Conventions of War (60 page)

Her mouth pressed into a firm line. Her eyes were stone. “I haven't had the leisure,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” Martinez said. “You seem to have made a wrong choice or two, somewhere in the recent past.”

He saw a shift in her eyes as the blow struck home.

“True,” she said. “I made a bad decision when I first met you, for instance.”

She turned and marched away, heels clicking on the tiles, walking away from him as she had at least twice before; and Martinez felt the tension suddenly drain from him. His knees wavered.

Honors about even, he thought. But she was the one who fled.

Again.

Feeling a need for support, he went to the buffet in order to have something to lean against. There he found Michi gazing at the food without much interest. He offered her his fritter.

“May I order you something to drink, my lady?” he asked.

“I'm trying not to drink,” she said. “Torminel toilets don't agree with me, and it's a long walk back to the airlock and
Daffodil
.”

Martinez could see Sula out of the slant of his eye. She was turned away from him, her back arrow-straight as she spoke to a Lai-own captain.

He bolted his whisky. Michi raised an eyebrow.

“I'll take my chances with the toilets,” he said.

 

“F
ucking imbecile,” Sula told Lord Sori Orghoder. “Next time try following my instructions.”

Lord Sori had grown accustomed to this sort of abuse by now, like the rest of Sula's captains, and his furry Torminel face was resigned.

“Apologies, my lady. I thought I was—”

“You're supposed to be following the hull of a chaotic dynamical system, not driving a runaway tram through a parking lot!”

Lord Sori's face gave a tremor, then subsided. “Yes, my lady.”

Peers, Sula knew, weren't used to be talked to this way. Her savagery had at first stunned them—and then, perhaps because they had no idea of anything better to do, they had obeyed. Sula's talent for invective had produced results. Light Squadron 17, under the lash of her tongue, was becoming proficient in Ghost Tactics.

She would never have dared speak to her army this way. Volunteers could all too easily have walked away. The Peers who commanded her ships were stuck with her, and perhaps they were too wedded to their notions of hierarchy ever to protest a tongue-lashing from a superior.

Sula worked them hard. She called them idiots and dunces. She criticized their ancestors, their education, and their upbringing. She even censored their correspondence—which was, she learned, remarkably dull.

Without her, she decided, they were nothing. A bunch of coddled aristocrats without an idea in their collective head. But she was going to be the making of them.

“We are going to storm the Naxid citadel,” she told them. “And I know we can do it, because I've done it before.”

One of the advantages of not caring about anything, she had decided, was that she could decide to care about any particular thing. She had decided she was going to care about Light Squadron 17. Her command would become immortal in the eyes of the Fleet.

She was particularly vicious at the moment because of her meeting with Martinez the previous evening. She felt the encounter had shown her at her worst. Not because she'd tried to cut him down, which he thoroughly deserved, but because she'd done it out of anger and surprise. She should have slashed Martinez to ribbons coolly and dispassionately, but instead had blurted out a few feeble insults and then run for it.

She had shown that she was vulnerable. She had demonstrated that she, who cared about nothing, still cared about him.

It was her officers who paid for this discovery with their dignity.

“Have some brain food with your dinner,” she told Lord Sori, “and we'll try another experiment, starting at eighteen and one.”

She broke the connection with Sori—and with the other captains who had been watching with properly impassive faces—and then unwebbed herself from her acceleration couch.

“Secure from general quarters,” she said. “Send the crew to their dinner.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Lieutenant Giove.

While Giove made the announcement to the ship's crew, Sula swung forward to put on her shoes, which she'd kicked off and dropped on the deck. The advantage of the Ghost Tactics experiments—radical tactics performed in a shared virtual environment while her actual ships soared innocently in the close formations Tork demanded—was that she didn't need to suit up. She disliked vac suits, the suits' sanitary arrangements, the helmet visors that locked her into a closed, encapsulated, smothering world. In an experiment, she could wear ordinary Fleet coveralls, kick off her shoes, and feel free to try out any outrageous strategem she pleased.

On the simplest level, each ship could simply follow the formula as she had created it, maneuvering within a series of nested fractal patterns that maximized both its defensive and offensive capabilities, and—significantly—moving in a pattern that would seem completely random to any observer.

There were more complex levels to the system, as there would be with anything involving fractals, and these had to do with the designated “center of maneuver,” around which the squadron would be navigating, which could be the flagship, a point in space, or an enemy. Choosing the center of maneuver, Sula suspected, was far more an art than a science.

With all the practice, she thought she was getting very good at her art, and she was beginning to hunger for the day when she could test it against the enemy.

 

M
artinez realized that Sula must have been charming others as she'd charmed him, because Tork announced a change in the fleet's order of battle. Light Squadron 17 was shifted into the van as the lead squadron. In the sort of battle that Tork clearly intended to fight, the van squadron would be the first to engage the enemy, and remain in action until the battle was over or until the squadron had been reduced to radiant debris.

Martinez wondered how exactly Sula made Tork so determined to sacrifice her to the necessities of war. Tork was giving the Naxids every possible chance to kill her along with most of her command.

“For once Tork's had a good idea,” Martinez said aloud as he sat at his desk and reviewed the order, and then was annoyed at himself because he felt the comment lacked conviction.

He looked down at his desk, at the image of Terza holding Young Gareth, which floated at the margins of the display.

At least, he thought, he'd stopped dreaming about Sula. He could give his family that.

 

B
ulletins came almost daily from Terza, charting Young Gareth's progress, and when Terza was busy and no message arrived, Martinez found himself missing the daily contact. He sent letters in return, and a few videos so Young Gareth could hear his voice and practice focusing his eyes on his father.

Another message, less welcome, arrived from his brother Roland. The video opened with a shot of Roland seated importantly in a hooded armchair upholstered in some kind of scaly leather that might have been Naxid skin. He had the Martinez looks, the big jaw, broad shoulders, big hands, and olive skin. He was also wearing the dark red tunic of the lords convocate.

“I have good news,” Roland began.

It seemed to Martinez that Roland was trying too hard not to be smug.

“Whatever vices Lord Oda might have enjoyed in the past,” Roland continued, “they seem not to have affected his fertility. Vipsania's pregnant.”

Martinez's mental wheels spun a bit before they found traction, and it finally dawned that Roland's good news—the
first
bit of good news, presumably—concerned their sister, who had been married to the heir of the high-caste Yoshitoshi clan. There had been a cordial sort of blackmail involved, Martinez recalled, Roland having bought the debts that Lord Oda hoped to conceal from his family.

Not unlike the arm-twisting that had gone into his own marriage. Roland's social wrestling had paid off twice now, with Martinez babies placed, like cuckoos, in the cradles of two of the High City's most prominent clans.

And as the clan heirs, no less.

“I don't know whether you've heard,” Roland said, “but it seems that PJ Ngeni died heroically in the battle for Zanshaa High City. Walpurga is now an eligible widow, and after a decent interval will find a more suitable spouse. Let me know if you encounter any candidates, will you?”

Martinez wished there were some way to engage his formidable sister to Lord Tork. That would kill the Supreme Commander faster than anything else.

“In return for his magnificent hospitality,” Roland continued, “the Convocation has voted to open Chee and Parkhurst to settlement, and under Martinez patronage. So our centuries-long ambition has finally been fulfilled.”

Chee and Parkhurst would be the first planets opened in hundreds of years, and both under Martinez patronage. No one could freeze the Martinez family out of the High City now.

“And of course,” Roland continued, finally getting to the point, “the Convocation voted to co-opt our father into their midst. He declined, with the wish that they'd consider me instead.” He spread his arms, offering a view of his wine-colored tunic. “The Convocation graciously agreed to abide by his wishes. I have volunteered for a committee that will return to Zanshaa ahead of the rest of the Convocation, to make recommendations concerning the organization of the capital. So, soon we may actually be able to communicate without these annoying delays.”

Roland returned his hands to the arms of his chair.

“I trust you will continue to massacre Naxids at your normal rate, and by the time I see you in person you'll have gained more medals and your usual dose of undying fame. I'll send you a message when I arrive in the Zanshaa system.”

The orange end-stamp filled the screen. Martinez blanked it in annoyance.

Roland was up to something, and an early visit to Zanshaa was part of it. Martinez didn't know what his brother's plot entailed, but he had little to do but speculate. Roland might be plotting another marriage, his own perhaps; or scouting the High City for the location of a new Martinez Palace grand enough for the city's newest lord convocate; or working to corner some essential supply coming down from orbit.

He only hoped that he himself was not an essential element in Roland's scheme.

As it turned out, Roland wasn't the only member of his family leaving Laredo. The next video from Terza informed him that she and Young Gareth were leaving to join her father—the location was a military secret, but it was presumably closer to Zanshaa than was Laredo.

“It's time my father saw his grandson,” Terza said. Her expression bore its usual serenity, and at once Martinez felt anxiety begin to gnaw at him. He wondered if Lord Chen had expressed some private disappointment in Young Gareth, and if therefore Terza was rushing the child to her father to reassure him…or, he thought darkly, to confirm his suspicions.

He considered forbidding the journey—he could claim that Lord Chen was too close to a possible Naxid attack—but decided against it.

He was too far away to issue his wife orders, but that was only a part of it. The fact was, the only daughter of Lord Chen outranked the second son of Lord Martinez. Young Gareth was Lord Gareth Chen, not Lord Gareth Martinez the Younger. He was the son of the Chen heir and the presumed Chen heir himself.

In other words, Terza could take the child anywhere she damn well pleased, and he had very little to say about it.

Martinez sent Terza a letter in which he wondered whether it was completely safe for her to make the journey, but otherwise made no protest. He bade her to give Lord Chen his very warmest regards.

He dared say nothing else.

 

F
rom her position in the middle of the van squadron, Sula half drowsed through one of Tork's maneuvers. After the intricacies and complexities of Ghost Tactics, Tork's standard exercises were a dreary trudge toward slumberland.

“Enemy missile flares,” said Warrant Officer Maitland from the sensor station. “Flares across the board. Forty—sixty—nearly seventy, my lady.”

The languor in Maitland's drawling voice as he announced the launch of a host of enemy missiles aimed at the squadron showed that he too was merely going through the motions.

“Comm,” Sula said. “Each ship will fire one battery counterfire. Weapons”—to Giove at the weapons station—“this is a drill. Engage the enemy barrage with Battery Two.”

“This is a drill, my lady,” Giove reported. “Tubes eight through thirteen have fired. We have a failure to launch from tube thirteen. Missile is running hot in the tube.”

Lady Rebecca Giove—short, dark, and kinetic—was incapable of sounding bored by anything. Her sharp voice had a clear ring of urgency even when she was making the most routine report.

“Weaponers to clear the faulty missile,” Sula said.

“Weaponers to clear the faulty missile, my lady.”

Sula could only imagine what the scene would be like in real life—seventy enemy missiles racing for the squadron, each with its antihydrogen warhead ready to rip apart the fabric of matter, the countermissiles lashing out, the faulty missile flooding the missile bay with heat and energetic neutrons, on the verge of destroying the ship, tension tautening the nerves, the scent of rising panic in her vac suit…

Nothing like that here.
Confidence
was following a script that had been written ahead of time by Tork's staff. The faulty missile had been planned from the beginning, to give the weaponers practice at clearing a missile from the tube.

Sula sat in her vac suit and recited the lines that the script more or less demanded. She left her helmet off so she didn't have to feel closed-in. Counterbattery fire destroyed most of the enemy missiles, and point-defense lasers got the rest. Weaponers operating damage-control robots cleared the defective missile from the tube. Light Squadron 17 launched its own attack, which was duly parried by the approaching—and virtual—enemy.