Conventions of War

THIRTY-TWO

When Fleet Commander Jarlath advanced toward Magaria at the beginning of the rebellion, he had come in fast, racing like an arrow aimed at the heart of the enemy.

When Tork moved, he came in slowly, like the tide, and with the same inexorable force.

Magaria had a well-equipped ring and seven wormhole gates to other systems. From Magaria the enemy could threaten a third of the systems in the empire. The Naxids had to defend it or risk losing everything.

There were four wormhole jumps and three systems between Zanshaa and Magaria. The loyalist forces had managed to seize the wormhole station on the far side of Zanshaa Wormhole 3, but not the others-Tork had sent another wave of special forces, but the Naxids again wiped them out with missiles fired from another system. The loyalist forces could see into the first of those three systems but no farther.

Though the Naxid fleet was almost certainly based at Magaria, Martinez knew it was possible they wouldn’t choose to fight there, but to defend their base by fighting forward of it. The Orthodox Fleet had to make every wormhole transit after the first with the assumption that they might at any point encounter the Naxids. In response, Tork repeated the tactics he had used at Zanshaa. The Orthodox Fleet was screened by hundreds of decoys. Relativistic missiles were fired into each system ahead of time, radars and ranging lasers hammering out, all timed so that when the Orthodox Fleet arrived, their sensors would be able to pick up a fairly complete picture of the system. Between wormhole jumps, the Fleet and its decoy screen performed random changes of course to baffle any relativistic missiles fired at them.

The wormholes were unusually close together, and the entire journey to Magaria took only sixteen days. The first eight were spent accelerating, and then the blazing antimatter torches were turned toward the enemy and a deceleration began. Jarlath had gone in fast with the Home Fleet and lost almost everything; Tork would go in more slowly, grapple the enemy with slow deliberation, and crush him with superior weight.

Martinez spent most of his transit time in Command gazing fretfully at the tactical display. He took his meals there and often slept on his acceleration couch. He had been caught away from Command during one attack and nearly broke his neck: he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

He stared at the display and watched the slow advance of the little symbols that represented the Orthodox Fleet as they crawled across the display’s vast emptiness. Decoys were shown in pink, real ships in red. At the head of the long column of red was the little clump that was Squadron 17. Martinez wondered what Sula was doing as she sat at the point of Tork’s spear; if she sat in Command, as he did, and watched her ship creeping toward its destiny.

The long hours of waiting in Command produced a restlessness in Martinez that worked itself out in motion. When he wasn’t watching the tactical display, he walked the corridors ofIllustrious, wandering from one department to the next, watching his crew as they too waited for the Naxids. He knew the value of his own ship and crew by now and wasn’t interested in detailed inspections; and when the crew braced to attention, he was quick to set them back to their work. He chatted informally with the department heads and sometimes with the ordinary recruits; he tried to project an air of quiet conviction in victory, the assured confidence of the veteran commander leading his crew to yet another inevitable conquest.

To his surprise, he found that the crew didn’t seem to need his confidence-they had plenty of their own. They possessed a moral certainty of victory that Martinez began to find inspiring. He had hoped to cheer his crew, and instead they cheered him. It would have seemed churlish not to live up to their trust in him.

The Orthodox Fleet plunged on through the three systems that neither side could truly claim as their own. Along the way, Tork issued demands for obedience and surrender. This was fairly pointless in the case of the first two systems, which were largely barren of life save for a few mining colonies. These, having surrendered to the Naxid fleet when the enemy were heading for Zanshaa, now surrendered with equal alacrity to the loyalists heading the other way.

In the third system, Bachun, Tork demanded that he be able to broadcast to the population. The Naxid governor declined to answer. Intercepted transmissions from the planet showed joyous celebrations in honor of a record harvest and increased industrial production, all testifying to the efficiency of the new regime.

Tork fired a missile straight at Bachun’s capital city. Without missing a beat, his messages began to be broadcast throughout the system. Tork recalled the missile.

To Martinez, it was beginning to look as if there would be no suspense until the Fleet reached Magaria.

He was wrong. When the alarms began to chirp, he was suited on his acceleration couch. He knew from the sound of the alarm tone what had happened before Warrant Officer Pan, the sensor operator, could cry his warning.

“We’re being painted by a targeting laser!”

“Engines!” Martinez shouted over him. “Cut acceleration. Pilot, rotate to heading one-two-zero by zero-eight-zero! Weapons, all point-defense lasers on automatic! Comm, get me Lady Michi! Engines, sound warning for acceleration!”

Gravity and the distant rumble of the engines ceased. The ship began its swing to its new heading. Inside the vac suit, Martinez’s heart sounded like a roll of thunder.

Michi had given the squadron standing orders for this situation. All ships would disperse without the need for an order from the flagship.

“We’re still being painted, my lord,” Pan said, more quietly.

The acceleration warning began to clatter. “Everyone med up,” Martinez said, and reached for the med injector in its holster by the side of his couch. He pressed it to his carotid and fired into it a precise dose of the drug that would-it was hoped-keep his veins and brain supple and safe from the effects of heavy acceleration.

The others in Command took their injectors and did likewise.

The ship ceased to swing. “One-two-zero by zero-eight-zero,” the pilot said.

“Engines, accelerate at six gravities.”

The roar of the engines overwhelmed the feeble warning tones of the sensor board. The room became a blur as Martinez’s acceleration couch dropped to its zero point.

“Captain, what’s the problem?” Michi’s voice, hoarse with her battle against acceleration, sounded in his earphones.

“Enemy targeting laser,” Martinez said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m in my sleeping cabin. I got to my bed in time. Does-”

The squadcom’s voice was drowned by a shout from Pan. “Here they come!”

“Ten gravities for one minute!” Martinez called.

He saw the flashes of white on the tactical display that were incoming missiles, a perfect swarm of them shooting out of Bachun Wormhole 2 like a stream of water caught by a stop-action camera.

The ship shuddered and groaned under the great surge of gravity. Martinez clamped his jaw in order to force blood to his brain. His vision darkened, narrowed to a tunnel focused on the tactical display. He saw blooms of bright light flash on the display as antimatter missiles detonated. Symbols flickered, indicating thatIllustrious ‘s point-defense weapons were firing. He fought for breath and consciousness, aware that control of the battle had never been his, that he would either live or die in the next few seconds and that he was helpless to make any difference…

The great pressure on his chest and mind eased. He had never felt he would be thankful to experience a mere six gravity acceleration.

Expanding clouds of plasma floated in the void ahead of the ship, showing where the oncoming Naxid missiles had destroyed part of the fleet’s decoy screen. Silver flickers on the display indicated rapidly receding missiles that had flashed through the system so fast they failed to acquire a target. By the time they finished decelerating and had begun their return to the point of origin, the Second Battle of Magaria would be over, one way or another.

There seemed to be no new missiles coming their way.

“Reduce acceleration to one-half gravity,” Martinez said.

Michi’s voice sounded in his earphones. “I take it we’ve survived, Lord Captain?”

“No casualties in the fleet, my lady. We seem to have lost forty or so decoys.”

“Message for the squadcom from the Supreme Commander,” said Nyamugali at the comm station.

“Forward it to her.”

Martinez heard the message secondhand, since his channel to Michi was still open when she played it.

“The lord commander,” said a chiming Daimong voice, “reminds Squadron Commander Chen that no element of the fleet is to disperse without permission of the Supreme Commander.”

Tork, Martinez thought, at least had the virtue of consistency.

More decoys were launched to fill the gaps caused by the surprise attack. Tork then launched a missile to destroy the source of the ranging laser, which turned out to be Wormhole Station 2.

“The old pirate,” Michi said, with feigned affection.

Illustrioussuffered the expected number of sprains and broken bones during the attack. No one was incapacitated. The Naxid strike had come to nothing, but the crew of the wormhole station observed the Orthodox Fleet’s reactions, and would have been able to deduce at least some of the icons on their screens that represented real ships and some that were decoys.

Perhaps that had been the whole point.

Martinez wrenched off his helmet to relieve himself of the scent of spent adrenaline that was souring his suit, then examined the spectra from the brief battle. There had been over two hundred enemy missiles, he saw. Most had missed completely. Only two squadrons had tried to starburst, his own and Sula’s.

Something about the way Sula’s squadron maneuvered seemed familiar, and he subjected the trajectories to analysis. They looked random, but on closer inspection they were not-they seemed to be following the hull of a chaotic system.

Somehow, Sula had taught the new tactics to her squadron, and presumably done so without Tork finding out.

Clever girl,he thought. He wished he and Michi had been as clever.

Martinez decided that he wasn’t going to leave Command until the campaign was over. He ordered Narbonne to bring him coffee and settled in for the approach to Bachun Wormhole 2, now marked on the display by the glowing dust that had been its station.

The Orthodox Fleet was preceded through the wormhole by the now usual swarm of relativistic missiles equipped with laser trackers and radar, and then by hundreds of decoys. In order to avoid any theoretical host of missiles waiting for them on the other side, the fleet performed some last minute maneuvers to delay their entry into the Magaria system, a movement that only served to increase suspense.

Martinez shifted to a virtual display before the fleet made its transit. The Bachun system filled his skull, the sun a white sphere, Bachun itself a tiny blue dot surrounded by a silver ring.

The wormhole sped closer. Martinez strained his thoughts to sense whatever waited on the other side. Energy raced along his nerves. He could feel his pulse beat hard in his throat.

He knew thatIllustrious had made its leap through the wormhole when the Bachun system vanished from his mind, replaced by complete darkness. His mind flailed without bearings, and then the sensors began picking up data from the scanning missiles that had been fired into the system ahead of time, and bit by bit Magaria’s system blossomed in his mind.

When Fleet Commander Jarlath had led the Home Fleet to disaster at Magaria, the battle was influenced by two gas giants, Barbas and Rinconell, that lay between Magaria Wormhole 1 and Magaria itself. This tactical map no longer existed-Barbas and Rinconell had moved on in their orbits, and Magaria itself was on the far side of its primary. The Orthodox Fleet could skate past Magaria’s sun, Magarmah, and blast straight for the enemy-held world.

Except of course for the enemy fleet, which now flashed onto Martinez’s display like a distant glittering string of fireworks. The Naxids had swung around Rinconell and were themselves heading for the primary.

The two fleets were on a gently converging course, and if nothing intervened, they could begin hurling missiles at each other in about five days.

The enemy commander had given Tork exactly the battle he was looking for.

“Lord Captain,” said Warrant Officer Choy at the comm station, “we have a radio signal from the Naxid commander. It’s in the clear.”

Martinez had to admire the enemy’s timing. The message came within three minutes of the Orthodox Fleet’s last squadron transiting into the Magaria system. The Naxids had known approximately when Tork would turn up, and had sent their message to arrive shortly afterward.

“Let’s see it,” he said. He was still scanning the tactical display, just in case the message was intended to distract the loyalist command while some kind of skulduggery went on.

The image of a Naxid appeared in a corner of Martinez’s display, and he enlarged it. The Naxid was elderly, with gray patches on his head where scales had fallen off. He wore the uniform of a Senior Fleet Commander, a uniform covered with softly glowing silver braid, and his eyes glimmered a dull scarlet in his flat head.

“This is Fleet Commander Lord Dakzad.” The voice was imperious. “In the name of the Praxis, I demand the immediate unconditional surrender of the disloyal, anarchist, and pirate elements that have just entered the Magaria system. You may signal your surrender by launching all missiles into interstellar space. If you fail to meet this demand, you will be destroyed by fleet elements operating under my command. I await your immediate reply.”

Martinez was already looking up Dakzad inIllustrious ‘s database. The enemy commander was even older than Tork, and had in fact retired some eight years earlier. Apparently, the crisis had dragged him back into harness, to replace the hapless commander who had fled Zanshaa after the fall of the High City.

A text message from Chandra appeared in another corner of his display.

“I don’t think Tork is going to like having his own surrender message preempted.”

“I don’t think he’s going to like being called a pirate,” Martinez answered.

He was right. Tork’s reply-also sent in the clear, so his own subordinates could admire it-denounced the rebels as traitors before demanding their surrender. It included a video of Lady Kushdai surrendering all rebel forces to Sula, as a reminder to Dakzad that by fighting he was violating the orders of his own superiors as well as that of the government and Fleet.

Dakzad replied with a lengthy justification of the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis, a denunciation of piracy as demonstrated by the destruction of wormhole stations and the Bai-do ring, and further demands for submission.

Tork’s response was even more elaborate, with historical references to the Shaa’s first Proclamation of the Praxis on Zanshaa, and repeated his original demand for capitulation.

Martinez supped at his own table that night and slept in his own bed. He didn’t think there would be anything interesting happening as long as the opposing commanders were arguing ideology.

Though there was no fighting beyond the verbal sort, the days following the transit to Magaria were not entirely tranquil. There were many conferences with Michi and her staff, with Martinez’s officers, with sensor operators, and with Tork’s staff and analysts in other squadrons. Enemy formations were endlessly examined to find whether they were decoys or enemy warships. At one point Chandra put forward the startling possibility that they wereall decoys, and that the real enemy were elsewhere, hiding behind Magaria’s sun perhaps, racing toward them behind a pack of a few thousand missiles.

Fortunately, subsequent evidence disproved this theory. Sensor missiles probed the area behind Magaria’s sun and found nothing but Magaria itself. Careful reading of laser ranging spectra suggested that there was a difference in size between at least some of the Naxid blips and others, indicating a mix of warships and decoys.

The enemy they saw before them was real.

The two great fleets gradually approached each other. The Orthodox Fleet remained on course to whip around Magaria’s sun en route for the planet. The course of the Naxid fleet would intersect that of the loyalists right there, at Magarmah.

Which, Martinez reflected, was an interesting tactical problem. The two fleets would hammer at each other for several hours, and then have to form into a queue for the slingshot around the sun. Given the considerable distance between ships even in the same formation, there was no real danger of collision, but the ships of the two fleets would be intermingled in that long queue, and presumably still be hurling missiles at each other.

And after their passage around the sun, the two fleets would have to separate somehow, all the while engaged at close range.

Tork showed he wasn’t totally unaware of these problems, and ordered his fleet into an acceleration to arrive at the intersection point ahead of the Naxids. He was confident he possessed superior numbers, and so ordered his lead squadrons to envelop the enemy as they came up. The Naxids increased acceleration to prevent this. This went on for the better part of a day, the crews crushed into increasingly flatter shapes, until Tork gave up and grudgingly ordered his rear squadrons to double on the enemy instead.

The problem of the intersection was still present. Martinez hoped by the time anyone neared the intersection point, the loyalists would already have won the battle.

Tork thought ahead, and took no chances. He ordered all ships, after passing Magarmah, to form on the same bearing for the passage to Magaria. Tork’s bearing might be the same one the Naxid commander would choose. There was no way of knowing.

“This shows that a textbook battle is only possible if both sides cooperate,” Martinez told Michi over dinner. “The Naxids knew approximately when Tork would enter the system, and they set up to receive him exactly the way the tactical manuals said to do it. If they’d doneanything else, we’d all be improvising.”

Michi gave a wry smile. “All Tork’s maneuvers were practice for the real thing after all.”

“In order to fight his kind of battle,” Martinez said, “Tork had to find a Naxid commander who was even older and more set in his ways than he is.” He thought of the two long lines of ships sailing toward their rendezvous, all more or less in the same plane.

Neither commander seemed interested in using the third dimension that was available to them. If he were in charge, Martinez thought, he would have stacked his squadrons in that third dimension and descended on the enemy like a giant flyswatter. As it was, Tork’s superior force would drag into battle slowly, one element at a time. It was almost as if he was deliberately dissipating his advantage.

When battle was within three hours, Martinez turned out in full dress, complete with white gloves and the Orb, and gaveIllustrious a complete inspection. Each division cheered him as he arrived. He found nothing out of place. The division heads’ 77-12s were all up to date, but he checked a few of the items for form’s sake, knowing he would find no discrepancy.

“Carry on,” he said, unable to think of anything more inspiring, and the crew cheeredthat too.

He returned to his cabin and Alikhan helped him out of his uniform and into coveralls and his vac suit. He marched to his station and entered.

“I am in Command,” he said.

“The captain is in Command,” agreed Husayn. Martinez helped the lieutenant out of the command couch, then lowered himself into it. Husayn took his place at the weapons board. Martinez put on his helmet, locking himself in with the scent of his body and suit seals.

“Lord Captain,” Pan said from the sensor board, “I’m detecting missile flares from the lead enemy ships.”

The Second Battle of Magaria had begun.

Cruiser Squadron 9 was astern of the Supreme Commander’s cruiser division, which was square in the middle of the fleet, and neither would be involved in the fighting for some time yet. Martinez had little to do but watch Sula’s engagement at the head of the long column, and watch it with growing impatience. Apparently the lead squadrons of each fleet were to be allowed to have their battle, and then the next squadrons in line, and the next. Tork had the advantage in numbers, Martinez thought, why didn’t he press the engagement? He should order the entire Orthodox Fleet to close with the enemy all along the line and hammer them till they were nothing but dust glowing on the solar wind.

Apparently this hadn’t occurred to Tork, or if it had, he’d decided against it. Perhaps he was giving the fates every chance to remove Caroline Sula from his life.

Martinez found his blood burning with anger on Sula’s behalf. He told himself that he would have been equally angry if it hadn’t been Sula, that he was outraged at the waste of loyal officers and crew.

In the display, he saw that Sula ordered counterfire to intercept the enemy missiles, and that otherwise she did nothing. He understood her tactics. Past experience showed that long-range skirmishing was unlikely to produce results, and Sula clearly wasn’t about to waste missiles when the odds didn’t favor her.

The Naxids, it appeared, hadn’t learned this lesson, and fired several more salvos before Sula replied with one of her own. Explosions moved closer to Light Squadron 17, providing a radio-opaque cloud behind which other missiles could advance. Fury and frustration raged in Martinez’s veins. He punched the key that would connect him to the Flag Officer Station.

“May I speak with Lady Michi, please?” he asked when Coen answered.

In answer, Michi’s image appeared on his display. “Yes, Lord Captain?”

“Can we prod Tork into some action?” Martinez demanded. “Do we have to let Sula fight on her own?”

She looked at him with impatience. “Bywe you meanme, I suppose. You should have an idea by now of how the Supreme Commander responds to prodding.”

“Ask for permission to engage the enemy more closely.”

Michi’s tone turned frosty. “Not yet, Captain.”

Martinez clenched his teeth. “Yes, my lady,” he said, and ended the transmission.

He gazed at the display with burning anger. Sula was on her own.

Sula watched the Naxid squadron’s latest volley of missiles get blown into perfect spheres of blazing plasma by Squadron 17’s counterfire. She sat in her vac suit on her couch in Command, a gray, featureless, metal-walled space that had replaced the more sumptuous room flashed into ruin by a charge of antiprotons at Harzapid. Her neck itched where she’d applied a med patch-she felt a spasm of fear whenever she saw a carotid injector, and she refused to use them.

Her helmet sat in its mesh bag attached to her couch. She hated the damned helmet and the suffocating sensation she got while wearing it; as the captain, she didn’t have to wear it if she didn’t want to.

She would have preferred not to have worn the vac suit either, but supposed she might need its sanitary arrangements by the end of the day.

“Another salvo incoming, my lady,” said Maitland.

“Track and destroy, Weapons,” Sula said.

“Yes, my lady! Track and destroy!”

Giove’s excited response rang off the metal walls. Sula wished Giove would calm down. She would have preferred a little peace in which to contemplate her options.

Tork had put her here to die, that was clear enough. The rest of the fleet wasn’t maneuvering to her support, and Squadron 17 would engage an enemy of equal force on terms that implied mutual annihilation. The woman called Caroline Sula was intended to have a hero’s death within the next hour or two.

The question that most interested Sula was whether Tork, in his simple way, might not have a point. The first act of her life ended with her wresting an entire planet from the claws of the Naxids and reigning over it as an absolute despot. Whatever any hypothetical second or third acts might contain, they could hardly equal the first.

Perhaps she had overstayed her welcome in the realm of existence. Perhaps the fittest trajectory of her life would be that of a meteor, blazing a brilliant trail in the heavens before annihilation.

She couldn’t construct a rationale that justified her own existence, or that of anyone else either. Existence was too improbable to come supplied with a justification, like a book of instructions supplied with a complicated bit of equipment.

She couldn’t work out why she was alive, and it was therefore difficult to work up a reason why she shouldn’t die.

“Comm,” she said. “Message to Squadron: fire in staggered salvo, fifteen seconds apart.”

On the other hand, she thought, there was her pride to consider. The pride that she had instilled in her well-drilled squadron. The pride that didn’t want her effort, and those of others, to go to waste. The pride that rejoiced in her superiority over the Naxids. The pride that wanted Ghost Tactics to triumph over the enemy. The pride that didn’t want to hand Tork a cheap victory.

Vainglory, she wondered, or Death?

It was pride that won the argument.

“Comm,” she said, “message to Squadron. Starburst Pattern Two. Execute at twelve eleven. Pilot, feed Pattern Two into the nav computer.”

A few minutes later the nav computer cut the engines, and Sula’s heart lifted as the ship swung in zero gravity to its new heading, the first in the sequence of bobs and weaves dictated by Pattern 2’s chaos mathematics.

When Tork’s furious message came, she took her time about answering.

“My lord!” This from Bevins, who was at the sensor station with Pan. “Starburst! Squadron Seventeen has starburst!”

Martinez enlarged the tactical display and saw Sula’s command separating from one another, engines firing at heavy accelerations. A gust of laughter burst from his throat.

Sula was surprising them all. Defying the Supreme Commander and her own sentence of death, and setting the rest of the Orthodox Fleet an example.

Admiration kindled a flame in Martinez’s breast.O Lovely! O Brilliant! Sula’s maneuver made him want to chant poetry.

He sent a text message to Chandra.Why can’t wedo that?

Chandra didn’t reply. Perhaps she was making the argument on her own.

Martinez wasn’t the only one sending messages, becauseIllustrious intercepted a message from Sula to Tork. It was a reply to a message thatIllustrious hadn’t received, since Tork’s message was sent by communications laser to Sula at the van of his fleet, andIllustrious was not in position to intercept the tight beam. But sinceIllustrious was astern of the flagship, it was in a position to catch the reply.

“Confidenceto Flag. Unable to comply.” That was the entire message.

Martinez was helpless with adoration. He was even more delighted whenIllustrious intercepted the answer to Tork’s following message.

“Confidenceto Flag. Unable to comply.” There it wasagain.

His joy faded, and a cold chill ran up Martinez’s spine as he considered what Tork might do next. He could order each individual ship back into place, bypassing Sula altogether-or he could simply order one of Sula’s subordinates to slit her throat and take command.

There was a silence from the Supreme Commander that lasted several minutes. Squadron 17 and the enemy continued to rain missiles at each other. The next squadrons astern had begun to fire as well.

Martinez waited, feeling unease in his inner ear for a moment asIllustrious went through a minor programmed course change. The warships were all swooping a bit now, dodging any theoretical beam weapons being aimed at them.

“Message from the Supreme Commander, my lord,” said Choy. A text of the message flashed onto Martinez’s display as Choy read it aloud.

“‘All ships rotate to bearing zero-two-five by zero-zero-one relative. Accelerate one point eight gravities at eleven twenty-three and one.’”

Martinez let out a long sigh of relief, then looked at the chronometer. He had a little less than one minute to complete the rotation.

The Orthodox Fleet was finally going to close with the enemy. Apparently, Tork had decided that Sula’s maneuver compromised either his dignity or his tactics or both, and he had to retrieve the situation.

“Zero gravity warning,” Martinez said. “Engines, cut engines. Pilot, rotate ship to zero-two-five by zero-zero-one relative. Stand by to accelerate on my command.”

As the ship swung, as the acceleration couch swung lightly on its runners, Martinez took the opportunity to shift again to a virtual display. His visual centers filled with the vast emptiness of space, the distant planets and Magaria’s looming sun, the two great formations of ships and decoys and the blazing curtain of antimatter bursts between the lead squadrons. The stars, an unnecessary distraction, weren’t shown. Tucked away in an unoccupied corner of the solar system was a softly glowing display that would allow him to communicate with anyone else on the ship, or call up information from any of the other displays in Command.

“Accelerate at one point eight gee on my mark,” he said. “Three, two, one, mark.”

Illustrious’s great torches lit smoothly. The metal hoops of the accelerating cage sang lightly as the weight came on. Martinez drew a long, hard breath against the gravities that were piling weights on his chest.

Ahead, Sula’s squadron was well and truly separated now, all the ships moving in an irregular, spasmodic fashion that seemed filled with random course and acceleration changes. Only an appreciation of the mathematics would show that the ships never strayed outside a mutually supporting distance, that their prearranged movement pattern allowed them to stay in secure laser communication with one another, that the formation could be shifted to concentrate offensive power on a group of enemy ships, or a single ship, or to form a protective screen around a damaged comrade.

If only Michi Chen’s squadron could adopt a similar organization.

He had every confidence that the loyalists would win the battle. The only question was the cost. Tork would grind the enemy down, using ships and crew as the grinder, but the numbers used by the new tactics were mathematical, and more flexible. Martinez wanted to tease the Naxids, surround them, baffle them, trap them like a slow-moving bear amid a pack of racing, snapping hounds. Using his tactics, the loyalists would still win, but there would be many more loyalists alive to enjoy the victory.

Tork’s stolid, workmanlike tactics offended him. Offended his intelligence, his professionalism, his sense of pride. The waste of lives offended him, and the waste of ships.

Tork might even wasteme, he thought.

He reached with his hands into virtual space, called up the comm board, then once again paged Michi. When Li answered, he asked for the squadcom.

“Stand by.”

It was a few moments before Michi appeared, miniature helmeted head and suited shoulders floating in the starless virtual space.

“Yes, Lord Captain?”

“May I suggest that we starburst, my lady?” Martinez said. “I realize the entire squadron doesn’t have the formula, but Lieutenant Prasad, plus Kazakov and the crew in Auxiliary Command, can feed them their necessary course changes, and-”

“My lord,” Michi said, her gaze stolid, “let me be plain. First, I am not about to disobey a direct order from the Supreme Commander. Second, you are not my tactical officer any more. Please confine yourself to managing the ship, and I will take care of the squadron.”

Martinez stabbed at the virtual button that ended the communication. Rage pulsed in his ears.

Michi’s words were all the more infuriating because they were true.Illustrious was his job. It really wasn’t his business to suggest tactics to the squadcom.

Othercommanders, he told himself,had followed his advice, to their benefit. Do-faq had followed his recommendations at Hone-bar, and come out of it with a bloodless victory. Michi herself, at Protipanu…well, he had been tactical officer then.

“Missile flares from the enemy squadron,” Pan reported. “Eighteen-thirty-six-forty-four missiles, my lord. Heading our way.”

Martinez returned his attention to the display. Right, he thought. Concentrate on runningIllustrious.

Concentrate on keeping himself and his ship alive.

And somehow manage this without tactics. He felt as if he were shackled to an iron cannonball while an angry mob pelted him with rocks.

“Keep tracking them,” he said. “Weapons, alert Battery One to possible counterfire.”

It would be Michi who would order any response. At this range, any missile launch was the squadcom’s business.

Orders came from the Flag Officer Station a few seconds later.Illustrious would fire five countermissiles as part of the squadron’s coordinated response.

Missiles leapt off the rails. Martinez watched as chemical rockets carried them to a safe distance so their antimatter engines could ignite, then saw the curves’ trajectories as the missiles raced toward the oncoming barrage.

The two salvos encountered each other at the approximate midpoint and caused a series of expanding radio blooms that temporarily blocked Martinez’s view of the squadron he was preparing to engage. He was able to view other enemy units, though, and they didn’t seem to be maneuvering, so he assumed his own enemy wasn’t either.

At the head of the fight, where Sula battled the enemy van, missiles were detonating in a continuous silent ripple, a ceaseless flash of brilliants against the darkness. Squadrons of decoys danced and maneuvered around the action, though without purpose-both sides had long since worked out which formations were decoys by now.

A text message from Chandra appeared on his display. “Target enemy with fifteen missiles. Immediate.”

Fifteen: that was a full battery.

“Weapons,” he said. “Battery Two to target the enemy. Fire when ready.”

“Fire fifteen from Battery Two,” Husayn replied smoothly. “Shall I fire a pinnace, my lord?”

The pinnaces were designed to race toward the enemy alongside missile barrages, to shepherd them to their targets. Martinez had worn the silver flashes of a pinnace pilot when he was a cadet, as had Sula. Pinnace pilots were dashing, and the duty was considered an entree to the fashionable world of yachting. Peers competed with one another for the few places available.

Unfortunately, the war had been hard on pinnace pilots, with casualty rates of something like ninety percent. Sula had been the only pinnace pilot to survive the First Battle of Magaria. For some reason, Peers weren’t volunteering for the duty in their usual numbers: most of the new pinnace pilots were now enlisted.

“No pinnace, Weapons,” Martinez said.

“No pinnaces, my lord.” There was a moment of silence, and then, “Missiles away, my lord. Tubes clear. All missiles running normally.”

“Tell Battery Three to stand by for counterfire,” Martinez said. Michi had used the radio blooms as cover to fire a salvo: possibly the Naxids would as well.

An idea floated into Martinez’s mind, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. The thought of the radio-opaque wall of missile bursts between him and the Naxids had combined with Husayn’s query about pinnaces to produce a fresh, bright notion that glittered in his thoughts like a precious gem.

Martinez probed the idea for a moment and found that it only glittered all the more.

“Comm,” he said, “I need to speak to the pilots of Pinnaces One and Two.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Choy.

The two pilots reported in. One was a cadet and a Peer, the other a commoner and a recruit.

“I’m going to fire you in opposite directions, at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic,” he said. “I want to use you as observation platforms, to get as many angles on the action as possible. Use passive detectors only-there will be enough radar and lasers out there. Send me all information real-time, and we’ll overlay it with our picture of the battle here.”

The pilots were too well-trained to show any relief at the knowledge that Martinez was not about to send them alongside flights of missiles into the hell of antimatter bursts that awaited them.

“Yes, my lord,” they said.

The pinnaces were launched. They were packed with sensor equipment and transmitters, in order to detect openings in enemy defenses and order whole sheaves of missiles into course changes. They would do very well as spotters, able perhaps to see around the missile bursts and provide a new angle on the combat.

Martinez instructed Choy and Pan to coordinate the reception of the pinnaces’ transmissions and their integration into the sensor picture of the battle. During the time it took to set that up, Michi ordered one more offensive barrage and another salvo of defensive missiles against incoming enemy.

Missile bursts were raging up and down the first two-thirds of the Fleet. At the head was a continuous seething blaze, like endless rippling chains of fireworks going off. So pervasive was the radio interference that Martinez had no clear picture of what was happening there, but he sensed that Sula’s fight had reached some kind of climax.

His picture of the battle was beginning to get a little murky. Both fleets were now flying past or through the dispersing plasma spheres caused by the detonation of Sula’s missiles, and though the bursts had cooled, they were still fuzzing the sensors.

Ahead of Squadron 9, Tork’s Daimong squadron fired one volley after another. More missiles than made sense, Martinez thought. He preferred greater elegance in these matters. It was as if Tork viewed the opposing fleets as gangs of primitives armed with clubs, charging into one another and thumping away. Tork presumably took comfort in the fact that his side had more clubs.

To the rear, the loyalist squadrons were still driving toward the enemy. Tork had more ships and squadrons than the Naxids, and he had ordered his rearmost formations to double the Naxid formation, get behind it to catch the rear elements between two fires. The tactic was obvious enough, and the Naxids were clearly aware of it: their squadrons were stretching their formations to engage as many of Tork’s ships as possible without permitting a clear path through their battle order.

More missiles launched, one salvo after another, all of which were destroyed to create radio-opaque walls between the approaching ships. It was as if the enemy were disappearing into thick clouds, clouds in which enemy missiles could hide. The data fromIllustrious’ s two pinnaces began to be factored into the tactical display, and they enabled Martinez to see several missile barrages being launched from behind the radio haze, and to plot his own missile intercepts. He congratulated himself that he had given himself a slight advantage over the enemy.

Considering the number of missiles racing toward him, he was going to need it.

He spared a moment for what was happening at the head of the column. He could see nothing through the plasma murk, but the intensity of fire appeared to have dropped away. Sula’s fight, at least for the moment, was over.

“Course change, my lord,” said Choy. “From the Supreme Commander.”

Tork’s new order aimed the squadron again for the original interception point, near Magaria’s sun, and reduced acceleration to a standard gravity. Apparently, the Supreme Commander had looked into the flights of enemy missiles coming at him and figured he’d gotten close enough.

Martinez decided Tork was probably right. Unless Tork was actually going to use tactics-something the Supreme Commander seemed determined to avoid-he might as well slug it out at this range as anything.

From what Martinez could see, the rear squadrons had given up trying to double the enemy. So it was just going to be hammer-hammer-hammer until the two fleets reached the intersection point, when things would turn very interesting indeed.

Data from the pinnaces was flooding in. Martinez kept shifting between the points of view ofIllustrious and the two pinnaces, trying to spot the enemy missiles coming in, as well as approaches by which his own missiles could get nearer the enemy. He fed the data to Chandra, and at least occasionally she followed his suggestions.

The Naxid missiles came closer. Point-defense lasers and antiproton weapons lashed out. Plasma bursts were filling far too much of Martinez’s field of vision. He remembered the data from First Magaria, the way the squadron defenses held up perfectly well until suddenly they collapsed and whole formations were wiped out in seconds. He began to feel as if someone had pasted a large target symbol to his chest.

“Permission to starburst?” he sent to Chandra. It was more than time.

He received his answer in text:“Squadcom says not yet.”

Martinez clamped down on his frustration and began again the business of trying to visualize trajectories. He checked plots from the two observation pinnaces againstIllustrious’ s own spectra, plotted possible missile courses against the expanding, overlapping spheres of plasma that raged between the two fleets…and then, when he saw his opportunity, he almost gave voice to a cry of pure joy. Tork’s Daimong squadron just ahead was heavily engaged: a dense cloud of plasma from Tork’s fight was going to pass between Squadron 9 and the Naxids in five or six minutes.

If Squadron 9 fired now, the missiles could be launched behind the plasma bursts that were currently screening it from the enemy. The missiles would dash ahead and make the approach through the cooling plasma from Tork’s battle. The attack would arrive from an unusual angle, and the Naxids might not see it at all-or if they did, it might be glimpsed for only a few seconds as the missiles dodged from one plasma cloud to another.

Nearly stammering in his haste, Martinez informed Chandra of this opportunity. The answer was immediate: fire a full fifteen-launcher flight following his trajectory, and then launch another full barrage straight at the enemy to keep their attention occupied.

Missiles leapt from the tubes, and this time Martinez fired Pinnace 3 along with them. The pinnace pilot couldn’t accelerate with the same angry speed as the missiles, but would follow them and perhaps be able to see the enemy from a perspective useful enough to make vital last second corrections.

Another flight of missiles roared in on Squadron 9, and was destroyed by lasers and antiproton beams. Martinez felt anxiety gnaw his nerves with sharp, angry teeth. The enemy missiles were getting so close that it was difficult to launch countermissiles in time-the missiles just took too long getting clear of the ship in order to ignite their antimatter engines. He would have to depend entirely on the point-defense beams.

His head swiveled within the virtual environment as he saw ahead a horrific, violent series of flashes. The Daimong squadron vanished into overlapping blooms of plasma light. Martinez felt his heart lurch against his ribs. Very possibly Tork, his flagship, and his squadron had all been destroyed, annihilated in an instant like so many squadrons at First Magaria.

He wondered how hot the fireballs would be whenIllustrious flew into them, in just a few minutes.

Chandra’s urgent voice sounded in his ears. “All ships prepare to starburst.”

About time,he thought.

“Engines,” he told Mersenne, “cut engines. Pilot, swing to course two-four-five by zero-six-zero. Engines, prepare to accelerate at eight gravities.”

Mersenne triggered the heavy-gravity warning.

“Starburst!” Chandra cried in Martinez’s earphones. “All ships starburst!”

“Engines,” Martinez said, “fire engines.”

The onset of eight gravities was like being kicked in the stomach by a horse. The sound of the engines was the roar of a fire-breathing monster. The cruiser’s spars and hull groaned aloud.

Martinez fought for breath. The virtual world in his head began to dim, and elements in the display flickered and faded out. The cruiser’s unexpected maneuver was making it impossible for the two observation pinnaces to maintain their telemetry.

“All ships fire by salvo.” Chandra’s voice was a hoarse, throaty cry against gravity. Martinez repeated the command.

“Missiles…fired.” Husayn’s voice seemed to have chirped up about an octave-or perhaps, Martinez thought, heavy gravity was affecting his perceptions.

“My Lord!”Pan’s shout showed no strain at all from the gravity.“Missiles!”

Martinez barely saw them coming before half the virtual display flared white, and then went completely dead as every sensor on that side of the ship was burned out.

“Roll ship!” Desperate urgency filled Martinez. Without sensors, the point-defense weapons couldn’t see the enemy missiles coming at them.

The pilot rolled the ship, and the darkness of dead sensors exchanged places with the white of a fireball. The burst had already expanded beyond the ship, filling the vacuum with radio hash, and neither Martinez nor the sensors could see anything beyond. Martinez looked at the radiation indicators. Neutrons, gamma rays, and pions pulsed as missiles detonated nearby. The hull temperature was spiking.

The half of the universe that had gone black slowly turned white as sensors were automatically replaced.

An enormous radiation pulse blacked out half the sensors again. This was no mere missile going off. Something that big had to be the destruction of an entire ship with all its antimatter fuel and ammunition.

“Twelve gravities for two minutes!” Martinez shouted.

The engines thundered. Martinez screamed against the onset of gravity, at the darkness filling his mind. He clamped his jaw muscles and swallowed to force blood to his brain. His breath was harsh in his ears.

Oblivion was a glorious release.

He fought his way to consciousness moments later. Michi’s voice rang in his ears.

“All ships fire by salvo!”

Martinez tried to speak around what seemed to be a felt-covered rubber ball in his mouth.

“Weapons, did you receive that? Fire by salvo.”

Husayn didn’t reply. He was probably still unconscious. Martinez was stumbling through the sequence of oral commands that would give him command of the weapons computer when he heard Husayn’s muzzy voice.

“Never mind, Lord Captain, I’ve got that.” There was a pause. “Missiles away.”

Illustriouswas still inside a plasma fireball, though the fireball was thinning and cooling. Martinez returned his attention to the radiation counter. The pulses were small and therefore distant. Hull temperature was beginning to drop.

Radars and ranging lasers lashed out into the radio murk. The images of a few ships nearby resolved out of the gamma ray haze, other survivors of Cruiser Squadron 9.

Three, Martinez counted, four. Five if you countedIllustrious.

A few minutes earlier they had been nine.

“All ships fire by salvo.” It was Chandra’s voice this time. Presumably she’d just regained consciousness.

Another salvo was fired at the enemy they couldn’t see. Martinez wished he could link his sensors with those of the two observation pinnaces.

The plasma fog was cooling and dispersing rapidly. A ship appeared, vaguely, ahead, proving there had been at least one survivor of Tork’s Daimong squadron. Ahead of the single Daimong ship, Martinez could see the flares of missile explosions. There were many more explosions behind.

And then, within the space of a few seconds, the plasma surrounding the ship dispersed to the point where the ship’s sensors were suddenly able to receive data from one end of the fleet to the other.

Martinez looked at first for the enemy squadron he had been engaging, and saw nothing but the flights of missiles he had just sent at them. He supposed the Naxids were still concealed by cooling plasma bursts.

At least no missiles seemed to be heading in his direction.

Astern, opposing squadrons were still smashing at each other. Ahead, one more Daimong cruiser had materialized, and this one was tentatively identified by the computer as theJudge Urhug, Tork’s flagship. At any rate, it was maintainingUrhug ‘s course.

Farther ahead a battle blazed against the brightness of Magaria’s sun. Martinez saw ships whirling around the action in a series of irregular curves, and his heart gave a shout as he realized that Sula’s squadron was still fighting, still deploying the new tactical system.

She had destroyed the squadron she’d first engaged, apparently, and then decelerated to attack the next enemy squadron from its unengaged flank, the classic doubling maneuver that the rearmost squadrons had failed to accomplish. After destroying the second group of enemy, Sula and the second loyalist squadron were now dropping back to engage a third enemy force.

He could see at least five of Sula’s ships, and their pattern of movement implied that there were more survivors that he couldn’t detect. A song of relief caroled through his heart at the realization that Sula was almost certainly alive.

“My lord,” said Choy. “Message from Pinnace Three.‘Attack successful. Enemy destroyed. Request orders.’”

Martinez looked in surprise at the space that had been occupied by the enemy squadron. Even though the plasma bursts had thinned, no enemy ships had appeared. It appeared thatIllustrious had just fired a series of missile barrages at enemies that had already been vaporized.

A burst of cold satisfaction raced through him. “Order Pinnace Three to return to the ship,” he said. “Weapons, direct all remaining missiles to attack the enemy next astern. Engines, reduce acceleration to one-half gravity.”

Relief akin to euphoria flowed through his sinews as the great pressure of eight gravities eased. The hull gave a series of cracks and shudders as if it were flexing vast limbs. Martinez pressed the touchpad that would connect him with Chandra.

“Request permission to decelerate and double the enemy next astern.”

Chandra’s answer was swift. “We’ve only got twenty-two minutes to our nearest approach to the sun,” she said. “We’ll have to wait till after our slingshot.”

Martinez looked in surprise at the display and saw that she was right. He’d been paying so much attention to the battle that the range to Magarmah had escaped him. Hours had gone by since the first Naxid squadron fired its initial flight of missiles, and meanwhile the sun had been growing closer.

“All ships to form on the flag,” Chandra said, this time over the general broadcast channel. “Illustrious,here’s your course.”

The cruiser altered its heading to bring it onto the course Tork had ordered for the fleet after the solar passage. Three other survivors of the battle took station nearIllustrious, each keeping a wary distance from the flagship and each other in order to avoid getting fried by the other ship’s blazing antimatter tails. The last survivor did not acknowledge any of Michi’s transmissions, but shaped its own course for the solar approach. It was unable to communicate though it was clearly under command, and it probably hadn’t received Michi’s order. The other ships stayed clear lest it do something unexpected.

Judge Urhuggave no orders and did not alter its course. Its engines were unlit, and as a result Squadron 9 was slowly closing on it. Martinez wondered if Tork’s cruiser was a ship of the dead.

Ahead ofUrhug there was a ferocious blaze of action and then silence. Sula’s squadron broke its formation and began heavy accelerations to line up for the passage across Magarmah.

If they had left any Naxids alive, the enemy was hidden by expanding plasma bursts.

Engines roared andIllustrious quaked as Squadron 9 burned around Magarmah. Martinez clenched his teeth in the face of high gravity and managed to hold onto consciousness.Illustrious maintained heavy thrust for another four minutes after the passage, to shape its course for Magaria, and Martinez looked ahead.

There were nothing but friendly ships between Squadron 9 and Magaria. Sula’s Squadron 17 was already dispersing again into its whirling formation and decelerating to engage the enemy. Martinez counted seven ships remaining in her squadron, and fourteen in the other friendly squadrons ahead.

Judge Urhughadn’t fired its engines during the solar bypass, and so hadn’t shaped the course that Tork himself had ordered for the fleet. The flagship was flying by itself toward the interstellar void.

“Prepare to decelerate,” came Chandra’s voice on the all-ship channel. “We will double the enemy squadron to our rear.”

Martinez hung weightless asIllustrious rotated to its new heading. He could only imagine what was happening on the other side of Magarmah as the two fleets approached the same point. Annihilating flights of missiles would be fired at point-blank range, as much a danger to the aggressor as the target. Possibly on account of the danger, they’d stop shooting missiles entirely, but that didn’t mean they were through fighting. As the opposing squadrons fell into line ahead and astern of one another, they would be close enough to begin deploying their antiproton beams as offensive weapons, and cause the same kind of carnage that Harzapid had seen on the first day of the mutiny. The opposing forces would roar around the sun shooting great chunks out of each other, and if they didn’t separate sufficiently after the transit, they’d just keep on shooting.

Martinez was at a loss as to how he’d be able to aid friendly ships if that were the case. He might not be able to fire missiles for fear of hitting his own side.

“Decelerate on my mark, at three gravities,” Chandra said. “Five, four, three, two, one, mark.”

Deceleration kicked Martinez in the spine. He saw that most of the other survivors began decelerating at the same moment-all but Sula’s, which had been decelerating all along-and he wondered if Michi was the senior surviving officer and had given them all an order.

Two ships didn’t decelerate. One was the cruiser that had been unable to communicate, which plodded along on its preset course, and the other a ship farther up the line, which might be in the same condition.

Martinez saw specks whirl around the sun, their torches flaring to bring them on track for Magaria. It was impossible to tell whether they were loyalist or Naxid, and Michi transmitted a demand that they identify themselves.

The reply flashed back at the speed of light. The new arrivals were Cruiser Squadron 20, five ships that remained of the ten that had started the battle.

The sun spat out another line of ships, tiny bright seeds flying across the darkness. They were on a different heading from the loyalist squadrons and therefore presumed to be enemy.

“All ships fire by salvo,” Chandra said. “No-wait. Stand by.”

The new arrivals’ course was peculiar. They weren’t racing after the loyalists, and they weren’t shaping a course to get between the loyalists and Magaria. In fact they didn’t seem to be heading anywhere in particular, and were soaring more or less into empty space.

No, Martinez realized. Not quite empty…

He stabbed the virtual button to send a message to Chandra.

“They’re running!”he said. “They’re heading for Wormhole Five.”

Which, he recalled, would eventually take them to the Naxid home world of Naxas.

“We’ve got to go after them!” he told Chandra. “The enemy fleetis the rebellion now. Magaria is nothing without them.”

“Fire by salvo,” Chandra said. “Stand by for course correction.”

Missiles were already being launched by the enemy squadron and by the remains of Squadron 20. It was very close range, and soon the space between them was filled with detonations.

Another squadron flung itself around Magaria’s sun, on track for Wormhole 5. They were already shedding missiles aimed at Cruiser Squadron 20.

“Turn to course zero-six-zero by zero-zero-one relative,” Chandra said. “Accelerate to six gravities, beginning at sixteen forty-one and one.”

“Engines, cut engines,” Martinez told Mersenne. “Pilot, do you have the new heading?”

“Yes, my lord.”

The loyalists began their pursuit of the fleeing enemy, gravity piling on their bones. The next two formations to pass the sun were loyalist, already engaged with the Naxid squadron astern of them. Antimatter burned and boiled in the space between ships.

Not all of the ships passed the sun intact. Two flew off on the trail ofJudge Urhug, unable to make use of their engines. It was unclear whether they were friendly or Naxid. Others fell into the wake of the loyalist squadrons, but reported too much damage to continue the engagement with the enemy.

If the Naxids had similar problems, they were silent about it.

More ships were flung out of the sun’s gravity well. Enemy squadrons vanished behind clouds of raging plasma. The radiation detector spiked as missiles reached fuel stores. The Naxids increased acceleration, and Michi did as well.Illustrious groaned to the increase in gravities. Martinez panted for breath against the leaden giant that squatted on his chest. Michi’s ships fired one salvo after another. Ships reported that their magazines were beginning to run low.

Eventually Michi called off the pursuit. The opposing forces had become too separated in their slingshot around the sun-those extra four minutes of thrust had thrown the loyalists too far away. The Naxids could keep their distance by matching Michi’s acceleration.

“Is Lady Michi the senior officer surviving?” Martinez asked Chandra.

“She must be,” Chandra answered. “Everyone’s following her orders.”

Martinez scanned the display, adding up the ships. The Orthodox Fleet had come into the battle with eighty-seven ships, and something like forty had survived-the exact number depended on how many of the three silent, uncontrolled ships now drifting for the void belonged to the loyalist fleet.

The Naxids had started with seventy-two warships, and thirty were now making their escape.

Ships on both sides were damaged, but at the moment it was impossible to say how many, or how badly.

What seemed clear was that combat had taken a heavy toll of flag officers. Tork’s ship was silent and drifting. Kringan’sJudge Kasapa hadn’t survived, unless it was another one of the ship-sized flotsam on course for nowhere. The third in command, Acting Junior Fleet Commander Laswip, had died with his ship.

That put Michi very definitely in charge.

“Captain Martinez.” Michi’s brusque voice rang in his head. “I’ll need you in my quarters at once.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Martinez let the virtual display fade and blinked as the control room swam into his vision for the first time in hours. Ancient Terran officers on horseback gazed sternly at him from the walls, and below the feet of their horses the displays glowed in colors that seemed dull compared to the brilliance of the virtual world.

“Comm,” Martinez said, “get me the premiere.”

When Kazakov answered, Martinez told her she was in command ofIllustrious while he was in conference.

“Yes, my lord.” She hesitated. “Congratulations, my lord.”

“Thank you.”

He unwebbed and swung forward to plant his feet on the deck, then wrenched off his helmet for a breath of somewhat freer air. While he still had the microphone on, he addressed the crew in Command.

“Well done, people. Take a breather and a stretch, but don’t go far. I’ll try to have food brought to you.”

As he stood, they turned to him, wheeling around in their acceleration cages. Mersenne raised his gloved hands and began to applaud. The others echoed him, the sound muffled by the vac suit fabric. Martinez grinned.

Hehad done rather well, he thought, considering his superiors’ mistakes.

He thanked them, then stripped off the cap that held his headphones, microphone, virtual projection net, and the diagnostic sensors that read his vital signs.

Michi had saidat once. He supposed he didn’t have time to change out of his suit.

Helmet under his arm, he left Command and trudged down the companionway to officers’ quarters. Michi, Chandra, Li, and Coen were grouped around Michi’s dining room, all bulky in their vac suits. Michi and Chandra were gazing at a wall display, the aides at datapads. Martinez entered and braced.

“Come in,” Michi said, her eyes intent on the wall display, and then she turned to him.

“I intend to pursue the enemy,” she said, “and finish them off once and for all.”

“Yes, my lady,” Martinez said.

Good idea,he thought.