Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  The flat Naxid head served only as a platform for sensory organs: a Naxid’s brain was in the center of its humanoid torso, with the heart and other vital organs being in the lower, four-legged body. Sula would prefer to have shot the guards first, but Makish and the Fleet officer—a junior fleet commander, no less—stood between her and the military constables, so she chose the more dangerous of the two and put a pair of shots into the center of the fleetcom’s back.

  As she shifted her aim, a long series of shots rang out, and her startled nerves gave a leap with each angry crack. Had the bodyguards got to their weapons that fast? she wondered. She shot Makish, her body braced for the impact of enemy bullets that didn’t come, and then she realized that the other shooter was Macnamara, firing over the stone wall and catching the enemy in a cross fire.

  There was a pause in which the only thing Sula heard was the singing in her ears caused by the shots’ concussion. The pistols PJ had given them proved rather noisy. There were Naxid bodies sprawled on the sidewalk and a lot of deep purple Naxid blood.

  “Run!” Sula said, the idea occurring to her suddenly; and she sprang over the Naxid bodies, the pistol still in her fist. Behind, Macnamara vaulted the wall and pelted in her wake.

  “Comm: stand by! Any second now! Comm: send!”

  The bomb was now redundant as an assassination device, but it could still serve as a propaganda weapon. The government might deny a pair of assassins with pistols, but they couldn’t deny a big explosion on the Boulevard of the Praxis, right in the middle of the High City.

  A file of Naxid children approached, neatly attired in school uniforms, their bodies snaking from side to side in the wake of an adult supervisor.

  Sula preferred not to murder children, not even if they were Naxids, but fate had not consulted her, and she wasn’t about to slow down and explain things. “Run!” she said as she dashed past. “Bad things!”

  “Wait!” the supervisor said, her black-on-yellow eyes going wide. Sula didn’t spare her a backward glance.

  She skated around the side of the Urghoder Palace and into the narrow lane that ran down its side. The cool shade of the lane was welcome after the afternoon sun. Sula slowed to a trot, and Macnamara slowed in her wake, pausing to pull an emergency flare from his pocket, strike it on the cool sandstone wall, and toss it behind them. Their retreat would be covered by billowing red smoke.

  Sula gasped for breath, her hand trailing on the palace wall for balance, and she wondered how much time to give the Naxid schoolchildren to get out of the way. She counted to ten, then spoke.

  “Comm: detonate. Comm: send.”

  A scant second later the sandstone wall punched her fingers with surprising strength and the ground lurched beneath her feet. She didn’t feel the explosion so much with her ears as with her insides, an uneasy stirring as the shock wave passed through each organ. The red smoke at the end of the lane was blown over them in a thin scarlet fog; and suddenly they were in a rain of rubble and trash blown off the Urghoder Palace roof. Sula tried to knock the stuff off her cap and shoulders as she ran.

  She unfastened the gray jumpsuit as soon as she made her way out of the cloud, and when they got to Macnamara’s two-wheeler, they both peeled out of their suits and took off their headgear, revealing richer clothing beneath. The workers’ costumes were shoved into the two-wheeler’s panniers, and with Macnamara driving, the vehicle moved out into traffic, the two passengers to all appearances a pair of upper-middle-class youth on a summer joy ride. Anyone looking closely would have seen that the clothing was soaked through with sweat, but the gyroscopically stabilized two-wheeler was moving too fast for that, weaving through the traffic, darting into lanes and alleys.

  Behind them the gray cloud of debris towered over the High City like an omen foretelling dark events to come.

  “The plan was too elaborate,” Sula said, blinking against the setting sun. “It would have been safer to plant the bomb somewhere along the route or pull up alongside Makish in a car and gun him down.”

  “You wanted something noisy,” Spence pointed out.

  “The big boom was the only thing the plan had going for it. The rest was fucking stupid.” She looked at Macnamara. “If you hadn’t known exactly what to do at the critical moment, we would have been neck-deep in the shit.”

  The flaws in the plan seemed so obvious now: she only wished at least a few of them had occurred to her at the planning stage.

  Action Team 491 stood in the shade of an ammat tree on the broad terrace of the Ngeni Palace, looking down the cliff at the Naxid checkpoint at the base of the road that zigzagged up the acropolis to the High City. The Naxids had shut down traffic entirely, and the long line of vehicles on the switchback road hadn’t moved in some time.

  Probably the funicular wasn’t moving either. The High City was being sealed off while the search went on for the assassins.

  “Cocktails?” PJ Ngeni said as he arrived with a tray.

  Sula took a Citrine Fling from the tray and raised the other hand to lightly fluff the damp hair at the back of her neck. On arrival at the Ngeni Palace, she’d first insisted on a bath and a change of clothes before conducting her debriefing. The tub PJ had offered her was large enough for a troop, and once she’d applied a lavender-scented bath oil to the steaming water, she remained in the tub till her toes wrinkled.

  Macnamara and Spence took their cocktails, sipped, and made gratified noises. PJ smiled.

  “Any news, my lord?” Spence asked.

  “No, Miss Ardelion.” Using the code name. “There hasn’t been a word on any of the news channels.”

  “They haven’t made up their minds how to report it,” Sula said. “They can’t deny the explosion, and they can’t deny closing all the exits to the High City.”

  “What are they going to do?” Spence’s dark eyes looked worried. “Search the High City for us?”

  “I don’t think they’ve got enough personnel. The High City’s big, and they don’t have that many people here.” With the ring and its elevators destroyed, the Naxids had been forced to bring their forces to the surface using shuttles propelled by chemical rockets, shuttles of which they had a limited supply. The actual numbers of those brought down from orbit were still fairly small, and the new arrivals depended for order on Naxids already on the planet when they arrived.

  “They could bring in Naxid police from outside the city,” Spence said.

  Sula looked down at the road with its traffic frozen in place. “We’ll see them from here if they do. But I don’t think they will.” She sipped her Fling and gave a cold smile. “With all access to the High City cut off, the Naxids are essentially besieging themselves up here. I don’t think they can afford to keep it up for long.”

  Team 491 and their host had a pleasant cocktail hour on the terrace, after which they adjourned to the sitting room to watch the news and await the arrival of the caterer. The last light of Shaamah gleamed a greenish pink on the window panes when the Naxid announcer said that a truck containing volatile chemicals had overturned on the Boulevard of the Praxis, causing an explosion and the unfortunate death of Lord Makish, Judge of the High Court, and his companion, Junior Fleet Commander Lord Renzak.

  Sula broke out in laughter. “They denied it!” she said. “Perfect!”

  No mention was made of a platoon of Naxid schoolchildren being wiped out, so Sula assumed they had weathered the bomb without many serious injuries.

  With a hand comm, she entered the Records Office computer on Administrator Rashtag’s passwords. It took a few minutes to update the text file she had already composed, and with a verbal command she sent it into the world.

  Resistance

  DEATH OF A TRAITOR

  Lord Makish, Judge of the High Court, was executed this afternoon by loyalist forces operating in the High City of Zanshaa. The sentence was imposed on Lord Makish by a tribunal of the secret government after Lord Makish was found guilty of signing the death warrants of Lord Governor
Pahn-ko and other loyal citizens.

  Executed along with Lord Makish was the traitorous Fleet officer Lord Renzak.

  The sentence was carried out by loyal Fleet elements using a bomb. These Fleet personnel have now reached safety and have been debriefed by their superiors.

  Though the rebel government claims that the deaths were the result of an accident with a truck carrying a volatile chemical—and whoever heard of such a truck on the Boulevard of the Praxis?—all the thousands of loyal citizens who heard or witnessed the explosion now have proof that loyalist forces operate at will even in the High City.

  Those rebels who heard the explosion should know that the tribunals are waiting. Those who murder loyal citizens will be noted, and their victims will be avenged.

  Who Are We?

  Resistance is the official newsletter of the loyalist government-in-exile. A loyal friend has suggested that we send this to you…

  At the end, Sula appended a copy of the first edition of Resistance, for any who hadn’t seen it.

  Because most of the Records Office personnel had gone home at the close of the business day, Sula sent out Resistance in smaller packets of a few thousand each so as not to tie up the broadcast node too conspicuously. As before, fifty thousand were sent. As before, they were sent randomly to inhabitants of Zanshaa who were not Naxids.

  PJ’s comm chimed as these operations were under way. He answered, then reported. “My smoking club. They’re going to be closed for a few days, till the damage is repaired.”

  “Anyone hurt?” Sula asked.

  “Cuts from flying glass, a couple of sprained ankles, and one broken collarbone.”

  Sula sent another two thousand copies of Resistance on their way. “Did you ask what was happening at the Makish Palace?”

  PJ looked stricken. “I didn’t think to.” He turned to go back to the comm.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sula said quickly. “It’s not that important. When they reopen I’m sure you’ll get the story.”

  The caterer arrived with a glorious meal for four, crisp duck served with a creamy eswod concoction and a tart sauce of taswa fruit. PJ offered the best of the Ngeni clan’s cellars to Spence and Macnamara, and afterward produced cigars.

  “This reminds me,” Sula said. “What is your club doing for tobacco now that the ring’s gone?”

  PJ gave an unhappy shrug. “Make do with the local variety, I suppose.”

  The climate of Zanshaa, for some reason, did not produce first-rate tobacco. Or cocoa. Or coffee. Sula, as it happens, had used half her inheritance to purchase quantities of the best of each of these before the ring was destroyed, and had them shipped to the surface, where they waited now in warehouses.

  “I might be able to help them out,” she said. “But no thank you, I don’t smoke.”

  Afterward, Action Team 491 reluctantly left the Ngeni Palace for whatever lodgings they could find. They were supposed to be workers caught in the High City when the exits were closed, and it would be logical for them to look for a hostel to stay in—and Sula told her team to make certain they got receipts, in order that their stories be all the more convincing.

  Lodgings were indeed hard to find—there were plenty of genuine workers wandering from one place to the next, with their IDs scanned by police patrols every few blocks. Sula finally found a place by paying more than she suspected a worker could afford. There, she enjoyed another bath, to wash away the odor of PJ’s cigars, then slept on the broad, faintly scented mattress.

  In the middle of the night she heard the creak of a floorboard, then felt the pillow press down hard on her nose and mouth. She gasped for breath, but there was no air. She tried to claw the pillow off her face, but her hands were pinned.

  She sat up with a cry half strangled in her throat, her hands clutching at her neck. Her pulse thundered in her ears like a series of gunshots. She stared blindly out into the dark, trying to see the shadow that was her attacker.

  “Lights!” she called, and the lights flashed on.

  She was alone in her room.

  She spent the rest of the night with the lights on and the video wall showing a harmless romantic drama that Spence would probably have adored.

  In the morning she rose and found that the road and the funicular had been reopened. Showing her identification and her receipt for a night’s lodging, she left the High City for the Lower Town. As she took a cab to Riverside, she saw a few copies of Resistance pasted to lampposts, each surrounded by clumps of readers.

  Buying breakfast from a vendor near the communal apartment, she learned that the Naxids had ordered their remaining hostages shot, then sent the police out onto the streets to find more.

  SEVEN

  Chandra walked into Martinez’s office in the middle of the afternoon watch and slid the door closed behind her. She looked at the game of hypertourney he was playing on the desktop and said, “Well, I’m free of the bastard at last.”

  Martinez looked up at her, his mind still filled with the game’s intricacies of velocities and spacial relationships. “Congratulations,” he said.

  The color was high on Chandra’s cheeks and her eyes burned with fury. She paced back and forth in front of the desk like a tigress whose feeding had arrived half an hour late.

  “I finally asked him!” she proclaimed. “I asked him if he’d get me promoted—and he said he wouldn’t!”

  “I’m sorry,” Martinez said. The words came reluctantly. “Captains can’t promote lieutenants,” he added.

  “This one can,” Chandra said savagely. “You know how those High City officers stick together. All he’d have to do is trade a favor with one of his cousin’s—Fletcher promotes the cousin’s cadet nephew in exchange for me getting my step.”

  Martinez knew that was true enough—Fletcher could have traded a favor with someone. That was how the high-caste Peers kept everything in their small circle.

  “Bastard wants me to stay in my place,” Chandra said fiercely as she paced. “Well, I won’t. I just won’t.”

  “I didn’t understand how you got together with Fletcher in the first place.”

  Chandra stopped pacing. Her eyes glared with contempt into time, gazing at her own past. “I’m the only officer on the ship who wasn’t Fletcher’s choice,” she said. “He had someone else picked for my place but he didn’t get to Harzapid before the war happened. When the squadron shipped out, I got sent aboard. I didn’t know anyone and—” She shrugged. “I tried to make myself agreeable to my captain.” Her mouth drew up in a sneer. “I’d never met anyone like him. I thought he had an interesting mind.” She barked out a laugh. “Interesting mind! He’s as dull as a rusty spoon.”

  They looked at each other for a few brief seconds. Then Chandra took a half step closer to the desk, her fingertips drifting over the black surface, cutting through the holographic display of the hypertourney game.

  “I could really use your help, Gare,” she said.

  “I can’t promote you either. You know that.”

  An intense fire burned in her eyes. “But your relatives can,” she said. “Your father-in-law is on the Fleet Control Board and Michi Chen is his sister. Between the two of them they should be able to work an overdue promotion for a lieutenant.”

  “I’ve told you before,” Martinez said, “I can’t do anything out here.”

  She looked at him levelly. “Someday,” she said, “you’re going to need a friend in the service, and I’m going to be that friend. I’m going to be the best and most loyal friend an officer ever had.”

  Martinez considered that Chandra’s friendship might come at a very high price.

  Though, professionally speaking, he could think of no reason why she shouldn’t be promoted. Other than her erratic and impulsive behavior, of course, and her chaotic love life.

  But how bad was that, really? he asked himself. Compared with some of the captains he’d known, Chandra was practically a paragon.

  Misunderstanding his sile
nce, she leaned forward and took his hand. Her fingers were warm in his palm. The hologram gleamed on her tunic. “Please, Gareth,” she said. “I really need you now.”

  “I’ll speak to Lady Michi,” Martinez said. “I don’t know how much credit I’ve got with her, but I’ll try.”

  “Thank you, Gareth.” She rested her hip on the desk and leaned across to kiss his cheek. Her scent flared in his senses. He stood, and dropped her hand.

  “That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant,” he said.

  She looked at him for a moment out of her long eyes, and her look hardened. She straightened. “As you wish, Captain,” she said, her pointed chin held high. “With the captain’s permission?”

  “You are dismissed,” Martinez said. His mouth was dry.

  She went to the door and slid it open. “I meant what I said,” she said, “about being your friend.”

  Then she was gone, leaving the door open behind her. Lord Shane Coen, Michi’s red-haired signals lieutenant, walked past and cast a curious glance into the room.

  Martinez nodded at him in what he hoped was a brisk, military fashion, then sat down at the desk again and hypertourney.

  It was a while before he could get his mind on the game.

  WHO KILLED THE HOSTAGES?

  The Naxids would have you believe that the deaths of over five hundred hostages are an inevitable result of actions by loyalist forces. But who rounded them up? Who ordered them shot? Who fired their weapons? Whose bullets struck them down?

  The agents of an illegitimate government!

  Sula paused with her stylus poised over her desk. Frustration pounded in her temples. She had the sense that her proper argument was evading her.

  Worse, she could imagine Naxid counterarguments. It wasn’t as if the legitimate government, as embodied by the Shaa who founded the empire, had hesitated to take hostages. The Shaa had held entire planets hostage. And furthermore they hadn’t hesitated to act: cities had been bombarded with antimatter weapons, and on one occasion an entire planet was wiped out in retaliation for the conspiracy of only a few people. The only legitimacy the empire had ever known was the threat of massive force.