The Praxis (3 page)

Some other time maybe.

Warrant Officer Taen's words were printed across the chameleon-weave left sleeve of his uniform jacket. There was no audio or video, which might have given a clue as to whether Amanda Taen was angry, but from the evidence, she hadn't shut him out altogether.

Perhaps this was one mistake from which he could recover.

Martinez triggered the silver sleeve button that acted as a camera and sent both video and audio in response. “I'm free now. Is it too late to meet? Or if it's too late, I'll call you tomorrow and we can reschedule.”

Flowers, he thought. If he didn't hear from Amanda Taen soon, he would send flowers along with a written apology.

He turned off the display, and the chameleon weave of the uniform jacket returned to its normal dark green, the precise color of Zanshaa's viridian sky. He encountered little traffic in the Commandery at this late hour as he walked to the cadets' duty room, and the click of his heels on the marble floor echoed in the high, empty corridors. At the door, he straightened his collar with its red triangular staff tabs, stiffened his spine, and marched in.

The four duty cadets didn't see him. As Martinez expected, they were watching sport on the room's video walls—as he remembered from his own cadet years, watching or participating in sport was the default activity, and any cadet who failed to be obsessed by sport was marked as a “toil,” an oddball.

No toils here. The sounds of football blared from one wall, all-in wrestling from another, yacht racing from the third. The cadets lounged on a sofa they'd dragged to face the wall displaying the yacht race, and were draped across the cushions with their jackets unbuttoned and cans of beer in their hands.

There was a problem presented by cadets who had graduated from one or another of the military academies but hadn't yet gained service experience. Jobs had to be found for them so they could gain seasoning without having the opportunity to damage themselves or others. Cadets were supposed to use the three years between their graduation and their lieutenants' exams to gain experience and study the many technical aspects of their profession, but many preferred the more tempting curriculum of inebriation, dissipation, and gambling away their available funds. “Glits,” such people were called.

Martinez remembered his own temptations very well, and the times he'd given in to them even better. He'd managed to carry off a degree of glithood—in fact, he'd found he was good at it, and only an inner compulsion to somehow be useful prevented him from turning into a complete parasite.

The cadets in the duty room were being used as messengers until useful work could be found for them. Normally, someone needing a messenger would have called here and summoned a messenger to pick up dispatches, which could give one of these layabouts a chance to finish his drink, spruce up his uniform, and transform himself into something resembling a smart, eager officer before presenting himself to authority.

Martinez parked himself directly behind their couch without anyone noticing. Pleasurable self-righteousness filled his mind. He had tracked the slothful cadet to its lair, where it wasted and loitered and thought not of duty.

“Scuuuum!”
he bellowed. Cadets were not as yet commissioned, and he didn't have to “lord” them, even though these were almost certainly Peers.

The four cadets—one woman and three men—leaped from the couch, braced their shoulders back, and bared their throats. “
My lord!”
they responded.

Martinez gave them a cold look. He had just had his dignity and fortunes shredded by a superior, and he felt a very powerful, very human urge to pass the pain on to someone else. He said nothing for a few seconds, daring them to relax once they realized they were facing a mere lieutenant—and a provincial at that.

The cadets stayed braced. Rich boy Foote, with his disordered blond cowlick and a clamp on his usual supercilious expression. Chatterji, with her freckles and her red hair clubbed behind her neck. Martinez didn't know the other two.

Eventually he condescended to speak. “Which of you is at the head of the queue?”

“I am, lord.” It was one of the unknowns who spoke, a small, slim, brown-skinned youth who reeked of the beer he'd splashed on his chest as he leaped from the sofa.

Martinez took a step closer and loomed over him. Martinez was tall, and looming was something he found useful, and he had practiced till he could do it well. “Your name, insect?” he inquired.

“Silva, lord.”

Martinez held out the letters. “These are to be hand-delivered to every ship on the ring station. To the captains personally, or to their aides. Signature-receipts will be collected and returned to Lord Commander Enderby's office.” He looked pointedly at the beery splotch that decorated the cadet's open jacket and the blouse beneath it.

“Are you sober enough for this task, Cadet Silva?”

“Yes, lord!” Barley and hops outgassed from Silva's lungs, but he didn't sway, not even with his heels together and Martinez looming over him. Therefore he probably wasn't so drunk as to bring complete disgrace onto himself, Martinez, and Enderby's command.

“The next shuttle for the skyhook leaves in half an hour, insect,” Martinez said. “That will give you just enough time to shower and change into suitable dress before going top-side.” A thought occurred to him, and he added, “You aren't so drunk that you'll upchuck on the elevator, will you, insect?”

“No, my lord!”

Martinez offered him the letters. “See that you don't. Better put these in a waterproof bag, just in case.”

“Begging my lord's pardon?” said someone else.

The speaker was Jeremy Foote, the big blond with the cowlick that disordered his hair on the right side, and though the cadet was braced when he spoke, he still managed to speak with something approaching his usual languid drawl. It was a voice he had probably spoken in the cradle, a voice that oozed breeding and social confidence, that conjured images of exclusive smoking rooms, fancy-dress balls, and silent servants. A world to which Martinez, despite his own status as a Peer, had no admittance, not unless he was begging favors from some high-caste patron.

Martinez wheeled on him. “Yes, Cadet Foote?”

“I may as well take the letters myself, my lord,” Foote said.

Martinez knew Foote well enough to know that this seeming generosity masked an underlying motive. “And why are you being so good to Silva tonight?” he asked.

Foote permitted a hint of insolence to touch a corner of his mouth. “My uncle's the captain of the
Bombardment of Delhi,
my lord,” he said. “After I've delivered the messages, the two of us could have a bit of breakfast together.”

Just like him to cite his connections, Martinez thought. Well damn him, and damn his connections too.

Until Foote had spoken up, Martinez had planned on letting the cadets off with a brief lecture on correct dress and deportment in the duty room. Now Foote had given him every excuse to inflict dread and misery on all of them.

“I fear you'll have to save the cozy family breakfasts for another time, Cadet Foote,” Martinez said. He jerked his chin toward Silva and once more held out the invitations.

“Get up to the station, Silva,” he said. “And if you don't make the next elevator, believe me, I'll know.”

“Lord!” Silva took the invitations and scuttled away, buttoning his jacket as he went. Martinez eyed the other three, one by one.

“I have other plans for the rest of you,” he said. “I'll oblige you to turn and look at the yacht race, if you will.”

The cadets made precise military turns to face the display on the video wall—except for Chatterji, who swayed drunkenly during her spin. The wall display gave the illusion of three dimensions, with the six competing yachts, along with a planet and its moons, displayed against a convincing simulation of the starry void.

“Display,” Martinez told the wall. “Sound, off.” The chatter of the commentators cut off abruptly. “Football, off,” he went on. “Wrestling, off.”

The yachts now maneuvered in silence, weaving about the twelve moons of the ochre-striped gas giant Vandrith, the fifth planet in Zanshaa's system. The moons weren't precisely the object of the race: instead, each vessel was required to pass within a certain distance of a series of satellites placed in orbit about the moons. In order to avoid the race turning into a mere mathematical exercise best suited to solution by a navigational computer, the satellites were programmed to alter their own orbits randomly, forcing the pilots into off-the-cuff solutions that would test their mettle rather than the speed of their computers.

Martinez maintained an interest in yacht racing, in part because he'd considered taking it up, not only because it might raise his profile in a socially accepted way, but because he thought he might enjoy it. He'd scored his highest marks in simulations of combat maneuvers, and as a cadet had qualified for the silver flashes of a pinnace pilot. He'd been a consistent winner in the pinnace races staged during his hitch aboard the
Bombardment of Dandaphis
, and pinnaces were not unlike racing yachts—both were purposeful, stripped-down designs that consisted largely of storage for antimatter fuel, engines, and life-support systems for a single pilot.

Martinez knew he
might
be able to afford a personal yacht—he had a generous allowance from his father, which could be increased if he were tactful about it. The little boats were expensive beasts, requiring a ground crew and frequent maintenance, and he would also be obliged to join a yacht club, which involved expensive initiation fees and dues. There would be docking fees and the expense of fuel and upkeep. Not least was the humiliating likelihood that he would probably not be considered for the very best yacht clubs, such as those—for instance—sponsoring the race now being broadcast.

So he had postponed his decision about whether to become a yachtsman, hoping that his association with Fleet Commander Enderby would serve his purposes equally well. Now that his gesture in aid of Enderby's life seemed to have triggered nothing but Enderby's loathing, perhaps it was time to reconsider the yachting strategy again.

Martinez looked at the display, drank it in. The race, though broadcast “live,” was actually delayed by twenty-four minutes, the length of time the telemetry signals took to travel from Vandrith to Zanshaa.

“Cadet Chatterji,” Martinez said, “can you elucidate the strategy displayed by racer number two?”

Chatterji licked her lips. “Elucidate, my lord?”

Martinez sighed. “Just tell us what the pilot is doing.”

Racer Two's craft—the display did not offer the name of the pilot, and Martinez didn't recognize the flashy scarlet paint job on the craft—had just rotated to a new attitude and fired the main engine.

“She's decelerating, my lord,” Chatterji said.

“And why is she doing that, Chatterji?”

“She's d—dumping delta-vee in order to—to—” She licked her lips. “—to maneuver better,” she finished lamely.

“And what maneuver is this deceleration in aid of?”

Chatterji's eyes searched the display in desperation. “Delta-vee increases options, my lord,” she said, a truism she had learned in tactics class, and clearly the first thing to leap to her mind.

“Very true, Chatterji,” Martinez said. “I'm sure your tactics instructor would be proud to know you have retained a modicum of the knowledge he tried to cram between your ears. But,” he said cheerfully, “our pilot is
decreasing
delta-vee, and therefore decreasing his options. So tell me
why,
Cadet Chatterji. Why?”

Chatterji focused very hard on the display but was unable to answer.

“I suggest you review your basic tactics, Cadet Chatterji,” Martinez said. “Persistence may eventually pay off, though in your case I doubt it.
You
—worm there—” Addressing the cadet whose name he didn't know.

“Parker, lord.”

“Parker. Perhaps
you
can enlighten Chatterji concerning our pilot's tactics.”

“She's dumping delta-vee in order to be captured by V9's gravity.” He referred to Vandrith's ninth moon, the innermost counting as number one. The Shaa didn't go in much for naming astronomical objects in interesting or poetic ways.

“And why is she entering V9's gravity well, Parker?”

“She's planning to slingshot toward the satellite near V11, lord.”

“And number four—that would be Captain Chee—” He recognized the blue and silver paint job. “Why is she
not
dumping delta-vee? Why is she accelerating instead?”

“I—” Parker swallowed. “I suppose she's trying another tactic.”

Martinez sighed deliberately. “But
why
, worm, why? The display should tell you. It's
obvious.
”

Parker searched the display in vain, then Cadet Foote's languid tones interrupted the desperate silence.

“Captain Chee is accelerating, lord, because she's intending to bypass V9 entirely, and to pass between V11 and the satellite to score her point. Since V11 possesses an atmosphere, she'll probably try to use atmospheric braking in order to dump velocity and make her maneuver to tag the satellite at the last minute.”

Martinez rounded on Foote and snapped, “I don't recall asking your opinion, Cadet Foote!”

“I beg the lord's pardon,” Foote drawled.

Martinez realized to his dismay that Foote had just succeeded in making himself the star of this encounter. Martinez had intended to throw a little justified terror into some wastrels caught drunk on duty, but somehow Foote had changed the rules. How had he
done
that?

In children's school fiction, there was always the evil bully, tormenting the youngsters, and then there was the hero, who tried to stand between the bully and his victims. Foote had made a gesture to help Silva, and now had just rescued Parker.