“No one was attacking me,” Martinez said. “The worst anyone said was that I wasn’t a tragic hero, and I hope to hell that’s true.”
“Fletcher’s said alot of things about you,” Chandra said.
“Yes,” Martinez said. He opened his cabin door, then turned to her. “But I’m not supposed to know that, am I? Because I’m not supposed to be on intimate terms with the captain’s girlfriend, am I?”
He closed the door on Chandra’s mask of thwarted fury, made his way to his desk and sat down. He put the Golden Orb down on the desk’s deep black surface and then opened the buttons on his dress tunic.
After the four-hour formal meal, he felt like a bird stuffed and trussed for roasting.
The winged children on the walls looked at him hungrily.
Next day, Martinez was in the Flag Officer Station briefly asIllustrious launched a pair of pinnaces, one of them piloted by the lone Daimong survivor of theBeacon. These would race past Termaine, their powerful cameras and other sensors trained on the Termaine ring to make certain that Lady Michi’s orders were obeyed, that all docking and construction bays were open to the vacuum and that all ships, including those under construction, had been cast off.Illustrious would recover the pinnaces on the far side of the system.
At Bai-do, the Naxids had opened fire on the pinnaces as they passed, killing the cadets who flew them, and Lady Michi had retaliated for this defiance by destroying the ring. Billions died in exchange for two cadets, making a point that it was hoped the Naxid high command would respect.
This time the pinnaces would have an escort. Each pinnace would fly surrounded by a cloud of twenty-four antimatter missiles, all under command of the pinnace pilots themselves. The missiles could either be used offensively or to counter missiles launched from the ring. The missiles, like the pinnaces, could be recovered after the completion of their mission, or diverted to other targets, like the merchant vessels that were accelerating madly in an effort to clear the system before Chenforce destroyed them.
Martinez watched as the missiles were flung from the tubes, as chemical rockets ignited to carry them a safe distance from the cruiser before the antihydrogen engines started. The pinnaces followed shortly thereafter, engines firing to take them on a long curve that would carry them on either side of Termaine.
The Flag Officer Station stood down once the pinnaces and the missile barrages were on their way, and Martinez tucked his helmet under his arm and made his way to his cabin, where his orderly, Khalid Alikhan, helped him out of his vac suit.
Alikhan was a thirty-year veteran of the Fleet who had retired with the rank of Master Weaponer, and who still proudly wore the goatee and curling mustachios of the senior petty officer. Alikhan was a fountain of vivid anecdotes, technical arcana, and knowledge of the devious paths one might take to circumvent the formalities and custom of the Fleet, and Martinez had employed him with the intention of taking advantage of those thirty years’ experience in the weapons bays.
Alikhan hung the vac suit in its locker and served Martinez coffee from the vacuum pot that waited on a sideboard in the office.
“I was wondering, my lord, if I might trouble you for an advance on my pay,” he said as he placed the cup on Martinez’s desk.
Martinez paused in surprise, the cup halfway to his lips. Alikhan had never before asked for an advance.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.” He rose from his chair, opened his office safe, and handed Alikhan five zeniths. “Will that be enough?”
“That’s more than sufficient, my lord. Thank you.”
Martinez closed the safe. “Is the petty officers’ club doing something special?” he asked. He couldn’t think what it could be. With the ship’s canteen running low after months away from port, the nearest place to spend money was Termaine.
“No, my lord,” Alikhan said. His stern face hardened into an expression of vexation. “I was unlucky at cards.”
Martinez looked at him, surprised again. “I didn’t know you gambled,” he said.
“I venture now and again, my lord.”
Alikhan braced, which indicated that he hoped the conversation was over. Martinez decided it might well be.
“Carry on, then,” he said, and Alikhan made his way out.
Martinez sat at his desk and sipped his coffee, then checked the tactical display.
The rebels at Termaine were obeying orders, so far as he could tell. Termaine was now surrounded by a small cloud of vessels that had been cast adrift, ready to be destroyed by Chenforce as it swept past.
Martinez didn’t find the sight completely assuring.
Bai-do too had complied with Michi’s demands, right up to the point where they opened fire.
SIX
The bomb was disassembled and brought up to the High City in pieces, hidden in Team 491’s toolboxes and then stowed in PJ Ngeni’s guest cottage behind the Ngeni Palace. The explosive itself, which might have triggered the sniffers at the funicular, was brewed in PJ’s kitchen out of components purchased from hardware stores and cleaning supply houses.
As the bomb reached final assembly, PJ hovered above the table in the study, torn between anxiety and an eerie delight. Eventually he became a distraction, and Sula had to take him to his study and pour several drinks down him before he calmed down.
Sula had at one point expressed doubts about smuggling arms past the detectors on the funicular, and PJ promptly volunteered the Ngeni clan’s collection of sporting weapons. Sula was about to decline—the guns were registered, and if they had to be left behind would point straight at PJ—when she hesitated and went to the nearest comm terminal.
Checking in at the Records Office, she found the arms registry and erased anything connected to anyone named Ngeni.
The police would have ballistics and forensics information regarding any legally purchased firearm, but they would be useless for an old weapon that had been fired many times. Sula made certain to equip her team with weapons that were centuries old.
On the day of the operation, Zanshaa’s viridian sky was clear and sunny, which made it more likely that Lord Makish would be walking home. This was desirable from Sula’s point of view, but less desirable was the probability that other Naxids, who preferred their weather hot, would be on the streets.
If they die, they die.She certainly didn’t intend to risk herself in order to spare a few stray Naxids.
Shortly after noon, Spence went off to Garden of Scents to stand lookout. Sula and Macnamara strapped their toolboxes onto the back of his two-wheeler at the Ngeni Palace, got aboard, and hummed away through half-empty streets. They traveled along Lapis Street, which paralleled the Boulevard of the Praxis to the north, and parked in the lane to one side of the Urghoder Palace, the empty building next to Judge Makish’s residence.
Sula tucked her hair into a bandanna, and over this put a worker’s lightweight cap; then, with Macnamara following, she carried her toolbox around the corner, past the inscribed entrance to the Urghoder Palace, and to Makish’s elaborate wrought-silver-alloy gate. She entered, approached the front door—whose form echoed the artichoke shape of the towers—and pressed a button that caused a clacking noise in the interior, similar to the sound of theaejai.
Behind her, Macnamara hovered near the gate, as though uncertain. He’d already put one of his toolboxes down behind some bushes near the path.
The liveried servant who answered the door reared back, in loathing or surprise, and stood as tall as her short-legged centauroid form permitted, on tiptoe reaching Sula’s shoulder.
“You should have come to the back entrance!” she declared in a voice that rose nearly to a screech.