the dais.
Akzad was on his feet again, shouting and brandishing the wand, oblivious to the blood that poured from his head wound. Everything had gone far beyond his, or anyone’s, control. Even the sergeant-at-arms stood perplexed: he was supposed to guard the Convocation against intruders, not take part in a brawl of one group of convocates against another.
“To the terrace!” Lord Chen could still hear Said’s magnificent baritone carrying over the sound of the riot. “Take them to the terrace!”
Battered into submission and seized by the angry convocates, the Naxids were dragged through the wide side doors of the amphitheater. Terrace furniture was knocked and kicked aside as the Naxids were dragged to the stone parapet and tipped over the brink, to fall 150 paces down the stony cliff. Akzad, in his torn ceremonial cloak, was hurled down with the rest, as were a dozen loyalist convocates, accidentally knocked over by the crowd or dragged to their deaths by Naxids clinging to them in desperation.
Lord Chen, gasping for breath, leaned for support on the parapet. His head swam as he stared at the carnage below, the scatter of centauroid bodies lying broken on the stones. The furious anger that possessed him had faded, and he looked down at his dead colleagues with growing astonishment, not only at what had just happened, but at his own part in it.
He was Maurice, Lord Chen, of Clan Chen, which had been at the absolute top of imperial society for thousands of years. Chens had served in the Convocation for all of that time, representing themselves and the interests of their clients, all beneath the stabilizing power of the Praxis.
Not one of them had ever participated in a riot in the Convocation chamber. Not one had ever killed a fellow convocate with his bare hands. In all the long history of the empire, nothing like what happened today had ever occurred. This act was completely unprecedented.
Lord Chen thought that what he was seeing below him, broken on the stones, was not just the bodies of legislators, but the old order itself.
“We must reconvene!” Again Said was shouting. “The Convocation must reform!”
Lord Chen filed with the others into the Convocation. Smashed and scattered furniture lay on and around the speaker’s dais like a scattering of old bones. The convocates retrieved the usable furniture and borrowed more from colleagues who had fled or died. Lord Said was proclaimed temporary chairman, though he was forced to conduct the meeting without the Lord Senior’s wand, which had disappeared and was never to be found.
The Convocation immediately passed on a voice vote a measure outlawing the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis, whoever and wherever they might be. Another vote proclaimed that the penalty for belonging to the organization would be dismembering. Then someone else suggested flaying, and the merits of flaying and dismembering were debated. After which a Terran lady convocate with a torn uniform tunic and a blackened eye rose to suggest that since the first lot had been thrown off a cliff, the rest should be as well.
Of such fascination did the convocates find this debate, and the ten or so laws they passed that day, that it was fully an hour before anyone thought to call the Commandery and inform the Fleet of the menace to the empire. And, once Fleet Commander Jarlath was informed, it was another hour before anyone bothered to tell him of the Naxid squadrons’ disobedience.
The empire was as inexperienced at quelling rebellion as Elkizer had been at making it.
Jarlath immediately ordered his three cruiser squadrons in pursuit of Elkizer. They left the ring and blasted toward Vandrith at over ten gravities’ acceleration with only partial crews aboard, but were gone less than an hour before Jarlath realized the pursuit was fruitless and recalled the ships.
Jarlath had begun to realize that he might be in a much more dangerous position than he’d supposed. A little information about what Akzad had said about the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis had reached him, and he gathered that large numbers of Naxids were involved. He had also remembered Elkizer marching around the ring with a group of senior officers and military constables, and with a burst of amazement realized that Elkizer had been rehearsing the boarding and capture of all non-Naxid ships.
There were 341 warships in the Fleet. Of these, sixty-eight, or nearly twenty percent, were commanded and crewed by Naxids, eight entire squadrons of six to ten ships each plus the odd ship here and there on detached duty. Of these squadrons, two had been stationed at Zanshaa with the Home Fleet, two at Magaria with the Second Fleet, one with the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid, one with the Third Fleet at Felarus, one squadron at the Naxid home world of Naxas, and the last at Comador.
Communications lasers immediately burned with urgent messages directed to fleet and squadron commanders at Harzapid, Felarus, and Comador. Additional messages went to ships at more remote stations. It would take days for some of the answers to come back, even pulsed at the speed of light through the relay stations at the wormhole gates, and Jarlath suspected that when the answers came, he wouldn’t like them.
He hesitated before sending messages to Fanaghee at Magaria and to the commander at Naxas. But on further consideration, he decided there was nothing to be gained by remaining silent. He queried Naxas as to its status, and sent a message to Fanaghee telling her of the mutiny of his two squadrons, and ordering her to intercept them.
Then he added up the figures in his head again, and didn’t like them any better than he had the first time.
Magaria was the key, he decided. If Fanaghee and her force stayed loyal, then the empire would survive what was to come.
Ifnot …Well, Jarlath thought, he would try to maintain an air of confidence.
It was only then, nine hours after Elkizer had disobeyed orders and bypassed Vandrith, that Jarlath remembered that there was one Naxid warship remaining on the station, the brand new light cruiserDestiny, which was ten days from completion—or so the dockyard superintendent had maintained for over a month now.Destiny had its crew and officers aboard, but had yet to be towed to the completion arena to receive its missiles, defensive weapons, and to test its propulsion systems with their first charges of antimatter.
Jarlath ordered the Military Constabulary to seize the ship. They were met with small-arms fire from the ship’s officers.Destiny ‘s crew ran out of the ship into the dockyard, where they began hurling homemade explosives and incendiaries. It was two hours before they were all rounded up and shot. Eight million zeniths’ worth of stores and dockyard equipment had to be written off.
Shortly after making his report on the incident, Jarlath received a reprimand complaining that he had shot the rebels instead of throwing them off a cliff, as prescribed by a new law passed that afternoon by the Convocation.
That was how the first day ended.
The message from the Commandery to Fanaghee at Magaria took twenty hours to arrive. It took another twenty for the reply to get back to Zanshaa. Fanaghee expressed alarm over the mutiny of Elkizer and Farniai and announced that she was dispatching the Second Fleet to intercept the rebels.
“Very good, Lord Commander,” said Lord Convocate Maurice Chen, who by virtue of the fact that he’d demonstrated martial skill by clouting the chief rebel on the head with a chair, had been deemed worthy of a promotion out of Oceanographic and Forestry and onto the Fleet Control Board. “It must be a relief to know that Magaria is safe,” he said to Fleet Commander Jarlath.
“Idon’t know it,” Jarlath replied. His fingers twirled little angry knots into his fur. “I don’t know if I credit Fanaghee’s report, or for that matter if I wish to.”
He ordered Fanaghee to provide detailed reports on the status of every ship under her command, the reports to be provided in video form and by the captains of the individual ships themselves. Which should make it clear, he thought, whether the captains could speak for themselves.
As he feared, there was no reply to his message. He informed Lord Chen and the rest of the Fleet Control Board that Magaria had fallen to the rebels.
There were five squadrons at Magaria. If the Naxids controlled them all, Fanaghee’s force would now be equal in number to the five squadrons remaining in the Home Fleet, and once Elkizer and Farniai joined her, she would have the advantage.
In which case, he knew he might as well surrender hope of recapturing Magaria. It would be all he could do to hold Zanshaa.
The next bulletin came from the Third Fleet at Felarus. Its Naxid squadron had departed the station unexpectedly on what its commander claimed was a training exercise, then opened fire on the rest of the Third Fleet, still moored to the ring station. Antiproton beams, intended as an antimissile defense, had been used offensively, and at point-blank range. Warships were blown apart, along with critical parts of the ring station. The Naxid barrage hadn’t been as severe as it could have been, which indicated that they were exercising a degree of restraint, perhaps out of compassion for their fellows, perhaps simply because they intended to return and capture Felarus’s ring later. Despite the rebels’ self-restraint, half the ships of the Third Fleet were destroyed, and the rest severely damaged. Because of additional damage to the repair facilities of the ring station, it would be many months before any of Third Fleet’s ships could be used against the rebels.
A puzzled message arrived from the commander of the ring station at Comador. The Naxid squadron based there had departed the station and were making their way out of the system, refusing communication. The station commander wished to know if the squadron was flying away on an exercise that he hadn’t been told about.
Jarlath also had to presume that the squadron at Naxas was lost.
From Harzapid alone there was good news. The commander of the single Naxid squadron, as inexperienced at staging a rebellion as anyone in the Fleet and far from any advice from the ruling council on Naxas, had marched his followers into Ring Command and sent forth a public announcement to the effect that he was now in charge. After recovering from her surprise, the commander of the Fourth Fleet organized storming parties and retook Ring Command. Unfortunately, this precipitated another point-blank battle with antiproton beams, but this time the loyalists weren’t caught unprepared. The Naxid ships were destroyed, at a cost of a third of the loyalists damaged or destroyed. That left enough ships to form two squadrons.
Jarlath ordered that any captured rebels be thrown off a cliff, if one was conveniently at hand, and otherwise be shot.
The victory at Harzapid gave Jarlath two more squadrons, four once damaged ships were repaired, and Jarlath took heart. He counted no more than ninety ships in the enemy fleet, and these included single ships on detached duty and the squadron from Comador, a station so remote that its renegade squadron would take months to arrive near the scene of any prospective action. This total also included the three squadrons captured at Magaria, which were not fitted for Naxid crews and thus would take some time for the special requirements of a centauroid species to be made.
Once Jarlath called in the Daimong squadron from Zerafan—only ten days away if he ordered a brutal, maximum acceleration—he would have fifty-four ships in the Home Fleet, which should suffice to hold Zanshaa until further help arrived. Squadron Commander Do-Faq’s Lai-own squadron at Preowin could arrive in forty days, necessarily at a much more gentle acceleration due to the less robust Lai-own physique. Individual ships could also be called in, enough to eventually make a squadron of small vessels.
Unfortunately, the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid was at least three months away. But after those three months were past and the Fourth Fleet arrived, Jarlath could be reasonably certain that any offensive he launched toward Magaria would stand a good chance of success.
In the meantime, Magaria preyed on his mind. Its ring was an enormous arsenal of missiles, parts, shipyards, and training facilities, a far superior facility to anything else the rebels possessed. Magaria also had the seven wormhole gates that could send an enemy force to much of the empire. If he could retake Magaria, Jarlath knew he could rip the guts out of the rebellion.
Instead he took steps for the defense of Zanshaa. Having put himself aboard his giant flagship, called in all crews and filled all ships with weapons, fuel, and supplies, he launched the remaining squadrons of the Home Fleet five days after Akzad’s abortive rebellion, and then began an acceleration toward Vandrith. This was not a pursuit of Elkizer’s fleeting squadrons, which by now were well out of reach, but rather, an attempt to give the Home Fleet some delta-vee so if an enemy attacked, the defenders wouldn’t be sitting ducks and massacred.
For the first few days of the emergency Sula ended up guarding a skyhook terminus again, though this time her party was armed with automatic rifles rather than stun batons, and one mustachioed petty officer was in charge of a tripod-mounted antimatter gun that would dispose of armored vehicles, or, indeed, anything at all. Only military personnel with valid identification were permitted on the cars, and Naxids were flatly forbidden to ride the skyhook under any circumstances.
The official stories being broadcast were confused and contradictory, indicating that something had happened that the censors didn’t know how to spin. The story they eventually settled on was that the Lord Senior and a group of his followers had tried to seize the government and killed a number of convocates, but were promptly flung off a cliff by indignant legislators. Two squadrons of the Home Fleet had rebelled as well, but these were now in flight. Fleet Commander Jarlath and the rest of the Home Fleet would soon depart to take vengeance on behalf of the established order.
Sula supposed that most of this was true, or true enough, except the part about the heroic convocates killing the traitors themselves. The Convocation had never done their own dirty work before, she thought: why start now? But looking at the news reports in more detail, Sula saw that it was possible to draw other conclusions.
She knew that the two rebellious squadrons were crewed by Naxids. The list of the traitorous convocates included only Naxids, whereas those convocates martyred by their treachery were all non-Naxids. And she had been ordered to forbid Naxids to ride the critical skyhook. From all of this, certain conclusions could be drawn.
Sula was quicker at math than Jarlath, and she didn’t like how the numbers were adding up either.
