character.”
Martinez felt a little tug of pleasure somewhere in his mind. “Have you told Lord Captain Fletcher?” he asked.
“I will in the morning.”
That night he might have managed a few hours’ sleep. He was up well before his usual time, walking about the ship, nodding to any crew he encountered but not speaking. He tried to make the nods brisk and confident. He hoped the thought,We’re going to thrash the enemy was shining out of his eyes.
When he found himself nodding, brisk and confident, to the same crewman for the third time, he realized how absurd was this behavior and he returned to his cabin. Silence grew around him as he sat at his desk. In the semidarkness the faces of the winged children seemed unusually grave.
He looked down at the surface of the desk and saw Terza, the image he’d installed there on his arrival, and the sight reminded him that he hadn’t written her since leaving Seizho. He picked up a stylus and began.
In a few hours we’re going into battle. You can spare yourself any suspense in regard to the outcome, because you won’t be receiving this unless we win.
And then the words stalled. After that opening sentence, his usual queries about her health and the memories of his boyhood on Laredo were going to seem banal. Going into mortal action alongside thousands of comrades seemed to call for some degree of profundity and introspection.
The problem was that introspection was not his strong point, and Martinez knew it.
He began by describing the silence of the ship, the way the vibration and rumble of the engines seemed to fade into white noise…how the crew were dutiful but quiet, waiting and watching…how he thought the battle would go well, and that he was hoping to win it without Chenforce taking any casualties.
I was called ‘clever’ the other day,he wrote.It’s a word people use to describe a kind of intelligence of which they do not entirely approve, and I have been called clever before. I am inclined to resent it, but suppose I should take whatever compliments come my way. At least they don’t call me stupid.
Martinez looked at the lines and thought that, before he sent the words onward, he should find out whether it was Michi or the captain who censored his correspondence.
His stylus hovered over his desk as he wondered what to write next.An old lover kissed me yesterday, but I didn’t want her.
Not the most reassuring of sentiments. His stylus didn’t move.
He looked at Terza’s picture, and he tried to remember her voice, the way she moved. Only vague memories came to him. The time they’d spent together seemed like a half-remembered dream.
Without invitation, pictures of Sula came to his mind. He remembered the flash of her emerald eyes, the silken weight of her golden hair on his palm, the taste of her flesh on his lips. It was as if he could reach out and touch her.
The scent of Sandama Twilight stung his sinus. He felt the weight and thrust and agony of a long steel sword as it drove through his heart.
An old lover kissed me yesterday,he thought,but she was the wrong old lover.
The pain will go, he told himself.
I delight in your letters,he wrote,but send a little video with your next message, so that I can see what you look like now.
And then he signed,Love, Gareth.
He didn’t send the letter on to whoever would censor it, but instead saved it in memory, and then blanked the desktop.
He secured the stylus in its gravity-proof holder and looked up to see winged children leering at him from the walls.
Three hours beforeIllustrious’ s closest approach to Okiray, Lady Michi gave a dinner for the cruiser’s officers. Alcohol was not served. Chandra Prasad was not present, being officer of the watch and in command of the ship. Martinez wondered whether Fletcher had made special provision for that.
Michi was an accomplished hostess, making certain to include everyone, even the most junior, in the conversation. Captain Lord Gomberg Fletcher, reflected multiple times in the mirror-bright asteroid material that decorated the walls, presented a series of magnificent pictures with his silver hair and patrician manner, so elegant and imposing that he seemed almost to be a host rather than a guest. Martinez, his eye on his sleeve chronometer, drank much coffee, ate whatever was put in front of him without tasting it, and said little.
At the conclusion of the dinner, Michi rose to offer a toast, raising her crystal glass of water. “To victory,” she said.
“Victory!”they all chanted, and for the first time that day Martinez felt his heart surge. Tongues of flame seemed to flicker on his skin. He was going to win this battle, and he was going to make the victory total.
“Action stations, my lords,” Michi said. “Now, if you please.”
Martinez returned to his quarters, took off his dress uniform, and used the toilet thoroughly before donning his vac suit. Helmet under his arm, he marched to the Flag Officer Station, encountering other crew on their way to their places. As they braced to let him pass he saw smiles on their faces, nods of greeting. Their absolute confidence buoyed him. He began to feel the pulse of victory surge through his veins.
Michi had not yet arrived at her station. Martinez made a point of circling the room and shaking the hands of Coen and Li and Franz, the warrant officer who monitored the status of the ship. Lady Michi arrived, saw what Martinez was doing, and made the rounds herself.
“Luck,” she said, clasping Martinez’s hand.
He looked at the brown eyes beneath the straight bangs, and smiled. “And to you, my lady.”
He webbed himself into his couch and the displays brightened around him. Forty-six minutes till their closest approach to Okiray, and six minutes till the next missiles were launched. All the squadron had already received their orders, and Martinez restrained his impulse to contact all the ships and confirm.
The six minutes ticked slowly by, and then two missiles leaped from each ship in Chenforce, and after igniting antimatter engines hurled themselves toward the eleven decoys that flew between the squadron and Bleskoth’s warships.
Martinez hunched forward and stared at the displays as anticipation hummed in his nerves. He was very interested to know if Bleskoth would behave as he had twice before, cutting his acceleration for twelve minutes whenever Chenforce fired missiles. Martinez thought that Bleskoth didn’t have any choice—his decoys were all programmed with that twelve-minute pause, and if he didn’t want to give himself away he’d have to follow suit.
Which was exactly what happened. Martinez took a deep, relieved breath. Bleskoth had just saved him the burden of recalculating a lot of trajectories at the last minute.
The ship rotated and the engines began the Okiray burn. Martinez tensed and growled and fought for breath, blackness closing in on his vision as he fought a losing war against the growing force of gravity. Eventually he passed out, and so missed the moment when the squadron’s tactical computers launched a hundred and twenty- eight missiles, all to be guided by a pair of cadets in pinnaces who—unconscious, like everyone else—were launched into space after them.
Gravity eventually ebbed, and Martinez gasped for air and clawed for his displays, trying to bring them close to his dimmed vision. Failing, he lunged forward against the reluctant webbing and slammed the rim of his helmet on the display, staring unblinkingly until the bright icons of the missiles flared into being at the darkened center of his vision. They were on their way, and were keeping the mass of the planet between themselves and the advancing enemy. Triumph blazed in his mind as Martinez sagged back into his seat.
Minutes later, the sixteen missiles fired at the eleven decoys, located most of their targets, and created a brilliantly hot screen of expanding, overlapping plasma spheres between Bleskoth and Okiray, preventing the enemy commander from seeing the last missile launch.
Bleskoth had no way of seeing the doom that was waiting for him in the planet’s shadow.
“All ships, increase deceleration to three gravities at 18:14:01,” Martinez signaled the squadron.
“Imperiousacknowledges,” Coen reported. “Illustriousacknowledges.Challenger acknowledges…all ships acknowledge, my lady.”
The force of the engines punched Martinez back into his couch. Chenforce was no longer content to wait for
