“Take your seats, my lords,” Tork said. Strips of dead flesh dangled from his face. His fixed expression seemed fierce, but his voice was a mellow chiming, like distant bells.
Martinez laid the Golden Orb on the table before him and perched gingerly on a chair more suited to the narrower Daimong frame. The ghastly smell was now clogging the back of his throat. He cleared it and took a sip of the water that had been provided in each place.
“I have reviewed Squadron Commander Chen’s report,” Tork said, “as well as reports filed by the individual captains. I am compelled to observe that the record of Chenforce is like no other I have ever encountered.”
At these words Martinez felt a certain optimism rise. Perhaps Tork had mellowed in the last months. Perhaps the success of the raid had convinced him to look on Chenforce as an example to the rest of the Fleet.
“Chenforce has destroyed many of the wormhole relay stations on which our civilization depends,” Tork said. “It has destroyed a planetary accelerator ring and killed many, perhaps most, of the inhabitants of Bai-do. Aboard the flagship we find officers—including the captain!—killed by the crew, murderers who were permitted to run free and to continue their vicious activities for months before paying for their crime. These same enlisted crew were involved in a continuous string of felonies, extortions, and a treasonous partnership with Naxid rebels. We even have evidence of cult activity aboard the ship, sure evidence that the officers did not properly indoctrinate the crew in their responsibilities to the Fleet and to the Praxis.”
Tork’s voice began in as a melodious chiming but built to a furious abrasive monotone, a harrying strident tone that grated on Martinez’s nerves and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Anger flared like a raging fire under his high collar.
“I have to ask myself,” Tork continued, “if these are proper acts of war. Certainly apirate might boast of wormhole stations destroyed, of the annihilation of a planet, of murder and his allegiance to cults. But are these proper activities for a Peer and an officer?”
He moved his pale bald head to stare at the officers before him.
“I make no judgments,” he said. “I was not at the scene. I tell you only that no such activities will be permitted in the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance. We do not attack planets. We do not attack helpless crew in relay stations. We exist for one purpose only, and that purpose is to engage the enemy fleet in battle— inproper battle—and by destroying them, to end the war that divides the empire. No deviations from this single task will be contemplated or permitted.”
He jabbed at the transparent surface of the table with his long fingers.
“We will engage the enemy and beat him by using the formations and methods that were bequeathed to us by our ancestors, ancestors beside whose greatness we exist as mere shadows. None of the deviant tactics that killed Fleet Commander Kangas will be permitted. The Fleet will exercise proper tactics, properly applied, and these tactics will guarantee victory.”
He leveled a finger along the table, pointing at each officer in turn. “There will be no premature starbursts, my lords! Any formation wishing to starburst must receive the permission of the Supreme Commander before executing the maneuver.”
Again the voice rose to a nerve-scraping pitch.
“All that is important is known! All that is perfect is contained in the Praxis! All innovation is deviation from the Supreme Law!No deviation is permitted! ”
“I never expected to be called a pirate by my own side,” Michi said asDaffodil leftJudge Urhug ‘s airlock.
“He makes no judgments,” Martinez said.
And, he thought, Tork might at least have mentioned that they’d vaporized over two hundred enemy merchant vessels, putting a permanent crimp in the Naxid economy, and finished the twenty or more warships that, the Fleet, wouldn’t have to fight at Zanshaa.
“Well,” Martinez said, “we can at least practice the new tactics on our own. We don’t have to tell Tork everything we do.”
But that wasn’t the case. The next day, Tork broke up Chenforce. The light cruiserCelestial, damaged at Protipanu, was sent to the yards at Antopone for repair. The other light cruiser and the frigate were sent to a newly created light squadron. The two Torminel cruisers were made part of an all-Torminel division, and the two remaining Terran ships became the nucleus of the spanking new Cruiser Squadron 9, to which were added the three survivors of the Home Fleet, also crewed by Terrans, three new-built Terran ships that had not yet arrived at Chijimo, and theBombardment of Delhi, a badly damaged Magaria survivor under repair since the battle.
The lone Daimong cadet—the survivor of theBeacon, lost at Protipanu—who had been hauntingIllustrious since the battle, was brought aboard Tork’s flagship; probably, Martinez thought, to be debriefed about any deviations that might have been practiced on Michi’s flagship during his time aboard.
At least Michi commanded the new squadron, soIllustrious remained the flagship.
It was impossible to practice any new tactical system for the simple reason that Michi and Martinez could not trust their subordinates not to rat them out to Tork. Chenforce had been a highly cohesive force, united by victory and by a faith in their commander. Michi could have run forbidden exercises within her old command and stood a reasonable chance that none of her subordinates would inform Tork of their activities. But no such trust existed within Cruiser Squadron 9. Neither Michi nor Martinez dared to suggest any prohibited experiments to the new arrivals.
“Tork’s doing this deliberately,” Michi told Martinez. “He’s trying to isolate everyone he feels he can’t trust, and surround them with strangers.”
“Let’s hope he’s not isolating contagion, but spreading the virus instead,” Martinez replied.
Tork kept his new formations busy with daily exercises, all drawn from the old playbook. Martinez thought Tork’s staff must have been working twenty-nine hours per day planning out the scripts. Every move was planned in advance; every maneuver, every missile fired, every casualty. Ships were judged not on how well they did against an enemy, but on how well they obeyed instructions.
For anyone who had experienced the new-style, free-form experiments that Martinez, Michi, and Do-faq had created, Tork’s maneuvers were agonies of frustration. Anyone who had ever been in an actual battle, Martinez thought, would have observed that real combat didn’t follow anybody’s script, and seen what a useless waste of time Tork’s maneuvers were.
But Tork hadn’t ever been in an actual battle, or in one of Martinez’s experiments. The maneuvers continued, one after another, all dreadfully familiar. Martinez could only hope that Tork had an intellectual equal on the Naxid side.
He had to admit, however, that the maneuvers were atleast giving the new ships practice at basic maneuvers. Their quality, marked by hastily trained crews under newly minted officers, was in general wretched. Even he, as a brand-new skipper aboard the newly crewedCorona, hadn’t been as hapless as these officers.
Light Squadron 14 under Squadron Commander Altasz, which had been on a raid similar to that of Chenforce, arrived three days after Chenforce was broken up. Martinez had once commanded the squadron, and he looked at his old command on the tactical display with a mixture of nostalgia and resignation. None of the old crews were aboard, none of those with whom he’d shared danger from Magaria to Hone-bar. The ships were old friends, but the crew in them were strangers.
Michi wanted to know how Squadron 14 had avoided danger from relativistic Naxid missiles, and queried Altasz in private. Altasz replied that he’d simply blown up every single relay station he’d come across.
“Tork will get another chance to use the word’pirate,‘ ” Michi predicted, and later found out that her forecast came true.
Routine in Tork’s command wasn’t all drill and discipline. There was a great deal of visiting back and forth among the officers, and a round of dinners, parties, and receptions. As new-minted ships joined, old acquaintances arrived or sent their greetings. Lady Elissa Dalkeith, Martinez’s first officer onCorona, invited him to a handsome dinner on her new frigateCourage . Small, blond Vonderheydte, who Martinez had promoted to Lieutenant onCorona ‘s flight from Magaria, invited him to a dinner in the wardroom of his cruiser, whereCorona ’s escape was recounted in detail to a fascinated group of officers. Ari Abacha arrived aboardIllustrious to drink a bottle of Chen wine and complain languidly about the amount of work he had to do as second officer of theGallant . Dour Master Engineer Maheshwari, his flamboyant mustachios still dyed a highly industrial shade of red, sent respectful greetings and congratulations from Engine Control of his new frigate. Squadron Commander Do-faq, who had won the Battle of Hone-bar by following Martinez’s advice, made him guest of honor at a large reception, and there he met Cadet Kelly, with whom Martinez had shared a carnal romp after they had narrowly escaped
