterer who seemed to know him, then closed the commode and turned to his guests.

  “Well!” he said brightly. “So you’re alive after all, Lady Sula!”

  “Yes.” The laugh that had been struggling to escape from her finally broke free, and she indulged it. “I hardly expected to see anyone I knew.”

  “That’s lucky, isn’t it?” PJ seemed pleased. “I’m glad I’m able to be of service.” He reached for the drink trolley. “What may I give you to drink? Whisky, Mr. Starling?”

  Sula looked at him. “Whatever you’ve got that doesn’t have alcohol. And what did you mean ‘service’?”

  PJ looked at her. “You’re obviously in, ah, straitened circumstances. You can stay here with me, of course, and I’m good for any tailor’s bills you may run up.” He patted his pockets. “Do you need any ready money?”

  Sula’s laugh rose again, unstoppable, and went on for some time. PJ hesitated, a half-hurt expression coming over his face. Sula controlled the laughter.

  “PJ, you’re wonderful!” she cried, and his exp
ression turned from hurt to pleased. “We don’t need money,” she told him. “We’re just dressed this way because, well, we’re just taking a look around, and we don’t want people to look at us.”

  PJ nodded, then hesitated again. A massive, startling thought worked its slow way across his face. “Oh!” he said. “Oh! I understand!” He pointed a finger at his two guests. “You’re here on a mission! You’re doing something for the secret government!”

  Sula wondered if she should tell PJ that, so far as she knew, she was the secret government.

  “Actually,” she temporized, “we’re just taking a look around. We’re not on an assignment or anything.”

  “Well, if there’s anything I can do,” PJ said, “anything at all, you’ll be certain to let me know.” He looked at Macnamara. “That was whisky you wanted, was it, Mr. Starling?”

  Macnamara looked at Sula. “Feel free,” she said.

  PJ poured whisky for himself and Macnamara, and gave Sula a Citrine Fling. He pulled his armchair closer to Sula and leaned toward her.

  “Lady Sula,” he said, “I want you to know that I’m completely at your disposal. Ever since the war began I’ve wanted to volunteer, I’ve wanted to prove myself worthy of…well,” he hesitated, “a certain person.”

  So he was still in love with Sempronia, Sula thought, even after she’d run off with another man.

  Don’t feel so superior, she told herself. PJ wasn’t the only person in the room to make the mistake of falling for a Martinez.

  “I’ve tried to think of something I could do,” PJ said. “I’ve racked my brains. But I have no military skills, and it’s too late to establish a career in the civil service. I even thought about becoming an informer or a spy.”

  Sula tried not to show her astonishment at this last revelation. So that’s what he was talking about, she thought as she remembered a drunken monologue from PJ at a reception.

  PJ settled back in his chair, a sunny smile breaking onto his face. “And now it’s come true. I can be your informer. Your spy. I can seek enemy secrets right here in the heart of the capital.”

  Alarm rose in Sula. “No,” she said quickly. “Don’t try to spy out anything. You’ll get caught and killed and put the rest of us in danger.” At PJ’s downcast expression, she added, “Just live your normal life. You already possess considerable knowledge that’s of value. Tell me what you know.”

  PJ seemed uncertain. “What do you mean?”

  “What’s the news? What do you hear at your clubs? What are the Naxids doing?”

  “Well,” PJ shrugged, “they’re all over the place, aren’t they? Taking over the High City. They claim that they’re bringing everything back to normal, the way it was under the Shaa, but that’s not true.” He took a sip of his whisky. “They’ve got their own people in charge of all the ministries, all the departments.”

  “So how do people feel about that?”

  “They’re angry, of course. But…baffled.” He shrugged again. “Nobody knows what to do. Like Van, who I was talking to in my smoking club. Lord Vandermere Takahashi, I mean.”

  The Citrine Fling stung Sula’s tongue. “Go on,” she said.

  “He’s in the Meteorology Department,” PJ said. “He’s got a new Naxid supervisor, and he doesn’t know how to act. He’s loyal, of course, but could he be charged with treason if he followed her orders?”

  “He might be shot if he didn’t,” Sula said.

  “Probably not in the Meteorology Department,” PJ allowed, “but if he were in anyplace critical, like my friend Sun is at the Ministry of Police, that would be different. He’s got Naxids asking him for information all the time, and he doesn’t know what they’re going to use it for, whether it’s an ordinary request or something they could use to prosecute loyalists. And of course he’s had to take the oath of allegiance to the new government—does that make him a traitor or not? Will he be prosecuted or killed after we win the war?” He blinked. “The former government—the real government, I mean—was quite vehement about cooperation with the Naxids. And Van’s worried too, because even the Meteorology Department will have to take the oath sooner or later.”

  “I see,” Sula said. Ideas sizzled through her mind.

  She thought she knew the message that she wanted to send to the population.

  Martinez spent the transit to Termaine in the Flag Officer Station, strapped to an acceleration couch and wearing a vac suit. Illustrious was at general quarters, standard procedure for a warship that might encounter an enemy on the other side of a wormhole. Martinez, as the squadron’s tactical officer, sat facing the squadron commander, Lady Michi Chen.

  The ship’s captain, Lord Gomberg Fletcher, directed Illustrious from Command, on another deck. The Flag Officer Station concerned itself only with squadron maneuvers and grand strategy, not with the details of running the cruiser.

  The squadron entered “hot,” radars and ranging lasers hammering in search of a foe. The Naxids knew Chenforce was coming, and they just might have prepared some kind of surprise.

  No surprise was in the offing, though since the Naxids had turned off their own radars, it took some hours for this to become apparent. Termaine Wormhole 1 was a considerable distance from Termaine’s primary, outside the heliopause, and it would take days for Chenforce to near the planet. If there were any surprises, they would be farther into the system.

  In the meantime, Michi Chen’s own demands were being pulsed to Termaine via high-powered communications lasers, and repeated on radio frequencies for the benefit of shipping. All ships in the system were to be destroyed; all crews in transit to abandon ship if they wished to live. All ships on the ring were to be cast off without crews, all docking and construction bays to be opened for inspection, any uncompleted ships thrown into the vacuum with everything else. And Squadron Leader Chen’s own message to be broadcast regularly on all planetary media, assuring the inhabitants of the planet that the Fleet still had teeth and were still able to punish rebels…

  The demands were not negotiable. The destruction of Bai-do had made that clear.

  It would be nearly half a day before the commander of the Termaine ring received the orders, and another half day before Illustrious could expect a reply. No incoming missiles appeared on the squadron’s sensors. The only ships visible were fleeing Chenforce under as many gees as their crews could stand. It seemed that the squadron was safe for the present.

  “Inform the squadron they may secure from general quarters,” said Squadron Commander Chen. Her fingers rapped in rhythm against the armrest of her couch. “Ships to remain on alert, and point-defense systems to be placed on automatic.”

  It was not beyond possibility that missiles were incoming at relativistic speed, and the ships’ automatic laser defenses would be the most efficient defense against such a threat.

  “Yes, my lady,” said Lady Ida Li, one of Michi’s two aides.

  Martinez looked at his commander. “Will you be requiring anything else, my lady?” he asked.

  “No. You’re at liberty, Lord Captain.”

  Martinez closed the tactical display, then pushed the display over his head until it locked. He unstrapped from his acceleration couch, grabbed one of the struts of his acceleration cage, and tilted the couch until his feet touched the deck. He stood, stretched to bring the blood tingling to his limbs, and then removed his helmet and took a grateful breath of fresh—or at any rate fresher—air.

  Michi Chen, still on her couch, removed her helmet and stowed it in the mesh bag intended for that purpose. She tilted the couch forward to get to her feet, and Martinez, like a good staff officer, stood by to offer a hand if necessary.

  She didn’t need his help. The squadron commander was a handsome, stocky woman, with graying dark hair cut in straight bangs across her forehead. She looked up at Martinez. “So far, so good,” she said. “I keep wondering if we’re going to find an enemy fleet waiting for us.”

  Martinez, who had been wondering if he
was going to be obliged to kill another four billion people, nodded in tactful agreement. “I think they’re fully committed to Zanshaa. I think they’re flying over the capital waiting for us to surrender.”

  Her lips gave a twitch of amusement. “I think you’re right. But my job obliges me to worry.”

  She adjusted the collar of her vac suit to a more comfortable angle, then led the way out of the Flag Officer Station. Martinez followed, wishing that someone had invited him to dinner.

  Martinez ate alone in his office, staring sourly at the plump buttocks and chubby faces of the naked winged children that so oddly ornamented his office walls. He was served by his cook, Perry, and he dined alone.

  It was normal for him to eat by himself. A tactical officer was typically a lieutenant, and would mess in the wardroom, a kind of club for the lieutenants. Martinez, a full captain, couldn’t take a meal in the wardroom without an invitation. Squadron Leader Chen had her own dining room, as did the Illustrious captain, Gomberg. Unless someone invited him, or unless he invited others, his unique status on the ship ensured his solitude.

  He had left the relatively carefree life of a lieutenant behind, but he missed the companionship that life had once brought him. He would have happily traded that companionship for the loneliness of command, but the fact remained that he wasn’t in command, and he had to dine alone anyway.

  Perry cleared Martinez’s plate and offered to pour more wine. Martinez placed his hand over the glass.

  “Thank you, Perry,” he said. Perry took the glass and left in silence.

  Martinez called the tactical display onto the wall, just to make certain nothing new had appeared. Even though the naked children on the walls gazed at the displays as if in fascination, Martinez found there had been no change.

  He closed the display and gazed at his desk, at images of Terza floating in the midnight surface. He thought of the child they had made together and he was suddenly possessed by a desperate exaltation, a hunger he could taste far more keenly than he had his meal. The idea of a child was a wonder to him, and he felt a blade-sharp longing for the child that he had never quite felt for Terza.