The Praxis

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Lieutenant Ondakaal,” the Naxid officer said by way of introduction. “Fleet Commander Fanaghee requires me to go aboard your vessel and conduct an inspection.”

  The words came with remarkable clarity over Alikhan’s sleeve comm rig.

  “Does the lord lieutenant have a signed order?” Alikhan asked.

  “That is hardly necessary.” Arrogance dripped like acid from Ondakaal’s words. “My orders come direct from the Fleet Commander herself.”

  “I beg the lord lieutenant’s pardon,” Alikhan said, “but you aren’t the Fleet Commander, and you’re not in our chain of command. Can you give me a written order that I can show to the officer of the watch?”

  Ondakaal’s head bobbed as he scanned Alikhan’s sleeve for badges of rank, and he saw the red hashmarks of seniority and the badge of the master weaponer. “Very well, Master Weaponer,” he said. “If you insist.”

  He opened his tunic and produced a letter, which he handed to Alikhan. “As you can see,” he said, demanding arrogance again in his tone, “the fleetcom’s seal is upon the letter.”

  “Indeed, my lord,” Alikhan said. “Please wait here with your party while I show this to the officer of the watch.”

  Alikhan stepped back and opened the airlock before Ondakaal or his group could react. Martinez could see the Naxids quiver with the impulse to hurl themselves at the open door, but Alikhan slid it shut quickly, and the moment passed.

  “Shall I open the letter, my lord?” Alikhan’s voice seemed a little breathless, as if he’d run a long distance rather than just a few steps.

  “Yes, by all means.”

  Martinez scanned displays and didn’t see a single Daimong ship resisting the Naxid boarders. The entire heavy squadron had fallen to the Naxids without a shot.

  Through the camera above the airlock door he could see Ondakaal talking to Dietrich and Hong. Martinez told the display to give him audio as well as video.

  “You can see it for yourself!” Ondakaal had grown angry. “Perigee is letting the inspectors aboard. You may as well stand aside and let us come aboard.”

  “I’m afraid not, my lord.”

  Martinez wanted to cheer, not at Dietrich’s words but at his upright, broad-shouldered stance, betraying no apology or any suggestion that he would cave to the Naxid’s demands.

  “I have very strict orders not to let anyone board without the permission of the officer of the watch,” Dietrich explained.

  “You are defying the orders of the Fleet Commander!” Ondakaal said. He brandished an arm, pointing to one side. “You see for yourself that Steadfast is letting the special inspectors aboard!”

  Over another channel, Alikhan was reading the contents of Fanaghee’s order. It seemed genuine enough.

  “No need for that,” Martinez told Alikhan. “Stand by for Buena Vista.”

  Ondakaal was continuing to hector the guards. Martinez decided he’d better rescue Dietrich and Hong before they were overwhelmed, and he pressed the audio button.

  “What is going on out there?” he demanded. “Who the fuck are you, Lieutenant, and why the fuck are you harassing my people?”

  At the tone of command, Ondakaal automatically braced into a respectful pose. “I am Lieutenant Ondakaal, my lord,” he said. “I am required by Senior Fleet Commander Fanaghee—”

  “Can you tell me what’s going on?” Martinez continued. “Communications have been completely scrambled. I can’t even get a ground line out!”

  “My lord, I’m unaware of—”

  “The only message I’ve got,” Martinez interrupted, “was ‘Prepare for Buena Vista.’ Can you tell me what that means, ‘Prepare for Buena Vista’?”

  Ondakaal’s surprise and uncertainty kept him from observing the electric glance that passed between Hong and Dietrich, the subtle shifts in their stance as they understood his words and prepared to jump backward for the airlock.

  “My lord, I’m afraid I don’t know what those words mean,” Ondakaal said. “But if you’ll let our inspectors aboard, I’ll—”

  “Buena Vista!” Martinez shouted. “Buena Vista!” And then, over the comm, he heard Alikhan’s voice shouting the words as well.

  Dietrich and Hong leaped backward, out of frame. Ondakaal realized what was happening, but too late: he made a lunge forward, followed in an instant by the warrant officers behind him, but apparently Alikhan got the airlock door shut in time, because Ondakaal soon appeared in the camera frame again, and without the two Terran constables.

  Martinez decided to take the offensive. If he kept Ondakaal busy, he might keep the Naxid from doing anything effective.

  “What the hell was that about?” he demanded. “Explain yourself, Lieutenant!”

  Martinez was suddenly aware that he was enjoying himself. For once, he wasn’t the provincial in the world of the privileged and self-important, or the junior lieutenant deferring to his superiors. He was playing a part, true, but it wasn’t a part dictated to him by his seniors, it was one he was inventing for himself. He was the only person within a hundred light-years who knew what was going on, and he was playing Ondakaal for a fool.

  And while Ondakaal was blustering about the guards’ abrupt withdrawal, Martinez dropped the volume on his outside comm and raised the one on his private channel with Alikhan.

  “Alikhan, where are you? Is everyone safe?”

  “We are safe, my lord, all three of us. We’ve shut both lock doors and we’re coming down the docking tube elevator.”

  “Very good. Once you’re aboard, seal Corona’s own airlock. Dietrich and Hong are to surrender their firearms to you, unrig the central trunk elevator, then report to their action stations. You are to collect the firearms, then perform the special task I assigned you earlier.”

  Safebreaking in the first lieutenant’s quarters. A task the nature of which he’d decided should probably not be spoken aloud, not yet.

  “Very good, my lord,” Alikhan said.

  Martinez turned to Mabumba, who was watching him with awe and surmise, a combination that triggered in Martinez a pleasurable surge of vanity.

  “Engines,” he said, “resume countdown.”

  Mabumba gave a start on being addressed, then turned to his console. “Countdown resumed,” he said.

  Martinez turned to Pilot Second Class Eruken. “Prepare to depressurize and retract the docking tube as soon as Corona’s airlock is shut.”

  Eruken busied himself at his console. “Preparing to depressurize and retract docking tube.”

  Martinez raised the volume on the outside comm in time to hear Ondakaal again invoke the authority of the Fleet Commander and demand to be let aboard.

  “Lord Lieutenant!” Martinez said. “Explain yourself! Why are you trying to break into Corona’s airlock!”

  “You withdrew your guards!” Ondakaal shouted “What is this treachery?”

  “Air and water connections withdrawn,” Mabumba reported in a hushed voice, pitched so Ondakaal couldn’t overhear. “Outside vents sealed.”

  “I withdrew my guards because of your threatening and abusive behavior,” Martinez said to Ondakaal. “I shall report this to your superior.”

  “Fleet Commander Fanaghee has ordered an inspection of your ship,” Ondakaal said.

  “Nonsense!” Martinez said. “I’ve heard of no inspection.”

  “It’s a surprise inspection,” Ondakaal said. “As I was trying to explain this to your master weaponer—”

  “Outside airlock door closed,” Eruken said in a near whisper, imitation of Mabumba’s hushed tones. Martinez put his hand over his microphone to keep Ondakaal from overhearing.

  “Depressurize and withdraw boarding tube. Warn crew to secure for zero gravity.”

  “Yes, Lord Lieutenant.”

  “All maneuvering thrusters gimbaled,” Mabumba said. “Pressure at thruster heads nominal.” A warning blast sounded, shrill and sudden, then faded. “Zero gravity warning sounded.”

  “If your master w
eaponer has shown you the fleetcom’s order…” Ondakaal was continuing.

  Martinez took his hand from his microphone. “Master Alikhan is bringing the order now,” he told him. “Once I read it, I’m sure there will be no difficulty. Please stand by.”

  Ondakaal fell silent, his arms hanging at his sides in an expression of baffled defeat. He had decided to trust that the order from Fanaghee would pry open Corona’s airlock, but his posture suggested he doubted that the order would work its magic.

  “Boarding tube withdrawn,” Eruken reported. “Ship is on one hundred percent internal power. Electrical connections withdrawn. Outside connectors sealed.”

  Martinez looked at his own displays. The Daimong ships now had Naxid guards on their airlocks, the Daimong guards withdrawn or under arrest. The displays could tell him nothing now that he didn’t already know.

  He began reconfiguring his displays for engine start and maneuver.

  “Data connectors withdrawn,” Eruken said. “Outside data ports sealed.”

  Martinez saw Ondakaal start, then he began an urgent communication with his sleeve display. Martinez couldn’t quite hear the exchange. Then Ondakaal looked up in surprise at the camera above the airlock.

  “You have withdrawn air and water connections to your ship!” he said. “What does this mean?”

  Martinez permitted himself a tight smile. “I am sealing myself from the station,” he said, “until certain things are explained.”

  “You are not authorized!” Ondakaal raged. “You must open your airlock to our inspectors!”

  “Please tell me,” Martinez said, “why you want to bring armed personnel onto my ship. You don’t need guns for an inspection, Lieutenant.”

  “This is by order of the Fleet Commander! You are not to question her orders!”

  “Main engines gimbaled,” Mabumba said. “Gimbal test successful.” Then, “Holding at ten seconds.”

  “Launch,” Martinez said.

  “Launch?” demanded Ondakaal. “What do you mean launch?”

  Martinez cut the Naxid off.

  “Engines ready to fire on command,” said Mabumba.

  “Clamps withdrawn,” Eruken said. “Magnetic grapples released.”

  Corona was berthed nose-in to the outer rim of Magaria’s outer accelerator ring, which was rotating at nine times the speed of the planet below. The rotation of the ring supplied the centrifugal force that provided gravity to the ship. In order to unberth, the ship didn’t need to fire maneuvering thrusters, it merely had to ungrapple and allow the release of centripetal force to hurl the frigate into space.

  Which meant that the ship’s apparent gravity was gone. Martinez’s first indication that Corona was clear of the station was the fact that he began to float free of his couch and discovered that he’d ignored his own zero-gee warning and failed to strap himself in. He busied himself with his harness.

  The gimbaled acceleration cages creaked slightly as the weight came off them. “Clear of the ring,” Eruken reported. “Clear of Perigee.” The berths were staggered slightly so that Corona wouldn’t be swatted out of the sky by the tail of the next ship moored to the ring, but still it was always a relief to know that the danger was past.

  “Pilot, zero our momentum,” Martinez said. He didn’t want Corona to keep floating out into space, where it would make a perfect slow-moving target. He presumed that the Naxids wouldn’t fire their antimatter missiles, since an antimatter warhead exploding on top of Corona would vaporize not only the target, but the dockyards, all the moored warships, and a chunk of the accelerator ring. But the point-defense lasers carried by the warships could be used offensively against Corona, and so could the antiproton beams carried by some of the larger ships. Though the lasers probably weren’t powerful enough to kill the frigate, Martinez wasn’t as confident about the antiproton beams, and any kind of damage might be fatal to his plans.

  Defense against the antiproton beams was the strong magnetic field used in any case by Corona to repel radiation. Martinez ordered it turned on, not that it would help against a point-blank strike from one of the enemy beams.

  He felt himself nudge gently against his restraining straps, then float free again. Eruken had killed Corona’s residual momentum, and the frigate was now hovering with the ring rotating ahead of its nose.

  “Pilot, maneuvering thrusters,” he said. “Take us directly south of the ring.”

  Again that nudge against the straps. “Maneuvering due south, my lord.”

  Martinez pressed keypads. “Navigation,” he said, “I’m sending you a course plot for Wormhole Four. Please load it into your computers.”

  “Ah—yes, my lord.” Diem was looking at his displays a little wild-eyed, and Martinez remembered that he was only a trainee and hadn’t yet certified for Navigator/Second.

  With himself, that made two inexperienced navigators in Command, Martinez realized. Not a good thing under the circumstances.

  Vonderheydte’s voice came from behind Martinez, and Martinez jumped: he’d forgotten someone was back there.

  “I’m hearing complaints from the captain’s cook, my lord,” Vonderheydte said. “Low gravity’s making a wreck out of his dinner. He says his sauce anglais is on the ceiling now.”

  “Comm, tell the cook to batten everything down and get to an acceleration couch. We’re going to be pulling some gees.” He turned to Eruken. “Pilot, signal crew to secure for hard acceleration.”

  Ear-blasting alarms whooped out, wailing up and down the scale. Personnel had been killed for not getting into their acceleration couches in time, and Martinez wanted to give them as much warning as possible.

  The alarm faded, leaving a gaping silence in its wake. Diem was looking over the navigation plot with what seemed growing desperation, while Eruken gazed at his controls and gnawed his lip. Mabumba cast a glance over his shoulder at Martinez, and his gaze seemed to center on the pistol that lay near-weightless against his thigh.

  None of them, Martinez realized, knew what was going on. Nor did anyone else on the ship.

  “Comm: general announcement,” he said, and when he spoke again he heard his own voice echo back to him from the ship’s public address system.

  “This is Lieutenant Martinez in Command,” he said. “I regret to tell you that a few minutes ago there was a mutiny on Magaria’s ring. The mutineers took advantage of the absence of so many of the officers and crews on the Festival of Sport, and they boarded and seized most of the ships on the station.” Martinez licked his lips. “Probably all ships, aside from our own. It is now our duty to take Corona to Zanshaa in order to alert the Fleet and the government to the danger presented by the mutiny, and to aid the Fleet in recapturing the lost ships.”

  Well, Martinez thought, that took care of the facts. But somehow he felt the deep inadequacy of his words. A really great leader, he thought, would make an inspiring speech at this point, would fire the crew to their utmost exertions and win their undying loyalty through the eloquence of his words. He wondered if he, Gareth Martinez, could ever be such a leader.

  What the hell, he thought. It seemed worth finding out.

  “One further thought,” he said. “Because the rebels have seized control of Magaria’s ring, they are now in a position to bring overwhelming power onto the planet below. We must therefore consider that Captain Tarafah and the rest of the crew are lost, and can only hope that their captors will treat them decently…”

  Well, this is cheerful, he thought in the deep silence that followed. He had better strew a bit of hope in the crew’s path before they all committed suicide or vowed to join the mutineers.

  “There are only a few of us left on the ship,” Martinez said. “We are going into extreme danger. We’re going to have to stand extra watches and work extra hard for the long days it will take us to get to Zanshaa, but I want you to understand that the captain and the other captives will be cheering for us to succeed. Because we’re the Corona’s team now—we’re the Coronas.
And it’s up to us to play hard and score the winning goal. End transmission.”

  He wanted to cringe into his seat as he brought the transmission to an end, and he felt his skin flush with mortification. Whatever had possessed him to end with that ghastly sports metaphor? This wasn’t eloquence, this was some kind of hideous, hackneyed cant that deserved nothing from the crouchbacks but derision. He should have made his announcement about the rebellion and then just shut up.

  But as he looked around the control room, he saw that it seemed to have gone all right. Mabumba was looking at his displays with what seemed genuine resolve instead of casting covert glances at Martinez’s gun. Eruken had straightened in his chair and was holding the thruster controls with determination. Even Tracy and Clarke—who had little to do, really, but gaze at their radar plots—seemed more intent on their work, and Kelly, who as weapons officer had even less to do, looked positively cheerful.

  Only Diem was unhappy, but then, Diem was probably transfixed by horror at the navigation plot Martinez had given him and hadn’t heard a word.

  Perhaps the crew had lower standards for oratory than the Master of Rhetoric at Martinez’s old academy.

  His sleeve display chimed and he answered.

  “Alikhan, my lord. I’ve completed that little errand you sent me on.”

  The display didn’t show Alikhan’s face, but instead the gaping front of Koslowski’s safe, with the door removed.

  “Yes, Alikhan?” Martinez said.

  “Nothing, my lord. Negative.”

  Panic began to stroke Martinez’s nerves with feathery fingers. The Fleet had wisely made it impossible for a junior lieutenant such as himself to discharge Corona’s awesome weaponry on his own initiative. The captain and each of the lieutenants carried keys with codes to unlock the frigate’s weapons, but no less than three of the four keys had to be turned at the same moment in order for the weapons to be fired.

  Even the defensive weapons, the point-defense lasers, were useless without the three keys. And the odds were, the Naxid ships were going to be firing at him very soon.

  “Have you checked everywhere else?” Martinez asked. “The drawers? Under the mattress?”