Conventions of War

TWENTY-NINE

The 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 flechettes 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 inIllustrious, 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?”

Martinez was able to listen in on Sula’s conversation with Tork because her communications were in the clear-she didn’tpossess 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 wasmy 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-hehadn’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.”

A tone of finality came into Tork’s voice. He knew perfectly well that he was speaking for history as well as to his officers, and his voice rang like bells tolling down the long line of generations. Martinez could only admire the effect.

“Legitimate government will be restored to the capital,” Tork went on, “and the rebel leadership punished. The Orthodox Fleet will be reinforced to even greater numbers, and then will advance on the enemy. Our victory is assured.The truth of the Praxis will prevail! ”

Depressed rather than inspired by the Supreme Commander’s words, Martinez climbed out of his vac suit and dragged himself to his cabin for a cup of coffee and a quick meal. The crew, he thought, would not be pleased-they had been ready for the final battle, had steeled themselves for victory or death, and now would discover that both triumph and annihilation had been indefinitely postponed and that they would have to stay in orbit around another damned star, going in dreary circles for months while waiting for the war to start again…

He knew he wouldn’t enjoy it either. His son would be born on distant Laredo beforeIllustrious would leave Zanshaa, and might well have spoken his first words before he ever laid eyes on the child that had been named for him.

Plus there would be bruising decelerations for the next few days, as the Orthodox Fleet prepared to swing around Vandrith for the defense of the system.

No one was listening to his advice.

It seemed like Sula was having all the fun.

After sending her first message to the arriving loyalist Fleet, Sula shouldered PJ’s rifle and left the Commandery for the Ministry of Wisdom. It would be hours before the new arrivals received her message, and hours again before a reply would arrive, and there were many things she needed to do.

And she knew sheneeded to occupy herself. The more things that occupied her, the less time she would have to think of Casimir lying bloodless on the cold tile floor of the morgue.

As she crossed the boulevard to her headquarters, she could smell the dust of the New Destiny Hotel that covered every surface and formed little drifts in the gutters. She heard the snap of fire, and over it the sound of turbines. She looked up. A coleopter was floating over the High City, moving very slowly from east to west.

So far as she knew, the Naxids didn’t have any flying warcraft-since no one had fought a terrestrial battle in thousands of years, there had been no need to build any-but improvisations were possible, and at least one person on the Naxid side was thinking in the right direction.

Contemplating antiaircraft defense, she hopped up the steps of the ministry and passed beneath an ornate bronze portal into her headquarters. As she entered her improvised command center-she’d taken a large meeting room, with onyx walls and a brilliant mirrored ceiling-Macnamara and Sidney leaped to their feet and braced. Others stared at them, then at Sula. She looked back expectantly. Eventually they shambled into something resembling a proper salute.

“As you were,” she said finally. “Try to remember you’re in an army.”

“My lady,” Macnamara said, “may I introduce the staff.”

Macnamara seemed to have chosen well. The majority were communications techs, and many were very familiar with the High City. Sidney had called some people he knew, people who ran businesses and understood how to organize small groups, and set about molding all the newcomers into something resembling a proper staff.

Sula’s first priority was to announce to the world at large that the loyalist fleet had arrived and would shortly be demolishing the Naxid ships on which the rebels relied for their protection. The announcement, she hoped, might serve to moderate any Naxid response.

Her next task was to assemble an order of battle and to locate the parts of her army that had disappeared. To that end, she sent people out into the city to find units and tell them to report in.

The next task was to make certain that all possible avenues into the city were covered, including all possible routes by which an enemy could climb the cliffs. The coleopter was scouting the city for a reason, and Sula was determined that it would find no unguarded area.

She placed units as well as she could, working with her maps, but knew she would have to make a personal inspection later. She looked down at her map, at the Gates of the Exalted, where the turrets of the antimatter guns were marked on the map in pencil.

“I want to get the antimatter guns out of those turrets,” she told Macnamara. “The rebels must have other antimatter guns, and the turrets are just targets waiting to be blown up.”

“You want me to do that now?”

“Yes.”

“I could put other guns in the turrets. Some of the machine guns we captured.”

“Good idea. Do that.”

Her comm chimed with a report from Julien. The Naxids were charging up the funicular again, and being wiped out again.

She knew they must have been reinforced substantially, because this time they came in greater numbers and with greater determination. This didn’t get them any farther, however, it just left them with larger piles of corpses.

As the assault faded away in blood and failure, Sula looked up to find a young Lai-own in the brown uniform of the civil service knocking politely at the door.

“Yes?”

The Lai-own came in and braced. “Enda Far-eyn, my lady,” she said. “I work in the Office of the Censor. I have a report to make.”

Sula looked up at the Lai-own and wondered why the guards passed a censor to see her. “Go ahead,” she said.

“At the Office of the Censor we receive a copy of every electronic transmission made on nonmilitary channels, my lady,” Far-eyn said. “Including those made by the Naxids.”

“Ah. Hah.” Sula cursed herself for an idiot. “I can use that.”

Indeed she could. Naxid officials on the High City had been calling for help ever since the battle began, and since most of them were at home or in a hotel when the action started, few if any had access to dedicated, encrypted military communications systems. They were calling on the regular state comm system, and the censor’s office had not only logged all the calls, but with the press of a few touch screens was usually able to pinpoint the comm unit from which the message had been sent.

Once the Naxid officials had been located, Sula sent out units to take them prisoner and add them to the growing collection of enemies in the courtyard of the Convocation. A few escaped capture, but when confronted, none resisted.

Far-eyn also managed to locate the official who had been ordering the suicidal assaults up the funicular. He was the assistant commander general of the police, and he was holed up in the Imperial Hotel.

“Let’s not cut his communications,” Sula said. “Ilike the orders he’s giving.”

Macnamara returned to report that he’d succeeded in swapping out the remaining antimatter guns. Two were now mounted on trucks, to use as a reserve, and two were emplaced in palaces overlooking the funicular and the Gates of the Exalted.

“I’ve hidden them well, my lady,” he reported. “The Naxids shouldn’t be able to see them the way they can spot the turrets.”

Which didn’t mean they couldn’t be destroyed, just that the Naxids would have to go to greater effort.

“Is the coleopter still scouting us?” Sula asked.

“It flew away.”

“If it comes back, try to knock it down with the antimatter guns.”

“My lady!” One of the staff, a young Torminel with sharp, fierce fangs, looked up from the comm display in the room’s large table. “It’s the Commandery! They say the Naxid fleet has begun to accelerate!”

The Naxids, Sula found, were piling on the gees, heading for Zanshaa at a bruising speed. Since they didn’t need to change velocity in order to fire missiles at Zanshaa, Sula suspected they were in fact fleeing the system.

“That’s what we’ll tell the world, anyway,” she decided.

The announcement was duly made on every video and audio network. Sula wondered how many of the announcements were getting through to the outside world, how many relays the Naxids had succeeded in shutting down. It might be that only the city of Zanshaa was receiving the broadcasts by now.

She didn’t sleep that night, instead making inspections of her units and shuffling reserves around. A good thing, she thought. Any sleep would be filled with Casimir and Caro and blood.

Lord Tork’s reply to her greeting arrived two hours before dawn, and Sula considered the Supreme Commander’s terse order to execute her prisoners. The hostages were her only guarantee of good Naxid behavior-not that it seemed to be working-and she’d hoped to interrogate them, a task for which up till now she had no time, and for that matter no interrogators but her own amateur army.

“Right,” she said. “Pick three minor functionaries out of that pack and chuck them off the rock at first light. Make sure it gets video coverage. We’ll point out on the broadcast that if the Naxids are naughty, more members of their government are going to get a chance to find out whether or not they can fly.”

First light, however, provided other distractions. The Naxids had been planning another major attack up the funicular, the plans for which were overheard by Far-eyn in the Office of the Censor; and this attack was supposed to be preceded by an attack by the “air element.” Sula alerted her reserves and moved the two mobile antimatter guns to cover the funicular.

The air element arrived first, cargo craft with machine guns mounted in the cargo doors. These made slow passes over the south cliff of the acropolis, the guns hammering the area around the funicular. After a number of misses, antimatter guns shot down two of the craft and the rest withdrew.

The attack itself was the usual bloody failure.

After the firing died away, Sula summoned a camera crew and walked to the Convocation, where two Naxid convocates and a captain of the Naxid fleet, previously chosen by Macnamara, were bound and thrown over the terrace to shatter on the stones below.

“Executions will continue as long as the rebels refuse to honor the instrument of surrender signed by Lady Kushdai,” Sula told the camera, and then dismissed the camera crew and took a walk along the terrace. The metal furniture was adapted to the Naxid physique, and the umbrellas were bright against the gray stone of the Great Refuge. The air was crisp and cool, and the sky had turned its usual deep green. Most of the columns of smoke that had been rising from the city the previous afternoon were gone. The city was very still.

Sula put a hand on the smooth, cool surface of the granite terrace wall and looked out over the rooftops. The streets between the buildings were deep, shadowed canyons, and as far as she could see, were absolutely empty. People were keeping their heads down, or watching their video walls for the latest bulletin, or both.

If there were Naxids keeping watch on this part of the cliff, they were hidden.

She knew they had to be down there somewhere. Naxid police were probably arriving by the thousand at the train stations, and sooner or later they were going to think of something more imaginative to do than charge up the funicular.

She considered this and decided that it probably didn’t matter. Her forces and reserves were sufficient to contain any threat to her perimeter. All she had to do was hold out long enough for the Naxid fleet to flee the system, and she suspected the High City contained enough food to keep the army eating for that length of time.

She would have liked to stay on the terrace awhile, perhaps with a sweetened, syrupy tea and a cream-filled brioche, but the Convocation’s food service seemed to have been disrupted. She returned to the Ministry of Wisdom and was told that she’d just had a call from the Commissioner of Kaidabal, who wanted to negotiate his surrender.

“He said that the rebels appointed him to the position against his will,” Macnamara said. “He said he’s a loyal subject of the empire.”

“What did you tell him?” Sula asked.

“We said you’d call him back.”

“Ah. Hah,” she said, and felt a slow smile break out on her face.

She’d won.