They paused near the fountain, great white moving columns of water that obscured, then revealed, the park’s famous statue, The Unsound Regarding Continuity with Awe. Continuity looked remarkably like one of the Great Masters, the Shaa. An irony, considering that the Shaa as a species had not Continued.
“No matter what happens on the Axtattle Parkway,” Sula said, “I think we ought to plan the destruction of the Great Destiny Hotel. Make a second truck bomb, drive it in the lobby some night, and blow every middle-rank administrator into low orbit. And the fuckers won’t be able to hidethat —half the city could look out their windows and see it go up.”
A gust of wind brought a fine spray of water into Hong’s eyes. He blinked and held up a hand. “Difficult to get that stuff into the High City, with only the funicular and the one road.”
“That’s why you prepare the truck now,” Sula said. “I know you have teams in the High City, yes?”
Hong looked opaque. “You’re not to know that, Four-Nine-One.”
Sula, who had heard Lieutenant Joong complain that it was vexing to live around the corner from his old smoking club without being able to visit for a puff on the old hookah, simply shrugged.
Cool mist fell on her face. She and Hong moved out of the fountain’s range and Sula handed Hong a package.
“Coffee,” she said. “Highland, from Devajjo.”
Hong was impressed. “Where did you find it?”
Sula offered a private smile. “Military secret. But let me know when you need more.”
Through the modest scattering of radioactive dust that had once been a wormhole relay station, Chenforce passed from the Koel system into that of Aspa Darla. Koel was a bloated red giant, cool and eerily luminous, that squatted in the middle of its system like a tick swollen with blood, and the system was uninhabited except for the crews of the relay stations, all of whom had died in the last few days from the missiles fired by Michi Chen from Mazdan, before her ship had even entered the Koel system.
The reason the crews had to die involved Koel’s position as a hub, with four heavily trafficked wormhole gates. Squadron Commander Chen had decided she didn’t want the Naxids to know which wormhole she planned to use to leave the system, and so all means of communication between Koel and the outside were eliminated.
Martinez appreciated Lady Michi’s cold-blooded logic, but he regretted the wormhole stations. Not so much because of the Naxid crews, though he would have spared them if he could, but because the stations were in their own way vital.
It wasn’t just that the stations knit the far-flung empire together with their high-powered communications lasers, but they also kept the wormholes themselves from evaporating. Wormholes could destabilize, or even vanish, if the mass that moved through them was not eventually balanced by a similar mass moving the other way, and the wormhole stations were built around powerful mass drivers that could hurl through the wormholes colossal asteroid-sized chunks of rock and metal that would serve to balance the equation.
The stations’ function as a communications relay could be filled by parking a ship equipped with sufficiently powerful communications gear in front of a wormhole, but the act of balancing mass against mass was a problem not so easily solved. People were going to have to be careful moving through Protipanu and Koel for fear of endangering their route home.
That also was part of Michi Chen’s intent. Even though Chenforce had moved on, commerce through the wormhole junction would slow to a crawl as planners worked frantically to balance mass.
Chenforce’s accomplishments in Koel showed that the empire was more fragile than Martinez had suspected. The civil war could change its landscape permanently.
Not that any of Koel’s wormholes were in immediate danger. Chenforce had found sixteen merchant ships in the system and destroyed them all to prevent them from contributing to the Naxid economy and war effort. Some of the crews, seeing the missiles coming, had escaped in lifeboats, and some hadn’t.
There were going to be more ships in Aspa Darla, and a bounty of other targets as well. But there was no reason to destroy Aspa Darla’s wormhole stations, as Aspa Darla had only two wormholes. Everyone would know that Chenforce was headed from here to Bai-do.
As soon as Chenforce flashed into the system,Illustrious broadcast Michi Chen’s message to the ring stations on the two metal-rich planets Aspa and Darla.
“All ships docked at the ring station are to be abandoned and cast off so that they may be destroyed without damage to the ring. All repair docks and building yards will be opened to the environment and any ships inside will be cast off. Any ship attempting to flee will be destroyed. Your facilities will be inspected to make certain that you have complied with these orders. Failure to obey orders will mean the destruction of the ring.”
Four pinnaces were launched, and raced toward Aspa and Darla to perform these inspections in advance of the arrival of Chenforce. It would be some hours before the squadron received a reply, and in the meantime Martinez, strapped securely on his acceleration couch, watched the sensor displays in case a Naxid squadron turned out to be in the system.
The ships in the system were using radar, a sign that Chenforce wasn’t expected here, and there were already a vast number of details appearing on Martinez’s displays. Many ships flying in and out, all soon to be targets, and no fleet formations to be seen.
Martinez began to relax. This was likely to be a one-sided affair, another triumph, and triumph was all he asked of fate.
He glanced at his own displays and saw the seven ships of Chenforce grouped in a tight cluster—a standard, old-fashioned formation, as neither Martinez nor Michi saw any sense in revealing their dispersed tactical formations unless lives were at stake. At the center of the formation, protected by the others, was the damagedCelestial. The Torminel crew, aided by damage control parties from other ships, had performed prodigies of repair, and had surprised everyone by rescuing Captain Eldey and the others trapped in Command and believed dead.Celestial was able to maneuver with the rest of the squadron, but had lost one of its missile batteries, much of its defensive armament, and about a quarter of its crew.
Another message flashed fromIllustrious ‘s transmitters.
“This is Squadron Commander Michi Chen to all ships in the Aspa Darla system. All crews are to abandon ship immediately. All ships in this system are to be destroyed. We will not fire on lifeboats.”
Missiles began firing shortly thereafter, to reinforce this order.
Time passed. It was becoming clear that the Naxids had no warships in this system.
“Message from Captain Hansen ofLord May, my lady,” said Lady Ida Li. “He…seems rather irate.”
Martinez saw a tight smile on Michi’s face. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll hear him.”
Lord May’s captain was a composition in scarlet: red hair, bristling red beard, red face, and bloodshot eyes that suggested Chenforce’s arrival had interrupted a bout of serious drinking. “Don’t kill my ship, damn you!” he boomed in a roaring voice that made Martinez wince and reach to turn down the volume on his earphones. “Ihate the fucking Naxids, there was just no damn way to get out of their clutches till now! I’m heading for Wormhole One—just tell me where the fuck to go from there!”
Lord Maywas in fact the closest ship to Chenforce, outbound from the system to Koel, and looked right down the throats of the oncoming missiles.
Martinez watched the smile play over Michi’s lips. “I’ll answer that one,” she said, and then touched controls on her comm display and looked into the camera pickup. “Captain Hansen, you will set a course Koel-Mazdan- Protipanu-Seizho. If you deviate from this you will be destroyed. From Seizho you may wish to continue into the Serpent’s Tail, as Seizho is dangerously near the enemy. Message ends.” Then she looked up at Martinez. “Captain, will you tell Command to retarget that missile?”
Martinez felt a smile break out on his lips. “At once, my lady.” He had a feeling that Aspa Darla was going to be lucky for him.
Martinez’s equilibrium had been restored during the long crossing of the Mazdan and Koel systems. There had been no nightmares ofBeacon ‘s loss, no lonely episodes of doubt or terror. The crew were cheerful, and the officers congratulatory, and gradually Martinez’s fury atBeacon ’s loss had faded. Even Captain Lord Gomburg Fletcher invited him to dine, alone without any of the other officers present, and endured Martinez’s accent for two entire hours without so much as a wince. Martinez tried to avoid being “clever,” on the theory that cleverness was what Fletcher would appreciate least. For the most part they discussed sports. Fletcher, like Martinez, had been a
