Walter Williams - The Praxis

Lord Richard, nearly overcome with glee at this order, placed armed guards at the personnel and cargo hatches, and told the workers that if they didn’t complete their tasks before the Fleet Commander orderedDestiny to leave the station, they would just have to come along to the war. So Sula spent half of each day mounting guard inside the cargo hatch, a sidearm on one hip as she listened to the litany of sad, desperate reasons why one person or another had to leave the ship. The endless succession of plaintive excuses wore on her patience and left her with no pity for the imprisoned workers whatever, and in the end she gave them a cold, green-eyed stare. “Odds are I’m going to die in combat,” she told them. “Why shouldn’t I take a few of you with me?” After that they avoided her.

Jarlath gave the fleet less than a day’s notice before leaving Zanshaa, an announcement that set the workers into a frenzy. Sula’s final task before leaving was to supervise workers carrying boxes of the captain’s slate tiles into storage, where they would remain until such time asDauntless found another few weeks in dock. Lord Richard seemed wistful as he watched them go by: the last captain’s tilework of asteroid material, filled with gaudy splashes of glittering pyrite, was really not to his taste, and the paneling in his cabin, in which yellow chesz wood was accented with trim of scarlet ammana paste, was not his style either.

It wasn’t long before Sula concluded that Lord Richard was a good captain. He had visited every department on the ship and spoken to everyone good-naturedly, displaying his crinkly-eyed smile. He’d had a knack for distinguishing what was important from what wasn’t, and rarely hounded his crew over the latter. All unlike her last captain, Kandinski, who tried to pretend that the crew didn’t exist except as imperfect mechanisms to keep his paneling buffed and his silver polished, and who never spoke to his crew unless issuing a rebuke.

Dauntlessmanaged to depart Zanshaa ring on schedule, with the rest of the Home Fleet. Sula found that she didn’t regret leaving Zanshaa. The capital hadn’t been lucky for her.

Not thatDauntless was shaping up to be any better.

“The Convocation wishes to know when you plan to launch your assault on Magaria.” The speaker was the elderly Senior Fleet Commander Tork, a Daimong whose long, mournful face belied the fervor that added a monotonal harshness to the chimes of his voice. Tork was the chairman of the Fleet Control Board, one of the five active or retired officers who served alongside the board’s four politicians.

Jarlath reclined on his acceleration couch aboardGlory of the Praxis, while the Fleet Control Board’s holographic images floated before his eyes. Suffering from four days’ hard acceleration, his bleached-white fur by now showing its black and gray roots, Jarlath knew he hardly presented his best face to his superiors.

“The enemy outnumbers us,” he said. “Once the Zerafan squadron joins, I’ll have fifty-four ships. Once Elkizer joins Fanaghee, she’ll have fifty-nine, and we can assume that squadrons from Naxas or Felarus will join as well.”

“You assume that Fanaghee will be able to convert all the captured squadrons to Naxid use by the time you arrive.”

“My lord,” said Jarlath, “I cannot afford to think otherwise.”

“And you also assume that she’ll be able to crew all her captured ships.”

A headache thudded dully behind Jarlath’s eyes. He had been over this with his own staff a dozen times.

“Her personnel will be overworked and overstrained, but it can be done,” he said. “If she strips much of the ring station of its personnel, she’ll have adequate fighting crews, though her damage control won’t be as efficient as ours.”

“But if she strips the ring station personnel,” Tork replied, “she won’t have enough dock workers to refit her captured ships.”

“She can bring workers up from the planet. Most of the inhabitants of Magaria are Naxids, and we have to presume they’ll sympathize with the enemy council.”

“You forget that you have the battleship squadron.”

Jarlath closed his weary eyes. “I have not forgot.”

“You have sixPraxis — class ships to the enemy’s one.” A metallic bray of triumph entered Tork’s voice. “Each battleship is the equal of a squadron!”

Then let’s send the battleships by themselves and win a glorious victory, Jarlath thought viciously, but he suppressed his anger. His weary muscles dragged his eyelids apart. “A hit by an antimatter missile will destroy a battleship as easily as it will destroy a frigate,” he said.

“You are being too cautious, my lord commander.”

Jarlath let the two-gravity acceleration drag his lips from his fangs. Enough was enough. “If your lordships give me a direct order to attack immediately,” he said, “an order inwriting, I shall of course obey.”

There was a long silence from the board members. Then Lord Chen spoke.

“I ask you to understand that there is much anxiety in the Convocation. The fall of Magaria has effectively cut us off from a third of the empire. Many of us have friends, clients, and other interests in the area controlled by the rebels.”

Lord Chen looked more than a little anxious himself. Jarlath remembered that he owned a shipping company, one that presumably had many ships and cargoes in enemy-controlled space.

“I too have friends on the other side of Magaria,” Jarlath said. “Throwing away the Home Fleet will do them no good.”

After the meeting came to an end, Jarlath wondered if he were wrong and the others right. One great strike at Magaria might well end the rebellion. The Naxids might not be ready. Jarlathwanted to make that strike. But the odds gave him caution.

Eight days later, engines burned fire and piled on the gees as Jarlath swung his ships around Vandrith for the return journey to Zanshaa. He was traveling one-fourteenth of the speed of light, and would continue accelerating and performing slingshot maneuvers around the system’s planets until he was traveling at least.5c, fast enough to avoid immediate destruction from any of Fanaghee’s ships tearing out of Magaria at eighty percent of the speed of light.

It was then that word came fromCorona and Lieutenant Martinez. Having escaped from Magaria to the Paswal system, Martinez was at last able to send his report through a wormhole relay station that Fanaghee didn’t control.

The Convocation responded to the news with raptures. Martinez,Corona, and its crew were voted the Thanks of the Convocation. Every crew member would be decorated, and Martinez himself would receive the Golden Orb, the empire’s highest military decoration, which had not been awarded in eight hundred years. Martinez and his descendants were awarded the right to have their ashes entombed in the Couch of Eternity, alongside the Great Masters. And aCorona monument would be dedicated somewhere in the High City, its location yet to be determined.

The Convocation also reconsidered the matter of Captain Blitsharts’s rescue, and decided that Martinez’s participation was worthy of the Medal of Merit, First Class. As this decoration was not within their gift, they recommended that the Fleet Control Board award the decoration.

The Convocation also passed on to the Fleet Control Board its recommendation that Lord Gareth Martinez be promoted immediately and given a command commensurate with his new rank.

“Well,” Lord Chen said, “we can confirm him inCorona. There’s a vacancy, after all.”

“But have you heard himtalk? ” objected Lord Commander Pezzini, the only other Terran member of the board. “He sounds like such a—an unsuitable person for command rank. An accent like that belongs in the engine bays.”