“Yes,” Martinez said. The answer depressed him. “Thank you, Alikhan.”
Alikhan withdrew. A few moments later Martinez looked at his plate and discovered that his food was gone. Apparently he’d eaten it, though he couldn’t remember doing so.
He thought about inviting the lieutenants for an informal meeting aboardDaffodil. Or the premiere lieutenant, Kazakov, to a dinner. To talk, and perhaps to plan for eventualities.
But no. That might call Fletcher’s attention to his lieutenants. Because of his position on Michi Chen’s staff, Martinez was one of the few people aboardIllustrious that Fletcher couldn’t legally kill. The lieutenants weren’t so lucky. If Fletcher suspected Kazakov of plotting with Martinez, then Kazakov might be in jeopardy.
Martinez sipped his glass of water, flat and tasteless from its trip through the recyclers, and then called Alikhan to clear the table. Just as Alikhan was leaving, Martinez’s sleeve comm chimed.
“Martinez,” he answered, and his heart leaped to see the squadcom’s face on the display.
Now, he thought, Michi would call him to a conference, and the two of them would work out something to do about Fletcher.
“Lord Captain,” the squadcom said, “I’d be obliged if you’d arrange a squadron maneuver—an experiment, rather—in three days, after we pass Termaine.”
Martinez fought down his surprise. “Yes, my lady. Do you want any kind of experiment in particular?”
“Just make sure it lasts at least a watch,” Michi said. “We don’t want the squadron to get rusty.”
“No, my lady.” He paused for a moment in hopes Michi would open the subject of the killing, and when nothing was said, he hopefully asked, “Do you have any other requests, my lady?”
Michi’s tone was final. “No, my lord. Thank you. End transmission.”
Martinez gazed for a moment at the orange end-stamp on his sleeve, then blanked the display.
Chenforce hadn’t had a maneuver since before Bai-do, so it was probably time to shine the squadron’s collective skills. The ships would be linked by communications laser into a virtual environment and fight a battle against an enemy force, or split into two divisions and battle one another.
Maneuvers in the Fleet, traditionally, were highly scripted, with the outcome determined in advance and the ships and their crews rated on how well they performed the tasks they were assigned. Michi, however, had requested an “experiment,” a type of maneuver that Martinez and Squadron Commander Do-faq had developed after the Battle of Hone-bar. In an experiment, the outcome of the maneuver was not determined in advance, and the ships and their commanders were free to improvise and experiment with tactics. It was a measure of Michi’s generosity that she was willing to permit this: most commanders would have insisted on knowing they were going to win ahead of time.
What was perhaps more important under the current circumstances was that while the maneuver was going on, Fletcher would not be conducting inspections, and thereby not be tempted to execute subordinates in passing.
Nor could Fletcher conduct an inspection while Chenforce flew by Termaine in two days. Everyone would be at general quarters for ten or twelve hours while they waited to see if Termaine would attempt resistance.
That left tomorrow, still a routine day in which the captain was free, if he desired, to conduct an inspection. Martinez wondered why Michi hadn’t ordered a maneuver then as well as three days hence.
Perhaps, he thought, Michi was giving Fletcher a test. One more dead petty officer and she’d know what steps to take.
He looked at the naked winged children that had been painted on his office walls, and he wondered at the mind that could both commission such art and plan a cold-blooded killing.
Martinez threw himself into planning the experiment. He altered the composition of the forces several times and modified the fine details obsessively. It was a way to avoid thinking about Fletcher, or remember Thuc falling with a fan of scarlet spraying from his throat.
That night, he wore a virtual headset and projected the starscape from outsideIllustrious into his mind, hoping it would aid his sleeping mind in achieving a tranquility that had eluded him all day. It seemed to work, until he came awake with his heart pounding and, in his mind, the black emptiness of space turned to the color of blood.
Breakfast was another meal eaten without noticing the contents of his plate. He dreaded hearing the businesslike sound of heels on the deck, Fletcher and Marsden and Mersenne, marching to his door to summon him to another inspection.
Even though he half expected the sound, his nerves gave a surprised, jangled leap when he heard it. He was on his feet and already half braced when Fletcher appeared in his open door, wearing full dress, white gloves, and the knife in its curved, gleaming scabbard.
“Captain Martinez, I’d be obliged if you’d join us.”
Cold dread settled over Martinez like a rain-saturated cloak.
“Yes, my lord,” he said.
As he walked to the door, he felt light-headed, possessed by the notion that everything from this point was predestined, that he was fated to be a witness to another inexplicable tragedy without being able to intervene, that within an hour or two he would again be reporting to Michi Chen while somewhere in the ship crew scrubbed blood from the deck.
Once again the captain wanted him as a witness. He wished Fletcher had just brought a camera instead.
Again Fletcher’s party consisted of himself and two others. One was Marsden, the secretary, but Mersenne had been replaced by Lord Ahmad Husayn, the weapons officer. That told Martinez where the party was going, and he wasn’t surprised when Fletcher took a turn two bulkheads down and headed through a hatch into Missile Battery 3.
Gulik, the rat-faced little master weaponer, stood there braced along with his crew. Once more Martinez watched as Fletcher conducted a detailed inspection, including not just the launchers and loaders, but the elevator systems used to move personnel along the battery, the large spider-shaped damage-control robots used for repairs during high-gee, when the crew themselves would be strapped in their acceleration couches and barely able to breathe or think, let alone move. Fletcher checked the hydraulic reservoirs of the robots, inspected the radiation-hardened bunker where the weaponers would shelter in combat, and then had two missiles drawn from their tubes. The missiles were painted the same green, pink, and white pattern as the exterior of the ship, and looked less like weapons of war than strange examples of design, art objects commissioned by an eccentric patron, or perhaps colorful candies intended for the children of giants. The captain dusted them with his white-gloved fingers—he expected missiles in their tubes to be as clean as his own dinner table—then had them reinserted and asked Gulik when the loaders had last been overhauled.
At last Fletcher inspected the weaponers themselves, the line of immaculately dressed pulpies, arranged in order of rank with the petty officers at the end.
Martinez felt his perceptions expanding through the battery, sensing every last cable, every last switch. He seemed hyperaware of everything that occurred within that enclosed space, from the scent of oil on the elevator cables to the nervous way Husayn flexed his hands when the captain wasn’t looking to the sheen of sweat on Master Weaponer Gulik’s upper lip.
Gulik stood at the end of the line, properly braced. Fletcher moved with cold deliberation up the line, his practiced eyes noting a worn seam on a coverall, a tool inserted in its loop the wrong way around, a laundry tag visible above a shirt collar.
Martinez’s nerves flashed hot and cold. Fletcher paused in front of Gulik and gazed at the man for a long, searching moment with his deep blue eyes.