those taken by the enemy, and clearly Lord Chen would be expected to arrange more contracts along those lines. Expansion of the yards and the military base, contracts for supplies, appointments for officers belonging to client clans…Ultimately, Lord Chen knew, the Martinez clan wanted the opening of two planets, Chee and Parkhurst, to settlement under Martinez patronage.
Lord Chen would be happy to deliver. There was nothing wrong with aiding one’s friends. There was nothing wrong with leasing one’s ships. There was nothing wrong with letting out contracts that would make the Fleet stronger during a desperate war. And there was nothing wrong with settling new planets, even though there had been no new settlements during the last twelve hundred years of the Shaa overlords’ decline.
True, if the Legion of Diligence happened to discover a pattern in this, there might be an investigation with dire consequences. But the Legion of Diligence was now busy rooting out rebels and subversion, and most military contracts were covered by secrecy laws which the Legion was bound to enforce, not to analyze. Lord Chen judged it all worth the risk.
“I have prepared a contract,” said Lord Roland, “with names of ships and sums specified. Would you like to review it?”
“Yes, if you please.”
Lord Roland held up his left arm. “Shall I send it to your sleeve display, my lord?”
“I don’t have a sleeve display,” Lord Chen said. Sleeve displays were probably a necessity for busy people such as military officers or office managers, he thought, but for a Peer they were vulgar. He produced a wafer-thin comm unit from an inner pocket, extended the display, and captured Lord Roland’s transmission.
While he was doing so, the Cree waitron delivered their order. The scent of Lord Roland’s coffee wafted over the table.
“I’m sure there will be no problem,” Lord Chen said as he folded away the display. “I’ll have signed hard copy delivered to your residence tomorrow.”
“Speaking of tomorrow,” Lord Roland said, “I hope we can expect you and Lady Chen at tomorrow’s party in honor of Vipsania’s birthday.”
Lord Chen suppressed annoyance. It was one thing to do business with the likes of the Martinez clan, and another to see them socially.
Still, he supposed there was no avoiding it.
“Of course. We’ll be happy to attend.” A thought struck him. “You have unusual names in your family, don’t you? Vipsania, Roland, Gareth, Sempronia…are they traditional in the Martinez clan? Or do they have some particular meaning?”
Lord Roland smiled. “Their particular meaning is that our mother is fond of romantic novels. We’re all named after her favorite characters.”
“That’s charming.”
“Is it?” Lord Roland’s thick eyebrows rose as he considered this notion. “Well,” he decided, “we’re a charming bunch.”
“Yes,” Lord Chen said with a thin smile. “Very.”
“By the way,” Lord Roland said, “I wonder if I might trouble you for advice.”
“I’d be only too happy.”
Lord Roland glanced over the lounge, then leaned toward Lord Chen and lowered his voice. “My brother Gareth keeps urging the family to leave Zanshaa. I know that you serve on the Fleet Control Board and are familiar with Fleet movements and dispositions.” He gazed intently at Lord Chen with his deep brown eyes. “I wonder,” he said, “if this would be your advice as well.”
Lord Chen struggled to master his thoughts. “Your brother…does he give reasons for his opinion?”
“No. Though perhaps he considers the defeat at Magaria a self-evident enough reason.”
So Gareth Martinez wasn’t handing out military secrets to his family, a breach of discretion that would have set Lord Chen to worrying about how confidential his connection to the Martinez clan was likely to remain.
“I would say,” he said with care, “that there is reason for concern, but there is no need to evacuate at present.”
Lord Roland nodded gravely. “Thank you, Lord Chen.”
“Not at all.”
He reached forward and touched Lord Chen lightly on the hand. Lord Chen looked in surprise at the touch.
“I know that you have no fear for yourself,” Lord Roland said, “but a prudent man should take no chances with his family. I want you to have the comfort of knowing that should you ever decide that Lady Chen and Terza should leave Zanshaa, they are welcome at my father’s estate on Laredo—and in fact they are welcome to travel with my sisters, in our family cruiser.”
Let’s hope it won’t ever come to that, Lord Chen thought, appalled. But instead he smiled again and said, “That’s a kind thought, and I thank you. But I’ve already arranged for a ship to be standing by.”
“The fault of the Home Fleet at Magaria,” Captain Kamarullah said, “is that they failed to maintain a close enough formation. They needed to mass their defensive firepower to blast their way through the oncoming missiles.”
Martinez watched the other captains absorb this statement. The virtual universe in his head consisted of four rows of four heads each, and smelled of suit seals and stale flesh. Martinez couldn’t read Do-faq’s face very well, or those of his eight Lai-own captains, and the two Daimong captains had expressionless faces to begin with, but the four humans, at least, seemed to be taking Kamarullah’s argument seriously. “How close should we get?” one of them even said.
Martinez looked at the sixteen virtual heads that floated in his mind, took a deep breath, and ventured his own opinion. “With all respect, my lord, my conclusions differ. My belief is that the squadrons didn’t separate early enough.”
Most turned curious eyes to him, but it was Kamarullah who spoke.
“You call for a premature starburst? That’s a complete loss of command and control!”
“My lord,” Martinez said, “that’s hardly worse than the loss of command and control that results when an entire squadron is wiped out. Now, if your lordships will bear with me, I’ve prepared a brief presentation…”
The others watched while he beamed them selected bits of the Magaria battle, along with estimates of the numbers of incoming missiles, missiles destroyed by other missiles, by point-defense lasers and antiproton beams.
“A defensive formation works well only up to a point,” Martinez said, “and then the system breaks down catastrophically. I can’t prove anything yet, but I suspect that antimatter missile explosions, with their bursts of heavy radiation and their expanding plasma shells, eventually create so much interference and confusion on the ships’ sensors that it becomes nearly impossible to coordinate an effective defense.
“You’ll observe,” running the records again, “that the losses during the first part of the battle were equal, very sudden, and catastrophic for both sides. It was only when both sides had lost twenty ships or so that the enemy advantage in numbers became decisive, and then the attrition of our ships was steady right to the end. Lady Sula’s destruction of five enemy cruisers was the only successful attack made by the Home Fleet without equivalent or greater loss.
“My conclusion,” looking again at the sixteen heads in their four rows, “is that our standard fleet tactics will produce a rough equivalence in losses, but the unfortunate fact is that the enemy have more ships, and I fear we can’t sustain a war of attrition.”
There was a long moment of silence, broken by the chiming voice of one of Martinez’s Daimong captains. “Do you have any suggestion for tactics that can take advantage of this analysis?”
“I’m afraid not, my lord. Other than ordering a starburst much earlier in the battle, of course.”
Kamarullah gave a contemptuous huff into his microphone that sounded like a gunshot in Martinez’s earphones. “A lot of goodthat’ll do,” he said. “With our ships scattered all over space, the enemy could stay in formation and pick us off one by one.”
Frustration crawled with jointed fingers up Martinez’s spine. That wasnot what he meant to imply, and he couldn’t help but feel that if he could only speak to the captains in person, he could bring his points across.
“I don’t mean that our ships should wander at random about the galaxy, lord captain,” he said.
