Walter Williams - Conventions of War

“Lord Captain,” Pan said from the sensor board, “I’m detecting missile flares from the lead enemy ships.”

The Second Battle of Magaria had begun.

Cruiser Squadron 9 was astern of the Supreme Commander’s cruiser division, which was square in the middle of the fleet, and neither would be involved in the fighting for some time yet. Martinez had little to do but watch Sula’s engagement at the head of the long column, and watch it with growing impatience. Apparently the lead squadrons of each fleet were to be allowed to have their battle, and then the next squadrons in line, and the next. Tork had the advantage in numbers, Martinez thought, why didn’t he press the engagement? He should order the entire Orthodox Fleet to close with the enemy all along the line and hammer them till they were nothing but dust glowing on the solar wind.

Apparently this hadn’t occurred to Tork, or if it had, he’d decided against it. Perhaps he was giving the fates every chance to remove Caroline Sula from his life.

Martinez found his blood burning with anger on Sula’s behalf. He told himself that he would have been equally angry if it hadn’t been Sula, that he was outraged at the waste of loyal officers and crew.

In the display, he saw that Sula ordered counterfire to intercept the enemy missiles, and that otherwise she did nothing. He understood her tactics. Past experience showed that long-range skirmishing was unlikely to produce results, and Sula clearly wasn’t about to waste missiles when the odds didn’t favor her.

The Naxids, it appeared, hadn’t learned this lesson, and fired several more salvos before Sula replied with one of her own. Explosions moved closer to Light Squadron 17, providing a radio-opaque cloud behind which other missiles could advance. Fury and frustration raged in Martinez’s veins. He punched the key that would connect him to the Flag Officer Station.

“May I speak with Lady Michi, please?” he asked when Coen answered.

In answer, Michi’s image appeared on his display. “Yes, Lord Captain?”

“Can we prod Tork into some action?” Martinez demanded. “Do we have to let Sula fight on her own?”

She looked at him with impatience. “Bywe you meanme, I suppose. You should have an idea by now of how the Supreme Commander responds to prodding.”

“Ask for permission to engage the enemy more closely.”

Michi’s tone turned frosty. “Not yet, Captain.”

Martinez clenched his teeth. “Yes, my lady,” he said, and ended the transmission.

He gazed at the display with burning anger. Sula was on her own.

Sula watched the Naxid squadron’s latest volley of missiles get blown into perfect spheres of blazing plasma by Squadron 17’s counterfire. She sat in her vac suit on her couch in Command, a gray, featureless, metal-walled space that had replaced the more sumptuous room flashed into ruin by a charge of antiprotons at Harzapid. Her neck itched where she’d applied a med patch-she felt a spasm of fear whenever she saw a carotid injector, and she refused to use them.

Her helmet sat in its mesh bag attached to her couch. She hated the damned helmet and the suffocating sensation she got while wearing it; as the captain, she didn’t have to wear it if she didn’t want to.

She would have preferred not to have worn the vac suit either, but supposed she might need its sanitary arrangements by the end of the day.

“Another salvo incoming, my lady,” said Maitland.

“Track and destroy, Weapons,” Sula said.

“Yes, my lady! Track and destroy!”

Giove’s excited response rang off the metal walls. Sula wished Giove would calm down. She would have preferred a little peace in which to contemplate her options.

Tork had put her here to die, that was clear enough. The rest of the fleet wasn’t maneuvering to her support, and Squadron 17 would engage an enemy of equal force on terms that implied mutual annihilation. The woman called Caroline Sula was intended to have a hero’s death within the next hour or two.

The question that most interested Sula was whether Tork, in his simple way, might not have a point. The first act of her life ended with her wresting an entire planet from the claws of the Naxids and reigning over it as an absolute despot. Whatever any hypothetical second or third acts might contain, they could hardly equal the first.

Perhaps she had overstayed her welcome in the realm of existence. Perhaps the fittest trajectory of her life would be that of a meteor, blazing a brilliant trail in the heavens before annihilation.

She couldn’t construct a rationale that justified her own existence, or that of anyone else either. Existence was too improbable to come supplied with a justification, like a book of instructions supplied with a complicated bit of equipment.

She couldn’t work out why she was alive, and it was therefore difficult to work up a reason why she shouldn’t die.

“Comm,” she said. “Message to Squadron: fire in staggered salvo, fifteen seconds apart.”

On the other hand, she thought, there was her pride to consider. The pride that she had instilled in her well-drilled squadron. The pride that didn’t want her effort, and those of others, to go to waste. The pride that rejoiced in her superiority over the Naxids. The pride that wanted Ghost Tactics to triumph over the enemy. The pride that didn’t want to hand Tork a cheap victory.

Vainglory, she wondered, or Death?

It was pride that won the argument.

“Comm,” she said, “message to Squadron. Starburst Pattern Two. Execute at twelve eleven. Pilot, feed Pattern Two into the nav computer.”

A few minutes later the nav computer cut the engines, and Sula’s heart lifted as the ship swung in zero gravity to its new heading, the first in the sequence of bobs and weaves dictated by Pattern 2’s chaos mathematics.

When Tork’s furious message came, she took her time about answering.

“My lord!” This from Bevins, who was at the sensor station with Pan. “Starburst! Squadron Seventeen has starburst!”

Martinez enlarged the tactical display and saw Sula’s command separating from one another, engines firing at heavy accelerations. A gust of laughter burst from his throat.

Sula was surprising them all. Defying the Supreme Commander and her own sentence of death, and setting the rest of the Orthodox Fleet an example.

Admiration kindled a flame in Martinez’s breast.O Lovely! O Brilliant! Sula’s maneuver made him want to chant poetry.

He sent a text message to Chandra.Why can’t wedo that?

Chandra didn’t reply. Perhaps she was making the argument on her own.

Martinez wasn’t the only one sending messages, becauseIllustrious intercepted a message from Sula to Tork. It was a reply to a message thatIllustrious hadn’t received, since Tork’s message was sent by communications laser to Sula at the van of his fleet, andIllustrious was not in position to intercept the tight beam. But sinceIllustrious was astern of the flagship, it was in a position to catch the reply.

“Confidenceto Flag. Unable to comply.” That was the entire message.

Martinez was helpless with adoration. He was even more delighted whenIllustrious intercepted the answer to Tork’s following message.

“Confidenceto Flag. Unable to comply.” There it wasagain.

His joy faded, and a cold chill ran up Martinez’s spine as he considered what Tork might do next. He could order each individual ship back into place, bypassing Sula altogether-or he could simply order one of Sula’s subordinates to slit her throat and take command.

There was a silence from the Supreme Commander that lasted several minutes. Squadron 17 and the enemy continued to rain missiles at each other. The next squadrons astern had begun to fire as well.