Walter Williams - Conventions of War

Opening the file, Martinez was surprised to find that someone else had already rewritten the report. The report now emphasized Chandra’s mastery of all aspects of her profession and the captain’s admiration for her talents and personality. Where Fletcher’s conclusion had read, “Promotion is not indicated,” the line was now “Promotion is enthusiastically indicated.”

Martinez had removed the word “enthusiastically.” And then he’d removed the extra user privileges he’d given Chandra before she got it into her head to rewrite anything else.

The Naxids took their parting shot at Chenforce the next day, four hundred missiles tearing into the system on their tail.

Because Michi had destroyed the wormhole stations that would have tracked Chenforce, the missiles weren’t able to make last second corrections and had to do their own searching. Because targeting took time, the missiles weren’t able to fly as fast as they had at Arkhan-Dohg. From the instant Chenforce first felt the touch of the targeting lasers, the squadron had nearly twenty-six minutes to prepare their response. Batteries of countermissiles were launched and every defensive weapon was deployed.

Chenforce performed flawlessly. Countermissiles destroyed most of the incoming warheads on the approach, and the rest were targeted by lasers and antiproton beams before they could close with the squadron. The closest was killed nearly two minutes out. The mood in Command throughout the combat was clinical. Even the applause at the destruction of the last incoming missile was restrained.

That was the last Chenforce heard from the Naxids. The squadron passed through one more enemy-controlled system without finding anything to shoot at, and then entered the nearly barren Enan-dal system through Wormhole 1.

Last they heard, both the station at Enan-dal Wormhole 1 and the station at Wormhole 2 were still controlled by the loyalists.

Martinez, suited and watching his displays, sat in Command while communications lasers pulsed queries to each station.

Wormhole Station 1 did not reply, which argued that the Naxids had occupied it. Michi sent a message informing them that they would be destroyed if they didn’t respond, and as if in answer, a lifeboat, presumably with the station crew aboard, broke from the station and began a high-gravity sprint toward the wormhole. Michi ordered both the station and the lifeboat destroyed, as either could conceivably track the squadron for a barrage of missiles.

It would take ten hours for Michi’s message to reach Station 2, and nearly ten hours for any response to return. After the first few hours, when it was clear that no Naxid force was lurking behind the system’s swollen red sun, Michi reduced the squadron to a lower level of alert, and Martinez left Command with suspense still humming in his nerves.

The squadron had been out of communication for nearly four months, and during that time the cause for which they fought could have died. The Naxids could have won a crushing victory over the remnants of the Home Fleet, or the loyalist cause simply collapsed in the wake of the fall of Zanshaa. It was a matter of conjecture whether Chenforce would have a home to return to.

Martinez was in Command at the earliest possible hour that he could expect a reply from Wormhole Station 2. It was early in the morning, before his usual hour for rising, and he clutched a cup of coffee in one hand, sipping as he listened to the routine chatter.

“Message from Station Two, my lord!” The joy in Acting Lieutenant Qing’s voice was answered by a leap of Martinez’s heart. “The message is in the proper code for the day. Decoding now…”

A pale Daimong face, set in a frozen expression of horrified surprise, appeared on Martinez’s displays.

“Welcome to Enan-dal, Lady Michi,” the Daimong said. “I am Warrant Officer Kassup of the Exploration Service. We have been told to await you. Word of your arrival has already been sent to the Fleet. I am sending a digest of the latest news, and I will forward your mail and any instructions from the Fleet as soon as they arrive.”

Martinez felt the easing of a tension he didn’t know he had. He half listened to Michi’s polite reply, then waited for a moment to see if she had any orders for him. She didn’t.

Michi finished the report of her raid, with its account of the battles at Protipanu, Arkhan-Dohg, and Alekas, its lists of casualties, the status of her seven ships, the totals of enemy ships destroyed, the description of the ring’s destruction at Bai-do, plus the details of the deaths of Captain Fletcher, two lieutenants, and four petty officers. The report was wrapped in several layers of cipher and sent to the Fleet Control Board by way of Station 2.

An instant later the crew’s personal messages, already in the queue, were sent, and with these went Martinez’s long serial letter to his wife Terza and shorter letters to his father, his mother, to his father-in-law Lord Chen, and to the two sisters who were still speaking to him. He also sent his father a scan of his portrait.

Martinez wasn’t needed. He returned command of the ship to Qing, went to his bed, and slept dreamlessly for many hours, well past his normal time for waking.

Alikhan, wisely, let him sleep.

Four days later Chenforce sped through Enan-dal Wormhole 2, and half a day later received its mail. Martinez gave the entire crew two hours free time to catch up with the news from home.

He took advantage of his own offer and retired to his office and shut the door. He opened his desk display and scanned the long list of mail. There was no communication from Caroline Sula. He hadn’t expected anything, but managed to notice its absence anyway.

He wondered where she was and what she was doing.

Martinez looked for the very last item by date, sent eleven days earlier. It was a video file from Terza, and he opened it.

Lady Terza Chen was quite visibly pregnant now-nearly seven months, he calculated. She stood in the camera’s range, draped in a long dark violet gown that emphasized the paler beauty of her face and of the hands that rested lightly on her pregnant belly. Her hair was long and black and worn in a pair of long tails, threaded with ribbon, that fell past her shoulders. Her lovely face bore the serenity that had always seemed slightly unreal to Martinez and had led to uneasy thoughts concerning what exactly was happening behind the tranquil mask.

With a shock he recognized where she was standing. It was a study in his family’s palace on Laredo, the long, elegant building of white and chocolate marble that stood in the center of the capital. He recognized the hulking, scarred old shelves of dark wood, the equally battered light fixtures.

The room had once been his. The half-open door behind Terza led to the bedroom in which he’d slept until he left for the academy at the age of seventeen, the room to which he had never returned. His parents must have put Terza in his old room-it was just the sort of sentimental gesture that would have appealed to his mother.

Martinez hoped she wasn’t too appalled by the old furniture, so badly knocked about by a houseful of active children.

And he maintained a devout wish that Terza would not discover the nude pictures of an old girlfriend, Lord Dalmas’s daughter, that he’d hidden in the back of the wardrobe that summer before he left for the academy.

“Hello,” Terza said. She turned to give a profile to the camera and smoothed the folds of her gown over the outline of her pregnant belly. “I thought I’d send a video so you could have an update on the status of your son.”

Son.Martinez felt his heart give a lurch. That the child was a boy hadn’t been clear when Chenforce had departed for its raid.

“He’s becoming rather an active child,” Terza said, “and is growing fond of exploration. We’ve been considering names, and in light of his conduct and in the absence of any instructions from the father, we’ve decided we rather like Gareth.” She turned to face the camera, a slight smile on her face. “I hope you approve.”