through Zanshaa’s wormhole at relativistic speeds.
Hundreds of other decoys appeared in other systems at the same time, all vectoring for the wormhole gates to Zanshaa. To Naxid observers, it would look as if five Orthodox Fleets were racing toward them on a mission of vengeance and annihilation.
The Naxids had nearly five days to work out which fleet was the real one, and though they might have, no relativistic missiles were fired.
They were saving their missiles for battle.
The first loyalist elements in the system were its own relativistic missiles, a long stream fired days earlier from the ring stations at Zarafan, Chijimo, and Antopone. They flashed through Zanshaa’s neighboring systems without having to make a single correction burn, thus assuring that they would arrive at Zanshaa undetected. They weren’t intended to destroy enemy ships, but to saturate Zanshaa’s system with furiously blue-shifted radar and laser bursts, their echoes revealing enemy formations to the Orthodox Fleet as soon as they arrived in- system.
Tork’s command burst through Wormhole 8 at the same hour that the decoy fleets from four other systems arrived through their own wormholes. The Naxids had been expecting them and their radars were turned off. No antimatter torches were visible—apparently, the enemy were moving in zero gravity, hiding somewhere in the system with their engines off. No ranging laser painted the Orthodox Fleet as it arrived, but there was no need— the Naxids knew perfectly well where they were.
But because of the relativistic sensor missiles that had been swarming into the system for the last ten hours, it wasn’t just the Naxids who possessed the latest tactical information. Updates began appearing on the displays of loyalist warships within seconds of their arrival.
Martinez sat in his captain’s chair inIllustrious, his eyes fixed on the tactical display. Cruiser Squadron 9 was still astern of Tork’s flag squadron, arranged in a clump carefully calculated so the ships would be able to stay clear of one another’s antimatter tails during maneuver, but still close enough so they could react instantly to orders.
It took several minutes before laser echoes resolved the location of the Naxid fleet. There were fifty-two warships surrounded by clouds of a couple hundred decoys, having just made a slingshot turn around the Stendis gas giant on a course for Zanshaa itself, a course that would gently converge with that of the Orthodox Fleet in slightly over four days. In fact, the point where the tracks of the ships would cross would be Zanshaa, and the final moments of the battle that would decide the fate of the empire might be fought above the capital itself.
The courses of the two fleets were converging on a track ideal for the kind of battle Tork had in mind. The fleets would draw closer to one another slowly, allowing each side to hammer the other with flight after flight of missiles, a battle of attrition that would favor the side with the most ships. One side would be annihilated, and the other would lose heavily even in victory.
Tork must have known where they were,Martinez thought. It was too much of a coincidence to believe that the Orthodox Fleet would jump into the system and find the enemy right where Tork needed them to be. He must have had spies in the Zanshaa system who were able to tell him exactly where the Naxids were, and he had adjusted the timing of his own attack to conform to enemy movements.
Martinez breathed his first free breath in several days. The fighting wouldn’t start for another three days at least. He removed his helmet, scratched his whiskered chin, and called to Alikhan for sandwiches and coffee.
Ten hours later, as he caught a few hours’ sleep in his cabin, he was called to Command by an urgent message from Kazakov. One glance at the tactical display showed him that something entirely unanticipated had happened.
The Naxid ships, instead of continuing on their course to encounter the Orthodox Fleet in three days’ time, had suddenly accelerated. They were racing toward Zanshaa at five gravities, as if planning on beating Tork to the capital.
Or as if they were running away.
Martinez began pulling on his vac suit. He could anticipate what would happen next.
He was proved correct. Tork ordered the Orthodox Fleet to accelerate and match the enemy’s velocity.
The problem was, Tork couldn’t catch up. The Naxids had nine hours’ head start before the light of their torches reached the Orthodox Fleet. And Tork couldn’t accelerate as fast as the enemy, because the Lai-own, with their hollow bones, would not stand accelerations of greater than two and a half gees. Tork would either fall behind or would have to leave his Lai-own formations behind.
Martinez, locked into his suit with the scent of suit sealant and the stink of his own body, watched from his captain’s chair as the enemy pulled ahead. Tork would never be able to bring about his decisive, orthodox battle. Instead he’d fall into the Naxids’ wake as he swung around Zanshaa, and even then could only fight an engagement if the Naxids’ reduced acceleration and permitted Tork to overhaul them.
Martinez couldn’t imagine why the Naxids were racing for Zanshaa with such urgency.
The reason was revealed when a radio message, sent in the clear, arrived from Zanshaa. He heard Master Signaler Nyamugali’s surprised intake of breath as she viewed the message, and then a chuckle.
“You’d better view this, Lord Captain.”
Martinez himself gave a gasp of surprise as the image resolved on his display and he saw Caroline Sula in all her brilliant beauty. Blood flashed hot in his veins as he viewed the pale skin, the flashing green eyes, and the familiar curl of sardonic amusement at the corner of one lip.
“This is Lady Sula, Governor of Zanshaa,” she said, “to the commander of the loyalist fleet. What took you so long?”
Martinez was able to listen in on Sula’s conversation with Tork because her communications were in the clear—she didn’tpossess a code, not even a simple one. So he learned early on that Sula, commanding something called the secret army, had seized the High City of Zanshaa and the entire Naxid government. The report was buttressed by video feed of Lady Kushdai signing articles of surrender in the Hall of the Convocation, and of some dubious-looking fighters lounging around public buildings.
That wasmy idea, Martinez thought. He had originally submitted a proposal to raise an army to hold Zanshaa until the Fleet could come to the city’s rescue, but he supposed that raising an army after the city was captured by the enemy counted as the next best thing.
Tork, whose response was of necessity also in the clear, was brusque.
“This is Lord Tork, Supreme Commander of the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance. Lady Sula, you will execute all traitorous rebels immediately by hurling them from the High City. Otherwise, hold the city and stand by for further orders.”
Martinez thought about this for a moment, then contacted Chandra Prasad in the Flag Officer Station.
“Does it strike you,” he said, “that Tork was griped to discover that Sula jumped the gun and won a battle on her own before the Orthodox Fleet could fire a single weapon at the enemy?”
“She may have won the only battle anyone’s going to fight for Zanshaa,” Chandra responded. “If you ask me, I think the enemy’s running for it.”
Which was exactly what the Naxids were doing. Three and a half days later the enemy raced past Zanshaa without firing a missile at Sula or anyone else, and accelerated on a path for the Vandrith gas giant. Once there, they could slingshot on to Wormhole 3 and away to Magaria—or, conceivably, whip around Vandrith to race past a number of other gas giants and back into the system again. The rationale for this last seemed scant.
Tork made an effort to catch the Naxids before it was too late. All non–Lai-own warships were ordered into punishing accelerations, charging in to engage the Naxids even with inferior numbers, but the Naxids just pushed their own accelerations in order to stay ahead. Both sides fired missiles at long range, to no effect.
Martinez spent the accelerations on his couch with gravities lying on him like a pyramid of wrestlers, all elbows and hard muscles; and though he tried to concentrate on the dull facts represented by his tactical display, the image of Sula kept rising in his mind. Her reappearance had been so startling, so dazzling, so unforgettable, and it seemed to have burned itself into his mind like a laser stitching a picture on his retinas. Over and again he conjured the emerald eyes, the hint of mischief in the corners of the lips, the silver-gold hair. Other images floated to the surface of his thoughts: Sula in bed, a flush of excitement mantling the pale skin; Sula at the breakfast table, licking jam from her lips; Sula on the dark street by the canal, walking away from him, her heels rapping on the pavement as she left him standing helpless in the scorched ruins of his love.
