Walter Williams - The Praxis

All that wouldn’t have mattered so much if Sorensen hadn’t been promoted past Recruit First Class. But Tarafah had wanted to boost his players’ pay beyond the hefty under-the-table sums he was doubtless handing them, so he’d promoted eight of his first-string players to Specialist First Class. No doubt he would have promoted them to Master Specialist if that rank hadn’t required an examination that would have exposed a complete ignorance of their duties.

Leaving aside the senior lieutenant, Koslowski, who despite playing goalkeeper seemed a competent enough officer, there were ten additional first-string players, plus an alternate—the second alternate being an officer cadet fresh from a glorious playing season at Cheng Ho Academy. To these were added a coach in the guise of a weaponer second class, all of which made up a lot of dead weight in a crew of sixty-one.

Thus it was that Martinez discovered what Captain Tarafah meant when he said he wanted the entire ship’s company to pull together. It meant that everyone else had to do the footballers’ jobs.

He could have coped easily enough if it meant covering for the genial but inept Sorensen. But because Tarafah was consumed with football, and the Premiere, as well, he had to do much of Koslowski’s work, and even some of the captain’s. And sometimes stand their watches as well as his own. And this during a period in which football wasn’t even in season. Martinez dreaded the time when the games actually started.

He enviedCorona’s second officer, Garcia. A small, brown-skinned woman, she wasn’t a suitable footballer, and she spoke with a provincial accent almost as broad as his own, but she’d got herself in with the captain as, in effect, First Fan. She’d organized the nonfootballer crew to attend and cheer for the Coronas at the games, and made up signs and banners and threw parties in the players’ honor. Thus, she had worked her way into the captain’s circle, though she was also obliged to keep her own watch and do her own work, and probably a little of the premiere’s as well.

“Pilot, rotate ship,” Tarafah said. A little ahead of time, Martinez thought, since the other ships in the division hadn’t rotated yet, but no harm done.

“Rotating ship,” called Pilot/Second Anna Begay, who was doing the job of Pilot/First Kostanza, a long-legged hairy-wristed halfback who sat behind her in the auxiliary pilot’s position, and whose displays had been set to an archived edition ofSporting Classics.

The acceleration couches swung lightly in their cages asCorona rotated around them. Martinez kept his eyes focused on his signals display board in front of him.

“Two-two-seven by one-two-zero relative, Lord Elcap,” Begay reported.

“Engines, prepare for acceleration,” said Tarafah.

“Engines signaled,” said Warrant Officer Second Class Mabumba, who was doing a class on propulsion to prepare for his exams for Warrant Officer/First.

The little muscle ticked in Tarafah’s cheek as he watched the digital readout on his displays. “Engines, accelerate on my mark,” he said, and then, as the counters ticked to 27:10:001, “Engines, fire engines.”

Gravity’s punch in the chest, and the gee suits tightening around arms and legs, told everyone in the ship that the engines had fired, but Mabumba reported the fact anyway, as protocol dictated. Acceleration couches swung to new attitudes as gee forces piled on, and began to generate the pulsing miniwaves that kept blood from pooling. The second division of Cruiser Squadron 18, echeloned so that each ship wouldn’t fry the one behind with its torch, blazed out toward the target.

Martinez saw that Tarafah seemed to relax once the engines were fired. There hadn’t been the slightest chance that theywouldn’t fire, of course: the dour, impatient Master Engineer Maheshwari had the engines well in hand, even considering the two footballers stuck in his department, one rated Engineer/First and supposedly in charge of his own watch.

The problems, if any, would come when weapons began to fire. SinceCorona had never fired a weapon in anger, the weapons bays had seemed a useful sort of place to stuff excess footballers. But now missiles were actually going to be launched, from launchers maintained and loaded by crews supervised by bogus weaponers. If anything would go amiss, it would be there.

In order to head off trouble, Martinez had sent Alikhan, his orderly, to the weapons bays instead of to the damage control or medical sections, as was normal. Alikhan had retired a master weaponer, and Martinez knew thatCorona’s weapons division could use him.

Still, if anything went wrong, Martinez hoped it wouldn’t involve antimatter.

Quietly, he configured his screen to show the view of the security camera in the weapons bay. He tucked the image into a corner of his display, then jumped back to his real job as a new message flickered onto his screens.

“Message from flag,” he reported.“Second Division, alter course in echelon to two-two-seven by one-nine-zero relative, execution immediate.”

Martinez touched the pad that would send the new course to the captain, pilot, navigator, and engine control, which would assure that they would all receive the same information and that it wouldn’t be garbled in transmission.

“Signals, acknowledge,” Tarafah said. “Engines, cut engines.”

“Engines cut, Lord Elcap.” Suddenly everyone was weightless in their straps.

“Pilot, rotate ship.”

“Rotating ship, Lord Elcap. New heading two-two-seven by one-two-zero relative.”

“Engines, fire engines.”

Again that punch in the solar plexus, the swinging of the couches in their cages. Somewhere, a couch wheel gave a little metallic scream.

“Engines fired, my lord.” Redundantly.

Over Tarafah’s shoulder, Martinez caught a glimpse of the navigation displays. The ships of the second division had all made the course change in their own time, leaving their line slightly ragged.Corona, at one end of the line, was headed just for the enemy, exactly according to plan.

“Weapons,” Tarafah commanded, “prepare to fire missiles.”

Martinez reflected that if it hadn’t been for Tarafah’s worry over whether one of his nominal petty officers was going to make him look bad, the current operation would scarcely have had any suspense at all.

Martinez had yet to see Magaria,Corona’s new base. Not that it was worth viewing: Magaria had been chosen as a major Fleet installation not because the world was a desirable one, but because the system had seven useful wormhole gates—only one fewer than Zanshaa itself—and the Second Fleet squatting at the wormhole nexus could therefore hold much of the empire in its power.

Magaria had been a hellishly hot planet when it was discovered, shrouded in clouds of acid and swept by typhoon winds, and thousands of years of tinkering with its climate had barely succeeded in making the place habitable. The population of Magaria’s accelerator ring was higher than that of the planet proper, several million who lived off the money the military brought in, or who existed as middlemen for cargoes passing through the port. A few towns crouched near artificial oases near the skyhook termini, hiding from the scouring sandstorms, their economies based on supporting and supplying the Fleet and entertaining its crews. Most of the inhabitants were Naxids, who were more suited for hot, dry weather than other species.

The local Fleet commander was a Naxid as well, Senior Fleet Commander Fanaghee. She was a ferocious disciplinarian who ruled her domain from a luxurious suite aboard theMajesty of the Praxis, one of the huge Praxis-class battleships that provided vast planet-slagging firepower as well as the splendor and magnificence which the customs of the service demanded for senior officers.