Walter Williams - Conventions of War

“I…forgive you,” he said.

He took a step toward her, but she had already turned and was walking away, heading for the next companion. Martinez followed.

At the bottom of the stair her orderly waited, properly braced. The airlock door was only a few paces away. The words that were on the verge of spilling from Martinez’s tongue dried up.

Sula turned and held out her hand. “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “I’ll see you again.”

He took her hand. It was small and elegant and warm in his ungainly paw. Her musky perfume caressed his senses, and his nerves leaped with the impulse to kiss her.

“Sleep well, my lady,” he said.

And dream of me…

That night Sula dreamed of nothing but the dead. She woke after a few hours with a scream bottled in her throat, and knew that she didn’t dare rest again.

She used her captain’s key to openConfidence ‘s databanks and edited out all references to the blood pressure spike that had shut down the engines during the Naxas battle. Instead she blamed the engine trip on a power spike in a transformer, a spike caused by radiation from a near miss. The transformer was scheduled to be replaced anyway.

There were anomalies in the cover story, and there would be her footprints in the record, but it would take a fair amount of detective work to find them, and she suspected that no one would ever be that interested.

The whole point of the elite commission, after all, was to bury everything that had happened onConfidence. She doubted anyone would look at the official records.

She resolutely refused to think of Martinez as she worked, and did her best to ignore a prickling of her neck hairs that told her he was standing right behind her, looking over her shoulder as she committed a lengthy string of electronic felonies.

I’ve done worse,Sula told the specter.

Martinez, she thought, strolled through life profiting from the death and misfortune of others.

She, on the other hand, was thebringer of death and misfortune. Make the two of them a couple, and the implications were chilling.

If we are ever together,she thought with a shiver,one or both of us will die.

She sent the revised database to bed. It was over an hour to breakfast, and she was still afraid to sleep. She sat up readingThe Greening of Africa, another of her Earth histories.

She still felt Martinez standing behind her, silent and reproachful as the dead.

Martinez spoke to each of his staff in turn to find out if they were willing to stay with him afterIllustrious went into refit. He was allowed to take servants with him from one posting to the next, but he wanted to make certain they were willing.

Alikhan accepted, as Martinez had hoped he would. He knew that Narbonne, Fletcher’s formet valet, didn’t like being Alikhan’s junior, and he wasn’t surprised when Narbonne asked for a discharge.

Montemar Jukes was more problematical. “I don’t think I’m going to need an artist after this,” Martinez said. “I won’t have a ship to decorate.”

Jukes shrugged. “I can save those plans for another day, my lord. But on Zanshaa you’ll have a palace, won’t you, Lord Captain? You and your lady? And won’t that palace need decorating? Perhaps with a full-length portrait of Lady Terza to match the one of yourself.”

“Ah…perhaps,” Martinez said. He didn’t want to admit to himself that a future without Terza was a possibility that lurked somewhere in the back of his mind.

Jukes remained on his payroll, and began contemplating themes for the decoration of a large house.

The surprise was the cook, Perry.

“I’d like to request a discharge, my lord,” he said.

Martinez looked in surprise at the young man standing opposite his desk.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked.

“No, my lord. It’s just that…well, I’d like to strike out on my own.”

Martinez regarded him narrowly. “Thereis something wrong, isn’t there?”

Perry hesitated. “Well, my lord,” he admitted, “sometimes I wonder if you actually like my cooking.”

Martinez was astonished. “What do you mean?” he said. “I eat it, don’t I?”

“Yes, Lord Captain. But-” Perry strove for words. “You don’t pay attention to the food. You’re always working while you’re eating, or sending messages on the comm, or dealing with reports.”

“I’m a busy man,” Martinez said. “I’m a captain, for all’s sake.”

Determination settled across Perry’s expression. “My lord,” he said, “do you even remember what you ate for your noon meal?”

Martinez searched briefly through his memory. “It was the thing with the cheese,” he said, “wasn’t it?”

Perry gave a little sigh. “Yes, my lord,” he said. “The thing with the cheese.”

Martinez looked at him. “I’ll give you the discharge if you want,” he said, “but-”

“Yes, please,” said Perry. “Thank you, my lord.”

Feeling slighted, Martinez wrote Perry an excellent reference, in part so he could feel superior to the whole situation.

That evening, at his meal, he looked at his plate with a degree of suspicion.

What was so special about it? he asked himself.

Sula gave a dinner to thank Michi for her own dinner party, and Martinez, Chandra, and Fulvia Kazakov were invited. Martinez would have been the sole male at the affair if it hadn’t been for Haz, Sula’s premiere.

Sula’s dining room onConfidence was metal-walled and painted a pale, sad shade of green. An overhead duct was a hazard to anyone tall. She had tried to make light of it by painting DUCK! on the duct in red letters. She served Hairy Rogers for cocktails, followed by wine and brandy. Martinez suspected that, as a nondrinker, her knowledge about how much alcohol people could actually consume without falling over was shaky. She was well on her way to getting everyone plastered.

Martinez sobered at the table, where he sat opposite Sula. Each cell in his body seemed to yearn toward her with every beat of her heart. He hardly dared look at her. Instead he did his best to follow the conversation, which was bright and amusing and concerned as little as possible with the war, Fleet business, or politics. The captains might be losing their ships, and all the officers might have a permanent black mark against their names for being a part of Chenforce, but the long, violent contest was over and they had all survived. Healthy animal spirits were rising, and on a pair of tubes soaring between the stars, there were only so many outlets.

Perhaps alcohol was safest, after all.

As the voyage progressed, he saw Sula frequently. There were only two ships, and the officers were social beings. Some kind of party occurred every day, though it wasn’t always the captains who were involved.

Still, it was half a month before Martinez dared to invite Captain Sula to dine with him alone.

He met her at the airlock-she had a different orderly this time, a straw-haired woman, but still with a Medal of Valor. Martinez escorted Sula to his dining room, where he offered her a choice of soft drinks. She had a glass of mineral water, and Martinez, who out of courtesy to his guest had decided to avoid alcohol, had another. Sula looked at the Jukes portrait of Martinez, looking brave and dashing at the head of the room, and smiled.

“Very realistic,” she said.

“Do you think so?” He was dismayed. “I’d hoped for better than that.”

Sula laughed and turned her attention to the murals of banqueting Terrans, the bundles of grapes and goblets of wine and the graceful people wearing sheets.

“Very classical,” she said.

“It only looks old. Let me show you another piece.”

He took her into his sleeping cabin and ordered the lights on, to revealThe Holy Family with a Cat. Sula seemed amused at first, and then a little frown touched her lips, her eyes narrowed, and she stepped closer to the ancient work. She studied it in silence for several long minutes.