“Martinez?” he said. “Martinez of theCorona ?”
“Indeed yes,” Foote said. His drawl, which spoke of generations of good breeding and privilege, took on a malicious edge, and it was carefully pitched to carry to the next table of recruits. “He sends messages to our young Sula nearly every day. And she replies as often, passionate messages from the depth of her delicate heart. It’s touching, great romance in the tradition of a derivoo singer.”
Morgen looked at her. “You and Martinez are, ah…”
Sula didn’t know why this revelation was supposed to be embarrassing: Lord Gareth Martinez was one of the few heroes the war had produced, at least on the loyalist side, and unlike most of the others was still in the realm of the living.
Sula ate a piece of flattened hash before replying, and when she did she pitched her voice to carry, as Foote had done. “Oh, Martinez and I are old friends,” she said, “but my Lord Lieutenant Foote is always inventing romances for me. It’s his way of explaining why I won’t sleep withhim. ”
That one hit: she saw a twitch in Foote’s eyelid. Again the acting captain suppressed a smile. “Well, I hope you’re saying good things about us,” he said.
Sula fixed Foote with her green eyes and replied in tone-perfect imitation of his drawl. “Mostof you,” she said. She took a drink of water. “By the way,” she said, “I wonder how Lord Lieutenant Foote comes to know of my correspondence?”
“I’m the censor,” Foote said. His smiling white teeth were perfectly even. “I view every torrid moment of your outgoing videos.”
“There’s still censorship?” Sula was surprised by the inanity of it. “Doesn’t Foote have better things to do?” They crewed a wrecked cruiser, with most of its officers dead, few of its weapons functioning, and the forward third of the ship a half-melted ruin, torn open to the vacuum of space. Surely one of the few remaining officers could find better use for his time than poking into her correspondence.
Morgen’s round face took on a solemn caste. “Censorship is more important now than ever, my lady. We’ve got to keep word of what happened at Magaria from spreading.”
Sula hastily washed down a piece of flat bread in order to unleash her reply. “Spreading towhom ?” she said. “Theenemy ? The enemy knowperfectly well they massacred forty-eight of our ships! They know we only have six ships left in the Home Fleet, and they’ve got to know theDelhi ‘s a wreck.”
Morgen lowered his voice, as if encouraging Sula not to spread this news to the enlisted personnel, who knew it perfectly well. “We have to prevent panic from spreading in the civilian population,” he said.
Sula gave an acid laugh. “No, we can’t have the civilians panicking. Not thewrong civilians, anyway.” She gave Foote a cynical look. “I’m sure our honorable censor’s family is panickingright at this very moment . The only difference between them and the general population is that Clan Foote is going to panic their way into aprofit. I’m sure their money’s moving all over the exchanges, and it’s being converted into…” Her invention failed her. “…into, ah, convertible things, to be carried to the safer corners of the empire to await a brighter dawn. Perhaps they’re even being carried in the current Lord Foote’s very own pillowcase.”
“My lord great-uncle,” Foote said quietly, “is too ill to leave his palace on Zanshaa.”
“His heir, then,” Sula said. “The point of the censorship is that we Peers are going to have a monopoly on the information necessary to survive whatever’s coming. Everyone who doesn’t belong to our order is expected to continue their normal lives, making money for the Peers, right up to the point where a Naxid fleet shows up and starts raining antimatter bombs out of the sky.Then maybe they’ll be allowed to notice that the media reports were less than candid.”
The acting captain pitched his voice even lower. “Sublieutenant my Lady Sula, I think this is not a suitable topic for the dinner table.”
Sula felt her lips quirk in amusement. “As my lord wishes,” she said. Probably Morgen’s relations were going to do well out of this, too.
Sula’s relations would not, for the simple reason that she didn’t have any. She was in the nearly unprecedented position of being a Peer without any money or influence. Though the title of Lady Sula made her the theoretical head of the entire Sula Clan, therewas no Sula Clan, no property, and no money save for a modest trust fund that had been set up by some friends of the late Lord Sula. She had only got into the Fleet because her position as a Peer gave her automatic place in one of the academies. She had no patron either in the service or outside it.
Deplorable though it was, her position nevertheless gave her a unique insight into how the Peers actually worked. The alien Shaa, who had bloodily conquered the Terrans, Naxids, and other species who made up the empire, had created the order of Peers as an intermediary between themselves and the great mass of their subjects. Now that the last of the Shaa was dead, the Peers were in charge—and had managed to land-crash into a civil war within bare months of their last overlord’s demise.
Sula was surprised it had taken them that long. So far as she could tell, the Peers acted exactly as one might expect from a class who had a near monopoly on power, their fingers in every profitable business, and who with their clients owned almost everything. The only check on their rapacity was the Legion of Diligence, who would massacre anyone whose avarice became too uninhibited—as, in fact, they had massacred the last Lord and Lady Sula.
The Peers, Sula observed, seemed to act out of naked self-interest. But for some reason it was impolite to actually say so.
Sula finished her flat food, then called a chronometer onto her sleeve display and wondered if she had enough time to look at her mail before suiting up to stand her watch.
She decided she had enough time.
Sula returned to her cabin, one that had originally belonged to a petty officer who had been killed at Magaria, and which still contained most of his belongings. She snapped on the video display with her right thumb, an action that caused a sudden sharp sting. She snatched her hand away, and as the display flashed on she inspected the thick scar tissue on the pad of her thumb. After the battle, in the course of conducting urgent repairs, her thumb had come into contact with a pipe of superheated coolant, and though the wound had healed, a wrong movement could still send pain shrieking along the length of her arm.
She tucked the thumb carefully into her palm and paged through menus with her index finger until she found her mail.
Only one message, from Lieutenant Captain Lord Gareth Martinez, three days in transit via powerful communications lasers. She opened the message.
“Well,Corona managed to bungle another exercise,” he said wearily. His broad-shouldered figure was slumped in a chair—he, like Sula, had been suffering from many days of high gee, and his weariness showed it. His viridian uniform tunic was unbuttoned at the throat. He had a lantern jaw, thick brows, and olive skin; his provincial accent was heavy enough to send razor blades skating up Sula’s nerves.
When they had first met, before the war, they had come together briefly, then came explosively apart. It was all Sula’s fault, she felt: she’d been too panicked, too paranoid, too far out of her depth. She’d spent the next several months hiding from him. A conceited son of privilege like Foote was someone she could cope with; Martinez was something else again.
If they were lucky enough to come together once more, she wasn’t going to let them blow apart ever again.
“I said byzero-one-seven !” Martinez said. “What’s thematter, there?”
“Sorry, my lord!” Fingers punching the display. “That’s zero-one-seven, my lord.”
“Pilot, rotate ship.”Corona was already a little late.
“Ship rotated, my lord. New heading two-two-seven by zero-one-seven.”
“Engines, prepare to fire engines.”
“Missile flares!” called the two sensor operators in unison. “Enemy missiles fired!”
“Power up point-defense lasers.”
“Point-defense lasers powering, lord elcap.”
Martinez realized he’d been sufficiently distracted by the announcement of the enemy missiles that’s he’d forgotten to order the engines to fire. He leaned forward in his couch to give emphasis to the order, and his command cage creaked as it swung on its gimbals.
