Conventions of War (34 page)

Savage, pointless anger roiled in Martinez. “Did
anything
go well?” he asked.

“The interrogation wasn't a success, particularly,” Xi said. “Phillips said he hadn't killed the captain and didn't know who did. He said he doesn't belong to a cult. He said the ayaca pendant was given to him by his sweet old nurse when he was a child, and by the way, the story can't be confirmed because she's dead. He said he had no idea that the ayaca had any significance other than being a pretty tree that a lot of people put in their gardens.”

Xi slumped over his table and took a drink from the beaker.

“When the drug hit him he kept to his story until his mind got the addles, and then he started to chant. Garcia and the squadcom and Corbigny—when she wasn't spewing—tried to keep him on the subject of the captain's death, but he kept going back to the same chant. Or maybe they were different chants. It was hard to tell.”

“What was he chanting?”

“I don't know. It was in some old language that nobody recognized, but we heard the word
‘Narayanguru'
all right, so it's a cult ritual language, and when the Investigative Service hears the recording they'll find someone to identify it, and that will be the end of Lord Phillips. And if the I.S. is on speaking terms with the Legion that week and passes the information, the Legion will probably arrest half the Phillips clan and that will be the end of
them,
because the Legion have many more methods of interrogation than are available to us here, and doctors who are far more bad than I am and are very proud that their confession rate is nearly one hundred percent.” He looked at the beaker again, then raised his head to look at Martinez.

“Captain, I have been remiss. I am a bad doctor and a bad host. Will you share my beverage of consolation?”

“No thanks, I've had enough already. And you're going to have a hell of a hangover.”

Xi gave a weary grin. “No, I'm not. A dose of this, a dose of that, and I will rise a new man.” His face fell. “And then the squadcom will turn me into a bad doctor again, and have me shoot chemicals into the carotid of a harmless little man who didn't hurt anybody, if you ask me—which nobody did—but who's going to die anyway, and I wish I'd kept my damn mouth shut about the captain's injuries.” He poured more alcohol into his beaker. “I thought I was going to be a brilliant detective, tracking clues like the police in the videos, and instead I find myself involved in something soiled and disgusting and sordid, and frankly, I wish I could throw up like Corbigny.”

“Keep this up and you will,” Martinez said.

“I shall do my best,” Xi said, and raised his glass. “Bottoms up.”

The bitter taste of defeat soured Martinez's tongue. As he left the pharmacy, he swore that the next time he had a brainstorm, he'd keep it to himself.

 

A
call from Garcia brought Martinez out of bed and running to the brig while still buttoning his undress tunic over his pajamas. “There was a guard here all night, Lord Captain,” Garcia said in a rapid voice as soon as Martinez entered the room. “There's no way anyone could have got to him.”

Martinez walked to Lord Phillips's cell, looked inside and wished he hadn't.

Sometime over the course of the night, Phillips had torn open the acceleration couch that served as his bed, pulled out fistfuls of the foam padding, then filled his mouth with the foam and kept packing it in until he choked.

Choked to death. Phillips was half off the couch and his mouth was still full of foam and his face was black. His eyes were open and gazed overhead at the light in its cage. Bits of the foam floated in the air like motes of dust.

Dr. Xi knelt by him. He eyes were red-rimmed and his hands trembled as he made a cursory examination.

“He knew he'd crack,” Michi said after she arrived. “He knew he'd give us the names sooner or later. He decided to die first to protect his friends.” She shook her head. “I wouldn't have thought he had the nerve for it.”

Martinez turned to her, rage poised on his tongue, and then he turned away.

“We're still no better off than we were!” Michi cried, and slammed her fist into the metal door.

Later that morning Martinez conducted vicious, mean-spirited inspections of Missile Battery 1 and the riggers' stores, but it didn't make him feel any better.

L
ord Chen's comm unit began to make an urgent squeak. “Pardon me, Loopy,” he said. He put down his cocktail and reached into the pocket of his jacket.

He stood on the seaside terrace of his friend Lord Stanley Loo, known since his school days as “Loopy.” A Cree orchestra played festive music from a bandstand that looked as if it had been designed by a lacemaker. The sea breeze carried over the terrace the refreshing scent of salt and iodine, and the roar of the waves on the rocks sometimes drowned out the band. Antopone's red sky gave the waves a lurid cast.

“Chen,” he said, raising his unit to his ear.

“My lord. Lord Tork requires your immediate presence aboard
Galactic
.”

Lord Chen recognized the careful diction of Lord Convocate Mondi, one of the members of the Fleet Control Board, a Torminel who took special care not to lisp around his fangs.

“The meeting's not for another three days,” Chen said. He reached for his cocktail with his free hand and raised it to his lips.

“My lord,” Mondi said, “is this communication secure?”

A cold hand touched Chen's spine. He put down his drink and turned away from the group on the terrace. “I suppose so,” he said. “No one's within listening distance.”

There was a slight hesitation, and then Mondi spoke again. “The Naxids are moving from Zanshaa,” he said. “It looks like they're heading for Zarafan under high acceleration.”

And from Zarafan, Lord Chen knew, they could go straight on to Laredo, where the Convocation were taking up residence.

Where his daughter would land any day.

“Yes,” he said, “I understand. I'll be there as soon as I can arrange transport.”

And then, as the surf boomed below, he put his hand comm away and returned to the party.

“Something's come up, Loopy,” he said. “Can you have someone arrange my return to the skyhook?”

 

“G
eneral quarters! Now general quarters! This is not a drill!”

From the panic that clawed at the amplified voice of Cadet Qing, Martinez knew from the first word this wasn't a drill. By the time the message began to repeat he had already vaulted clean over his desk and was sprinting for the companion that led to Command, leaving Marsden sitting in his chair staring after him.

Martinez sprang for the companion just as the gravity went away. The distant engine rumble ceased, leaving the corridor silent except for the sound of his heart, which was thundering louder than the general quarters alarm. Martinez had no weight but still had plenty of inertia, and he hit the companion with knees and elbows. Pain rocketed through his limbs despite the padding on the stair risers. He bounced away from the companion like an oversized rubber eraser but managed to check his momentum with a grab to the rail.

His feet began to swing out into the corridor, and that meant
Illustrious
was changing its heading. He had to get up the companion and into Command before the engines fired again. His big hand tightened on the rail so he could swing himself back to the steep stair, kick off and jump to the next deck.

No good. The engines fired suddenly and he had weight again. His arm couldn't support his entire mass and folded under him, and the rail caught him a stunning blow across the shoulder. He flopped onto his back on the stair. Risers sliced into his back.

Martinez tried to rise, but the gravities were already beginning to pile on.
Two gravities. Three…
Pain lanced through his wrist as he seized the rail to try to haul himself upright. The stair risers were cutting into him like knives.
Four gravities at least…
He gasped for breath. Eventually he realized he wasn't going to be able to climb.

He realized other things as well. He was on a hard surface. He hadn't recently taken any of the drugs that would help him survive heavy gravity. He could die if he didn't get off this companion, cut by the stairs like cheese by a slicer.

A sort of crabbing motion of his arms and legs brought him bumping down the stairs, each step a club to his back and mastoid, but once his buttocks thumped on the deck it was harder to move, and the risers were still digging into his spine.
Five gravities…
His vision was beginning to go dark.

Martinez crabbed with his arms and legs and managed to thump down another stair. Comets flared in his skull as his head hit the tread. He clenched his jaw muscles to force blood to his brain and dropped down another step.

It was Chandra's nightmare, he realized. Relativistic missiles were inbound
and he needed to get to Command
. It would be the height of stupidity to die here, vaporized by a missile or with his neck broken by the sharp edge of a stair.

He thumped down another stair, and that left only his head still on the companion, tilted at an angle that cramped his windpipe and strained his spine.
Six gravities…
His vision was totally gone. He couldn't seem to breathe. Without the drugs, Terrans could only rarely stay conscious at more than six and a half gravities. He had to get off the stair or his neck was going to be broken by the weight of his head.

With a frantic effort he tried to roll, his palms and heels fighting for traction against the tile, fighting the dead weight that was pinning him like a silver needle pinning an insect to corkboard. Vertigo swam through his skull. He fought to bring air into his lungs. He gave a heave, every muscle in his body straining.

With a crack, his head fell off the stair and banged onto the tile. Despite the pain and the stars that shot through the blackness of his vision he felt a surge of triumph.

Gravity increased. Martinez fought for consciousness.

And lost.

 

W
hen he woke, he saw before him a window, and beyond the window a green countryside. Two ladies in transparent gowns gazed at the poised figure of a nearly naked man who seemed to be hovering in a startlingly blue sky. Above the man was a superior-looking eagle, and on the grass below the two ladies were a pair of animals, a dog and a small furry creature with long ears, both of whom seemed to find the floating man interesting.

It occurred to Martinez that the man in the sky wasn't alone. He, Martinez, was also floating.

His heart was thrashing in his chest like a broken steam engine. Sharp pains shot through his head and body. He blinked and wiped sweat from the sockets of his eyes.

The man still floated before him, serene and eerily calm, as if he floated every day.

It was only gradually that Martinez realized he was looking at a piece of artifice, at one of the trompe l'oeil paintings that Montemar Jukes had placed at intervals in the corridors.

The engines had shut down again. Now weightless, Martinez had drifted gently from the deck to a place before the painting.

He gave a start and looked frantically in all directions. The companion leading to Command was two body lengths away. So far as he knew, the emergency, the battle, or whatever it was, had not ended.

He swam with his arms to reorient himself, and kicked with one foot at the floating man. He shot across the corridor, absorbed momentum with his arms—pain shot through his right wrist—and then he did a kind of handspring in the direction of the companion.

He struck the companionway feet first and folded into a crouch, which enabled him to spring again, this time through the hatch atop the companion.

From there it was a short distance to Command's heavy hatch. The door was armored against blast and radiation and would have been locked down at the beginning of the emergency. Martinez hovered before the hatch, his left hand clutching at the hand grip inset into the door frame, his right stabbing at the comm panel.

“This is the captain!” he said. “Open the door!”

“Stand by,” came Mersenne's voice.

Stand by?
Martinez was outraged. Who did the fourth lieutenant think he was, some snotty cadet?

“Let me into Command!” Martinez barked.

“Stand by.” The irritating words were spoken in an abstract tone, as if Mersenne had many more important things on his mind than obeying his captain's orders.

Well, perhaps he did. Perhaps the emergency was occupying his full attention.

But how much attention did it take to open a damn hatch?

Martinez ground his teeth while he waited, fist clamped white-knuckled around the hand grip. Lieutenant Husayn floated up the companion and joined him. Blood floated in perfect round spheres from Husayn's nose, some of them catching on his little mustache, and there was a cut on his lip.

There hadn't been the regulation warning tone sounded for high gee—or for no gee, for that matter. Probably there hadn't been time to give the order. Martinez wondered how many injuries Dr. Xi was coping with.

After Martinez had been waiting nearly a minute, the hatch slid open with a soft hiss. He heaved on the hand grip and gave himself impetus for the command cage.

“I have command!” he shouted.

“Captain Martinez has command!” Mersenne agreed. He sounded relieved. He was already drifting free of the command cage, heading toward his usual station at the engines display.

Martinez glanced around the room as he floated toward his acceleration cage. The watch were staring at their displays as if each expected something with claws to come bounding out of them.

“Missile attack, my lord,” Mersenne said as Martinez caught his acceleration cage. The cage swung with him, and he jacknifed, then inserted his feet and legs inside. “At least thirty. I'm sorry I didn't let you into Command, but I didn't want to unseal the door until I was certain the missiles had all been dealt with—didn't want to irradiate the entire command crew if there were a near miss.”

It grated, but Martinez had to admit Mersenne was right.

“Any losses?” he asked.

“No, my lord.” Mersenne floated to a couch next to the warrant officer who had been handling the engines board, then webbed himself in and locked the engine displays in front of him. “We starburst as soon as we saw the missiles incoming, but when we hit eight gravities, there was an engine trip.”

Martinez, in the act of webbing himself onto his couch, stopped and stared.
“Engine trip?”
he said.

“Engine number one. Automated safety procedures tripped the other two before I could override them. I'll try to get engines two and three back online, and then work out what happened to engine one.”

So now he knew why he'd suddenly found himself floating. The engines had quit, apparently on their own, and in the middle of a battle.

He pulled his displays down from over his head, heard them lock, began a study of the brief fight.

The Naxids hadn't attacked in the Osser system, as Chandra's war game had predicted. They'd waited for Chenforce to proceed to the next system, Arkhan-Dohg, where the hot, humid world of Arkhan supported a population of half a billion, mostly heat-loving Naxids, and cold, glacier-ridden Dohg supported a billion more, for the most part furry Torminel.

Chenforce hadn't found anything to shoot at in Osser, and there was very little traffic in Arkhan-Dohg. The Naxids knew they were coming, and every ship that could move was being routed away from them.

Even though Chenforce was finding few targets at present, they were still creating a massive disruption in the rebel economy. The hundreds of ships fleeing Chenforce weren't carrying cargoes to the appropriate destination. Not only were cargoes being routed well out of their way, many cargoes were stalled waiting for transport, and elsewhere industries were failing for want of supply.

The Naxid attempt to swat them from the sky had occurred when the squadron was two days into the Arkhan-Dohg system. Chenforce was suddenly painted with tracking lasers. Mersenne had immediately gone to general quarters and ordered
Illustrious
to accelerate as rapidly as possible away from the other ships. Before
Illustrious
was on its new heading, the sensor operators were reporting brief flares that showed incoming missiles making last-instant course corrections.

Most of the missiles targeted the swarm of decoys cruising ahead of Chenforce, but a few got through the screen to target the squadron itself, all to be destroyed by point-defense weapons. By that time the number one engine on
Illustrious
had tripped off and the cruiser was drifting, its captain floating bruised and unconscious in the corridor outside his office.

The Battle of Arkhan-Dohg, from the first alarm to the destruction of the last incoming missile, had taken a little less than three minutes.

“One failure in the point-defense array,” Husayn reported from the weapons station. “Antiproton gun three failed after one shot.”

“Just like Harzapid,” muttered Mersenne.

“How many decoys do we have in the tubes?” Martinez asked Husayn.

“Three, my lord.”

“Fire them immediately. We want to get decoys ahead of the squadron in case the Naxids have a follow-up attack.”

The Command crew looked a little hollow-eyed at this possibility.

“Decoys fired, my lord. Tubes cleared. Decoys proceeding normally under chemical rockets to safety point.”

“Replace them in the tubes with another set of decoys,” Martinez added.

Primary command crew were drifting through the hatch and quietly taking up their stations. Alikhan arrived lugging Martinez's vac suit by a strap. Martinez told him to report to the weapons bays after putting the suit in one of the vac suit lockers: he didn't have time to put it on right now.

“I've commenced a countdown on engines two and three,” Mersenne reported. “We're at five minutes twenty-one.”

“Proceed.”

“My lord,” Husayn said, “decoys' antimatter engines have ignited. All decoys maneuvering normally.”