“Thank you,” Tarafah grudged. “But I’ve got to get back to the team—we don’t want the Beijings to get another goal in the final minutes.”
“Yes, my lord. I’m sorry you were asked to leave the game.”
“My ship.” Tarafah’s eyes narrowed. “What about my ship?”
“Armed Naxids tried to board theCorona, my lord. I had to get her out of dock.”
Tarafah gave a dismissive look. “That’s been explained. It was a surprise inspection.”
“They werearmed, my lord,” Martinez said. “Why do inspectors need guns? And they were storming every ship on the station. Forty of them to every ship. Naxids.Only Naxids. With guns.”
Tarafah’s eyes cut away, to something or someone out of frame, and then back.
“Was it a Naxid who brought you the information, my lord?” Martinez inquired gently. “Are there Naxids with you now?”
Tarafah hesitated, and then his look hardened again. “Of course they’re Naxids,” he said finally. “They’re from Fleet Commander Fanaghee’s staff.” His tone turned accusing. “You’ve got thefleetcom involved, Martinez! Do you know howvast this is?” A loud cheer roared up from the nearby crowd, and impatience crossed his face. “I’ve got to get back to the game. Now you turnCorona around and get back to the station—everything will get straightened out once you get back.”
Martinez’s heart sank. This, he thought, is the precise moment at which any of this stops being fun.
“You’re saying this freely?” he asked. “Under no duress or compulsion?”
“Of course,” Tarafah snapped. “Now getCorona back to the rim and we’ll get everything settled.”
“Yes, my lord,” Martinez said, tasting the bitterness that striped his tongue at the knowledge of what he’d have to say next.
Delay, he told himself. Delay was all. Delay would justify everything.
“If you’ll just give me the code word,” he told Tarafah, “I’ll swing the ship around and start the deceleration.”
Tarafah had started to turn, ready to return the football pitch, but now he swung back to the camera. “The what?” he said.
Martinez tried to keep his face earnest. “The code word,” he said. “The code word you gave me last night.”
A snarl of frustration crossed Tarafah’s face. “What are you talking about, Martinez?”
“Remember?” Martinez said, sorrow and dread entering his heart even as he tried to keep his face earnest and eager. “Remember at dinner? When I raised my suspicions about the Naxid movements, you told me that no one was to boardCorona unless you gave the password.”
“I never gave you a password!” Tarafah said. “What are you driveling about?”
He seemed genuinely baffled. Sadness weighed on Martinez like the slow, inevitable pressure of gravity. Tarafah didn’t yet understand just how seriously he had been betrayed.
“The password that tells me that you’re free and uncoerced,” Martinez said. “You’ve got to give me the password, my lord, before I can turnCorona around.”
“I didn’t give you anything—” The camera on Tarafah jiggled. “—Anything of the sort. I—” He hesitated, his eyes cutting out of frame, then back. “I demand that you turnCorona around and return to the ring station!”
“Without the password?” Martinez said, and this time he allowed his sorrow to show. “I understand, Lord Elcap. End transmission.”
He could have kept the dialogue going for another few rounds, but he didn’t have the heart for it.
He had bought time, and he had bought it with his captain. It would take time for the Naxids to get a password out of Tarafah, the more so because the password did not exist.
For a moment Martinez gave himself up to the images of Tarafah being slashed with stun batons, battered, shackled, shot. He saw Tarafah lying in his blood, insisting through pain-clenched teeth that there was no password.
Delay.He had bought time, that was the important thing.
He paged Alikhan again. “Anything?”
“Therewas a safe in the elcap’s office, my lord. Nothing in it but documents.”
“Have you searched the office?”
“I’m doing so now, my lord.”
“Shall I send you help?”
“Can you trust anyone else for the job, my lord?”
The question brought Martinez up short. Whocould he trust? The captain’s and lieutenants’keys were the most dangerous items on the ship. It was a capital crime—one of those involving flaying and dismemberment—to possess a key that didn’t belong to you. Was there anyone on the crew who was truly convinced that it was necessary to get ahold of the keys, and actually obey the order?
Martinez considered the matter, then laughed as a possibility occurred to him. He checked the crew manifests to find where the crew action stations were, then paged Zhou and Knadjian. The two stared at him from the displays, surprise plain on their bruised faces.
“I want you to report to Alikhan in the captain’s office and follow his instructions,” he told them, to their further surprise.
Corona’smerry thugs should have a fine old time tearing the captain’s stateroom to bits.
“My lord!” Tracy, the sensor operator, gave a sudden surprised squeak. “Ferogashhas launched!”
A cruiser, roughly twiceCorona’s size. “Do you have a course?” Martinez asked.
“It hasn’t fired its torch, my lord. It’s just separated from the ring station.”
“Let me know if it goes anywhere.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The Naxids were planning something forFerogash, and Martinez was willing to venture thatCorona featured in that plan.
He thought a moment, then paged the captain’s secretary. “Saavedra,” he said, “you understand our situation.”
Saavedra gave him a careful look, lips pinched beneath broad mustachios. “I understand yourexplanation of the situation, Lord Lieutenant.”
Martinez found growing in himself a distinct lack of enthusiasm for warrant officers who made these sorts of rhetorical distinctions.
“Do you understand thatCorona is in danger?” he asked. “That we may be fired on?”
Saavedra gave a terse nod. “I understand, my lord.”
“In order to activate the defensive weaponry, I need the captain’s key. Do you know where the captain keeps it?”
Saavedra’s eyes hardened. His jaw firmed. “I donot, my lord.”
“Are you certain? The lives of everyone on this ship may be at stake.”
“I don’t know where the key is, my lord.”
“You’ve never come across it? You’ve never seen him take it off, or take it from a drawer, or from his safe…?”
“On the sole occasions on which I have seen the captain’s key, it has been around the captain’s neck.”
Martinez decided he didn’t like warrant officers who used excessively formal diction either. He considered visiting Saavedra in whatever compartment he sheltered in and blowing a hole in his knee in hopes a memory might leak out. But the fantasy was only that; he didn’t dare leave Command.
Sweet reason would have to prevail.
“I need you tothink,” Martinez urged. “Think about where the captain puts his valuables. Where he might hide something precious. Anything you can tell me.”
Saavedra looked imperiously from the display. “I shall consult my memory, my lord.”
“Consult away.” Disgusted. “End transmission.”
For the next fourteen minutesFerogash continued to drift away from the ring station without maneuvering. Alikhan reported no success, even after the two reinforcements arrived and Martinez suggested thumping the paneling for secret compartments and tearing open the captain’s pantry. If the office had been carpeted, he would have suggested ripping up the rugs.
Then another transmission came from Ring Command. “It’s Deghbal, my lord,” Vonderheydte reported.
“Tell him to stand by.”
Martinez counted a minute and a half, as much as he dared, then answered.
“This is Martinez, my lord.”
Deghbal’s black-on-green eyes glimmered in the lights of the ring’s command center. “Your captain has recalled the password he gave you,” he said. “The password is ‘offsides.’ ”
Martinez tried to look relieved, as if the word were the thing he desired most in all the world instead of the first thing Tarafah could think of when the pain finally grew too great to bear.
“Thank you, my lord,” Martinez breathed. “Now may I hear the word from Lord Elcap Tarafah himself?”
“Lord Tarafah is unavailable,” Deghbal said. “Your team has just won a victory, four points to one. The field is in turmoil. There is much celebration. I don’t believe we could locate Captain Tarafah even if we wished to.”
Martinez forced onto his face what he hoped was an ingratiating smile. “I’d still like to hear it from the captain, if I may.”
“You may not!” Deghbal’s response was immediate, and sharp. “This has gone on long enough. You will returnCorona to her berth at once.”
“I’d very much like to hear that from my captain.”
“You will return immediately!”Captain Deghbal’s voice contained the glottal throb that was the Naxid equivalent of a snarl.“There have been enough games today!” Deghbal leaned toward the camera, his black beaded lips drawn back. “If you fail in your obedience, I will order that your ship be fired upon.”
“Just because I want to speak to my captain?” Martinez said. He widened his eyes in feigned disbelief. “Just let me hear the word from my captain and everything will be fine.”
“Obey my order or face the consequences.” Deghbal reared back, his black-on-green eyes glaring.
Martinez said nothing, simply leaned back in his couch and looked impassively at the camera. He could think of no other way to delay things. He and Deghbal stared at each other for a long, long moment…Martinez counted eight seconds. Then Deghbal gave a contemptuous flick of one hand.
“End transmission.” The orangeEnd Transmission symbol appeared, and Martinez told the display to vanish.
Now we die, he thought.
But nothing happened right away.Corona’s engines burned on for another nine minutes before anything was heard from the ring station.
“Ferogashis maneuvering, my lord!” from Tracy.
“Ferogashfiring main engines!” echoed Clarke.
Martinez tried to control his suddenly leaping heart. “What course?”
“Zero-zero-one by zero-zero-one. Course due north, my lord. Two gravities and accelerating.” The 313-degree Shaa compass had no zero coordinate, but began instead with one, the odd number left over after factoring the prime number. The one, of course, stood for the One True Way of the Praxis.
Ferogashwasn’t chasing, it was heading north, the quickest way to clear the ring and open fire.
“Page crewman Saavedra,” Martinez said.
