The letters, transformed to digital images, took days to reach Terza through the wormhole relays, but once she started receiving them she began responding in kind. Through her neat calligraphy he learned of her harp teacher Mr. Giulio, with his sharp nose and heavy knuckles; the pyramid-shaped Chen villa in the Hone Reach, built by the first Chen to reach convocate rank; and her reaction to an old Koskinen drama, a recording of which she’d found onEnsenada. She spoke of her pregnancy and the changes that were embracing her body.
Martinez pictured her on the love seat in her room, bent over a notebook with her hair thrown back over her shoulders and a calligraphy pen in her long, graceful hand.
He wrote that he missed her, and that she shouldn’t be concerned if his letters suddenly stopped for a while. That didn’t mean a battle, necessarily, that just meant he was busy or the squadron was moving.
He wroteLove, Gareth at the end of his letters, and found that the words didn’t seem awkward. He was surprised at that, and then, as one letter followed another, the surprise began to fade.
Martinez finally rated a dinner with the captain, though this was in the context of Lady Michi and her entire staff being invited to dine. The murals in the captain’s suite had actually been painted on, instead of being mounted like wallpaper. Fletcher was a gracious host, and kept up a flow of light conversation for the entire evening. Chandra Prasad was not in evidence.
Martinez dined with Michi regularly, and was a frequent guest of the wardroom. He began to feel that he should return this hospitality, and received the squadcom’s permission to useDaffodil. He invited Lady Michi, and then the lieutenants, and finally the lieutenants along with their captain. Espinosa and Ayutano stood by the docking port with white gloves to help the guests onto the yacht. All but the captain praised Perry’s cooking, but even Fletcher praised the wine, the vintages that had actually been shipped from the Chen cellars by Terza, and which Martinez had blindly loaded aboard without even looking at the labels.
After thatDaffodil became a kind of club for the younger officers. Martinez frequently invited them for drinks or games, events where they wouldn’t have to wear full dress. Despite the informality Martinez made a point of never being alone there with Chandra, or indeed with any female crew member.
Illustriousfell into routine. The Naxids seemed unaccountably tardy in seizing the capital that had been abandoned to their mercy. When Martinez had first come aboard, the Naxids had been expected any day. But the days rolled past, and the Naxids refused to show themselves.Illustrious went on with its series of drills and musters and inspections. Martinez suggested to Lady Michi that the number of drills be cut back: he didn’t want the crouchbacks to overtrain and lose their edge. She agreed, and a drill was now scheduled for every third day.
Still the Naxids didn’t come. Martinez could feel boredom twitching at his nerve ends. One day he encountered Lord Captain Fletcher in the corridor, walking with Chandra. Martinez braced in salute.
“Ah, Hoddy,” Fletcher said amiably. “I call you Hoddy.”
“My lord?”
Fletcher waved a hand in a vaguely beneficent gesture. “You are Hoddy. Hoddy I call you, and Hoddy you shall be.”
Martinez blinked. “Yes, my lord,” he said.
The captain and Chandra passed on, and Martinez hurried to his cabin, where he called up a dictionary and looked up “Hoddy.” He found no entry, not even in the collection of slang.
Fletcher never called him Hoddy again. The incident remained a mystery.
Another heavy cruiser joined Chenforce, one damaged in the mutiny at Harzapid and since repaired. Chenforce now mustered eight ships, half of them heavy cruisers. The new arrival was worked into the tactical system through a series of exercises, but beyond that nothing changed. After forty days aboardIllustrious , Martinez and Chenforce seemed to have fallen into a pleasant trance, a wide orbit about Seizho’s primary that might well last forever. The Naxids became a distant, receding dream.
The dream ended one afternoon while Martinez was writing to Terza. He answered a call, and found Lady Michi’s grim face looking out of his sleeve display. “They’re moving,” she said. “My office at once.”
Martinez sprang to his feet, dodged around his desk and dashed into the corridor, only to find Captain Fletcher ahead of him, moving at a saunter. Martinez tried not to tread on Fletcher’s heels in his impatience as he followed the captain to Michi Chen’s office.
“I’ve just received a flash from Zanshaa,” she said, as they braced for salute. “Wormhole stations report the flares of forty-three ships leaving Magaria and accelerating toward Zanshaa. Considering the length of time it took the message to reach us, the Naxids should reach Zanshaa wormhole Three in about two and a half days. At ease, by the way.”
Martinez relaxed only slightly. “Forty-three,” he said. “That leaves a few unaccounted for.”
“We can hope the others are guarding Magaria and Naxas,” Lady Michi said. “And if not, and if we encounter them”—she shrugged, and Martinez saw a surprising, superior smile touch her lips—“we’ll fight and we’ll win. I have every confidence in our crews.”
“Thank you, my lady,” Fletcher said, as if he’d been personally responsible for all the crews in question.
Michi looked at the map she’d called onto the surface of her desk. “I’ll want everyone suited up for the change of course to Protipanu,” she continued, and then looked up. “Captain Martinez, there will be time for a squadron drill between now and then. Let’s sharpen our sword one last time, shall we?”
“Yes, my lady.”
The squadron commander looked over her shoulder and called into the next room. “Vandervalk?”
Michi’s orderly came in with three small glasses on a silver tray. Golden fluid shone through a sheen of condensation on the glasses. Michi, Fletcher, and Martinez each took one. Martinez passed the glass under his nose and scented Kailas, a buttery-sweet dessert wine.
Michi raised her glass. “To our hunt, my lords.”
Martinez felt the pull of a feral smile on his lips. On the back of his neck he felt the cold fingers of some primal ancestor, some forebear who crouched over his prey and raised stained hands to the sky in a celebration of blood and death.
“To our hunt,” he said, and raised his glass.
Less than half an hour later, the ships of Chenforce swung onto a new heading and fired their engines. Gee forces began to build.
Martinez felt a growing exultation even as he felt the weight piling on his ribs.
Our hunt.The Martinez Plan was under way.
THIRTEEN
As Goddess of the Records Office, Sula worked to cover her every track that she could find. Her primary identity, the Jill Durmanov who inhabited the cozy apartment in Grandview, had been so thoroughly compromised by the Military Constabulary that Sula decided to make Jill Durmanov less substantial. Durmanov was the proprietor of the company that owned crates of cocoa and coffee, and Sula altered the records to make the proprietor Lucy Daubrac, the woman who lived in the communal apartment in Riverside. Sula made the change retroactive: Lucy hadalways owned the company, and Sula backdated the company itself, changing the record to indicate that it had been in existence for twelve years.
While she was at it, she had the Records Office send password updates to Lucy’s hand comm, not to Jill’s.
Change the key, change the lock. And write on the lock the words “This hasalways been the lock.”
The next night she was back in the Records Office computer. She had realized that if another intrusion into the executive file were detected, or something else went amiss with the file, it would be reloaded from a backup and she’d have to act fast so as not to lose her access. Lady Arkat’s passwords gave her access to the backup file, and Sula—using the same tricks she’d used with the primary file—successfully wrote her own executive file over the backup.
Summer grew warm and the heat rose in waves from the pavement. Flowers trailed in red and orange cascades from window boxes, and the streets remained crowded well into the night. The Naxids declined to invade. Sula wondered if they’d lost their nerve.
With no enemy to fight, she and her team wandered over the Lower Town, listening. They entered cafes and bars and markets and spoke to whoever would speak to them. Sula wanted to learn what she could about the people around her.
