Walter Williams - Conventions of War

Afterward she joined Eldey in the vehicle that raced for the city. Overhead, multiple sonic booms announced the arrival of other shuttles that carried elements of Eldey’s support staff and the thousands of personnel that the empire was bringing to the capital.

Bureaucrats to run the government, engineers to keep services going, and executioners to work their will on the vanquished. It was the way Zanshaa had always been governed.

“I wish you had not so much emphasized those people bringing down a government through choice,” Eldey said. “We really can’t have that sort of thing. But otherwise I think you did very well with them.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Sula said dully. Her mind still swam in the surge of emotion that had swept her that afternoon.

He looked at her with his large eyes. “You might have a future as a politician,” he said.

“I don’t have the money.”

“Don’t you?” Eldey said softly. “Well, there are ways.”

If she hadn’t been so exhausted, she might have asked what Eldey had in mind, but she just sat in the vehicle until it drew up to the Commandery, where the governor bade her good-night and continued on to his own residence.

Her sleep that night was an empty blackness filled with roaring, as if she were at the center of a huge, invisible army, all calling her name.

On Sula’s last morning in Zanshaa she reported to Lord Governor Eldey, gave him the passwords for the more critical files, and then formally resigned her command of Zanshaa’s military. She sent Macnamara, Spence, and her new cook, Rizal, ahead to the Wi-hun airstrip, and then had One-Step drive her to the city of the dead where Casimir lay in his stolen tomb.

A bitter wind scattered flakes of snow over the dried, brown blossoms of the flowers the cliquemen had piled on the sepulcher. The monument installed before the tomb projected a three-dimensional holographic image of Casimir, but it lacked the touch of mordant humor and the slight aura of menace that she remembered. The hologram looked more like the pale, cold face she saw on the floor of the hospital morgue.

Sula paused for a moment before the tomb, her hands in the pockets of her greatcoat, and then drew from her pocket theju yao pot. She held it up to the faint light and saw Casimir’s holographic image reflected irregularly in the blue-green crackle of its glaze. A sharp pain pierced her breastbone. How many deaths had the pot survived, she wondered, in the millennia since it had been carried away from Honan just ahead of a Tatar invasion? How many owners had lifted their eyes to the pot and drawn peace and strength from its timeless beauty?

Too many, she thought.

She walked around the memorial to the tomb itself, to the brushed titanium slab that sealed the doorway. Her reflection wavered uncertainly in the cold light. She raised the pot and smashed it against the slab. It crumbled to bits between her fingers. A sob broke from her throat. She stomped the fragments with her feet, and then a weakness flooded her and she leaned against the tomb for support, her head pressed to the cold metal.

You selfish bastard,she thought.You died and left me alone.

The cold metal was a shooting pain against her forehead. She gathered her strength and pushed herself away from the tomb, then began the walk back to the car.

Fragments of the pot crunched beneath her soles.

Everything old is dead,she thought.Everything new begins now.

Lord Eldey kindly offered Sula the use of his private yacht, theSivetta, which he would not be needing for the months he served as governor. Sula understood the historical reference to the grand old Torminel monarch, and Eldey was surprised and pleased that she knew.

On the shuttle from Zanshaa to the yacht, she flew past one of the huge merchant vessels that had brought supplies and personnel to the capital. The cargo ship was a gleaming mirror-bright dome, with the engine module on the far side like the stem of a mushroom. It was far larger than any Fleet warship, with room enough aboard to carry a cargo of ten thousand citizens; and it was only one of half a dozen ships brought to the capital. Clearly, the empire was very serious about keeping hold of Zanshaa now that they’d retaken it.

Sivettawas a beautiful miniature palace, filled with elaborate mosaics of complex, interwoven geometric figures that dazzled and bewildered the eye, and managed to be more dazzling and bewildering the longer Sula looked at them. The crew was Torminel, but since Eldey had Terran aides, there were furniture and acceleration couches suitable for Terrans, and a cook who could assist her own cook, Rizal, in providing food other than raw meat served at blood temperatures. Sula had given Rizal money for food shopping before they’d left Zanshaa, and brought up as well a large collection of wine and spirits donated by the grateful merchants of the High City-an odd gift for someone who didn’t drink, Sula thought, but she supposed she’d spend time entertaining, and so the wine would come in handy.

Not that she expected to spend much time enjoying the yacht’s comforts. She would be enduring long periods of high gee asSivetta caught up withConfidence, which was orbiting the Zanshaa system with the rest of the Orthodox Fleet.

Among the information sent her by Tork’s staff was an order of battle for the Orthodox Fleet. Scanning it, her eye immediately lit on the flagship of Michi Chen’s Cruiser Squadron 9-Illustrious,Captain Lord Gareth Martinez.

At the name, her heart gave a surge.

The last she’d heard of Martinez, he had become Michi Chen’s tactical officer. Now he actually commanded the flagship.

She wondered how many ofIllustrious ‘s people had to die or be captured by the enemy in order to accomplish that. It was how Martinez seemed to get his promotions.

Her own ship,Confidence, was probably the smallest vessel that Tork could have offered her, a frigate with fourteen missile launchers, and it was normally an elcap’s command. Possibly, Tork had hoped she would refuse the appointment as beneath her dignity. If so, he would now be thumping the walls in chagrin.

Confidencewas a part of Light Squadron 17, a formation made up of five Terran frigates and four Torminel light cruisers, all of them commanded by lieutenant captains-which meant that as a full captain, she was now senior officer of the squadron and its commander, so long as Tork made no other dispositions.

Tork, she realized, had decided not to offer a heavy cruiser, normally the province of a captain, but instead given her an entire squadron. This act of unexpected generosity struck her at first as a trap of some kind, though she couldn’t imagine what it would be. Did Tork expect that she’d fail in a squadron command, when she’d been mistress of an entire world? And then it occurred to her that the assignment might simply be an oversight. Tork had a lot on his mind: maybe it had slipped his mind that he’d handed her nine ships.

But on further thought, that didn’t seem likely. A master of detail like Tork would not have made such a mistake.

Maybe Lord Eldey’s support, complete with the loan of his yacht, had made Tork cautious about offending any of her powerful supporters, and therefore made him generous. Or perhaps he’d simply decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Clan Sula was one of the oldest and-at least until recently-most distinguished families of Peers. Maybe Tork assumed that her genes would bring her into line.

She gained a better idea of Tork’s motivations once she contacted her new command. FromSivetta she sent messages to each ship, requesting a full report on their status plus the data on the latest squadron maneuvers.

The ships were in good order and, according to their officers, in an excellent state of training. Sula hadn’t expected the officers to say anything else, and assumed the data from the maneuvers would give her an idea of the real situation.