TWENTY-FOUR
Anxiety over the Naxid raid had not improved Tork’s appearance. His flesh was dying faster than ever, and dry twists of skin hung from his hands and gray, expressionless face. Decay came off him in great gusts. But however frail his body seemed, his mind remained firm and inflexible as ever.
“There is only one possible solution,” he said, “and that is for this board to appoint me commander of the Home Fleet.”
Lady Seekin’s eyes were huge beneath her dark goggles. “But aren’t you retired, my lord?”
Resignation tinged Lord Tork’s voice. “This board has the power to restore me to active service. I will accept, of course, with regret. I had hoped that those days were long past.”
Lord Chen doubted that Tork’s regret could possibly be greater than his own.
“I don’t understand, my lord,” he ventured. “You’ve been entrusted with the direction of the entire Fleet establishment, not just ships, but ring stations and everything on the ground as well. You’re crucial to our hopes of victory. Can you possibly forsake this trust for the command of only one element?”
Chen had been afraid his words might provoke another diatribe from Tork, but the chairman’s chiming voice remained level.
“There is no one else. Consider—the Home Fleet must be led by someone of suitable rank. Most of the active officers of fleet command rank died at Magaria, and the rest are too distant from the scene of action. Kringan is three months away, at Harzapid with the Fourth Fleet. Pel-to is at Felarus, with Naxid-held systems in the way. Trepatai is at Seizho, but her health broke down early in the war, and she hasn’t left her bed for months. Lord Ivan Snow has suitable rank, but has spent most of his career with the Investigative Service, has never commanded a large formation, and is in any case three months away at Laredo, where he reports to the Convocation. Whereas I…”
There was a moment of silence. Lord Chen closed his throat against the sickly waft of dying flesh that floated to his nostrils.
“I am available,” Tork said. “I will hold suitable rank once I am restored to the active list. I am a Daimong, and could join the two new Antopone cruisers, which are adapted for Daimong crews and could take me aboard without difficulty.”
“Couldn’t wepromote someone into the position?” Lady Seekin asked. “Lord Pa Do-faq is a victorious commander. We couldn’t find a more experienced officer.”
Chen closed his eyes and wished he could close his ears as well, against the sonic storm that was bound to peal from Tork at Lady Seekin’s sensible but naive sentiments. Again he was surprised, for Tork said nothing, while the question was answered by Pezzini.
“Do-faq’s an advocate of the innovations that got Kangas killed,” he said. “We can’t put the Home Fleet under him—he’d just kill more good officers, and probably lose Zanshaa all over again. The Fleet needs to be under a strong disciplinarian and an advocate of orthodox tactics.” He nodded at Tork. “The lord chairman fits the description.”
“I am no longer young,” Tork said, “but my health remains good. And in any case I need retain my vigor only a few more months.”
After that there was no choice. Tork and his loyalists would block any attempt to promote Do-faq or anyone else.
Lord Chen raised his hand with the others when the vote was called, and Lord Tork was appointed unanimously to command the Home Fleet, charged with the reconquest of Zanshaa and the defeat of the rebels.
Tork threw himself into the work with his usual dedication. He didn’t transfer himself to the Daimong ships right away, but stayed where he had sufficient support staff to keep himself informed of the status of the Fleet throughout the empire.
The Daimong ships continued to Chijimo, where they would dock and receive their weapons. Tork made certain all necessary equipment was shipped from Antopone. The Home Fleet under Do-faq decelerated all the way to Zarafan, then swung around its sun and whipped back to Chijimo.
Reinforcements were on their way. Three ships from the Fourth Fleet that had finished repairs after the battle at Harzapid. Three brand-new frigates, built with astounding efficiency by the Martinez yards at Laredo, were undergoing trials; and the Convocation, mightily impressed, commissioned five frigates more. Thirty-one more ships were nearing completion elsewhere in friendly space, and construction had begun on another sixty.
Fleet Commander Kringan, at Harzapid, apparently heard the call of the trumpets once the news of Kangas’s death reached him. Within three days he’d placed himself aboard a frigate, one that hadn’t yet finished repair, and launched himself for Chijimo with repair crews still aboard. Clearly he was hoping to arrive in time to be appointed commander of the Home Fleet, but unfortunately no one else was hearing the same trumpets, because by the time the frigate left Harzapid’s system, Tork had already received the supreme command.
Lord Chen would be grateful for Kringan’s presence, however. It would be good to have another high-ranking officer on hand in case Tork worked himself into a stroke.
But Tork showed no sign of flagging. He grew leaner and he shed skin at a fantastic rate, but he burned with a fever that his age could not quench. Lord Chen had to admit that no other officer could possibly have been more dedicated.
The Naxids launched no more raids.
“They’ve learned not to make detachments,” Lord Mondi said as they relaxed one evening inGalactic ‘s lounge. “Every time they send a force out on its own, they lose it. Hone-bar, Protipanu, and now Antopone—and since there have been no Naxid survivors, they have no idea what’s doing it to them.”
“So it all comes down to one big battle then,” said Pezzini. “It all comes down to Zanshaa.”
The three traitors were executed two days after their arrest. The Convocation, in the hours following the start of the rebellion, had decreed that the penalty for treason was torture followed by hurling the condemned from a great height. Martinez managed to talk Michi out of the torture on the grounds that the squadron had no professional torturers and that amateurs were bound to make a mess of it. He couldn’t tell whether Michi was relieved by her decision or not.
There were no heights to throw the condemned men from, but Michi managed an approximation.Illustrious was decelerating at one gravity, to swing around the blue giant Alekas and on to another wormhole, so she decided to eject the traitors from an airlock. Once free of the ship, the traitors would no longer be decelerating and would fall into the ship’s burning antimatter tail.
And they would be ejected without vac suits. “Damned if I’ll waste vac suits on them!” Michi snarled. The vacuum might well kill them before they were torn to atoms by the antimatter blast. Martinez didn’t know which death would be worse.
Gawbyan was stoic in the moments leading up to his execution. Francis was contemptuous, and Gulik, who had condemned himself and the others repeatedly during his interrogation, sagged in a kind of bewilderment. He seemed to suggest that it was unfair to execute him. He’d cooperated and freely confessed, and he didn’t understand why he didn’t get a prize from a grateful empire.
They died with ceremony. A party waited at the airlock, Martinez, Michi with her staff, and all the lieutenants except Corbigny, who was on watch. All glittered in full dress. There was a guard, witnesses from each of the prisoners’ departments, and the ship’s band, which played the low, mournful “Death Without Honor” as the prisoners shuffled from the brig in their coveralls.
Constable Garcia stripped from the condemned their badges of rank and seniority. Guards tied their ankles together with white mourning tape, and their arms were taped to their sides. They were then taken into the airlock and loaded onto an apparatus designed to eject the bodies of crew who had died in accident or as a result of enemy action. The apparatus hadn’t ever been used on live crew, so far as Martinez knew, but he imagined the principle remained the same.
The inner airlock door closed smoothly. Garcia stepped to the airlock controls. The band halted at the end of the phrase, and the drummer began a slow, throbbing pulse on the hourglass-shaped drum.
“Evacuate the airlock, Mr. Garcia,” Martinez said.
“Evacuate the airlock, my lord.” Garcia turned to the controls. If there was a sound, a hiss or the throb of
