The Sundering (43 page)

Rashtag began his new administration in bombastic mode, issuing a series of new decrees having to do with security and threatening dire punishments for infractions. New passes would be issued, and police would check them at the door. Anyone not at his station during working hours would suffer reprimand or worse. All intrusions would be reported immediately. The watchword was
Efficiency!
The next day the watchword was
Security!
After that,
Loyalty!

Sula recognized Rashtag’s style, which was common enough in the Fleet, and a look at his file, which was available to anyone with Rashtag’s passwords, confirmed her judgment. He’d been a police sergeant for the last eleven years, and had just received his step to lieutenant in the last few days, as a consequence of being born a member of the right species. A bully promoted beyond his ability, he would be pleased by those who flattered and truckled to him, and offended by pride or even quiet competence. He would promote the flatterers and drive out the capable. Records Office security would soon be tied in its own regulations and ineptitude, and be less use than ever.

She’d had captains like that. She should make a note never to target Rashtag: he was too useful to the loyalist cause.

Following Rashtag’s amusing orders came something of more interest. The Administrator of Records, the senior civil servant in the Records Office, had been replaced by a Lord Ushgay, and Ushgay had ordered an immediate search through the records to find buildings in certain locations, all to be requisitioned by the government. A large hotel in the High City was to be acquired, with first-class appointments—not that in the High City there were any other kind—plus a number of palaces, preferably those belonging to traitors who had fled Zanshaa with the outcast government.

Other buildings in the Lower Town were also to be requisitioned. Hotels or whole apartment buildings in the vicinity of the main railroad terminus and the funicular railway, plus warehouses as close to that area as could be found. The machine shops of the railway were to be requisitioned, as was the nearby government motor pool and repair shops, including hundreds of transport vehicles suitable for Naxid drivers and passengers. Enough to transport nearly two thousand Naxids.

Sula gave a low whistle. Now
this
was interesting.

That evening, Sula made a diagonal chalk mark on the streetlight on the northeast corner of Bend and 134th Street, the signal that she wished to meet with Hong in front of the Pink Pavilion in Continuity Park at 16:01 the following afternoon. She found Hong beneath one of the old elms, and they approached each other with bright smiles fixed to their faces, as if they were old friends encountering one another by chance. Hong took her arm and began to stroll with her along one of the paths.

It was a bright summer day, and the park was full. A group of Torminel flew kites, preparing for the Kite-Flying Festival in a few days; and young teams of Naxids played lighumane in fields fenced off by bright alloy uprights.

“This is a hand comm,” Hong said, as she felt something drop into her shoulder bag. “We’ll use it only for the Axtattle operation—when that operation’s over, destroy the unit or otherwise dispose of it.”

Elms rustled overhead as Sula nodded her understanding.

“Our sources,” Hong continued, “have told us that Naxid police have been ordered to clear five airfields of all non-Naxid personnel. All of them are on this continent, more or less in a circle around Zanshaa City. One of the fields is Wi-hun, so we’re still betting that’s where the rebel main body will land.” He gave a grim smile. “From now on, your team is on alert. I want you all sleeping in your apartment, with your equipment ready. When Naxids begin to land, I’ll send you a message on the hand comm announcing that your cousin Marcia’s given birth. If I mention birth weight, these are the number of shuttles landing each hour. If I say it’s a boy, that means shuttles are landing at Wi-hun and the Axtattle plan is on.”

“Understood.”

“Once Marcia gives birth, nobody is to be more than two minutes away from your apartment. When I hear the Naxids are getting ready to move into the city, I’ll send a message telling you when to meet me at a restaurant. You’ll get your team to the Axtattle site by that hour.”

“Understood. It looks as if we’ll have a fair amount of warning, because they’re requisitioning transport from Zanshaa City.” Sula dropped into Hong’s own shoulder bag an envelope containing a data foil with a summary of the Records Office intercepts, and then she gave him a brief recapitulation of its contents.

“The hotels and apartments near the funicular will be barracks,” she said. “The other buildings will hold their gear, supplies, and transport. The new elite will be in the palaces in the High City, and the officers and administrators in a High City hotel. My guess is that will be the Great Destiny Hotel, which has a lot of Naxid-suitable rooms and a restaurant that specializes in Naxid food.”

“Very plausible,” Hong nodded.

They paused near the fountain, great white moving columns of water that obscured, then revealed, the park’s famous statue, The Unsound Regarding Continuity with Awe. Continuity looked remarkably like one of the Great Masters, the Shaa. An irony, considering that the Shaa as a species had not Continued.

“No matter what happens on the Axtattle Parkway,” Sula said, “I think we ought to plan the destruction of the Great Destiny Hotel. Make a second truck bomb, drive it in the lobby some night, and blow every middle-rank administrator into low orbit. And the fuckers won’t be able to hide
that
—half the city could look out their windows and see it go up.”

A gust of wind brought a fine spray of water into Hong’s eyes. He blinked and held up a hand. “Difficult to get that stuff into the High City, with only the funicular and the one road.”

“That’s why you prepare the truck now,” Sula said. “I know you have teams in the High City, yes?”

Hong looked opaque. “You’re not to know that, Four-Nine-One.”

Sula, who had heard Lieutenant Joong complain that it was vexing to live around the corner from his old smoking club without being able to visit for a puff on the old hookah, simply shrugged.

Cool mist fell on her face. She and Hong moved out of the fountain’s range and Sula handed Hong a package.

“Coffee,” she said. “Highland, from Devajjo.”

Hong was impressed. “Where did you find it?”

Sula offered a private smile. “Military secret. But let me know when you need more.”

Through the modest scattering of radioactive dust that had once been a wormhole relay station, Chenforce passed from the Koel system into that of Aspa Darla. Koel was a bloated red giant, cool and eerily luminous, that squatted in the middle of its system like a tick swollen with blood, and the system was uninhabited except for the crews of the relay stations, all of whom had died in the last few days from the missiles fired by Michi Chen from Mazdan, before her ship had even entered the Koel system.

The reason the crews had to die involved Koel’s position as a hub, with four heavily trafficked wormhole gates. Squadron Commander Chen had decided she didn’t want the Naxids to know which wormhole she planned to use to leave the system, and so all means of communication between Koel and the outside were eliminated.

Martinez appreciated Lady Michi’s cold-blooded logic, but he regretted the wormhole stations. Not so much because of the Naxid crews, though he would have spared them if he could, but because the stations were in their own way vital.

It wasn’t just that the stations knit the far-flung empire together with their high-powered communications lasers, but they also kept the wormholes themselves from evaporating. Wormholes could destabilize, or even vanish, if the mass that moved through them was not eventually balanced by a similar mass moving the other way, and the wormhole stations were built around powerful mass drivers that could hurl through the wormholes colossal asteroid-sized chunks of rock and metal that would serve to balance the equation.

The stations’ function as a communications relay could be filled by parking a ship equipped with sufficiently powerful communications gear in front of a wormhole, but the act of balancing mass against mass was a problem not so easily solved. People were going to have to be careful moving through Protipanu and Koel for fear of endangering their route home.

That also was part of Michi Chen’s intent. Even though Chenforce had moved on, commerce through the wormhole junction would slow to a crawl as planners worked frantically to balance mass.

Chenforce’s accomplishments in Koel showed that the empire was more fragile than Martinez had suspected. The civil war could change its landscape permanently.

Not that any of Koel’s wormholes were in immediate danger. Chenforce had found sixteen merchant ships in the system and destroyed them all to prevent them from contributing to the Naxid economy and war effort. Some of the crews, seeing the missiles coming, had escaped in lifeboats, and some hadn’t.

There were going to be more ships in Aspa Darla, and a bounty of other targets as well. But there was no reason to destroy Aspa Darla’s wormhole stations, as Aspa Darla had only two wormholes. Everyone would know that Chenforce was headed from here to Bai-do.

As soon as Chenforce flashed into the system,
Illustrious
broadcast Michi Chen’s message to the ring stations on the two metal-rich planets Aspa and Darla.

“All ships docked at the ring station are to be abandoned and cast off so that they may be destroyed without damage to the ring. All repair docks and building yards will be opened to the environment and any ships inside will be cast off. Any ship attempting to flee will be destroyed. Your facilities will be inspected to make certain that you have complied with these orders. Failure to obey orders will mean the destruction of the ring.
”

Four pinnaces were launched, and raced toward Aspa and Darla to perform these inspections in advance of the arrival of Chenforce. It would be some hours before the squadron received a reply, and in the meantime Martinez, strapped securely on his acceleration couch, watched the sensor displays in case a Naxid squadron turned out to be in the system.

The ships in the system were using radar, a sign that Chenforce wasn’t expected here, and there were already a vast number of details appearing on Martinez’s displays. Many ships flying in and out, all soon to be targets, and no fleet formations to be seen.

Martinez began to relax. This was likely to be a one-sided affair, another triumph, and triumph was all he asked of fate.

He glanced at his own displays and saw the seven ships of Chenforce grouped in a tight cluster—a standard, old-fashioned formation, as neither Martinez nor Michi saw any sense in revealing their dispersed tactical formations unless lives were at stake. At the center of the formation, protected by the others, was the damaged
Celestial.
The Torminel crew, aided by damage control parties from other ships, had performed prodigies of repair, and had surprised everyone by rescuing Captain Eldey and the others trapped in Command and believed dead.
Celestial
was able to maneuver with the rest of the squadron, but had lost one of its missile batteries, much of its defensive armament, and about a quarter of its crew.

Another message flashed from
Illustrious
’s transmitters.

“This is Squadron Commander Michi Chen to all ships in the Aspa Darla system. All crews are to abandon ship immediately. All ships in this system are to be destroyed. We will not fire on lifeboats.”

Missiles began firing shortly thereafter, to reinforce this order.

Time passed. It was becoming clear that the Naxids had no warships in this system.

“Message from Captain Hansen of
Lord May,
my lady,” said Lady Ida Li. “He…seems rather irate.”

Martinez saw a tight smile on Michi’s face. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll hear him.”

Lord May
’s captain was a composition in scarlet: red hair, bristling red beard, red face, and bloodshot eyes that suggested Chenforce’s arrival had interrupted a bout of serious drinking. “Don’t kill my ship, damn you!” he boomed in a roaring voice that made Martinez wince and reach to turn down the volume on his earphones. “I
hate
the fucking Naxids, there was just no damn way to get out of their clutches till now! I’m heading for Wormhole One—just tell me where the fuck to go from there!”

Lord May
was in fact the closest ship to Chenforce, outbound from the system to Koel, and looked right down the throats of the oncoming missiles.

Martinez watched the smile play over Michi’s lips. “I’ll answer that one,” she said, and then touched controls on her comm display and looked into the camera pickup. “Captain Hansen, you will set a course Koel-Mazdan-Protipanu-Seizho. If you deviate from this you will be destroyed. From Seizho you may wish to continue into the Serpent’s Tail, as Seizho is dangerously near the enemy. Message ends.” Then she looked up at Martinez. “Captain, will you tell Command to retarget that missile?”

Martinez felt a smile break out on his lips. “At once, my lady.” He had a feeling that Aspa Darla was going to be lucky for him.

Martinez’s equilibrium had been restored during the long crossing of the Mazdan and Koel systems. There had been no nightmares of
Beacon
’s loss, no lonely episodes of doubt or terror. The crew were cheerful, and the officers congratulatory, and gradually Martinez’s fury at
Beacon
’s loss had faded. Even Captain Lord Gomburg Fletcher invited him to dine, alone without any of the other officers present, and endured Martinez’s accent for two entire hours without so much as a wince. Martinez tried to avoid being “clever,” on the theory that cleverness was what Fletcher would appreciate least. For the most part they discussed sports. Fletcher, like Martinez, had been a fencer at the academy.

After it was clear that no enemy warships lurked in the Aspa Darla system, Michi stood most of the crew down from action stations. Martinez rose from his couch with a growing optimism in his heart, and then a thought occurred to him.