anyone interested in the battle and with the proper access. There might well be repercussions for Kamarullah’s career at some point, but Martinez’s finger wouldn’t be so conspicuously on the trigger when Kamarullah went down.
Martinez debated the matter with himself for some time. He didn’t like Kamarullah, but he told himself to put personal feelings aside.
Though personal feelings aside, hestill didn’t like Kamarullah.
If he sent the messages on to the Fleet Control Board, that would be a deliberate act aimed at finishing Kamarullah for good and all. Kamarullah would remain in the service—officers were desperately needed—but he’d be stuck in a desk job somewhere and he’d never see promotion. Martinez couldn’t help but be satisfied at the picture.
But what would happen to Martinez? He would become known as the sort of officer who blew up other officers’ careers. Kamarullah might have friends or patrons in the service who would be in a position to take revenge on his behalf.
On the other hand, if he erased the recordings, would Kamarullah be grateful? Would he use his influence to help Martinez advance in the service?
Martinez thought not. If Martinez erased the recordings, Kamarullah would continue in command of Light Squadron 14, though it was likely that—if Do-faq’s report offered anything like justice—Martinez would be promoted out of the squadron, either to another ship or to a squadron command of his own, and then he wouldn’t have to worry about Kamarullah again.
Martinez looked at his options, his uncertainty tipping the balance one way, then another.
And then he asked himself the question:If we were in combat, would I feel safer if Kamarullah were in charge?
The answer to that question came very quickly, with a chill and a start of horror.
He would keep his ammunition against Kamarullah in case it looked as if Light Squadron 14 might actually engage the enemy under Kamarullah’s command.
But otherwise he would make no move. He would see what developed in reaction to his success at the Battle of Magaria.
And, until then, he would enjoy Kamarullah’s silence.
It was four days before Kamarullah ordered another maneuver, and during that time both he and Martinez were privileged to witness a series of daily experiments by Do-faq’s squadron. Again Kamarullah’s maneuver was a standard exercise out of the textbook. AgainCorona distinguished itself with a flawless performance.
It was afterward that Kamarullah dropped the bombshell. In a message to the captains of his squadron, Kamarullah in a toneless voice read an order from the Fleet Control Board, requiring all ships to Zanshaa to dock at Zanshaa’s ring, at which point both officers and enlisted would debark and be replaced by fresh crews.
“Are theyinsane ?” Martinez wanted to shriek. To replace the only crews in the whole fleet with experience of victory and replace them by people who knewnothing ? Admittedly the squadron’s crews were beaten down from their month of acceleration, but the Control Board was throwing away all his men had learned.
And they were throwing awayMartinez ! The only officer who had given them a victory! What could those people be thinking?
On receipt of the message, Martinez stalked to his office and sat in seclusion with a bottle of brandy, but two swallows made him realize he was too angry to spend his time wallowing in misery. He locked the bottle back in its cabinet and instead dictated and sent an angry letter to his brother, Roland.
He doubted it would do any good, but Roland was at least a safe custodian of his rage.
“And here are the two affidavits testifying to my identity,” said Sula. She produced the documents, written as law required on special stiff paper that would remain legible in the archives for at least a thousand years. She handed the papers to Mr. Wesley Weckman, the glossy young man who managed the trust department of the bank where Lady Sula’s funds had been kept since the execution of her parents.
Now that she had reached her majority at the age of twenty-three, it would normally require only a signature and a thumbprint to release the funds, but the pad of Sula’s thumb had been burned away during an accident with one of theDelhi ‘s heat-exchange pipes shortly after the Battle of Magaria. Testament from higher authority was therefore required.
Weckman glanced at the signatures. “Your commanding officer,” he said, “and…” His eyebrows lifted. “Lord Durward Li. Well, they should know you if anyone does.” His eyes turned to Sula. “Of course, it’s a bit redundant after all your appearances on video.”
Bombardment of Delhihad at last returned to Zanshaa after fifty long days of deceleration. On docking with the ring station, the old crew had been relieved while a new crew trooped on board, most of them trooping right off again when it was clear to the new officers thatDelhi was in as bad a state as the old crew had been reporting all along. Under a skeleton crew,Delhi pushed off from the ring station and began an acceleration burn for Preowyn, where it would undergo a complete rebuild before rejoining the fleet.
The old crew, leaving the ship, wearily said their farewells and then dragged themselves into their dens like wounded animals. Each had been given a month’s leave. Sula spent over an hour drowsing in a hot bath, then ten hours collapsed on a bed in the hostel the Fleet maintained for officers in transit. The next day, her body still staggered with its good fortune in avoiding high gravities for so long, she dropped down the skyhook to the surface of the planet, where she took the shuttle to the capital. Another dormitory room had been reserved for her in the Commandery, where she was to receive a decoration from Fleet Commander Lord Tork as soon as she could replace her borrowed jumpsuits with proper uniforms.
Arrangements had been made with a tailor ahead of time, the tailor originally introduced to her by Martinez and who had once replaced a set of uniforms that had been sent off to Felarus without her, and which had presumably been blown to bits along with most of the Third Fleet. The tailor had all Sula’s measurements from the previous visit and the uniforms awaited only the final fitting. Sula was amused to discover that her chest measurement had increased, a result of the extra muscle packed around her ribs to help her breathe against the force of increased gravities.
For the actual ceremony she stood in the Commandery’s Hall of Ceremony, braced at attention in her new viridian full-dress uniform. Lord Tork hung about her neck the Nebula Medal with Diamonds, while she fought to keep her face properly stoic as the stench of rotting flesh came off the fleetcom in waves. A pair of Lai-own aides replaced her sublieutenant’s shoulder boards with those of a full lieutenant. The citation was vague in its description of the circumstances in which she had destroyed the five enemy ships—no one was yet admitting that, her own actions aside, the Battle of Magaria was a hideous defeat.
As if people hadn’t long since drawn their own conclusions.
Because live heroes were rare in this war, the video of the medal ceremony had been repeated almost hourly on all video channels since, and Sula, on her walk to the bank this morning, had received a number of curious looks and a few congratulations from total strangers. If she presented affidavits to the trust manager, it was because the law required it.
While Weckman tapped silently at the glowing characters in his desk, Sula sat in the deep green leather bank chair and inhaled the delicate scent of old money growing even older.
“What will you want done with the balance?” Weckman said. “Unless of course you intend to take it all in cash.”
Sula looked at him. “Havepeople been withdrawing their funds in cash?”
Weckman raised an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised at the names.”
Converting their fortunes into convertible things, Sula thought, misquoting herself. Taking their assets to the more shadowy parts of the empire to await the bright sun of peace.
She wondered if Lord Durward Li was one of those carrying a fortune in his pillowcase. When she’d visited the Li Palace the day before to pay a condolence call on the death of his son and to ask him to provide the affidavit, she’d found he had discovered a need to visit family properties in the Serpent’s Tail, and was closing his house.
“I don’t need the cash just yet,” Sula said. “But I’d like the money available.”
“Standard account, then.” Weckman’s fingers tapped the glowing surface of his desktop. “We have other accounts that offer higher rates of interest, should you wish to commit the money for longer periods of time.”
