Conventions of War (52 page)

His hand closed on the beads, and behind his heavy eyelids was a glow of pleasure.

A Daimong doctor arrived, dignified in sterile robes colored an elegant mauve, and he stared at the bed display for a long moment.

“I got every bit of shrapnel,” he said, as if offended by Casimir's obstinate refusal to be well. “I don't understand what's wrong.”

Sula wanted to shriek at him, but instead caught a whiff of his dying flesh and felt her insides give a lurch.

Casimir passed out again. The doctor ordered the bed wheeled away for further tests. Sula tried to follow, but the doctor was strict.

“You'll only be in the way,” he said. His unwinking eyes looked her up and down. “And you aren't sterile.” Sula glanced down at herself, saw the spatters of blood and decided that the doctor was right.

Besides, the team and group leaders she'd ordered here were beginning to arrive.

“This place is a mess,” she told them after Casimir and the doctor had left. “You need to get it under control, and you need to get your people under control too.”

She assigned two of the groups to guard duty: Torminel and Lai-own, to alternate night and day. The rest she assigned to cleanup.

“From this point on,” she said, “and unless you're needed for fighting, all your people are to be considered auxiliaries to the medical personnel. If an orderly asks one of your people for help, you'll provide it. If a corridor needs cleaning, your people will clean it—and they'll ask damn politely for the cleaning supplies too.

“And I want that pile of bodies at the entrance taken away. We want to keep this place sanitary, for all's sake. If the morgue won't hold the corpses, put them on a truck and take them to someplace that will.”

Something in her manner—possibly the rage and the spatters of blood—convinced them to obey without comment. At any rate, she didn't have to shoot any more of her own command. It was only a few moments later that she saw some Terran fighters march past the door with their weapons slung over their backs and their hands busy with mops and buckets.

A whiff of dead flesh preceded the return of the Daimong doctor. He had an oversized datapad with a digitalized cross section of Casimir's insides.

“I understand the problem now,” he said. “The young gentleman was hit by shrapnel from a rocket. The case was straightforward. All the scanners were in use, but with shrapnel we might as well use X ray, so that's what we did. I located every bit of shrapnel and removed it.”

He showed Sula the display. Garish false color swam before her eyes.

“The problem is, the gentleman was wearing armor when he was wounded. A piece of the armor was driven into his body, and the armor is some kind of hard plastic that happens to be radiolucent, so the X rays didn't see it. A full-body scan revealed the fragment, however, and here it is.”

Sula could make no sense of the display. She forced sound past the fist that had clamped on her throat.

“Tell me what's happening,” she said.

The chiming Daimong voice took on a sonorous, practiced note of sympathy.

“The fragment of armor is in his liver. We can't put fluids into him fast enough to counteract the bleeding. I'll be operating as soon as the gentleman is prepped, but it's bound to be a mess.”

She looked at him. “Get him fixed,” she said.

Superiority rang in the doctor's voice. “I'll do what's possible, but please consider how hard it is to reassemble a Terran liver once it's been cut up.”

The doctor floated out of the room, leaving Sula with the unsettling image in her mind. She knew it would be a while before she heard anything of Casimir, and she didn't want to wait while acid chewed on her insides, so she made an impromptu inspection of the hospital, followed in silence by One-Step and Casimir's Torminel bodyguard. Progress was being made, but the place was still in chaos, and more qualified personnel were clearly needed. She called Macnamara to tell him to have all broadcast stations put out a call for medical personnel and volunteers to report to the Glory of Hygeine Hospital.

“Immediately, my lady,” Macnamara said. There was a pause while he gave orders, after which Sula asked him for a report.

“The Naxids made another try at the funicular,” Macnamara said, “and it didn't go any better than last time. Other than that, I've just been trying to get an idea of where our units actually
are
. A lot of them seem to have just disappeared.” There was a pause, and then he added, “It's lunchtime. Maybe they'll report when they've eaten.”

Sula told him to start putting together a staff.

“But
who
?”

A lot of what he needed was communication, and the Ministry of Wisdom was full of communications specialists. Then he needed runners to make certain that units were doing what he'd told them to, and someone to keep track of supplies. Sula suggested starting with Sidney.

“I'll do what I can, my lady,” Macnamara said.

She needed to be there, she thought, in her headquarters, building a staff herself, but found she couldn't tear herself away. She walked back to Casimir's ward, stopping every so often to talk to the casualties who were still lying in the corridors. Most were lightly wounded, in good spirits, and inclined to blame the Naxids for their trouble. Sula began to feel a faint stirring of optimism.

A Terran waited in Casimir's ward, clad in the sterile robes of a surgical assistant, with the muffler lowered only partly from her face. Sula saw her, saw the concern and sympathy in her eyes, and felt her hope die.

“I'm sorry,” the woman said. “He died before we could finish prepping him. The doctor did his best for the next half hour but by that point there was really no chance.”

“Where's the doctor?” Sula said. She wanted to hear it directly, from the motionless chiming lips.

“Still in surgery. He went on to the next patient.”

Bitter laughter rang in her mind. No point in interrupting the doctor before he had the chance to kill another wounded man.

“His name was Massoud,” Sula said. “Casimir Massoud. Make a note of that.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“I'd like to see him.”

Because all pallets and stretchers were required for the wounded, Casimir lay in the morgue on cold floor tiles. He wore only the bandages from his first operation and the twisted blue pastel sheet. The small holes on the right side, where the doctor's equipment went in, had been neatly sealed by circles of pink plastic that looked like a child's toy suction cups.

One-Step's beads were wrapped around his hand.

Sula knelt by the body and looked down at the heavy-lidded eyes fallen shut for the last time. A vast storm of sheer feeling boiled through her, emotions rising strong and unbounded to the surface only to fall again before she could identify them.

I would have made you a lord, she thought. We would have gone through the High City like an angry wind, and if you had died then, it would have been because everyone was afraid of you, and of me.

I don't know if I have the strength to do it on my own.

I don't know if I'll want to.

She bent to kiss the cold lips and to breathe his scent for the last time, but Casimir didn't smell like himself anymore. It was this that brought the tears to her eyes.

Sula rose abruptly and turned to the surgeon's assistant. “I'll claim the body later,” she said. “Right now I have a war to direct.”

“Yes, my lady.”

One way or another she would be with Casimir again. Either she would come for the body and bring it to a glorious funeral—a cliqueman's extravagance with a greenhouse's worth of flowers and a Daimong chorus and a hearse drawn by white horses—or she would lie bloodless with him here on the cold tiles.

At the moment she didn't care which.

One-Step and the Torminel bodyguard followed her out of the morgue. She turned to the Torminel.

“What's your name?”

“Turgal, my lady.”

“You're working for me now, Turgal.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Where's your partner?”

“Dead, my lady.”

Sula hesitated. “Sorry,” she said.

“My lady,” the Torminel said, “I have Mr. Massoud's will.”

She made the adjustment to her sleeve display. “I'm set to receive,” she said.

You're going to need the money,
he'd said, knowing he was dying. He wanted her to cut a figure in the High City once the war was over.

Maybe she would. Or maybe she'd convert it all to precious stones and hurl them off the High City to the people below.

Macnamara's voice came to her headset as she was walking down the steps at the front of the hospital.

“My lady.” There was a strange urgency in his voice. “I know you want to be at the hospital, but I really think you should head for the Commandery.”

Sula told him that she was on her way, and asked him why.

“We didn't have the expertise to handle the equipment in the Commandery once the Naxids were gone,” Macnamara explained. “But some of the techs from the ministry have been over there, and it looks as if there's something going on. Something in space.

“It looks as if the Fleet is coming.”

T
he Battle of Zanshaa was preceded by skirmishes on a number of fronts. On seizing Zanshaa, the Naxids had also occupied all eight of its wormhole relay stations. They then hopped armed teams through the wormholes to seize the stations on the other side, giving them a view of all systems, friendly and enemy, that surrounded Zanshaa.

Since possession of these stations would also give them a splendid view of the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet as it burned toward Zanshaa, and allow them to estimate its course, velocity, numbers, wormhole through which it would pass, and its approximate arrival time, Supreme Commander Tork decided to take the wormhole stations back before they could supply information to the enemy.

Accordingly, before the Orthodox Fleet had even left Chijimo's system, attack craft carrying highly trained and motivated assault teams launched for the five wormhole stations leading into systems still loyal to the Convocation. The teams were intended not simply to capture the relay stations on the friendly side of the wormholes, but to move through them and capture the stations on the Zanshaa side, thus providing Tork and the Orthodox Fleet with fresh intelligence concerning the numbers and location of the Naxid enemy.

The assault teams were equipped with the latest in zero-gravity weaponry designed to minimize damage to the stations—plastic bullets that would deform before punching through station walls, projectors to flood an area with fast-hardening foam to trap any enemy and render him immobile and incapable of resistance and flèchettes to penetrate gaps in body armor and inject a neurotoxin fatal to Naxids but somewhat less lethal to other species. The teams wore heavily armored vacuum suits with maneuvering rigs for maximum tactical advantage in a zero-gravity environment. They flew assault craft with specially designed airlock access doors that would override any internal airlock control, or could burn through station walls to create a new airlock if necessary.

If a station was damaged, the assault craft were equipped with repair facilities and enough bottled air to resupply the station in the event of decompression. The assault team members were cross-trained not only in zero-gravity assault, seizure, and other forms of mayhem, but in repair and in the operation of a wormhole station once it was emancipated from Naxid control.

The assault teams were the finest the Fleet could provide—dedicated, intelligent, and indoctrinated fully in obedience to the Praxis. Their officers were level-headed, capable, and flexible. They were packed into their assault craft already in their armor, injected with drugs to aid them in high-gee, high-stress situations, and sent racing for the wormhole stations at accelerations of nine gravities or more.

It was expected that the Naxids in the wormhole stations would see them coming. When in fact they did, they reported the blazing deceleration torches to their superiors. In response, the Naxid fleet at Zanshaa fired missiles that sped through the wormholes at ever-growing velocities, located the assault craft, intercepted and vaporized them.

So it was that Tork's approach to Zanshaa Wormhole 8 was observed by the Naxids after all. Perhaps Tork had expected it and thought the high-stakes gamble with the assault teams worth the risk. His approach showed his commanders that he had at least learned a few of the lessons taught by Chenforce. The Orthodox Fleet was screened by over two hundred decoys, all resembling real ships, all ready to intercept any enemy missiles flung through Zanshaa's wormhole at relativistic speeds.

Hundreds of other decoys appeared in other systems at the same time, all vectoring for the wormhole gates to Zanshaa. To Naxid observers, it would look as if five Orthodox Fleets were racing toward them on a mission of vengeance and annihilation.

The Naxids had nearly five days to work out which fleet was the real one, and though they might have, no relativistic missiles were fired.

They were saving their missiles for battle.

The first loyalist elements in the system were its own relativistic missiles, a long stream fired days earlier from the ring stations at Zarafan, Chijimo, and Antopone. They flashed through Zanshaa's neighboring systems without having to make a single correction burn, thus assuring that they would arrive at Zanshaa undetected. They weren't intended to destroy enemy ships, but to saturate Zanshaa's system with furiously blue-shifted radar and laser bursts, their echoes revealing enemy formations to the Orthodox Fleet as soon as they arrived in-system.

Tork's command burst through Wormhole 8 at the same hour that the decoy fleets from four other systems arrived through their own wormholes. The Naxids had been expecting them and their radars were turned off. No antimatter torches were visible—apparently, the enemy were moving in zero gravity, hiding somewhere in the system with their engines off. No ranging laser painted the Orthodox Fleet as it arrived, but there was no need—the Naxids knew perfectly well where they were.

But because of the relativistic sensor missiles that had been swarming into the system for the last ten hours, it wasn't just the Naxids who possessed the latest tactical information. Updates began appearing on the displays of loyalist warships within seconds of their arrival.

Martinez sat in his captain's chair in
Illustrious,
his eyes fixed on the tactical display. Cruiser Squadron 9 was still astern of Tork's flag squadron, arranged in a clump carefully calculated so the ships would be able to stay clear of one another's antimatter tails during maneuver, but still close enough so they could react instantly to orders.

It took several minutes before laser echoes resolved the location of the Naxid fleet. There were fifty-two warships surrounded by clouds of a couple hundred decoys, having just made a slingshot turn around the Stendis gas giant on a course for Zanshaa itself, a course that would gently converge with that of the Orthodox Fleet in slightly over four days. In fact, the point where the tracks of the ships would cross would be Zanshaa, and the final moments of the battle that would decide the fate of the empire might be fought above the capital itself.

The courses of the two fleets were converging on a track ideal for the kind of battle Tork had in mind. The fleets would draw closer to one another slowly, allowing each side to hammer the other with flight after flight of missiles, a battle of attrition that would favor the side with the most ships. One side would be annihilated, and the other would lose heavily even in victory.

Tork must have known where they were,
Martinez thought. It was too much of a coincidence to believe that the Orthodox Fleet would jump into the system and find the enemy right where Tork needed them to be. He must have had spies in the Zanshaa system who were able to tell him exactly where the Naxids were, and he had adjusted the timing of his own attack to conform to enemy movements.

Martinez breathed his first free breath in several days. The fighting wouldn't start for another three days at least. He removed his helmet, scratched his whiskered chin, and called to Alikhan for sandwiches and coffee.

Ten hours later, as he caught a few hours' sleep in his cabin, he was called to Command by an urgent message from Kazakov. One glance at the tactical display showed him that something entirely unanticipated had happened.

The Naxid ships, instead of continuing on their course to encounter the Orthodox Fleet in three days' time, had suddenly accelerated. They were racing toward Zanshaa at five gravities, as if planning on beating Tork to the capital.

Or as if they were running away.

Martinez began pulling on his vac suit. He could anticipate what would happen next.

He was proved correct. Tork ordered the Orthodox Fleet to accelerate and match the enemy's velocity.

The problem was, Tork couldn't catch up. The Naxids had nine hours' head start before the light of their torches reached the Orthodox Fleet. And Tork couldn't accelerate as fast as the enemy, because the Lai-own, with their hollow bones, would not stand accelerations of greater than two and a half gees. Tork would either fall behind or would have to leave his Lai-own formations behind.

Martinez, locked into his suit with the scent of suit sealant and the stink of his own body, watched from his captain's chair as the enemy pulled ahead. Tork would never be able to bring about his decisive, orthodox battle. Instead he'd fall into the Naxids' wake as he swung around Zanshaa, and even then could only fight an engagement if the Naxids' reduced acceleration and permitted Tork to overhaul them.

Martinez couldn't imagine why the Naxids were racing for Zanshaa with such urgency.

The reason was revealed when a radio message, sent in the clear, arrived from Zanshaa. He heard Master Signaler Nyamugali's surprised intake of breath as she viewed the message, and then a chuckle.

“You'd better view this, Lord Captain.”

Martinez himself gave a gasp of surprise as the image resolved on his display and he saw Caroline Sula in all her brilliant beauty. Blood flashed hot in his veins as he viewed the pale skin, the flashing green eyes, and the familiar curl of sardonic amusement at the corner of one lip.

“This is Lady Sula, Governor of Zanshaa,” she said, “to the commander of the loyalist fleet. What took you so long?”

 

M
artinez was able to listen in on Sula's conversation with Tork because her communications were in the clear—she didn't
possess
a code, not even a simple one. So he learned early on that Sula, commanding something called the secret army, had seized the High City of Zanshaa and the entire Naxid government. The report was buttressed by video feed of Lady Kushdai signing articles of surrender in the Hall of the Convocation, and of some dubious-looking fighters lounging around public buildings.

That was
my
idea, Martinez thought. He had originally submitted a proposal to raise an army to hold Zanshaa until the Fleet could come to the city's rescue, but he supposed that raising an army after the city was captured by the enemy counted as the next best thing.

Tork, whose response was of necessity also in the clear, was brusque.

“This is Lord Tork, Supreme Commander of the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance. Lady Sula, you will execute all traitorous rebels immediately by hurling them from the High City. Otherwise, hold the city and stand by for further orders.”

Martinez thought about this for a moment, then contacted Chandra Prasad in the Flag Officer Station.

“Does it strike you,” he said, “that Tork was griped to discover that Sula jumped the gun and won a battle on her own before the Orthodox Fleet could fire a single weapon at the enemy?”

“She may have won the only battle anyone's going to fight for Zanshaa,” Chandra responded. “If you ask me, I think the enemy's running for it.”

Which was exactly what the Naxids were doing. Three and a half days later the enemy raced past Zanshaa without firing a missile at Sula or anyone else, and accelerated on a path for the Vandrith gas giant. Once there, they could slingshot on to Wormhole 3 and away to Magaria—or, conceivably, whip around Vandrith to race past a number of other gas giants and back into the system again. The rationale for this last seemed scant.

Tork made an effort to catch the Naxids before it was too late. All non–Lai-own warships were ordered into punishing accelerations, charging in to engage the Naxids even with inferior numbers, but the Naxids just pushed their own accelerations in order to stay ahead. Both sides fired missiles at long range, to no effect.

Martinez spent the accelerations on his couch with gravities lying on him like a pyramid of wrestlers, all elbows and hard muscles; and though he tried to concentrate on the dull facts represented by his tactical display, the image of Sula kept rising in his mind. Her reappearance had been so startling, so dazzling, so unforgettable, and it seemed to have burned itself into his mind like a laser stitching a picture on his retinas. Over and again he conjured the emerald eyes, the hint of mischief in the corners of the lips, the silver-gold hair. Other images floated to the surface of his thoughts: Sula in bed, a flush of excitement mantling the pale skin; Sula at the breakfast table, licking jam from her lips; Sula on the dark street by the canal, walking away from him, her heels rapping on the pavement as she left him standing helpless in the scorched ruins of his love.

A startling fact overshadowed it all. His brilliant lover had somehow made herself Queen of Zanshaa, put the Naxids to flight, and upstaged the Supreme Commander and the entire empire.

With regret, he realized that this meant she was hardly likely to beg his forgiveness.

Eventually Tork gave up the pursuit. He ordered the entire Fleet to decelerate prior to a slingshot around Vandrith that would put them in a wide orbit around Zanshaa's sun, then broadcast a general message to all flag officers and captains.

Tork's flesh was a more sickly gray even than usual. Strips of skin hung from his brow and chin. He clearly hadn't been holding up well under acceleration.

“My lords,” he declared, “the primary mission of the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance has been completed. We have driven the Naxid rebels from Zanshaa. Unfortunately we have been unable to bring their fleet to battle—that inevitable triumph will have to wait for another day.

“Certain officers have suggested that we pursue the Naxids until we can engage them.”

Martinez raised an eyebrow—
he
hadn't been one of those officers. He preferred to delay any pursuit, and hope in the meantime that Tork would drop dead or be replaced.

“The Naxids are retreating onto their supports,” Tork continued, “just as we did when we withdrew from Zanshaa. The farther the Naxids retreat into rebel-controlled space, the greater the number of reinforcements will be able to join them. I do not wish to commit this fleet to a pursuit deep into enemy territory, to an engagement where, at an unknown location, against an unknown number of enemy, our own reinforcements will be unable to locate us and in the meantime to leave the capital without defenders.”