Walter Williams - Conventions of War

Julien would have been on his way by seven, but it was necessary to wait for the Naxid supervisor, the one who approved all the ration cards, to leave.

Still suffering from his interrogation, Julien limped to liberty on the night that the Naxids announced that the Committee to Save the Praxis, their own government, was already on its way from Naxas to take up residence in the High City of Zanshaa. A new Convocation would be assembled, composed both of Naxids and other races, to be the supreme governing body of their empire.

“Here’s hoping we can give them a hot landing,” Sula said. She was among the guests at Sergius’s welcome-home dinner, along with Julien’s mother, a tall, gaunt woman, forbidding as a statue, who burst into tears at the sight of him.

Veronika was not present. Interrogation had broken a cheekbone and the orbit of one eye: Julien had called a surgeon, and in the meantime provided painkillers.

“I’llgive them a welcome,” Julien said grimly, through lips that had been bruised and cut. “I’ll rip the bastards to bits.”

Sula looked across the table at Sergius and silently mimed the word “ten” at him. He smiled at her, and when he looked at Julien, the smile turned hard.

“Ten,” he said. “Why stop there?”

Sula returned the smile. At last she had her army. Her own team of three plus a tough, disciplined order of killers who had decided, after all-and after a proper show of resistance-to be loved.

Time passed. Martinez dined with Husayn and Mersenne on successive days, and the next day spent eight hours in Command, takingIllustrious through the wormhole to Osser. Squadrons of decoys were echeloned ahead of the squadron, in hopes of attracting any incoming missiles. Pinnaces flew along with the decoys, painting the vacuum ahead with their laser range finders. Every antimissile weapon was charged and pointed dead ahead.

Chenforce made some final-hour maneuvers before passing the wormhole, checking their speed and entering the wormhole at a slightly different angle, so as to appear in the Osser system on a course that wouldn’t take them straight on to Arkhan-Dohg, the next system, but slightly out of the direct path.

Martinez lay on his acceleration couch, trying not to gnaw his nails as he stared at the sensor displays, waiting for the brief flash that would let him know that missiles were incoming. His tension gradually eased as the returning radar and laser signals revealed more of the Osser system, and then a new worry began to possess him.

The Naxids would have to wonder why Chenforce had changed its tactics, particularly when they hadn’t met any genuine opposition since Protipanu, at the very beginning of their raid. If the Naxids analyzed the raiders’ maneuvers, then reasoned backward to find what the tactics were intended to prevent, they would be able to see that Michi Chen and her squadron was concerned about a missile barrage fired at relativistic velocities.

If the tactic hadn’t yet occurred to the Naxids, Chenforce might now be handing them the idea.

But that was a worry for another day. For the present it was enough to see that the ranging lasers were finding nothing, that more and more of the system was being revealed without an enemy being found, and that Chenforce was as safe from attack as it was ever going to be.

Eight hours after they entered the new system, Martinez finally asked permission from Michi to secure from general quarters, andIllustrious dropped to a lower level of alert. He returned to his paperwork, but it was all he could do to avoid calling the officer of the watch every few minutes to make certain the squadron wasn’t flying into jeopardy.

Days passed. Martinez conducted regular inspections to learn his ship and crew and to confirm the information reported on the 77-12s. He dined in rotation with Lord Phillips, who was scarcely more talkative than at their previous meeting; with Lieutenant Lady Juliette Corbigny, whose nervous chatter was a contrast to her silence in the presence of the squadcom; and with Acting Lieutenant Lord Themba Mokgatle, who had been promoted to the vacancy left as Chandra shuttled to Michi’s staff.

Late one day, as Martinez sipped his cocoa and gazed at the painting of the woman, child, and cat, he realized that there was another figure, a man who sat on a bed opposite the fire from the woman and her baby. He hadn’t noticed him because the painting was dark and needed cleaning, and the man wasn’t illuminated by the fire. One moment he wasn’t there, and the next Martinez suddenly saw him, head bent with a stick or staff in his hands, appearing like a ghost from behind the painted red curtain.

He couldn’t have been more surprised if the cat had jumped from the picture into his lap.

The dim figure on the canvas was the only discovery Martinez managed during that period. The killer or killers of Captain Fletcher remained no more than a phantom. Michi grew ever more irritable, and snapped at him and Garcia both. Sometimes Martinez caught a look in her eye that seemed to say,If you weren’t family …

In time, after the first breathless rush of taking command was over, he was reminded that there were too many captains’ servants on the ship. He had Garcia take Rigger Espinosa and Machinist Ayutano into the Constabulary, with the particular duty of patrolling the decks on which the officers were quartered. Buckle the hair stylist was sent to aid the ship’s barber. Narbonne was taken onto Martinez’s service as an assistant to Alikhan, a demotion that Narbonne seemed to resent.

That left Baca, the fat, redundant cook that no one seemed to want, and Jukes. Baca was eventually taken on as an assistant to Michi’s cook, a post he wasn’t happy about either, and that left Martinez with his own personal artist.

Martinez called Jukes into his office to give him the news, and the man turned up in Fleet-issued undress and managed to brace rather professionally in salute. Martinez decided that tonight he must have gotten to Jukes before Jukes got to the sherry.

“I’ve been playing with a design forIllustrious, ” Jukes said. “Based on folk motifs from Laredo. Would you like to see it?”

Martinez said he would. Jukes downloaded from his sleeve to the wall display, and revealed a three-dimensional model of anIllustrious, covered with large, jagged geometric designs in violent shades of red, yellow, and black. Nothing more unlike Fletcher’s subtle, intricate pattern of pink, white, and pale green could be imagined.

Martinez looked in surprise at the cruiser, which was rotating in the display, and managed to say, “That’s very different.”

“That’s the point. Anyone looking atIllustrious is going to know that Captain Martinez is on station, and that he’s a bold skipper who’s not afraid to stand out from the common run of officers.”

Martinez suspected that he already stood out more than was good for him. He knew that Lord Tork, head of the Fleet Control Board, was not about to forgive him for achieving such prominence so quickly, not when the Fleet’s whole style was based on letting family connections quietly work behind the scenes to further elevate those who had been already elevated from birth. As far as the board was concerned, any further glory won by Martinez would only be at the expense of more deserving Peers, that he should have taken his promotion and decoration and been happy to return to the obscurity from whence he’d come.

Flying that gaudy red and yellow design anywhere within Tork’s domain would shriek his presence aloud in the ears of a superior who never wanted to hear his voice again. It would be like buying media time to advertise himself.

But Tork was already a lost cause,Martinez thought. A little advertising wasn’t going to change anything. So why not?