Lady Michi had retaliated for this defiance by destroying the ring. Billions died in exchange for two cadets, making a point that it was hoped the Naxid high command would respect.
This time the pinnaces would have an escort. Each pinnace would fly surrounded by a cloud of twenty-four antimatter missiles, all under command of the pinnace pilots themselves. The missiles could either be used offensively or to counter missiles launched from the ring. The missiles, like the pinnaces, could be recovered after the completion of their mission, or diverted to other targets, like the merchant vessels that were accelerating madly in an effort to clear the system before Chenforce destroyed them.
Martinez watched as the missiles were flung from the tubes, as chemical rockets ignited to carry them a safe distance from the cruiser before the antihydrogen engines started. The pinnaces followed shortly thereafter, engines firing to take them on a long curve that would carry them on either side of Termaine.
The Flag Officer Station stood down once the pinnaces and the missile barrages were on their way, and Martinez tucked his helmet under his arm and made his way to his cabin, where his orderly, Khalid Alikhan, helped him out of his vac suit.
Alikhan was a thirty-year veteran of the Fleet who had retired with the rank of Master Weaponer, and who still proudly wore the goatee and curling mustachios of the senior petty officer. Alikhan was a fountain of vivid anecdotes, technical arcana, and knowledge of the devious paths one might take to circumvent the formalities and custom of the Fleet, and Martinez had employed him with the intention of taking advantage of those thirty years’ experience in the weapons bays.
Alikhan hung the vac suit in its locker and served Martinez coffee from the vacuum pot that waited on a sideboard in the office.
“I was wondering, my lord, if I might trouble you for an advance on my pay,” he said as he placed the cup on Martinez’s desk.
Martinez paused in surprise, the cup halfway to his lips. Alikhan had never before asked for an advance.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.” He rose from his chair, opened his office safe, and handed Alikhan five zeniths. “Will that be enough?”
“That’s more than sufficient, my lord. Thank you.”
Martinez closed the safe. “Is the petty officers’ club doing something special?” he asked. He couldn’t think what it could be. With the ship’s canteen running low after months away from port, the nearest place to spend money was Termaine.
“No, my lord,” Alikhan said. His stern face hardened into an expression of vexation. “I was unlucky at cards.”
Martinez looked at him, surprised again. “I didn’t know you gambled,” he said.
“I venture now and again, my lord.”
Alikhan braced, which indicated that he hoped the conversation was over. Martinez decided it might well be.
“Carry on, then,” he said, and Alikhan made his way out.
Martinez sat at his desk and sipped his coffee, then checked the tactical display.
The rebels at Termaine were obeying orders, so far as he could tell. Termaine was now surrounded by a small cloud of vessels that had been cast adrift, ready to be destroyed by Chenforce as it swept past.
Martinez didn’t find the sight completely assuring.
Bai-do too had complied with Michi’s demands, right up to the point where they opened fire.
SIX
The bomb was disassembled and brought up to the High City in pieces, hidden in Team 491’s toolboxes and then stowed in PJ Ngeni’s guest cottage behind the Ngeni Palace. The explosive itself, which might have triggered the sniffers at the funicular, was brewed in PJ’s kitchen out of components purchased from hardware stores and cleaning supply houses.
As the bomb reached final assembly, PJ hovered above the table in the study, torn between anxiety and an eerie delight. Eventually he became a distraction, and Sula had to take him to his study and pour several drinks down him before he calmed down.
Sula had at one point expressed doubts about smuggling arms past the detectors on the funicular, and PJ promptly volunteered the Ngeni clan’s collection of sporting weapons. Sula was about to decline—the guns were registered, and if they had to be left behind would point straight at PJ—when she hesitated and went to the nearest comm terminal.
Checking in at the Records Office, she found the arms registry and erased anything connected to anyone named Ngeni.
The police would have ballistics and forensics information regarding any legally purchased firearm, but they would be useless for an old weapon that had been fired many times. Sula made certain to equip her team with weapons that were centuries old.
On the day of the operation, Zanshaa’s viridian sky was clear and sunny, which made it more likely that Lord Makish would be walking home. This was desirable from Sula’s point of view, but less desirable was the probability that other Naxids, who preferred their weather hot, would be on the streets.
If they die, they die.She certainly didn’t intend to risk herself in order to spare a few stray Naxids.
Shortly after noon, Spence went off to Garden of Scents to stand lookout. Sula and Macnamara strapped their toolboxes onto the back of his two-wheeler at the Ngeni Palace, got aboard, and hummed away through half- empty streets. They traveled along Lapis Street, which paralleled the Boulevard of the Praxis to the north, and parked in the lane to one side of the Urghoder Palace, the empty building next to Judge Makish’s residence.
Sula tucked her hair into a bandanna, and over this put a worker’s lightweight cap; then, with Macnamara following, she carried her toolbox around the corner, past the inscribed entrance to the Urghoder Palace, and to Makish’s elaborate wrought-silver-alloy gate. She entered, approached the front door—whose form echoed the artichoke shape of the towers—and pressed a button that caused a clacking noise in the interior, similar to the sound of theaejai .
Behind her, Macnamara hovered near the gate, as though uncertain. He’d already put one of his toolboxes down behind some bushes near the path.
The liveried servant who answered the door reared back, in loathing or surprise, and stood as tall as her short-legged centauroid form permitted, on tiptoe reaching Sula’s shoulder.
“You should have come to the back entrance!” she declared in a voice that rose nearly to a screech.
“Beg pardon,” Sula said, “but we were told to work on the garden. If this is the Urghoder Palace, that is.”
“The Urghoder Palace is next door!” the servant said. “Be away!”
“We were told wrong, then,” Sula said cheerfully. “Thanks anyway!”
“Away!” the servant repeated.
Hope we blow your ass to the ring,Sula thought. Under the servant’s black-on-red eyes she and Macnamara left the garden and neatly closed the gleaming alloy gate behind her. While the servant continued to watch, the two made their way to the Urghoder Palace and entered the overgrown, disused front garden, where—behind the ivycrusted flanking wall of yellow sandstone—they were out of sight of the Makish front door.
They opened their boxes and readied their tools. Sula and Macnamara each inserted a receiver in one ear, clipped a tiny microphone to their collars, and did a brief communications check with Spence. For the rest of the afternoon they worked steadily in the garden a task that Sula found more taxing than she’d expected. She had been raised in cities and grown up in ships and barracks: her experience with domestic plants was limited. Macnamara, fortunately, was from the country, and had lived so bucolic a childhood he’d actually worked as a shepherd. Under his guidance Sula pruned and hacked at the overgrown foliage and thought herself lucky that no actual sheep were involved. Macnamara assisted when a bough or a root needed more muscle than Sula possessed, but was otherwise busy in a secluded corner of the garden, digging a slit trench with a portable pick.
Sula wanted someplace for them to hide when the bomb actually went off. They had debated whether they truly needed to be anywhere in the vicinity—possibly a real professional saboteur, certain in her luck and in the technology of remote-controlled detonators, wouldn’t need to be anywhere closer than the Garden of Scents—but Sula lacked that confidence. If one of the Makish servants found the toolbox hidden in the garden, she wanted to be close enough to claim it before anyone opened the box to find the bomb.
