"The Sundering" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter Jon)

THREE

Perfect porcelain glazes floated through Sula’s mind, the blue-green celadon ofkinuta seiji, thegros bleu of Vincennes, the fine crackle ofJu yao. Fine porcelain was a passion with her, and she often drifted to sleep with illustrations of pots and vases and figurines projected in random order on the visual centers of her brain.

The forms soothed her, as the touch of the real objects delighted her fingertips. And the ancient words used to describe porcelain—ko-ku-yao-lan, Muscheln, Faience, deutsche Blumen, Kuei Kung, rose Pompadour, Flora Danica, sgraffito, pâté tendre—evoked exotic places and ancient times, the courts and lime-shaded byways of old Earth.

Her tongue silently formed the words, curling itself around each syllable in sensuous delight. Her silent chant evoked a timeless perfection that was removed from her current situation: unwashed, weary, fighting for every breath. The crew ofDelhi barely spoke: they climbed in and out of their couches only to shovel in nourishment and perform necessary labor, and the rest of the time they lay on their couches, in the stink of their suits, and fed into their minds the mindless entertainment that might lighten their burden, the comedies that were no longer funny, and the tragedies that seemed trivial compared to what they had already endured. The high gravities had gone on far too long.

The deceleration alarm sang, and Sula reluctantly opened her eyes and let the porcelain fade from her thoughts. She dragged herself out of her suit, then to the shower, then into a clean coverall. Supper’s flat food was eaten in silence. Foote lacked the energy to gibe at her, and she was too exhausted to provoke him.

Sula stuck a med patch behind her ear to help her through the next acceleration, then dragged on her vac suit while wincing at the sharp scent of the spray disinfectant she’d used to try to scrub out some of the odor. She would stand—or lie—the next watch in Auxiliary Control while her superiors tried to sleep, but unless the Naxid fleet arrived, or the Shaa came again, there would be little for the watch to do except stare at the displays while the preprogrammed work of the ship went on.

Twenty minutes into the next weary watch a message light glowed on Sula’s displays, and she answered to discover a message from Martinez in which he unveiled an entire new system for fleet combat.

Her weariness faded as she devoured the contents of the message. The mathematical equations on which the new formations were based was sound. As were the tactics, at least as far as they went.

Sula’s impression, though, was that they didn’t go far enough. Martinez’s ships would fly at a safer distance from each other, and the effective fields of fire of their defensive weaponry would overlap, but their formation was still strict. Martinez had replaced a close rigid formation with, in effect, a looser but still rigid formation. Sula sensed that it could, and should, be looser still.

She gnawed at the problem for long moments, then called up a math display. She started with the equation Martinez had sent her and then elaborated on it, filling the display with figures, symbols, and graphs in her tiny, precise hand, symbols immediately translated into larger numbers on the display.

She let the computer check her work, fed different experimental numbers into the variables to make certain everything computed correctly. As she worked there rose in her a growing sense of power and delight, a joy in the revelations she was making to herself. These numbers and the reality they described, she thought, had waited for ages to be revealed; but it was she who incarnated them, not another. Just as, thousands of years ago, someone had discovered the perfect curves of a Sung vase, a form that had always existed in potential.

When the fever of discovery passed, Sula sent the work to Martinez.

“This is my first pass at it,” she told him. “What I’ve done is add chaos to your formation—chaos in the mathematical sense, I mean. The enemy will see constant formation changes that appear locally stochastic, but instead your ships will be following along the convex hull of a chaotic dynamical system—a fractal pattern—and provided they all have the same starting place, each of your own ships will know precisely where the others are.”

Sula had to pant for a few breaths in order to get enough wind to continue, and she vowed to be a little more careful with her air. “What you have to do is designate a center point for your formation. The point can be your flagship, the ship in the lead, any enemy vessel, or a point in space. Your ships will maneuver around that center point in a series of nested fractal patterns, which should make their movements completely unpredictable to the enemy. You can alter the variables depending on what range you find suitable.”

She took another few breaths. “I hope Foote’s working at his little censorship duties right now and sends this on without delay. The math’s beyond him, I’m sure, but it’s hardly subversive. I’ll send more when I’ve had time to think, and a little more leisure.”

She sent the message, and then took a few more sips of air. The oxygen content had been boosted to keep the mind and body alive during acceleration, and in a world in which a free breath was becoming the most important currency of existence, the taste of it was like alcohol to the drunkard. Sula glanced over Auxiliary Command, which had been quietly humming along while she’d been dealing with Martinez’s equations, apparently without having missed her attention.

And then her eyes lit on the flashing alarm lights on the displays of Pilot/2nd Annie Rorty, and annoyance began to bubble in her blood. “Mind that course change, Rorty!” she called.

Rorty didn’t respond. Sharing the cage with Rorty was Navigator First Class Massimo, who was probably also asleep.

“Massimo! Give that lazy bitch a shove!”

Massimo gave a start that confirmed that he, too, had been drowsing. “Yes, my lady!” he croaked in his sandpaper voice, and reached to the next couch to shove Rorty’s shoulder. “Officer wants you, pilot.” He waited for a response, then shoved again.

There was a long moment of silence, and then in a frenzy of frustration and anger Sula called up the life support data that was supposedly being fed into computer memory by Rorty’s vac suit. Therewas no data. It wasn’t that Rorty had flatlined, it was that there was no input at all.

“I think there’s something wrong, my lady,” Massimo growled, redundantly.

“Navigator! Make that course change yourself!”

“Yes, my lady.” Massimo’s gloved hands fumbled to move Rorty’s data to his own board.

“My lady,” said the communications officer, “I have a query fromKulhang. They want to know why we haven’t made the scheduled course change.”

“Zero gee warning!” Sula called. The alarm rang out. “Engines, cut engines.”

“Engines cut, my lady.”Delhi ‘s spars groaned as deceleration ceased, as the vibration and distant roar of the engines faded. Sula’s cage gave a creak of relief as gravities eased.

“Massimo, rotate ship.”

“Ship rotating.”

“Comm,” Sula said, “informKulhang that our acceleration will be reduced due to the sudden illness of an officer.”

“Very good, my lady.”

Sula’s calling a pilot second class an officer was less than truthful, and many commanders wouldn’t have halted an acceleration for a life that didn’t have a commission attached to it, butDelhi ‘s crew had been so reduced that any of the survivors were precious.

Besides, Sula wasn’t going to lose any crew she didn’t have to.

Sula’s cage sang as it swung, the ship rotating around it.

“New heading,” Massimo said. “Zero-eight-zero by zero-zero-one absolute.”

“Normal gravity warning,” Sula said. “Engines, burn at one gravity.”

Sula’s acceleration cage creaked as the engines fired, and her couch swung to the neutral position. Spars and braces moaned, and shudders ran the length of the ship. “Comm,” Sula said, “page the pharmacist and a stretcher party to Auxiliary Control.” And she flung off her webbing and walked across the deck to Rorty’s cage and stared through the faceplate of the pilot’s helmet.

The young woman’s freckles stood out as the only spots of color on her pale, dead face. Though she knew it was hopeless Sula wrenched off Rorty’s helmet, revealing the plug that Rorty had forgotten to attach to the suit’s biomonitor that would have alerted the officer of the watch and the acting doctor to any number of common medical anomalies.

Sula tore off her own helmet and gloves and felt for a pulse. There was none. The flesh of Rorty’s neck was still warm.

“Massimo! Help me get her on the deck!”

Auxiliary Control had very little room between the cages, unlike the more spacious control room that had been incinerated along withDelhi ‘s captain. Massimo and Sula got Rorty out of her couch and sprawled on the black rubberized deck, arms and shoulders and dangling limbs clanging against the spinning cages. A heave of Massimo’s broad shoulders detached the top of the suit, and Sula pulled it off over Rorty’s head as Massimo, bulky in his own suit, straddled her thin body.

Without waiting for orders Massimo began chest compressions. Sula flung the suit top away, knelt, tilted the head back, cleared the tongue with her fingers, and pressed her mouth to the dead girl’s lips.

As she breathed for Rorty, Sula felt her own heart throb weakly in her chest. She had to pant for her own breath in between forcing air into Rorty’s lungs. A wave of vertigo eddied through her skull. She remembered bending over another girl six years before, a girl who fought ineptly but persistently for life in defiance of the logic that proclaimed that she die. Sula remembered her own eyes scalding with hot tears. She remembered begging the other girl to die.

She remembered putting her in the river later, the chill swift water that rose over the pale, mute face, the golden hair that briefly brightened the water before it vanished into the darkness.

Delhi’sdoctor had died at Magaria, incinerated along with the sick bay and most of the ship’s medical supplies, so it was a Pharmacist First Class who answered Sula’s call. He was competent enough, though; got a breathing mask on Rorty’s face and cut open Rorty’s tunic to get an electrical heart stimulator onto the pilot’s pale chest. The cottony taste of Rorty’s mouth was on Sula’s tongue. When the pharmacist got out a med injector to fire a stimulant straight into Rorty’s carotid, Sula had to turn away as nausea burned an acid path up her throat.

She hated med injectors. Sometimes injectors figured in her nightmares. That’s why she used patches.

The pharmacist unfastened the cap that held Rorty’s earphones and virtual array, then put a sensor net over the pilot’s head to get an image of her brain. He studied the display for a moment, then began to switch off his gear. “Every beat of the heart,” he said, “just spills more blood into the brain.” He turned off the respirator. “You did very well, my lady,” he told Sula. “You were just too late.”

The stretcher party arrived and stood in the doorway while the pharmacist packed away his gear and twitched Rorty’s jumpsuit closed over her chest. Sula fought the sickness that was closing on her throat with velvet fingers. When she thought she could stand, she reached for the cage stanchions and pulled herself upright, then retrieved her helmet and gloves and returned to the command cage.

Rorty was put into the stretcher. “Let me know when you’ve…stowed her,” Sula said. “Then we’ll resume higher gee.”

“Very good, my lady,” one said.

She looked at Massimo, who stood with arms akimbo, a thoughtful look on his unshaven face as he watched Rorty’s body being strapped onto the stretcher.

“Massimo,” she said, “that was good work.”

He looked at her, startled. “Thank you, my lady. But—if I hadn’t dozed off—I might.”

“Nothing you could have done,” Sula said. “She forgot to connect the helmet monitors to her suit.”

Massimo absorbed her words, then nodded. If we’d got warning, Sula thought, Rorty might be a cripple instead of a corpse.

“Can you do both piloting and navigating duties till the end of the watch?” Sula asked.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Better get busy plotting our return to the squadron, then.” The squadron had altered course to swing around Vandrith, one of the Zanshaa system’s gas giants, and they’d have to pull some extra gees to catch the planet in time.

The stretcher-bearers had to tip the stretcher on end to walk it down the narrow lanes between acceleration cages. Sula thought about erratic blood pressure throughout the squadron, arteries eroding, blood spilling into brain tissue or the body cavity. Rorty had been twenty and in perfect health. Many more months of this and half the ship might be stricken.

Sula looked at the helmet in her hands and realized she absolutely could not put the helmet on her head, that if she couldn’t draw free breaths of cabin air she would scream. She stowed the helmet and her gloves in the elastic mesh bag rigged to the side of the couch, and then resumed her seat. With the back of her hand she tried to scrub Rorty’s taste from her lips.

She tried to think of vases and pots, of smooth celadon surfaces. Instead she thought of gold hair shimmering, fading, in dark water.

No matter how many pieces of porcelain she piped into her dreams tonight, she knew, they would all turn to nightmare.

The next day, heavy-lidded and ill, Sula declined her breakfast and confined herself to sips of Tassay, a hot milky carbohydrate and protein beverage flavored with cardamom and cloves. The aromatic spices soothed her sleepless, jangled nerves; the nutrition would keep her conscious, if not exactly sparkling.

“Have I mentioned that Lieutenant Sula is exchanging mathematical formulae with Captain Martinez?” Foote said to the acting captain, Morgen.

Morgen didn’t appear very interested. There were deep black blooms beneath his eyes, and lines in his face that hadn’t been there a month before. “That’s nice,” he said.

“She and Martinez are trying to reform our entire tactical system based on lessons learned at Magaria,” Foote says. “Martinez places great trust in her, it seems.”

Morgen raised a piece of flat bread to his mouth, then hesitated. “Martinez is consulting you on his tactics?”

Morgen found it surprising that Lieutenant Captain Lord Gareth Martinez—who after all wasfamous — was consultingDelhi ‘s most junior lieutenant in the matter of maneuvering his squadron.

Sula answered cautiously. “He asks my opinion,” she says.

“Well,” Morgen said, chewing. “Maybe you’d better share it with the rest of us, then.”

Sula didn’t feel up to delivering a lecture to her superiors, but she managed to stumble through a brief explanation without tangling up her thoughts too badly. Foote—who listened with great care and seriousness, and managed not to make a single sarcastic or offensive remark the entire time—turned the video wall to the Structured Mathematics Display and surprised Sula by calling up the formula she’d sent to Martinez the previous evening.

“I cribbed this out of your message,” he explained.

Morgen’s eyes scanned the formula quickly, then slowly went through it again, statement by statement.

“Perhaps you’d better explain in more detail,” he said.

Sula gave Foote a sullen glare of weary resentment, then did as her acting captain requested.

Martinez looked in wild fascination at the ten enemy engine flares registered on the display, and took an extra half-second to make certain that his voice was calm when he spoke.

“Message to the squadron,” he said. “Cease acceleration at—” He glanced at the chronometer. “25:34:01 precisely.”

Martinez returned to calculating trajectories. As Wormholes 1 and 2 were 4.2 light-hours apart, the Naxids had actually entered the system slightly over four hours ago, and were decelerating as if they intended to stay in the Hone-bar system. It was impossible to be precise about their current location, but it appeared they were heading slightly away from Martinez’s force, intending to swing around Hone-bar’s sun and slingshot around toward the planet. They would, in time, see Martinez’s squadron enter hot, with blazing engine flares and pounding radars, and know the new arrivals for enemies.

Martinez’s squadron wasn’t heading for Hone-bar either, but rather for a gas giant named Soq, on a trajectory that would hurl them toward the system’s sun, on screaming curves around three more gas giants, and then back through Wormhole 1 again and on to Zanshaa. They were heading for the sun at a much more acute angle than the Naxids, and if neither changed course Martinez would cross his enemy’s trail on the far side of the sun.

But that wouldn’t happen. The Naxids would pass behind the sun and swing toward Hone-bar and the squadron, and then antimatter would blaze out in the emptiness of space and a great many people would die.

Gradually, as he studied the displays, Martinez realized that his message had not been repeated back to him.

“Shankaracharya!” he said. “Message to squadron!”

“Oh! Sorry, lord elcap. Repeat, please?” Shankaracharya’s communications cage was behind Martinez, so Martinez couldn’t see him, only hear his voice over his helmet earphones.

Martinez spoke through clenched teeth, wishing he could lock eyes with Shankaracharya and convey to him the full measure of his annoyance. “Message to squadron. Cease acceleration at—” He looked at the chronometer again, and saw that his original time had expired “25:35:01.”

“25:35:01, my lord.” There was a pause while Shankaracharya transmitted the message. And then he said, “Messages from the other ships of the squadron, lord elcap, reporting enemy engine flares. Do you wish the coordinates?”

“No. Just acknowledge. Engines.” Martinez turned to Warrant Officer First Class Mabumba, who sat at the engine control station. “Engines, cut engines at 25:35:01.”

“Cut engines at 25:35:01, lord elcap.”

“Shankaracharya.”

“My lord?”

He had deliberately waited for his junior lieutenant to acknowledge before he spoke. He didn’t wantthis message to go astray. “Message to Squadron Commander Do-faq via the wormhole station. Inform him of the presence of ten enemy ships just entered the Hone-bar system. Give course and velocity.”

“Very good, my lord. Ten enemy ships, course, and velocity to the squadcom.”

Coronacouldn’t communicate directly with Do-faq, not with the wormhole in the way, but there were manned relay stations on either side of the wormhole, all equipped with powerful communications lasers. The stations transmitted news, instructions, and data through the wormholes, and strung the empire together with their webs of coherent light.

The low-gravity warning blared out, the engines suddenly cut out, and Martinez floated free in his straps. His ribs and breastbone crackled as he took a long, deliberate free breath. He saw Vonderheydte at the weapons board casting him a look, and then Mabumba at the engine control station.

Mabumba was one of the original crew who had helped Martinez stealCorona from the Naxid mutineers. So were Tracy and Clarke, the sensor operators. Navigator Trainee Diem—now promoted Navigator/2nd—sat where he had during the escape, and so did the pilot, Eruken. Both had been joined by trainees.

Cadet Kelly, who had acted as weapons officer in the flight from the Naxids, had been returned to her original job of pinnace pilot, and was presumably now sitting in Pinnace Number 1, ready to be fired into action. Vonderheydte had replaced her in the weapons cage, again with a trainee to assist, and Shankaracharya had taken Vonderheydte’s original place as communications officer, backed up by Signaler Trainee Mattson.

These were the most reliable personnel he had aboard, along with Master Engineer Maheshwari in the engine department, another veteran ofCorona ‘s earlier adventures. Martinez regretted extremely the fact that Kelly wasn’t a part of his Control staff. He didn’t relish her chances in what was to come—only one pinnace pilot had survived Magaria, and that had been Sula.

It wasn’t just Kelly he’d have to look after, though, it was all of them. And not just the personnel aboardCorona, but the other ships in his squadron.

And then it occurred to him that many ofCorona ‘s people didn’t yet know they were about to engage the enemy, only those here in Control and presumably those with Dalkeith in Auxiliary Control.

He had better tell them.

“Comm: general announcement to the ship’s personnel,” he said, and waited for the flashing light on his displays that indicated he was speaking live throughout the ship.

“This is the captain,” he said. “A few minutes ago we entered the Hone-bar system. Shortly after passing through the wormhole, sensors detected the flares of a squadron of rebel warships entering the system through Wormhole Number Two. We have every reason to believe that within a few hours we will be heavily engaged with the enemy.”

He paused, and wondered where to go from here. At this point a brilliant commander would, of course, inflame his men with a flood of dazzling rhetoric, inspiring them to feats of courage and radiant daring.

A less than brilliant commander would make an address of the sort Martinez was about to deliver. He made a note to himself that, if he survived the coming fight, he’d assemble a stock of these sorts of speeches in case he ever needed one again.

He decided to stress the aspect practical. “With Squadron Commander Do-faq’s force, we will have a decisive advantage in numbers over the enemy. We have every reason to anticipate success. The enemy force will be crushed here, at Hone-bar, and the Naxids’ plans will be wrecked.”

He glanced over the control room crew and saw what he hoped was increased confidence. He decided to follow with unabashed flattery. “I know that you are all eager to come to grips with the enemy,” he continued. “We’ve trained very hard for this moment, and I have every confidence that you’ll do your duty to the utmost.

“Remember,” getting on to the rousing finish, “the comrades we’ve already lost, killed in battle or taken prisoner by the enemy on the first day of rebellion. I know that you’re anxious to avenge your friends, and I know that when the Naxids’ captives are finally liberated, they’ll thank you for the work you’ll do this day.”

From the reaction of the control room crew—the chins lifted in pride, the glitter of determination in their eyes—Martinez thought he’d done well. He decided to quit while he was ahead and ended the transmission.

That left only the enemy to deal with. He looked again at the display, ran a few calculations from current trajectories.Corona ‘s squadron, after a month’s acceleration, was traveling just in excess of a fifth of the speed of light. The Naxids were faster, coming on at 0.41c. They could stand higher accelerations than the Lai-owns of Do-faq’s heavy squadron, or perhaps they’d been in transit for a longer amount of time.

And then Martinez realized what the enemy squadron was, and what they were doing here, and the entire Naxid strategy dropped into his mind like a ripe fruit fallen from the tree.

These ten enemy ships were the squadron that had originally been based at the remote station of Comador, and were heavy cruisers under a Senior Squadron Commander named Kreeku. On the day of the rebellion, they’d simply left Comador’s ring station and burned for the center of the empire. It had been assumed they were heading for the Second Fleet base at Magaria, but the Comador squadron hadn’t taken part in the battle there. The Fleet had assumed this was because they hadn’t arrived yet, but perhaps they’d always been intended to go someplace else.

Any ship traveling from the empire’s core to the Hone Reach had to travel through Hone-bar’s Wormhole 3—if another route existed, it hadn’t been discovered. Kreeku had all along been intended to cut the Hone Reach off from any loyalists and secure it for the Naxids.

“Comm,” Martinez told Shankaracharya, “message to the squadron, copy to the squadcom. We are facing Kreeku’s squadron from Comador. End message.”

“Kreeku’s squadron from Comador. Very good, my lord.”

Martinez told his display to go virtual, and the Hone-bar system expanded in his skull, all cool emptiness with a few dots here and there representing Hone-bar’s sun and its planets, the wormhole gates, and little speeding color-coded icons with course and velocity attached.

Since the arrival of the Naxids the merchant vesselClan Chen had increased its acceleration and was fleeing the system as fast as the bones of its crew could stand. Martinez could confidently assume that the Naxids, who would not know of Martinez’s arrival for another four hours, would continue their course toward Hone-bar’s sun, and by now would have traveled a little short of two light-hours’ distance. They would travel an equal distance before they would see Martinez’s engine flares, and then their blissful ignorance would end.

There would be many hours after that for the battle to develop, and it would pass through a series of obvious stages. Martinez should begin decelerating and let Do-faq’s eight heavier ships enter the system and join him. Do-faq could then confront the enemy with sixteen ships to the Naxids’ ten, and engage on favorable terms. With the loyalists swinging around Soq, and the Naxids coming around Hone-bar’s sun, the two squadrons would be meeting each other almost head-on, in one of those blazing collisions that Martinez had seen in records from the Battle of Magaria. At the end of which a few loyalist survivors would pass through the fire and into victory.

All Martinez’s instincts protested against this scenario. Though he had every reason to believe that Kreeku would be annihilated, he would probably take at least half of Faqforce with him. The whole scenario reeked of useless waste.

There had to be some way to make better use of the loyalists’ advantages.

And of what, Martinez asked himself with full, careful deliberation, did these advantages consist?

Numbers and firepower.Eight frigates and light cruisers in Martinez’s Light Squadron 14, plus Do-faq’s eight heavy cruisers, against ten heavy cruisers. An advantage sufficient to crush the enemy, but not decisive enough to avoid casualties.

Surprise.The enemy wouldn’t know of Martinez’s arrival for another four hours. But that advantage wasn’t decisive, either, because it would take the opposite forces a lot more than four hours to engage.

And…

Another surprise.Because the enemydidn’t need to know of Do-faq’s squadron at all.

Martinez’s pulse thundered in his ears. He called up a calculator and began punching in numbers.

“Vonderheydte!” he called out. “Shankaracharya! Get out your lieutenants’ keys! Hurry!”

In order forCorona ‘s world-shattering weaponry to be deployed, three out of its four most senior officers had to turn their keys at the same moment. Martinez feared he’d already lost too much time.

He was currently carrying his captain’s key on an elastic band around his neck. He yanked off his helmet—blind, since he was still in virtual—and scrabbled for his collar buttons. He told the computer to cut the virtual environment, then yanked the key, shaped like a narrow playing card, from his tunic and thrust it into the slot on the display.

Vonderheydte, after a similar struggle with his clothing, slid his own key into his slot. “Key ready, my lord.”

From the comm cage behind him, Martinez heard only a quiet, “Let me help you with that, my lord” from Signaler Trainee Mattson, followed by the chunk of a helmet being twisted off its collar ring. Then, after a few seconds in which Martinez’s nerves shrieked in impotent agony, he heard Shankaracharya say, “Damn these gloves!”

There was another ten-second eternity before he heard Shankaracharya’s, “Key ready, my lord.”

Martinez tried not to scream his commands at the top of his impatient voice. “Turn on my mark,” he said. “Three, two, one, mark.”

From his position he could see Vonderheydte’s weapons board suddenly blaze with light.

“Weapons,” Martinez said, “charge missile battery one with antimatter. Prepare to fire missiles one, two, and three on my command. This is not a drill.” He turned to Eruken. “Pilot, rotate ship to present battery one to the enemy.”

“Rotating ship, lord elcap.” Martinez’s cage gave a shimmering whine as the ship rolled.

“Display: go virtual.” Again the virtual cosmos sprang into existence in Martinez’s mind. With his gloved hands he manipulated the display controls to mark out three targets in empty space between his squadron and the enemy.

“Weapons,” he said, “fire missiles one, two, and three at the target coordinates. This is not a drill.”

“This is not a drill, my lord,” Vonderheydte repeated. “Firing missiles.” There was a brief pause in which Martinez’s nerves involuntarily tensed, as if expecting recoil. “Missiles fired,” Vonderheydte said. “Missiles clear of the ship. Missiles running normally on chemical rockets.”

The missiles had been hurled into space on gauss rails—there was no detectable recoil, of course—and then rockets would take them to a safe distance fromCorona, where their antimatter engines would ignite.

“My lord.” Shankaracharya’s voice in Martinez’s earphones. “Urgent communication from Captain Kamarullah. Personal to you, lord elcap.”

Martinez’s mind whirled as he tried to shift from the virtual world, with its icon-planets and plotted trajectories and rigorous calculations, to the officer who wished to talk to him.

“I’ll take it,” he said, and then Kamarullah’s face materialized in the virtual display, and at offensively close range. Martinez couldn’t keep himself from wincing.

“This is Martinez,” he said.

Kamarullah’s square face was ruddy, and Martinez wondered if it was the result of some internal passion that had flushed his skin or an artifact of transmission.

“Captain Martinez,” Kamarullah said, “you have just fired missiles. Are you aware that you can’t possibly hit the enemy at this range?”

“Main missile engines ignited,” Vonderheydte reported, as if to punctuate Kamarullah’s question.

“I don’t intend to hit the Naxids with these missiles,” Martinez said. “I’m intending to mask a maneuver.”

“Maneuver?Outhere? ” Kamarullah was astonished. “Why? We’rehours yet from the enemy.” He gazed at Martinez with a fevered expression, and spoke with unusual clarity and emphasis, as if trying to convince a blind man, by the power of words alone, that he was standing in the path of a speeding automobile. “Captain Martinez, I don’t think you’ve thought this out. As soon as you saw the enemy, you should have given the squadron orders to rotate and start our deceleration. We need to let Squadron Commander Do-faq join us before we can engage.” His tone grew earnest, if not a little pleading. “It’s not too late to give up command of the squadron to a more experienced officer.”

“The missiles—” Martinez began.

“Damn it, man!” Kamarullah said, his eyes a little wild. “I don’t insist thatI command! If not me, then stand down in favor of someone else. But you’re going to have your hands full managing a green crew without having to worry about tactics as well.”

“The missiles,” Martinez said carefully, “will mask the arrival of the squadcom’s force. I intend to keep the existence of the heavy squadron a secret as long as I can.”

Astonishment again claimed Kamarullah. “But that would takehours. They’re bound to detect—”

“Captain Kamarullah,” Martinez said, “you will stand by for further orders.”

“You’re not going to attempt any of your—your tactical innovations, are you?” Kamarullah said. “Not with a squadron that doesn’t understand them or—”

Martinez’s temper finally broke free.“Enough! You will stand by! This discussion is at an end!”

“I don’t—”

Martinez cut off communication, then pounded with an angry fist on the arm of his couch. He told the computer to save the conversation in memory—there had better, he realized, be a record of this.

And then he stared blindly out into the virtual planetary system, the little abstract symbols in their perfect, ordered universe, and tried to puzzle out what he should do next.

“Comm,” he said. “Message to Squadron Commander Do-faq, personal to the squadcom. To be sent through the wormhole relay station.”

“Very good, my lord. Personal to the squadcom.”

Again Martinez waited for the light to blink, a little glowing planet that came into existence in the virtual universe, and he said, “Lord Commander Do-faq. In my estimation, our great advantage in the upcoming battle is that the enemy do not yet know of the existence of your squadron. As we approach the enemy, I will fire missiles in an attempt to screen your force for as long as possible. I will order Light Squadron Fourteen into a series of plausible maneuvers in order to justify the existence of the screen.

“If you agree with this plan, please order your force onto a heading of two-nine-zero by zero-one-five absolute, as soon as you exit the wormhole, and continue to accelerate at two gravities. This will allow you to take advantage of the screen I have already laid down.”

He looked at the camera and realized that he should perhaps soften the effect of having just given an order to an officer several grades superior in rank.

“As always,” he said, “I remain obedient to your commands. Message ends.”

He fell silent as the recording light vanished from the virtual display, and as he thought of the message flying fromCorona to Do-faq through the power of communications lasers, a deep suspicion began to creep across his mind. He began to wonder what might happen if his messages to Do-faq weren’t getting through. If, somehow, the wormhole relay stations were under the control of the enemy.

The only thing that made his suspicions at all plausible was that the arrival of the Naxid squadron shouldn’t have been a surprise. The station on the far side of Wormhole 2 should have seen the Naxids coming hours ago, and reported to the commander of Hone-bar’s ring station, who in turn should have relayed the information to Do-faq, whose arrival he’d known for the better part of a month. In fact, there should have been a long chain of sightings, all the way from Comador.

Why hadn’t the information reached him? he wondered. Had half the Exploration Service joined the rebels?

If it had, and if his messages to Do-faq hadn’t got through, he’d better order that his last two messages be beamed just this side of the wormhole, so that Do-faq would receive them as he flashed into the Hone-bar system.

He was on the verge of giving the order when Shankaracharya’s voice came into his earphones. “Message from Squadron Commander Do-faq via Wormhole One station. ‘Yours acknowledged. Light Squadron Fourteen to head course two-eight-eight by zero-one-five absolute and commence deceleration at four point five gravities.’”

“Acknowledge,” Martinez said automatically, while panic flashed along his nerves. Do-faq’s order was in response to hisfirst message, and would send Martinez’s squadron on a wide trajectory around the Soq gas giant, wide enough to permit Do-faq’s ships to take an inside track, closer to the planet, to make up some of the distance between the two squadrons.

The order was perfectly orthodox and sensible. Unfortunately it wasn’t compatible with the plan of the battle as Martinez had mapped it out in his mind.

It would take nearly five minutes for the last transmission, with its suggestion for maneuver on the part of Do-faq, and another five minutes for Do-faq’s response to come back. But in order for Light Squadron 14 to embark on Martinez’s plan, it would have to begin its maneuver before Do-faq’s reply could possibly arrive.

In order for Martinez to continue with the plan that he had devised, he was going to have to disobey Do-faq’s order.

Suddenly he wished that the Exploration Servicehad been corrupted, that the messageshadn’t got through the wormhole stations.

“Comm,” he said, “message to squadron. Rotate ships: prepare to decelerate on course two-eight-eight by zero-one-five absolute. Stand by to decelerate on my command.”

Shankaracharya repeated the order and then transmitted it to the squadron. Martinez gave the order also toCorona ‘s pilot, and the acceleration cages in Command sang in their metallic voices as Eruken swung the frigate nearly through a half-circle, its engines now aimed to begin the massive deceleration that Do-faq had ordered.

He watched the chronometer in the corner of the display and watched the numbers that marked the seconds flash past. He thought of Do-faq’s dislike of Kamarullah, who Do-faq blamed for wrecking a maneuver, and how Do-faq’s vengeance had followed Kamarullah over the years and deprived him of command.

How much in the way of retribution could Martinez expect if he disobeyed Do-faq during an actualbattle?

And yet, within the ten-minute lag, it was very possible that Do-faq would countermand his own order, and agree to Martinez’s plan.

Brilliant light flared on the virtual display. Solid flakes of antihydrogen, suspended by static electricity in etched silicon chips so tiny they flowed like a fluid, had just been caught by the compression wave of a small amount of conventional explosive in the nose of each of the three missiles Martinez had launched. The resulting antimatter explosion dwarfed the conventional trigger by a factor of billions. Erupting outward, the hot shreds of matter encountered the missiles’ tungsten jackets and created three expanding, overlapping spheres of plasma between Light Squadron 14 and the enemy ships, screens impenetrable to any enemy radar. The screen would hide any number of maneuvers on the part of Martinez’s force.

The plasma would also screen the arrival of Do-faq’s eight heavy cruisers.

The sight of the explosions made up Martinez’s mind, and words seemed to fly to his lips without his conscious order.

“Comm: message to the squadron. Rotate ships to course two-nine-two by two-nine-seven absolute. Decelerate at five gravities commencing at 25:52:01.”

Mentally he clung to a modest justification: Light Squadron 14 was nottechnically a part of Faqforce any longer; Martinez’s squadron command wastheoretically independent until Do-faq actually entered the Hone-bar system….

None of that, however, would make the slightest difference to Martinez’s career if Do-faq chose to inflict vengeance on his junior.

The order would swing the light squadron through a course change that would shoot it over Soq’s south pole and slingshot it toward the enemy at a very narrow angle that would put it on a trajectory to place it between Hone-bar and the oncoming Naxids. This would place the squadron in an ideal position to further conceal the existence of Do-faq’s oncoming heavy ships.

Martinez gave the order to Eruken, and again the acceleration cages sang as, in obedience to the laws of inertia, the couches rotated easily within them.

“Let me help you with that, my lord.” The murmured comment from Signaler Trainee Mattson snapped Martinez away from his concentration on the tactical display.

“Display: cancel virtual,” Martinez said. He reached a hand to the curved bars of his acceleration cage, seized it in a fist, and swung his weightless body to a position where he could look directly at the communications cage.

Shankaracharya was staring at his communications board, his wide eyes ticking back and forth over the displays in apparent bewilderment. Signaler Trainee Mattson, teeth gnawing his lower lip, tapped away at his own display.

“What is going on, comm?” Martinez demanded.

Shankaracharya gave Martinez a startled look. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said. “I–I didn’t hear the order. Could you repeat, please?”

“Course two-nine-two by two-nine-seven relative,” Mattson said helpfully.

“Absolute, not relative!” Martinez said. “Check therecord! All commands are recorded automatically! Call up the command display, everything should be there!”

Mattson gave a quick, nervous shake of the head at this reminder. “Very good, my lord.”

Shankaracharya was now busy at his own display. Martinez could see that his hands were trembling so severely that he kept pressing the wrong parts of the display, then having to go back and correct.

“What was that time, my lord?” Shankaracharya asked.

“Never mind. I’ll take the comm board myself.”

He had been communications officer on theCorona prior to the Naxid revolt: he could do the job easily enough, and there was no way he could allow such a critical operation to remain in the hands of a trainee and a very junior, suddenly very erratic lieutenant. In the profound silence of the control room, Martinez let go of the cage and called up Shankaracharya’s board onto his own display. Mattson had managed to get most of the message onto the board, excepting only the time of acceleration. A glance at the chronometer showed that all the ships might not have time to perform the maneuver in time, so he advanced the time half a minute to 25:52:34.

He sent the message, as well as the time correction to Mabumba on the engines board. Martinez was still minding the comm board when the call from Kamarullah came.

“Martinez,” he answered. “Make it quick.”

Kamarullah’s image was flushed a brighter color red than it had been before. “Are you aware that you’ve disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Martinez admitted. “Is that all?”

Kamarullah seemed staggered by Martinez’s confession, and was without words for a few seconds. “Are you mad?” he managed finally. “Is there any reason why I should consider obeying this order?”

“I’m beyond caring if you obey my orders or not,” Martinez said. “Do as you please, and we’ll see what a court says afterward. End transmission.”

A few seconds laterCorona ‘s engines fired and delivered a kick to Martinez’s tailbone that threw his couch swinging along the inside of a long arc. This was followed by a series of shorter arcs until the couch finally settled, with Martinez’s suit clamping gently on his arms and legs to prevent his blood pooling, and the iron weights of gravity stacking themselves one by one on his bones.

Coronagroaned, its frame shuddering as the acceleration built, jolting as if a giant were stamping on the deck. The display showed that Kamarullah’s ship had, in fact, obeyed Martinez’s order, and done so correct to the second. Whatever Kamarullah intended, it wasn’t open mutiny.

A few minutes later, Do-faq’s squadron appeared through the wormhole, rotated to two-nine-zero by zero-one-five absolute, and fired their engines. Relief bubbled in Martinez’s heart like the finest champagne.

Do-faq had done as Martinez had asked. Martinez had not ended his career with an act of disobedience.

Martinez was too drained by the five-gravity deceleration to celebrate, and he knew he had work to do. Fighting against the deadening anesthesia the high gee wrapped about his mind, Martinez planned and ordered another series of missile launches that would, as his original plasma clouds cooled and dispersed, reinforce the screen behind which the loyalist squadrons could maneuver.

If he commanded a larger ship he’d have a tactical officer to make these calculations and suggest solutions to problems, but asCorona was only a large frigate he had to do all the work himself.

With gravity dragging at his brain he couldn’t be certain that his calculations were completely correct so he added more missiles just to make certain.

Antimatter tore itself to pi-mesons and gamma rays in the solar wind, and plasma fireballs expanded in the darkness. Behind the torn, hot matter, Do-faq’s squadron plunged onward, unobserved. Martinez, fighting to think as desperately as he fought for breath, launched more sets of missiles.

A little over two hours after entering the Hone-bar system,Corona ‘s squadron made a furious burn across Soq’s south pole, briefly reaching ten gees as every person aboard sank groaning into unconsciousness. When Martinez battled his way to awareness like a punch-soaked fighter swinging wildly at an enemy he could barely perceive, he put all his concentration into forming and sending an order for the squadron to reduce its deceleration to two gravities.

Martinez gasped and rolled his neck as the weight of gravity came off. With the relief of the interminable pressure he could feel alertness pouring back into his brain as if someone had opened a tap. He called up the abstract, perfect virtual display, and watched little burning figures fly across darkness.

Light Squadron 14 had now swung on a course that would cause it to pass close to Hone-bar, inside the most probable course taken by the enemy. The Naxids, for their part, hadn’t altered their course, and in fact had no reason to—they were still two hours from learning of the loyalists’ existence.

Martinez ordered another missile barrage—and ordered one of his light cruisers to make it, a ship with a greater store of missiles than his own frigate. He gave no orders for the missiles to explode, or where—he just pushed them out ahead of the squadron in the expectation that they would be useful later.

The Naxids were most likely intending to stay in the Hone-bar system—their deceleration flares implied that—but it was possible they intended to slip by Hone-bar’s sun and continue on to Wormhole 3 and the Hone Reach. Whatever their purpose, the appearance of Martinez’s squadron on their displays might make them change their plans completely. If they had been ordered to avoid battle, they might blaze away for Wormhole 3 even if their original intention had been to stay. And even if they had been intending to pass on, the sight of a weaker squadron might convince them to engage.

In any case, Kreeku would have to make his decision very soon after detecting Martinez’s arrival. His squadron would be on the verge of passing Hone-bar’s sun when they first saw Martinez’s engine flares, soon to be followed by maneuvers completely obscured by a screen of radiation from exploding antimatter missiles. Kreeku would have to conclude that the maneuvers were intended to bring on an engagement—Martinezmight be intending to obscure a flight for Wormhole 3, but Kreeku couldn’t assume that.

So the question was whether Kreeku would fight or not—and given that the Naxids would believe themselves superior in numbers, Martinez assumed that Kreeku would commit to battle. He would sling his forces around Hone-bar’s sun at a sharp angle and head more or less for Soq.

And then, three hours later when Kreeku finally saw what course Martinez had taken shooting out of Soq’s gravity well, he would have to decide whether or not to react. He would either crowd in toward Martinez, in effect pinning him against Hone-bar, or engage from a distance.How aggressive was he?

Martinez called up Kreeku’s biographical file out ofCorona ‘s data system and saw the career track of a successful officer—a mix of specialties, ship and planetary assignments, staff college. In the public record there were, of course, none of the more candid assessments given by Kreeku’s superiors, nothing to indicate whether he was brilliant, stodgy, dull, or a swashbuckler.

Martinez decided that Kreeku probably wouldn’t react right away. He wouldn’t need to—it would still be hours before the squadrons would clash.

“Message to the squadron,” he said. “Alter course to two-eight-seven by zero-two-five relative, commencing at 27:14:01. Deceleration to remain at two gravities.”

As his spoken words were transcribed into text by the computer he sent them forth. He had ordered the course change “relative,” meaning with relation to the squadron’s current heading, rather than “absolute,” in reference to the arbitrary coordinate system that had been imposed on every star system by the conquering Shaa.

He gave further instructions to the missile barrage he’d sent out ahead of the squadron, and then decided it was time to send another message to Do-faq. “My lord,” he said into the camera, “I am enormously gratified at the confidence you have expressed in me by taking my suggested course. If you will further oblige me by ordering your squadron onto a heading of zero-one-five by zero-zero-one absolute after you pass Soq, I will do my best to provide cover and prevent the enemy from detecting you.

“Thank you again for your trust. I shall try to prove worthy of it. Message ends.”

As he sent the message to Do-faq he was aware of a light prickle of sweat on his forehead. He felt a sudden awareness of how much he was taking on himself, the fate of the Hone-bar system, the lives of thousands of crew. He looked at his displays and hoped that Kreeku wouldn’t prove to be a genius.

At 27:14:01 the missile barrage exploded, creating a wall of hot plasma in front of the squadron, and the ships commenced their maneuver. If the Naxids had been able to see it, they would have seen the squadron make a kind of diagonal move in front of them, from a course that would pass between the Naxids and Hone-bar to one that would pass outside of both planet and squadron. It might look as if Martinez had changed his mind about how he wanted the battle to develop.

What Martinez actually wanted was an excuse to create the plasma screen in the first place, any reason to hide Do-faq’s force. The maneuver itself was secondary.

Some time later the ships passed through the screen they had created, andCorona traveled for several minutes in a bubble of hot radio hash, blind to the universe outside, the hull temperature rising. And then they were clear, and the other ships of the squadron appeared, their formation unaltered, their torches burning.

Martinez shifted their heading again, aiming for where he suspected Kreeku would appear after his transit around Hone-bar’s sun, and then he rearranged their formation. The Naxids would see them arranged in a wheel,Corona at the hub surrounded by a constellation of seven ships. But the Naxids wouldn’t see the ships themselves—what they would see instead would be the ships’ tails of antimatter fire pointing straight toward them, obscuring anything behind.

What would be obscured behind, Martinez hoped, would be the eight ships of Do-faq’s squadron, flying in Martinez’s wake and accelerating at a steady 2.3 gravities, the highest acceleration the frailty of the Lai-own physique would permit. Any radiation from Do-faq’s engine torches would, Martinez hoped, be taken for his own squadron’s engine exhaust.

If Martinez had worked his calculations aright—and if the Naxids’ own maneuvers were reasonably conventional—he would lead Do-faq’s heavy squadron right onto the enemy without Kreeku’s being aware of their existence.

Do-faq, without comment, followed Martinez’s suggestion and put his squadron on the course that would enable Martinez to guard the fact of his presence. Hours ticked by. Martinez could spot the moment when Kreeku first saw Light Squadron 14 fly through Wormhole 1—the deceleration burn ceased, and then the squadron reoriented and began a deceleration at higher gees.

When Kreeku burned around Hone-bar’s sun and emerged on the track Martinez had most desired, he felt relief melt his limbs like butter. He made some fine adjustments to the positions of his squadron, and sent another suggestion to Do-faq that enabled Martinez to more efficiently screen his force as the angle between the opposing forces changed with their movement toward one another.

Martinez and Kreeku, now four light-hours apart, were approaching each other at a combined speed of nearly seven-tenths the speed of light. They would meet in less than six hours—though by then, of course, a great many people would be dead.

A flower of something like vanity began to blossom in Martinez’s heart. He had actually done it—he had smuggled eight large warships into the Hone-bar system without the enemy learning of their existence. He was giving orders to his own superior officer, the formidable and unforgiving Do-faq, and Do-faq was obeying them without comment. Even theenemy seemed to be flying in obedience to Martinez’s will.

This battle would be studied by generations of Fleet officers, Martinez knew. Even if, as seemed perfectly possible, he was killed in the next few hours, he had assured himself a place in history.

Martinez celebrated by reducing his deceleration to one gravity and sent his crew to supper. Though he felt no hunger himself, he thought his crew would fight better on a full stomach.

Once food was placed before him he found he was ravenous, and he shoveled Alikhan’s fare into his mouth at a relentless rate. When his plate was empty he paged the premiere to his office, then explained to Dalkeith his plans for the upcoming battle, which she would need if he was killed and she, by some wild chance, survived.

“Who do you have on your comm boards?” Martinez asked her.

“Yu, my lord. Backed by Signaler/2nd Bernstein.”

“Are they satisfactory?”

She seemed unsurprised by the question, but then she was unsurprised by most things. “I have no complaints, lord elcap.”

“Good. I want them transferred to Command. Trainee Mattson is too inexperienced, and Shankaracharya—well, he hasn’t worked out.”

A tremble in Dalkeith’s watery blue eyes demonstrated a pattern of thought that she chose not to voice. “Very good, my lord,” she said.

Martinez told Shankaracharya as the Command crew returned to their stations following the meal. “You and Mattson will be going to Auxiliary Command,” Martinez told the lieutenant. “Yu and Bernstein will serve the comm boards here.”

Shankaracharya’s face didn’t show surprise—instead there was a kind of spasm, a tautening of the muscles of the neck and cheek, and then no expression at all. “I’m, ah, sorry, my lord,” he said. “I–I’ll try to do better in future.”

“I regret the necessity, lieutenant,” Martinez said. “I’ll do what I can for you, later.”

And what he could do would include never putting Shankaracharya in combat again, at least not in a position in which lives could possibly hang in the balance.

The young lieutenant left Command with his helmet under his arm, his body straight and his eyes fixed resolutely ahead, refusing to meet the pity in the eyes of the other control room crew. It was only then that Martinez remembered that Shankaracharya was his sister’s lover.

Sempronia’s going to really hate me for this.

Yu and Bernstein arrived and settled into their seats. A check showed the crew ready to resume higher gees. Martinez ordered the squadron to increase deceleration to two gravities.

Time passed, and Martinez grew fretful. He wondered if there were a traitor on Hone-bar or some of the other inhabited parts of the system, and if that traitor would see Do-faq’s squadron and alert Kreeku to its existence.

In his long hours, isolated in his foul-smelling suit and with death flying toward him at a significant fraction of the speed of light, Martinez began to believe wholeheartedly in the existence of the traitor. In the traitor’s messages. In Kreeku’s genius, who fully alerted by the traitor was now luring the loyalist squadrons to their doom. Martinez was glad when the shooting started, and he didn’t have to think about the traitor anymore.

The approaching forces were still two hours apart when both sides began firing missiles, waves of onrushing destruction that maneuvered in the empty space between the converging warships. When he saw the missile flares on his display, Martinez made a transmission to his ships.

“It’s for Lord Squadcom Do-faq to destroy the enemy,” he said. “He’s the hammer that will smash them out of the sky.Our job will be to stay alive—we should fight defensively and concentrate more on preserving ourselves than on destroying the enemy. Tell your weapons officers to emphasize defense.” He gazed into the winking camera light and thought of the fight that was coming, the weaving missiles bearing their radiation fury, the annihilation that could strike at any of them. “See you on the other side,” he said.

Martinez waited to make certain that Warrant Officer Yu actuallysent the message before he went on to think of other things.

Missiles began finding each other in the depths between the squadrons, the brilliant plasma bursts masking the opposing ships from one another’s sight. When the bursts had gained a sufficient density, Martinez sent a message to Do-faq.

“I believe that your lordship can begin launching missiles now.”

Without waiting for a reply, Martinez ordered his own force to maneuver. The eight-ship squadron was divided into two four-ship divisions, and he ordered the divisions to separate, as if to catch the enemy between two fires. Shankaracharya’s work had shown the theoretical maximum separation at which overlapping defensive fire remained effective, and Martinez kept the ships within that sphere. In the meantime, he made certain thatCorona kept arcing missiles between Do-faq and the enemy, to provide the necessary screen for the heavy squadron’s approach.

The missile bursts intensified, a continuous drumroll of flashes and dying matter. Point-defense lasers lashed across the darkness, striking at any incoming threat. Martinez felt his heart begin an inexorable climb into his throat as he watched the hot, opaque cloud of explosions roll nearer and nearer.

“Starburst!” he ordered. “All ships starburst!”

No doubt Kamarullah would consider the maneuver premature, but his ship as well as the others rotated and began to burn heavy gees away from the others, getting as much separation as possible before the onslaught that was about to engulf them.

“Defenses on automatic!” Martinez called as the hand of gravity slammed him into his couch. The display told him the pressure on his chest was nine gravities before his vision narrowed, and then winked out altogether.

After a long moment of darkness Martinez fought his way to consciousness, clenching his teeth and swallowing to force blood to his brain. He saw his displays as if through the wrong end of a telescope, a long distance down a dim tunnel. Gradually his vision cleared, and he gave a gasp as he realized what he was viewing.

Do-faq and the heavy squadron had launched a hundred and sixty missiles, all of them screened from the enemy by the erupting missiles and counterfire of Light Squadron 14. These missiles now raced out of the concealing plasma clouds, converging on Kreeku’s force at seven-tenths of the speed of light.

The missile strike was a vast expanding carpet of light, like the phosphorescence on a moving wave, the entire enemy force torn to elemental fire in a few brief seconds. Martinez watched in awe, unable to believe that the Naxids’ end had come so swiftly.

But the battle hadn’t ended with the death of the enemy. Missiles were still weaving through space, dodging the defensive lasers and onCorona ‘s trail. There were several minutes of suspense before the last threat was destroyed by Vonderheydte’s laser fire.

There was silence, and then cheers began to ring in Command. Martinez felt a giddy exhilaration, and repressed the urge to climb out of his cage in the heavy gravity and lead the crew in a delirious stomping dance.

More cheers burst out as other friendly ships emerged from the plasma fog, though it was not for several minutes that it became clear that Martinez had wiped the enemy from existence without a single loss to his squadron.