Logs

'Well,' he said, 'I'm interviewing the lieutenants one by one anyway. I'll ask them about that night, but I don't think any will give me a story different from anything they've already told Garcia.'

'I mess in the wardroom,' Xi said. 'I could make a few inquiries as well.'

'We must find an answer,' Michi said.

On his way to his office Martinez contemplated Michi's choice of words: she had said an answer, not the answer.

He wondered if Michi was willing to sacrifice the answer-the real answer-in favor of any answer. An answer that would end the doubts and questions on the ship, that would help to unify Illustrious under its new captain, that would put the entire incident to bed and let Illustrious, and the entire squadron, get on with their job of fighting Naxids.

It was a solution that would sacrifice an officer, that was true, but an officer who was an outsider, a provincial Peer from a provincial clan, isolated from the others who had all been hand-picked by Fletcher. An officer who no one seemed to like very much anyway.

An officer who was very much like the officer Martinez had been just a year ago.

He didn't like Michi's solution on these grounds, and on others as well. There had been three deaths, and Martinez thought Michi was too quick to consider the first two solved. He had a sense that the deaths all had to be related some way, even though he couldn't guess at anything that might connect them.

In his office he found Marsden waiting patiently with the day's reports. Martinez called for a pot of coffee and worked steadily for an hour, until a knock on the door interrupted him. He looked up and saw Chandra in the doorway.

He tried not to envision a target symbol pinned to her chest as she stepped into the room and braced.

'Yes, lieutenant?' he said.

'It was unfortunate that we couldn't discuss…' Her eyes cut to Marsden, whose bald head was bent over his datapad. 'That matter we wanted to talk about at dinner today.'

'We can talk about it tomorrow,' Martinez said.

'It would be a little late.' Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. 'The lady squadcom had asked me to conduct my experiment tomorrow.'

She wants to find out how much you're worth before deciding on your arrest. The bitter thought rose in Martinez' mind before he could stop it.

He sighed. 'I don't know how I can help you, lieutenant.' She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. 'In order for this to be what you want, it can't be anything standard. Either my standard or their standard, if you see what I mean. It has to be something that's completely yours, and something that hadn't been done before, or at least not recently.'

Her hands clenched into fists, and this time did not unclench. 'I understand, my lord.' From the sound, her teeth were clenched, too.

'It's not easy, I know.' Martinez made a conciliatory gesture. 'I'm sorry, but I have no useful ideas for you.' He mentally reviewed the last few days. 'I don't have useful ideas for anyone, it seems.'

Her fists still clenched, Chandra braced, executed a military turn, and marched away.

Martinez looked after her, and a morbid part of his mind wondered if Chandra was angry enough to kill him.

Martinez was killed the next morning, during Chandra's maneuver. Martinez spent the time passing command of the ship to Kazakov in Auxiliary Command, so that his crew in Command could devote themselves entirely to the maneuver.

'The experiment assumes that we are six hours into the Osser system.'

Osser again, Martinez thought. It was almost as if Chandra were repeating Martinez' last maneuver, not a good sign if she wanted to impress Squadron Commander Chen.

'Chenforce has entered hot, and we've been able to search the system a little more than three light-hours out. No enemy force has been detected. Are there any questions?'

Apparently there were none, because Chandra went on. 'The exercise will commence on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.'

A new system blossomed on the navigation displays.

'My lord,' said Warrant Officer Pan, one of the sensor operators, 'we're being painted by a tracking laser.'

'Where?'

'Dead ahead, more or less. A rather weak signal-I don't think it's anywhere near-My lord! Missiles!' Pan's voice jumped half an octave in pitch.

'Power all point-defense lasers!' Martinez said. 'Power antiproton beams!'

But by that point they were all dead, and within seconds Chenforce was a glowing cloud of radioactive parties spreading itself into the cold infinity of space, and Martinez' heart was thumping to a belated charge of adrenaline.

Naxid missiles, Martinez realized, accelerated to relativistic velocities outside the system, then fired through the wormhole along the route they knew Chenforce had to take. The reflection of a tracking laser fired from somewhere in the system provided last-instant course corrections.

Through his shock he managed a grim laugh. Chandra had impressed the squadcom, all right.

Michi's voice came into Martinez' headphones. 'I'll want all officers in my quarters for dinner at fifteen and one.'

The mood at dinner was sober. The officers looked as if they'd been beaten flat by hours of high-gravity acceleration.

The meals that had been prepared in the wardroom, and in the captain's and squadcom's kitchens, were combined-casseroles mostly, that could cook quietly away in the ovens while everyone was at quarters. Michi had several bottles of wine opened and shoved them across the table at her guests, as if she expected the depressed company simply to swill them down.

'I should like the tactical officer,' she said, 'to comment on this morning's experiment.'

The tactical officer. Triumph glimmered in Chandra's long eyes as she rose. 'The attack was something I'd been worried about all along. I know that we were following standard Fleet doctrine for a squadron in enemy territory, but I wondered how useful that doctrine was in reality.' She shrugged. 'I guess we found out.'

She turned on the wall display and revealed that in her simulation she'd launched thirty missiles from Arkhan- Dohg, the next system after Osser.

'It was possible to make a reasonable calculation of when we'd enter the Osser system. Since our course would be straight from Wormhole One to Wormhole Two, the missiles' track was obvious. Our course and acceleration could be checked by wormhole relay stations and any necessary corrections sent to the missiles en route. All the Naxids would need would be a targeting laser or a radar signal to give the missiles' own guidance systems last-second course corrections.' She shrugged. 'And if our course and speed are very predictable they won't need even that.'

'Obviously,' Michi said, 'we need to make our course and acceleration less predictable.' She looked at the assembled officers. 'My lords, if you have any other suggestions, please offer them now.'

'Keep the antimissile defenses powered at all times,' Husayn said.

'My lady,' Chandra said, 'I had thought we might keep our own targeting lasers sweeping dead ahead and between the squadron and any wormholes. If they pick up anything incoming, we might gain a few extra seconds.'

'Decoys,' Martinez said. 'Have a squadron of decoys flying ahead of us. The missiles might target them instead of us, particularly since they'll have only a few seconds to pick their targets.'

Decoys were missiles that could be fired from the squadron's ordinary missile tubes, but were configured to give as large a radar signature as a warship. They were less convincing the longer an observer had to view them, but with a relativistic missile having only a second or two to make up its mind, that was hardly a problem.

Michi seemed dubious. 'How large a cloud of decoys are we going to need?'

Martinez tried to make a mental calculation and failed. 'As many as it takes,' he said finally.

Michi turned to Chandra. 'I want you to try all these tactics in simulation.'