Conventions of War (71 page)

The others ate thoughtfully as they sat beneath the murals of roistering ancients. Martinez had given them plenty to think about.

And to talk about. He knew there was no better advertisement for a subject than forbidding it to be mentioned. Lord Tork's orders—at least as interpreted by him—would naturally offend the pride of every member of Chenforce. When
Illustrious
and
Courage
discharged their crews, and officers and enlisted made their way to new postings, they would take their offended pride with them.

It was ridiculous to command them not to talk about their accomplishments. They would talk in wardrooms over dinner, in drawing rooms over cocktails, and drunkenly in bars. They would boast of their time with Chenforce, of their service under Michi Chen and Martinez, of their own prowess.

They would not let the memory of Chenforce die.

Martinez had also made a point of giving his lecture while the servants were still putting plates on the tables, thus ensuring that the enlisted would also carry their full measure of indignation throughout the Fleet.

There were certain things that Tork could not do. He could not put a number of Peers of the empire under surveillance to make sure they weren't speaking of their wartime experience, nor punish them when they did. He couldn't follow the hundreds of enlisted as they moved through the expanded Fleet, or prosecute them en masse, or even discharge them. They too would carry the legend of Chenforce wherever they went.

Sometimes, Martinez reflected, the best way to sabotage a superior was to follow his orders in the most perfectly literal way.

 

M
artinez's dinner with his officers was the first of several social events after the long, brutal deceleration finally ended, with Chenforce diving through the rings of a gas giant gorgeous with velvet-soft clouds of purple and green, then shaping a new course at a far more moderate deceleration.
Illustrious
and
Confidence
wouldn't have to part from the rest of Chenforce for three more days, and during that time there was constant visitation back and forth. Michi played host to a reception for the captains during which, through heroic effort, Martinez and Sula managed not to exchange a single word. Sula invited Michi to a dinner in her honor, and since Martinez hadn't been invited to accompany, he in turn invited his former captains from Squadron 31. He gave them much the same speech he had given his lieutenants, and with much the same effect.

The final day, Michi gave a farewell dinner for the captains of Cruiser Squadron 9, in which she thanked them for their loyalty, their courage, and their friendship, and raised a glass to their next meeting. Martinez, who sat at the far end of the table quivering with the barely suppressed impulse to deliver another tirade on the subject of Tork's order, thought he saw a tear glimmering in her eye.

Illustrious
and
Confidence
set a new course and began their acceleration toward Naxas Wormhole 1 en route to Magaria and Zanshaa. Martinez braced for the inevitable, which came two days later when Michi invited him and Sula to supper.

Michi and Martinez met Sula at the airlock, where a guard of honor rendered the proper formalities as Sula stepped onto
Illustrious
. She wore full dress, the dark green of the tunic a subdued reflection of the emerald green of her eyes. The sight took Martinez's breath away.

Sula faced the squadcom and braced; Michi shook her hand and welcomed her aboard. A tall, bushy-haired orderly hovered behind her right shoulder, a young man Martinez would have been inclined to dismiss if it weren't for the ribbon of the Medal of Valor on his breast. He was taken off to be a guest of the petty officers' mess, and Martinez and Sula followed Michi up a companionway to her quarters.

“Interesting decor,” Sula said, eyeing one of the trompe l'oeil archways in the corridor.

“All installed by Captain Fletcher,” Martinez said. “The artist is still aboard.”

He figured she wouldn't rip his head off if he stuck to the facts.

“That was a Vigo vase in that still life,” Sula remarked.

Michi glanced over her shoulder. “Are you interested in porcelain, Lady Sula?”

Which led to a discourse that took them to the dining room and into the first cocktail. Sula had a mixture of fruit juices, and the others Kyowan and Spacey. Martinez, standing with tingling tongue and feigned nonchalance by the drinks cart, felt Sula's clinical glance burn like ice on his skin.

Michi turned to Sula. “Lady Sula, I was wondering if I could review the moment in the battle when you moved your squadron to engage the enemy heavies. I have some questions about how you knew which of the enemy to choose as your particular target.”

Sula explained. Illustration would make the explanation more comprehensible, so the party moved to Michi's office, where they could use the holographic display built into her desk. The tension drawn between Martinez and Sula began to ebb as they reexperienced the fantastic degree of coordination they had felt in the battle, the balance of movement and fire, subtlety and force. Sula's pale skin glowed. Her eyes danced. She looked at him and smiled. Martinez returned the gaze and found that his laughter matched hers.

The party moved back to the dining room and continued the battle while plates, bottles, and napkins were deployed on the table like ships of war. Michi and Martinez described the Battle of Protipanu, and Martinez talked about Hone-bar. Diagrams were drawn in gravy. Sula recounted her adventures on the ground in Zanshaa.

“Weren't you afraid of dealing with the cliquemen?” Michi asked.

Sula seemed to calculate her answer for a half second or so. “Not really. I'd known people like them on Spannan, where I grew up, and—” There was another moment of calculation. “Well,” she said, “it's like with everyone else. You have to calculate your common interests.”

Michi seemed dubious. “Weren't you afraid that they'd betray you and…well, just take everything?”

Sula calculated again, then grinned. “Unlike good Peers like Lord Tork?”

Martinez burst into laughter. Michi's laughter was more strained.

Still, Martinez thought, Sula wasn't being completely candid about something. He wondered what it was.

The scent of coffee floated through the room. The conversation went on well past the tail end of dinner, well into the second pot of coffee. During the long course of the conversation, and with Sula's agreement, Martinez told her honor guard to stand down—she could leave the ship informally, with no inconvenience. When she thanked Michi, rose, and collected her hat and gloves from Vandervalk, Martinez offered to accompany her to the airlock.

“If you'll page Macnamara to meet me there.”

Martinez did so. He walked with Sula into the corridor. It was late and nearly deserted; most crew were asleep. Their heels rapped on Fletcher's polychrome tiles.

Suddenly Martinez was afraid to speak. He was possessed of the certainty that if he opened his mouth, he'd spoil everything, all the intimacy that he and Sula had just rediscovered, and then the two would have no choice but to be enemies forever.

Sula was less shy. She gazed straightforward as she spoke, her eyes not meeting his. “I've decided to forgive you,” she said.

“Forgive me?” Martinez couldn't help himself. “It was you who dumped me, remember?”

Her voice was flat. “You should have had more persistence.”

She came to the companion and dropped quickly down the stair to the deck below. Martinez followed, his heart throbbing.

“You were very insistent,” he said.

“I was upset.”

“But why?”

That seemed the point. He had asked her to marry him, and she had refused him—with anger—and marched off into the Zanshaa night.

Sula stopped, turned, looked at him. He could see the muscles strained in her throat.

“I'm not good at relationships,” she said. “I was afraid, and you wouldn't let me
be
afraid. By the time I got over the fright, you were engaged to Terza Chen.”

“My brother arranged that without telling me.” He hesitated, then spoke. “I called you all night.”

She stared at him for a blank second, then reeled as if he'd struck her.

“I was upset,” she said. “I was—” She shook her golden head. “Never mind what I was doing. I told the comm to refuse all calls.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Martinez felt as if an iron hand had seized his vitals and twisted them. It was like losing her all over again.

“I…forgive you,” he said.

He took a step toward her, but she had already turned and was walking away, heading for the next companion. Martinez followed.

At the bottom of the stair her orderly waited, properly braced. The airlock door was only a few paces away. The words that were on the verge of spilling from Martinez's tongue dried up.

Sula turned and held out her hand. “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “I'll see you again.”

He took her hand. It was small and elegant and warm in his ungainly paw. Her musky perfume caressed his senses, and his nerves leaped with the impulse to kiss her.

“Sleep well, my lady,” he said.

And dream of me
…

 

T
hat night Sula dreamed of nothing but the dead. She woke after a few hours with a scream bottled in her throat, and knew that she didn't dare rest again.

She used her captain's key to open
Confidence
's databanks and edited out all references to the blood pressure spike that had shut down the engines during the Naxas battle. Instead she blamed the engine trip on a power spike in a transformer, a spike caused by radiation from a near miss. The transformer was scheduled to be replaced anyway.

There were anomalies in the cover story, and there would be her footprints in the record, but it would take a fair amount of detective work to find them, and she suspected that no one would ever be that interested.

The whole point of the elite commission, after all, was to bury everything that had happened on
Confidence
. She doubted anyone would look at the official records.

She resolutely refused to think of Martinez as she worked, and did her best to ignore a prickling of her neck hairs that told her he was standing right behind her, looking over her shoulder as she committed a lengthy string of electronic felonies.

I've done worse,
Sula told the specter.

Martinez, she thought, strolled through life profiting from the death and misfortune of others.

She, on the other hand, was the
bringer
of death and misfortune. Make the two of them a couple, and the implications were chilling.

If we are ever together,
she thought with a shiver,
one or both of us will die.

She sent the revised database to bed. It was over an hour to breakfast, and she was still afraid to sleep. She sat up reading
The Greening of Africa,
another of her Earth histories.

She still felt Martinez standing behind her, silent and reproachful as the dead.

 

M
artinez spoke to each of his staff in turn to find out if they were willing to stay with him after
Illustrious
went into refit. He was allowed to take servants with him from one posting to the next, but he wanted to make certain they were willing.

Alikhan accepted, as Martinez had hoped he would. He knew that Narbonne, Fletcher's formet valet, didn't like being Alikhan's junior, and he wasn't surprised when Narbonne asked for a discharge.

Montemar Jukes was more problematical. “I don't think I'm going to need an artist after this,” Martinez said. “I won't have a ship to decorate.”

Jukes shrugged. “I can save those plans for another day, my lord. But on Zanshaa you'll have a palace, won't you, Lord Captain? You and your lady? And won't that palace need decorating? Perhaps with a full-length portrait of Lady Terza to match the one of yourself.”

“Ah…perhaps,” Martinez said. He didn't want to admit to himself that a future without Terza was a possibility that lurked somewhere in the back of his mind.

Jukes remained on his payroll, and began contemplating themes for the decoration of a large house.

The surprise was the cook, Perry.

“I'd like to request a discharge, my lord,” he said.

Martinez looked in surprise at the young man standing opposite his desk.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked.

“No, my lord. It's just that…well, I'd like to strike out on my own.”

Martinez regarded him narrowly. “There
is
something wrong, isn't there?”

Perry hesitated. “Well, my lord,” he admitted, “sometimes I wonder if you actually like my cooking.”

Martinez was astonished. “What do you mean?” he said. “I eat it, don't I?”

“Yes, Lord Captain. But—” Perry strove for words. “You don't pay attention to the food. You're always working while you're eating, or sending messages on the comm, or dealing with reports.”

“I'm a busy man,” Martinez said. “I'm a captain, for all's sake.”

Determination settled across Perry's expression. “My lord,” he said, “do you even remember what you ate for your noon meal?”

Martinez searched briefly through his memory. “It was the thing with the cheese,” he said, “wasn't it?”

Perry gave a little sigh. “Yes, my lord,” he said. “The thing with the cheese.”

Martinez looked at him. “I'll give you the discharge if you want,” he said, “but—”

“Yes, please,” said Perry. “Thank you, my lord.”

Feeling slighted, Martinez wrote Perry an excellent reference, in part so he could feel superior to the whole situation.