Walter Williams - Conventions of War

Despite the reinforcements, Tork still declined to launch for Zanshaa. Martinez began to receive hints from Michi Chen-which had apparently originated with her brother-that both the government and the Fleet Control Board had lost patience with Tork and were on the verge of taking action-if, that is, they could make up their minds whether the action would be to replace Tork with Kringan, formerly of the Fourth Fleet and now Tork’s second in command, or simply to order Tork to attack.

Possibly Tork heard these same hints, because he announced that he would move as soon as he had been reinforced by another three frigates from Laredo, ships that were already on their way. By the time that happened, the Naxids had received five ships, and Tork’s advantage in numbers had fallen from twelve to ten.

Tork delayed for another four days after the Laredo frigates arrived-long enough, Martinez observed, for a query to be sent to the Control Board on Antopone, and for the return of an adamantine response. At this point Tork finally committed himself. Orders were sent to his squadron commanders, to individual ships, and to other Fleet elements in other systems.

The Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance kindled its mighty antimatter torches, echeloned its squadrons, took a last high-gee swing around Chijimo, and hurled itself for Chijimo Wormhole 1 and the foe that waited at Zanshaa.

Sula rode the first of several trucks into the High City and took the Ngeni Palace for her headquarters. Maps and equipment were spread out on the dining room table. Portraits of Ngeni ancestors looked down in shock.

In the palace courtyard, screened by trees and shrubbery and statues of more ancestors, the trucks were repainted in Fleet colors. A pair of earth-moving vehicles with huge plow blades and wheels taller than a Terran already waited on their trailers. Members of Sula’s advance team began fitting sheets of improvised plastic armor around the drivers’ compartments.

Shawna Spence and a pair of assistants ripped out the interiors of a pair of cars that she would later pack with explosive. An entire truck bomb, her calculations suggested, would be redundant for the jobs intended-the cars would do perfectly well.

PJ Ngeni wandered around trying to be useful and generally getting in the way.

Elsewhere in the great city, combat teams were assembling. Or so Sula had to hope.

The sun sank slowly into a pool of hemoglobin red, signaling the end of a perfect autumn day. The fragments of the Zanshaa ring glowed in the darkening sky. The scents of the city rose on the still air: uncollected trash, dying flowers, cooking. Sula had her people gather on the terrace behind PJ’s cottage and assemble the mountaineering gear, the long lines laid out in coils, the harnesses and ascendors that would carry people and gear up the cliff face.

Before the escalade began, Sula made a scan in either direction with light-enhancing binoculars. None of the Naxid guards at the Gate of the Exalted seemed interested in anything going on below.

Her sleeve comm gave a chirp. She looked at the display and saw a text message: WANT TO MEET TOMORROW AT THE BAKERY?

The party at the foot of the cliff was ready.

Sula sent a return message-WHAT TIME? — then gave the command to hurl the long ropes over the parapet. Each rope ended in a bundle that included a climbing harness and the end of a safety line that would be belayed by one of the advance team on the terrace.

The reply was: 1301. Which meant that all three ropes had hit the ground without being hung up on snags or brush. Less than three minutes later Sula heard the soft whine of an electric motor, and a few seconds afterward the first head crested the terrace wall. A white grin split the dark face.

“Hi, princess,” Patel said, and two of the advance team rushed forward to take him under the arms and lift him onto the terrace flagstones. His harness was efficiently stripped and sent back down under its own power. Patel loosened the strap of the rifle he’d been carrying and lowered his heavy pack. Sula pointed at the Ngeni Palace.

“Go through the courtyard to the big house. We have some food there.”

“Thanks, princess.”

More electric whines announced the arrival of two more climbers. The high-torque ascendor motors carried them up the rope at a walking pace, which meant the ascent required little skill except for staying in the harness, fending off the cliff with their feet, and hanging onto their gear.

The first group of thirty-nine were all Bogo Boys, an entire action group. Among them was Casimir, who reached for Sula with one hand and gave her a fierce kiss.

“Julien’s with the rear guard,” he said. “I think it’s because he just doesn’t want to come up this cliff.”

“I can see his point,” she said.

Fuel packs on the ascendors were replaced. The next deliveries sent up the static lines were equipment: weapons, ammunition, explosive, and detonators, all the gear they despaired of getting past the chemical sniffers at the foot of the High City’s one access road. Spence and her engineering team hustled the packs of explosive to her stripped vehicles. A chill wind began to float between the spires of the High City, and Sula shivered in her coverall.

Casimir faded into the darkness, then returned a few moments later carrying a long coat that he wrapped around her shoulders.

“From PJ’s closet,” he murmured into her ear.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and kissed him again.

She kept peering into the night with her binoculars, particularly at the Naxid installation at the Gate of the Exalted. She saw lookouts there, but their attention seemed occupied mainly with the traffic far below on the switchback road.

The last of the supplies whined up the static lines, and then the ascendors began delivering Sula’s soldiers once again, the Lord Commander Eshruq Wing of the Secret Army-fighters, mostly Torminel, recruited mainly from the Zanshaa Academy of Design. The undergraduate industrial designers had become ruthless bombers and assassins, perhaps because of their youth and flexibility, or possibly because of their carnivore Torminel heritage. Now they would prove useful on account of their huge night-adapted eyes.

After the Eshruq Wing came another group of Bogo Boys, followed at last by Julien. He required three assistants to haul him, pale and shivering, over the parapet. With trembling hands he lit a cigarette, then shook his head and said, “I’m never getting in one of those harnesses again. Never again.”

“If this goes right,” Sula said, “you won’t have to.”

She made a brief inspection of her army, most of whom were lying on the beds, tables, and carpets of the Ngeni Palace that hadn’t yet been taken to storage. Many were ritually cleaning and readying their weapons. Some were gambling. Sidney sat in an antique hooded armchair, the hood filled with a cloud of hashish smoke. Fer Tuga, the Axtattle sniper, limped from room to room, looking at the fighters in apparent surprise. He had fought all his battles alone till now, and the number of his allies on this mission was a revelation to him.

Sula found PJ in his drawing room, looking far from the stylish Peer. He wore durable baggy trousers with a leather seat, as she’d sometimes see horsemen wear, and a ragged brown pullover. He had two weapons disassembled on the glossy Dwell-period table in front of him, a long hunting rifle with a butt inlaid with ivory and chased with silver, and a small pistol. He was cleaning the weapons with care and great fussiness, and he didn’t look up as she paused in the doorway.

She wanted to tell PJ to leave the guns and get into bed and wait for the war to be over, so he could dress in one of his lovely tailored suits and drift down the road to one of his clubs. She wanted to tell him that he had proved his worth a thousand ways, that dying in a street fight wasn’t going to make Sempronia Martinez love him. She wanted to tell him to head down the funicular to some bar or restaurant in the Lower Town, find some pliable girl, and fuck Sempronia out of his mind.