Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  Light Squadron 14 under Squadron Commander Altasz, which had been on a raid similar to that of Chenforce, arrived three days after Chenforce was broken up. Martinez had once commanded the squadron, and he looked at his old command on the tactical display with a mixture of nostalgia and resignation. None of the old crews were aboard, none of those with whom he’d shared danger from Magaria to Hone-bar. The ships were old friends, but the crew in them were strangers.

  Michi wanted to know how Squadron 14 had avoided danger from relativistic Naxid missiles, and queried Altasz in private. Altasz replied that he’d simply blown up every single relay station he’d come across.

  “Tork will get another chance to use the word ‘pirate,’” Michi predicted, and later found out that her forecast came true.

  Routine in Tork’s command wasn’t all drill and discipline. There was a great deal of visiting back and forth among the officers, and a round of dinners, parties, and receptions. As new-minted ships joined, old acquaintances arrived or sent their greetings. Lady Elissa Dalkeith, Martinez’s first officer on Corona, invited him to a handsome dinner on her new frigate Courage. Small, blond Vonderheydte, who Martinez had promoted to Lieutenant on Corona’s flight from Magaria, invited him to a dinner in the wardroom of his cruiser, where Corona’s escape was recounted in detail to a fascinated group of officers. Ari Abacha arrived aboard Illustrious to drink a bottle of Chen wine and complain languidly about the amount of work he had to do as second officer of the Gallant. Dour Master Engineer Maheshwari, his flamboyant mustachios still dyed a highly industrial shade of red, sent respectful greetings and congratulations from Engine Control of his new frigate. Squadron Commander Do-faq, who had won the Battle of Hone-bar by following Martinez’s advice, made him guest of honor at a large reception, and there he met Cadet Kelly, with whom Martinez had shared a carnal romp after they had narrowly escaped annihilation at the hands of the Naxids, and who stood out of the crowd, with her broad grin blazing.

  A letter or video from Terza arrived almost every day. Martinez watched the growing pregnancy with a mixture of awe, desire, and frustration.

  One video showed his portrait, which his proud father had printed and set in the foyer of the palace.

  There was no word or sign of Caroline Sula. Martinez wondered where she was.

  The rounds of social contact made it easier for him to promote his tactical system in casual settings. There were hundreds of officers in the Orthodox Fleet who had never seen battle, some of them of senior rank, and most were eager to hear from those who had. Martinez refought Hone-bar and Protipanu dozens of times at dinners and receptions, and always made a point of mentioning the tactical lessons learned. He was describing the mathematics of the new system to a newly arrived captain from Harzapid, a self-important man with ginger whiskers, and found that the man understood him.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “The convex hull of a dynamical system. That’s the Foote Formula.”

  Martinez raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”

  “The Foote Formula—the system developed by one of the bright young lads assigned to the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid, Lord Jeremy Foote. He was promoting the system among his friends when he was still on his way to the Fourth Fleet from Zanshaa, and once he arrived, he acquainted everyone he could. He’s made quite a number of converts among the younger officers. A pity Lord Tork isn’t keen on it.”

  Martinez couldn’t believe his ears. He remembered Foote well, a big, blond cadet with all the drawling arrogance of the elite Peerage, a man who, despite his inferior military rank, did his best to make him feel his social inferiority at every meeting.

  “Do you really think Lord Jeremy understands the math?” he said.

  The captain seemed surprised. “He devised it, didn’t he?”

  “Well, no actually.” Resentment simmered beneath Martinez’s words. “When I was working out the system, I consulted with other officers, among them Lady Sula—the hero of Magaria, if you remember.”

  The captain was trying to follow this. “You consulted with Lord Jeremy then?”

  “No.” Martinez felt an angry smile draw itself across his face. “Lord Jeremy was the censor aboard Lady Sula’s ship. He had a complete record of the correspondence, and apparently he’s been passing it off as the Foote Formula among his friends at the Fourth Fleet.”

  The captain processed this, then turned stern. “Surely not,” he said stoutly. “I knew Lord Jeremy’s father—a worthy heir to the most impeccable ancestors. I can’t imagine anyone in the family doing such a thing.”

  Martinez felt his savage grin return. “I’ll be sure to ask him when I see him.”

  He was able to do so ten days later, at a reception for the officers of the newly arrived Splendid. The cruiser was aptly named, being one of the flying palaces of the old Fourth Fleet, heavily damaged on the day of the mutiny but now repaired and returned to duty, and with Foote among its junior officers.

  Martinez waited until late in the reception, when Sub-Lieutenant Foote was relaxed and talking to a group of his cronies, and then approached. Since the reception was formal and Martinez was carrying the Golden Orb, Foote and his friend were compelled to brace in salute.

  “Foote!” Martinez cried with pleasure. “How long has it been?” He transferred the Orb to his left hand and held out his right. Foote, taken aback, took his hand.

  “Very pleased to see you, Captain,” he said. He tried to withdraw his hand, and Martinez clamped hard and stepped close.

  Yes, it was the same Foote. Large and handsome, with a blond cowlick on the right side of his head and an expression of arrogant disdain that had probably settled onto his face in the cradle.

  “Everyone has been telling me about the Foote Formula!” Martinez said. “You absolutely must explain it to me!”

  Foote’s heavy face flushed. Again he tried to withdraw his hand, and again Martinez held him close.

  “I never called it that,” he said.

  “You’re too modest!” Martinez said. He turned to the other officers, the young high-caste Peers whom Foote counted among his equals.

  “Lord Jeremy,” he said, “you absolutely must explain to your friends where you first encountered the formula!”

  Martinez saw rapid calculation reflected in the pale eyes, and then Foote drew himself up to his considerable height. When he spoke, there was light amusement in his drawl.

  “I encountered the formula, of course,” he said, “when I had the duty of censoring Lady Sula’s correspondence with you, my lord. I was struck by the formula’s adroitness in coping with the tactical problems revealed by the Battle of Magaria, and I decided to show it to as many officers as I could.”

  Martinez had to give Foote credit for finding the most graceful way out of his situation. Foote had realized that claiming authorship of the formula would only lead to his humiliation; instead he claimed only the role of popularizer.

  Martinez gave a broad grin. “You know,” he said, still grinning, still pumping Foote’s hand, “you should have mentioned the real authors of the formula. It would have been more thoughtful.”

  Foote’s reply was smooth. “I would have,” he said, “if I’d known for certain who the authors were. I knew that you were involved, and Lady Sula, but the correspondence indicated that other officers had contributed, and I didn’t know their names. And besides…” He glanced over his shoulder, as if in fear of being overheard. “…I recognized the controversial nature of the work. Anyone whose name was associated with the formula was bound to get on the wrong side of certain senior officers.”

  “How considerate of you to leave my name out of it!” Martinez exclaimed, with what he hoped was an expression of transparently false bonhomie. “But you needn’t in the future—I’m sure you couldn’t change Lord Tork’s opinion of me in the least.”

  Foote only lifted one supercilious eyebrow. Martinez turned to look at Foote’s companions, who were watching the two with expressions ranging from wariness to thou
ghtful surprise.

  “I won’t keep you from your friends any longer,” he said, and released Foote’s hand. Foote flexed the hand and massaged it with the other. Martinez looked from one face to the next.

  “Take care with your formulas, now,” he said, “or you may find Foote giving them to all sorts of people.”

  Then, with another smile and a wave of the Orb, he turned and walked away.

  Given the wide social rounds of the officers, he knew that their exchange would circulate throughout the Orthodox Fleet in days.

  Revenge might at best be a petty emotion, he thought, but at times it was a strangely satisfying one. And in something called the Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance, it seemed to have the blessing of higher authority.

  The funicular creaked as the strain came on its cable, and Sula’s seat swayed on its gimbals. As the train rose, it passed between the gun emplacements—turrets of heavy, near-impenetrable plastic—that had been placed on the terraces on either side of the terminus. The barrels of antiproton guns thrust from the turrets, ready to turn any attacker into a scattering of subatomic particles.

  Sula left the car at the upper terminus and stepped out onto the flagstone terrace. A blast of wind scoured her face. One of the turrets squatted, featureless and ugly, on the terrace before her. It was barely large enough to contain the gun, its crew, and the rotating mechanism. Stubby little ventilators protruded from the top, along with periscopes and antennae. There was a low Naxid-sized door in the back, and it was closed.

  Naxid guards dashed about, legs churning, or stood in the lee of the turret, sheltering from the wind. Sula pretended to adjust her long scarf, then took her shopping bag and headed into the city.

  Satchel charges, she thought. Deliver enough kinetic energy to the turrets and anything inside was going to get scrambled whether the turrets were breached or not. Unfortunately, the sensitive antiproton ammunition might get scrambled as well, and the result would be an explosion that…well, whatever else it might do, it would at least solve her problem.

  Still, it would be nice if they could use those guns.

  She wondered when the gun crews got their meals. Surely the doors would open then.

  But even if the antiproton guns were disabled or captured, there was no practical way to get a large force up that slope. It was too steep, and her people could climb only slowly and be exhausted by the time they arrived. Plus, any defenders at the upper terminal of the funicular could hold off an army with small arms.

  Any large force would have to come up the switchback road on the other side of the acropolis, a route that had its own problems, not the least being that it would be under fire every step of the way.

  These calculations spun through her mind as she walked across the High City, emerging by the Gate of the Exalted, marked by the two pillars where the switchback road entered the plateau, a place guarded by another pair of antiproton guns in turrets. Looking to the other side, she recognized the large barrel-vaulted edifice of the Ngeni Palace, with the terrace behind and the banyan that overshadowed PJ’s cottage.

  From PJ’s, she thought, she might be able to view the defenses, see when the guard changed and when meals arrived.

  Besides, she was freezing.

  PJ brightened when she arrived on his doorstep, and he offered her tea and soup.

  “I wish I could contribute more,” he said as he watched her eat. “I’m not giving you much information these days. My clubs are almost empty—more servants than members. Everyone who could leave has gone.”

  “You’re still very well placed here,” Sula said. “Any information you provide is valuable.” Her attempts to boost PJ’s morale had become so standardized that she could practically recite the lines in her sleep. “I’m counting on you,” she added, “to stay in the High City and keep your ear to the ground.”

  “I’m a good shot,” PJ said hopefully. “I could move into the Lower Town and become an assassin.”

  Sula mopped the last of her soup with her bread. The soup was flavored with lemon and saffron both, an unusual but in this case successful combination.

  “You’re useful here,” she said.

  “For what?” PJ said darkly. “You can buy soup in a restaurant.”

  “You have binoculars, I assume.”

  “Yes. Naturally.”

  “I want you to keep an eye on those antiproton guns at the Gate of the Exalted. Check regularly. Find out when the crews are changed, when they’re fed. When the doors in the turrets are open or closed.”

  PJ’s look was intense. “You’re thinking of attacking them?”

  “I’m thinking I’d like to have a pair of antiproton guns, yes. Or at least the ammunition.”

  Her action team had been trained on the weapons, and the stay-behind force under Fleetcom Eshruq had some in inventory, but Sula hadn’t known where, and presumably they’d been captured by the Naxids.

  Perhaps the four guns on the High City were the ones that the secret government had once owned. It was only right to take them back.

  “Oh, PJ, another thing,” Sula said. “You don’t happen to know any expert mountaineers, do you?”

  PJ’s first report was astoundingly detailed. It seemed to Sula that he must have been checking the batteries every half hour, and stayed up all night to make observations. He’d caught the shift changes, mealtimes, the number of guards, the number of officers, and the type of transport that moved them to and from their barracks.

  Sula had begun visiting the High City regularly to observe the two turrets overlooking the funicular, but her data only confirmed PJ’s, and in the end she saved herself the commute and assumed the two gun batteries were on the same schedule.

  When the cold wind finally spent its last strength howling around the eaves of the High City, she found the answer to the question of when the turret doors were opened—in good weather. The turrets were small and cramped, and the crews much preferred being out of doors, at least when an autumn wind wasn’t blustering around the gray granite battlements of the acropolis.

  “So we set the attack on a nice day,” Sula said at a planning meeting. “All we need is to glance at the long-range forecast.”

  “We can probably manage that, princess,” said Patel with an easy smile. “It’s climbing that damned rock I’m worried about.”

  They were holding the meeting in Patel’s hotel suite, sitting around an elegant chrome-rimmed table that seemed strangely at home with the fussy laquered cabinets, the collected bric-a-brac, and the bright bouquets of fragrant flowers. The room, with its oddities and perfumes, appeared to be a perfectly suitable environment for a man who had offered to fight for love.

  “I wish we could rehearse the climb somehow,” Julien said. “We’ve not only got to get ourselves up that cliff, but our gear.” He gave a tight, uncomfortable grin. “And I don’t much like heights.”

  It was clear that no frontal assault on the acropolis could possibly succeed. The positions that controlled the two gateways to the High City—the funicular and the switchback road—could only be taken from behind, and that meant first sneaking a force onto the acropolis.

  Getting an army up the cliff was a task that would have been impossible in peacetime, when the long granite bulk of the High City was illuminated by brilliant floodlights that would have pinned any climber to the cliff. After the destruction of the ring, the electricity shortage had turned the floodlights off. Even most of the streetlights on the High City were dark, so the area was full of shadows.

  The Ngeni Palace was very large, enough to hide two entire action groups until it was time for them to move out.

  “We can have them practice on a real cliff,” Macnamara suggested. “Take them out to the country and send them up an escarpment.”

  Julien looked at him in something like shock. He was a city boy, and the very idea of countryside was alien to him.

  “Can’t we do it in town somewhere?” he said. “Climb a building or something?”


  Sula smiled “That might attract attention.” She looked up at Macnamara. “You’ll work out the training schedule for the trips to the country and the climbs. I want everyone to ascend at least twice.”

  Julien was dismayed. “Won’t there be snakes and things?” he asked.

  Casimir grinned at him. “Yes. Big nasty poison ones too.”

  Macnamara sniffed and made a note on his datapad. He had never learned to like the cliquemen, and he wasn’t able to hide it. The Bogo Boys responded with a good-natured condescension that suggested they were hated by a lot more interesting people than Macnamara.

  Sula took a sip of her sparkling water and looked at her agenda. “My worry is security,” she said. “This is a big operation. Any leaks and most of us die.”

  “Keep the inner circle small,” Casimir said. “Only a few of us should know the actual objective.”

  Spence tapped cigarette ash into one of Patel’s elegant ashtrays—hanging around cliquemen, along with a delivery job that delivered tobacco in large quantities, had taught her to smoke.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “What we should do is hide one big operation under another big operation. We tell them to prepare for one thing, and then—on the day—they all get new orders.”

  Sula looked at her in surprise. “What’s bigger than taking the High City?”

  “Attacking Wi-hun,” Spence suggested, naming the airfield the Naxids used as a base for their shuttlecraft. “That might draw security forces out into the countryside.”

  “No,” Casimir said. “We tell everyone we’re taking the prisons and liberating all the hostages.”

  Sula looked at him in admiration. “Very nice,” she said. “Storming the prisons will require a lot of the same skills as storming the High City, so we can explain any training exercises. And we’ll put a watch on the prisons, have people take notes about the number of guards, shift changes, and so on, so that if the Naxids find out about it, the data will seem to support the cover story.”