a slow, implacable tide through his blood.
She’s mine,he thought.
Sula had decided to roll the dice again, three nights earlier when she’d returned from a cocktail party Michi had given for the officers of her sadly reduced squadron. She’d stepped into her little office, her skin still tingling with the awareness of Martinez that she’d felt during the last few hours, and paused to look at the wall behind her desk, the wall with the two rifles.
There was the keepsake of PJ, she and the keepsake of Sidney.
It was only then that she realized that she had no keepsake of Casimir, nothing but memories of frantic nights filled with the sting of adrenaline, the tang of sweat, and the sound of weapons fire. She had put Casimir in his tomb, and sacrificed theju yao pot to his memory. She had intended to join him, to seek her oblivion in a brilliant, clarifying, annihilating blast at Magaria, but pride had intervened.
Very well, she would let pride dictate her course. She would roll the dice on life, not death. She would roll the dice on love, not exile.
She would let Casimir stay buried, and hope that the fantastic Martinez luck would overcome the curse she carried with her.
In her mind, she bargained with Lord Chen. “I can arrange for the return of your daughter,” she said. “Captain Martinez and I were in love before the marriage was arranged. I can arrange for that love to blossom again. The marriage will end, and you will not be blamed by Clan Martinez.
“In return I require your patronage of myself, and your continued patronage of Captain Martinez. And of course Martinez and I will raise the child, who I don’t imagine you’d care to have around anyway.”
And who I need as a hostage to guarantee your cooperation.
She looked at the matter from Lord Chen’s point of view, and saw nothing to object to.
She knew better than to strike any fantasy bargains with Lady Terza Chen. The Chen heir had been born under circumstances that valued her womb over any other part. She was a bearer of precious Chen genetics, to be mixed with other valuable genetics as her family dictated. That Chen genes had been debased by Martinez plasma was, as far as Clan Chen was concerned, a misfortune of history.
Terza had been born a mere carrier of genes, but marriage had turned her into something more formidable. Her social standing was higher than that of her husband, which made her valuable to the wealthy, ambitious clan into which she had married, and who would be inclined to defer to her. In fact—as Sula was inclined to read the situation—it was Lord Chen who was the pawn now, a pawn both of Martinez interests and of his newly empowered daughter, the mother of the new clan heir.
It was unlikely that Terza would wish to return to her earlier role as a mere breeder-in-waiting. Any such change would have to be decided elsewhere. Her husband and her father would have to be in agreement on these basics.
With these thoughts in mind, Sula shaped her new program. Her policy of pride demanded that she not cheapen herself in any way. She did not pursue Martinez.
Instead, she drew him a map. She gave up the Sengra perfume that Casimir had given her and returned to her earlier scent, Sandama Twilight. This, she noticed, seemed to produce an effect—Martinez looked as if she’d hit him between the eyes with a hammer.
Detail was added to the map. WhenConfidence was still two wormhole jumps from Zanshaa, she arranged to rent a spacious apartment in the Petty Mount, in the shadow of the High City. To give herself privacy she made Macnamara and Spence the present of a twenty-nine-day vacation at a resort on Lake Tranimo, two hours from Zanshaa City by supersonic train. “You’re sick of the sight of me after all this time,” she told them over their protests. “And though I love you both, I will be happy not to have to look at you for a while.”
Her cook, Rizal, was given a discharge and permission to return home, though she kept him on retainer in case she needed to produce a meal.
She made certain that Martinez knew of all these arrangements, knew that she would be alone in a comfortable apartment away from the close confines and spying eyes of the High City. She wouldn’t even have any servants around.
She drew the map, but it was up to Martinez to follow it. Pride demanded that, at least.
She received few messages once communication with Zanshaa was restored. The news programs from the capital consisted in large part of executions. She didn’t watch them—she’d seen quite enough of that—but took note of the names.
With the peace, the information possessed by the enemy prisoners was no longer of any value, and batches of them were being flung from the High City every day. All the members of the government, both Naxids and others, officers of the security services, and the members of the ration authority whose lives Sula had spared so the planet would not starve. Now they were all condemned, their lives forfeit, their fortunes confiscated, their clans decimated.
Good,Sula thought.
The tiny revenant of Chenforce flew into Zanshaa’s system, braked, fell into orbit around Zanshaa. Between the ships and the blue and white planet curved a vast section of the broken accelerator ring, a section so huge that it was impossible to tell from close up that it was a mere fragment of what had once been the greatest monument of interstellar civilization. The ring’s smooth flank was studded with antennae, receiver dishes, and vast solar arrays.
In time, fragments of the broken ring would be nudged down to a lower orbit, reconnected to the elevator tethers, then stitched back together. Several large asteroids would be sacrificed to provide enough mass to replace the segments that had been vaporized in the antimatter explosions that had separated the ring sections.
For the moment, though, the ring was still a wreck. Tugs nudged the two warships to bays in the Fleet docks, where they would remain for months, perhaps years, awaiting their overhaul. The ring wasn’t spinning, so there was no gravity, and the crew floated weightless as soon as they released their webbing.
There was no accommodation for officers or crew on the ring. Not only was there no gravity, but the vast empty tube had not yet been pumped full of air. A series of atmosphere shuttles approached the warships and hovered a short distance away while lifelines were rigged. The crew formed in their divisions, donned vac suits, and moved in small groups into the main cargo airlock, where they crawled hand over hand along the lifelines till they reached their shuttles. Their baggage came after them on lines.
Sula waited in the airlock atrium to wish them all goodbye. She stood before the doors, wearing her vac suit but without her helmet, and shook the hand of each of the crew as they passed.
It was harder than she’d expected. Building the secret army and seizing the High City had been her greatest accomplishment, but it had never been her ambition, and she had never trained for such a task. The covert war and the battle for the High City had been a frantic improvisation, and though she was proud of her decisions, it had been too much like a plunge into unknown territory for her to feel comfortable with the memory.
Her training and hopes, however, had always been aimed at the command of a warship, andConfidence was her first. The frigate was small and unlovely, and her quarters a metal-walled box, but she had grown to love this deadly waspish instrument of her will. She had won many victories in its close confines, and not all of them were against Naxids.
The officers and their servants were the last off the ship, and had a shuttle of their own. Sula nerved herself to put on the hated helmet, and managed to contain her terror long enough to slap the faceplate closed and step into the airlock. Seeing the huge blue loom of the planet to one side and the great dazzle of stars on the other calmed her, gave her a sense of scale and helped her forget the confines of the shoe box she wore on her head.
After the transfer, they had to wait on their acceleration couches for the officers fromIllustrious, who took a longer time because they had more crew to transfer. Sula hated every second she was confined in the helmet, and was grateful for more than one reason as she recognized Martinez floating aboard. Even in a vac suit, those long arms and shortish legs were unmistakable.
Everyone webbed in, and the chemical engines ignited. The shuttle trailed fire across half the world before making a series of braking S-turns before Zanshaa City, after which it dropped to a landing at Wi-hun. Sula gazed out the ports and watched the sky turn from black to viridian green.
