Michi and Chandra looked weary but exultant in their virtual images, sagging in their vac suits but glowing with victory.
Sula appeared spattered with blood.
Martinez looked at her in shock. He remembered her appearance in bloody body armor after the Battle of the High City, and wondered if she’d decided to specialize in dramatic entrances.
“Are you all right, Lady Sula?” Michi asked.
“Yes. I had a nosebleed under high gee.”
Sula’s tone was curt and dismissive. Michi changed the subject.
“I need a report from all ships on the number of remaining missiles. I need to know if we can fight those three enemy ships that just entered the system.”
“I happen to have the figures,” Sula said. “My ships’ magazines average nine percent of full capacity.”
“My ships range between three and six percent,” Michi said. Her gaze flickered to Martinez. “And Squadron Thirty-one?”
“Ah,” Martinez said, “I’ll check. But I don’t suppose our numbers are much better.”
Michi looked grim. “If those three big ships are like the others, they’ll be able to fire off six hundred missiles in each salvo.”
That, Martinez thought, was going to make fighting them very difficult indeed.
Stupid to die, fighting a trio of improvised warships, just because you’re at the end of your logistical tether and you don’t have anything to shoot at them.
“My lady,” he said, “may I suggest that you make your surrender demand extremely convincing?”
Determination crossed Michi’s face. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll make it clear that if we’re fired on, Naxas burns. We’ve got enough missiles forthat.” She looked at someone off-camera—presumably Chandra, because Chandra also looked off-camera.
“I’ll want a list of the twenty-five largest cities on Naxas,” Michi said.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Better make it fifty. And I’d like demographic data as well, so we can be sure to pay special attention to smoking any Naxid neighborhoods.”
Chandra hid a smile. “Yes, my lady.”
Michi’s demand for unconditional surrender went out in the clear, both to Naxas and to the oncoming ships. It would be nearly three hours before Naxas could reply. Chenforce took aboard its surviving pinnaces, recovered the few missiles that hadn’t yet found something to blow up, and began repairing the minor damage taken by some of the ships in the fight.
Martinez took a shower to wash off the scent of his suit seals and invited Captain Dalkeith to a celebratory dinner. That seemed fair, since after all he was dining in her cabin.
“I wish I had your cook,” Dalkeith said in her breathless child’s voice. She looked at the black specks in her fluffy scrambled eggs, which Perry had laid on a bed of fragrant preserved seaweed. “Are those truffles?”
Martinez didn’t know.
He was back in Auxiliary Command at the earliest possible moment that Naxas could reply. No answer came, not even an acknowledgment.
Minutes ticked by. The air in Auxiliary Command began to seem hot and close. The bodies of the crew, liberated from the confines of vac suits, combined to give the room a sour, combusted scent, all save Khanh, who wore far too much lime-scented cologne.
Martinez heard chatter in the background as Chandra gave the weapons officers targeting information for the fifty largest cities of Naxas. He thought about how to fight those three big ships with their limitless supply of ammunition.
“Squadcom wants another conference, my lord.” Falana’s fingers jabbed at the touch pads on his display.
“I’ll go virtual.”
The same three faces appeared in the display. Michi and Chandra looked scrubbed and refreshed, but Martinez didn’t spare them more than a glance. Instead he stared at Sula. She was breathtaking—beautiful and polished and perfect. She wore understated Fleet undress, and the dark sensor cap and its chin strap framed her face and made it seem to glow. Suddenly he could scent a phantom memory of her perfume.
“I’ve given them an hour,” Michi said. Her angry voice snapped Martinez out of his trance. “I think that’s enough. We’ll launch our missiles for Naxas. Time the impacts for a hundred twenty minutes from now, so they can see it coming at them and have time to think about it.”
“That will give them extra time to evacuate their cities,” Chandra pointed out.
“The living will envy the dead,” Sula said. Her voice was hard.
Martinez looked at her again, and wondered where that cold anger had come from. He knew her anger well enough, but he remembered it as hot. He remembered her as insecure, as clumsy in formal situations, as passionate in bed.
Clearly she had learned a few new social strategies.
“My lord!” Falana cried. “Message from Naxas!”
The others must have been alerted at the same time, because they were all gazing off-camera.
“Let’s see it,” Martinez said.
His virtual space was invaded by the image of a young Naxid. He wore the brown tunic of the civil servant, and he stood alone and faced the camera with frozen dignity.
“To Squadron Commander Chen,” he said, “greetings. I am Lord Ami Yramox, Secretary to the Assistant Minister of Right and Dominion, Lady Rundak.”
Secretary to an assistant minister, Martinez thought. Yramox lived pretty far down the chain of command to reply to an ultimatum as crucial as Michi’s.
“All my superiors have committed suicide,” Yramox said. “Before their deaths they instructed me to surrender to you all forces under the command of the Naxas government. We await your orders.”
The Naxid spoke on, but he was drowned by the cheers now ringing from the walls of Auxiliary Command. Even Gunderson, who throughout the battle had spoken with a deliberate, sonorous calm, was bellowing with undisguised joy.
Michi and Chandra were glancing left and right, off-camera, smiling, apparently enjoying a similar frenzied demonstration in the Flag Officer Station.
Sula remained cool, gazing at the camera with her jade eyes. Apparently there was no spontaneous shouting permitted in her control room.
A few hours later, when orders from Naxas reached the new arrivals, the three big Naxid ships began firing their missile batteries, hundreds and then thousands of missiles racing into the void. When they reached a safe distance, they exploded, a long series of bright expanding detonations, like fireworks celebrating the end of a long, bloody war.
THIRTY-SIX
There were a few hours for rejoicing, just enough time for the cooks to produce a feast and for the crew to drink to their own survival and that of their mates. The recreation tubes were very much in demand. Martinez dined with the officers ofCourage while Alikhan packed his belongings, then he formally surrendered command of Squadron 31, and with it, his acting rank of squadron commander.
He sent a farewell message to his captains, praising their record of enemy killed without a single casualty, then said good-bye to Dalkeith and the other lieutenants. He arrived aboardIllustrious to the usual formalities. The corridors echoed to the same sort of celebrations he’d just left. The party was just getting started when alarms began to blare, and everyone strapped in for more hours of heavy gee. In order to stay in the Naxas system and avoid shooting off into space, Chenforce had to lose delta vee, and that meant more days of bone-hammering deceleration.
This was clearly unfair. The crews resented the fact that they’d just won the war but had to endure the heavy gees anyway.
Martinez resented it too. He had just enough time to visit his cabin—he found the Holy Family undisturbed, still snug with their cat and their fire—and then he had to don his vac suit.