Blitsharts had been responsible for their first meeting: Martinez had planned, and Sula executed, a perilous rescue of the famous yachtsman. Who, when rescued, had turned out to be dead.
“Blitsharts?”he said. “Why Blitsharts?”
“The Fleet Court of Inquiry determined his death was accidental. But his insurance company insists it was suicide, and there’s a civil trial coming up. I’m to give a deposition, and the Fleet has extended my leave till then.” She looked up at him. “After which I will be free. Just in case some celebrated captain wants to request me for his next ship.”
Which was an invitation to kiss her if anything was, and he put his arm around her and was about to lean in close when the car came to a halt and the doors popped up with a hydraulic hiss.
Damn. All he had got was a taste of her dizzying perfume and a tingling awareness of the warmth of her skin.
She gave a rueful smile as he withdrew. When he rose from the car, a score of Fleet pulpies snapped to the salute, throats bared. Anyone in uniform—even the Lords Convocate themselves—were required to salute the Golden Orb, which was why Martinez had chosen to carry it. He’d hoped to relieve his feelings of anger and resentment by abusing his privileges with as many senior officers as he could find.
Now the orb was a dreadful inconvenience. He was going to have to spend the day trying not to walk into stiff, braced figures murmuring “Stand at ease” and “As you were,” and attracting far more attention to himself and to the beautiful and celebrated Lady Sula than he wanted.
Sula and Alikhan following, Martinez progressed through the stone-stricken mass of Fleet personnel to one of the cars of the train that would take them to the ring station’s lower level—a lower level that, just to make things confusing, was actually above Martinez’s head.
The Fleet areas of the ring, resolutely unattractive but functional with their docking bays, storage facilities, barracks, schools, and shipyards, tended to obscure the fact that the accelerator ring was one of the great technological miracles of all time. It had been drawing a sun-silvered circle about Zanshaa for nearly eleven thousand years, a symbol of Shaa dominion visible from nearly everywhere on the planet. The lower level of the accelerator ring moved above the planet in geostationary orbit, tethered delicately to the world of Zanshaa by the six colossal cables of the planet’s skyhooks. Built atop the lower level was the ring’s upper level, which rotated at eight times the speed of the lower in order to provide its inhabitants with normal gravity.
Eighty million people lived on Zanshaa’s ring, housed for the most part in areas considerably more attractive than the Fleet districts, and there was room for hundreds of millions more. To these denizens of the upper level, pressed by centrifugal force to the outside of the station ring, the lower level was actually above them. In order to ascend, they boarded a train that was then accelerated down a track in time to be scooped up by a massive ramp and track that dropped with exquisite timing from the geostationary level. Once there, humming electromagnets braked the train to a stop, and the passengers, bobbing in one-eighth gravity and aided by a series of handrails, made their way along a series of ramps to the giant car that would soon drop through Zanshaa’s atmosphere to the terminal on its equator.
Without shame Martinez barged into the compartment reserved for senior officers—it was the Golden Orb, not Martinez’s modest rank, that provided access. The hoped-for privacy did not materialize. As Martinez entered he saw the baleful look given him from over the shoulder of the other passenger already strapped into his couch, and his heart gave a lurch as he recognized the hawk-nosed visage of the lord inspector of the Fleet, one of the most feared men in the empire.
“Forgive me if I don’t stand,” said Fleet Commander Lord Ivan Snow in a sandpaper voice. “I don’t fancy unwebbing right now.” He was in the first row, with a brilliant view through the huge glass window that made up most of the outside wall.
“That’s quite all right, my lord,” Martinez said. Ducking beneath the low ceiling, he and Sula took couches as far removed from the feared lord inspector as the modest compartment permitted.
“The day isn’t working out well,” Sula murmured in Martinez’s ear as she bent over his couch.
“Part of a ongoing pattern,” Martinez answered softly.
“It may interest you to know,” said the chief of the Investigative Service, “that the cause of the breakdown in communications that occurred at Hone-bar has been discovered. At the same time thatyou, Captain Martinez, are being decorated and promoted in two days’ time, seven traitors will die screaming.” Martinez could hear the quiet satisfaction in the lord inspector’s voice. “Die screaming,” Lord Ivan repeated pleasantly. “I arranged the timing myself.”
Martinez was for a moment at a loss for speech.Promoted? Finally he managed words.
“Congratulations on…a successful investigation, lord inspector,” he said.
“And congratulations to you, lord captain, on a timely and successful combat.”
Promoted?He had known about the decoration, but this was the first time a promotion had been mentioned.
Then Martinez felt his ire rising. The training school in charge of a full captain was even more absurd than in the hands of an elcap.
He wondered if he dared mention the matter to the lord inspector. The wordsdie screaming returned to his mind, and he decided he didn’t.
“There’s not a lot of point in our talking,” Sula said quietly, as the huge elevator car was locked onto the cable. “Why don’t you sleep? You look about dead.”
“I feel…” He was about to say “fine” but he realized that the ease of low gravity, and the comfort of his couch, were about to make a liar out of him. So instead he said, “Good idea,” and closed his eyes.
He was asleep before the car dropped out of the accelerator ring and into brilliant sunlight. The growing acceleration that pressed him into his couch was much less than he’d been enduring for the last two months and it failed to wake him. Below, the land blazed with color: brown mountains tipped with white, the light green of the land contrasting with the deeper, more profound green of the sea. The atmosphere was a faint blurring on the edges of the world. The whirlwind of a tropical storm, its white gyre of cloud edged with blue, was thrashing southward from the equator.
Calculations spinning through her mind, Sula watched Do-faq’s tactical experiments on her sleeve display.
Martinez woke, his mind fresh, just as the car settled feather-light into its terminal, and the couch swung into its rest position, inverted from where it had been at the start of the journey. He and Sula stepped onto what had, when they’d boarded, been the ceiling, and let the fleet commander precede them from the car. He nodded civilly as he passed.
“And congratulations to you as well, Lady Sula,” he said.
“Thank you, my lord.”
Martinez, as he followed the old man from the car, suspected that the congratulations may not have had anything to do with Sula’s decoration.
Reunited with Alikhan and Martinez’s baggage, they took another train to the shuttle terminus, where they boarded the supersonic for the city of Zanshaa. Martinez traded the ticket he’d already reserved for an entire four-seat first-class compartment. Alikhan retained his original seat in second class.
With the Golden Orb, which like a device out of a fairy tale had the power to turn others to stone, Martinez marched to his compartment, installed himself and Sula, and drew down the shades.
Privacy at last.
He sat next to her and tried not to melt beneath the gaze of those green eyes. Martinez took her hand.
“I’m afraid to speak,” he said.
She tilted her head. “Why?”
“Because I’m not at my best right now, and I might say something wrong. And then…” He sought for words. “And then everything would be spoiled, and you’d walk out of this compartment and I’d never see you again.”
He saw the blood rise in her translucent pale skin. Her perfume whirled through his senses. “I forgive you,” Sula said. “In advance.”
He kissed her hand, her palm, her wrist. He leaned close to kiss her lips, then hesitated.
“I’m not running away,” she said.
He laid his lips to hers for the space of three heartbeats. She raised a hand to lightly cup the side of his head. He kissed her again, then had to break away because he realized he’d been holding his breath, and that his
