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.
Around them, as the gravities pressed the crew deeper into their couches, the peace began to take shape. The Fleet and the Convocation had worked out a plan ahead of time. Non-Naxid officials who—the last anyone heard—had been on Naxas were ordered by Michi to take command of the government, provided they hadn’t accepted jobs in the rebel administration. A disturbingly large percentage of them had and were disqualified. The remainder were not always the pick of the crop, but would have to serve till new administrators were sent out from Zanshaa.
The Naxids seemed to accept the situation quietly, which was certainly lucky for those who so unexpectedly found themselves in charge. The presence of three squadrons armed with dozens of missiles seemed a good recipe for social order, and those most likely to lead a resistance had just committed suicide.
The three Naxid converted warships, traveling too fast to decelerate completely, were ordered to proceed through one of Naxas’s wormholes, dock at another system, and surrender themselves there. Michi didn’t want them in the Naxas system, where they might tempt some unreconstructed Naxid into a misadventure.
A consequence of the sudden victory was that all the wormhole stations were suddenly open. For the first time in a year and a half, nearly all parts of the empire were in communication with one another, the communication lines broken only here and there where a wormhole station had been blasted out of existence.
Michi sent a brief report to Tork through the wormhole relay, the text wrapped in the Fleet’s most elaborate code in case the Naxids were inclined to eavesdrop. It mentioned the bare facts of the battle—victory, a loss of four warships for thirty-eight enemy, a friendly government soon to be in place—but carefully avoided any details, such as the dire lack of ammunition.
A more candid report went to Tork via the more secure method of a relativistic missile, with another missile going to the Fleet Control Board. These reports featured a complete record of the fighting as well as a statement concerning the perilous state of the ammunition supply.
Because there were two reports, Michi received two replies. The first, which arrived fifty-odd hours after she flashed off the original brief report, featured equally brief congratulations. The message was in text, signed by a staff officer.
The second message, which flashed into the system on the back of a relativistic missile, was a video from Tork himself. Michi called off the squadron’s acceleration, then summoned Martinez to her office to view it.
Ligaments creaking in the reduced gravity, Martinez came to her office and braced. Michi sagged wearily in her chair, a cup of coffee before her. The half-nude bronze statues towered over her. The strain of days of high gee lined her face, and there was something else as well, sadness and a kind of defeat.
“This concerns you,” Michi said, “and in a burst of cowardice I decided that you’d better get the news from Tork and not from me.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Yes. Sit down.”
Michi’s servant Vandervalk was already pouring coffee. Martinez thanked her, sat, and took the cup. The coffee’s sharp scent bit the back of his throat.
A pall enshrouded his mind. This wasn’t going to be good.
Michi ordered the video wall to show Tork’s message. The Supreme Commander appeared at once. He looked more healthy than Martinez had recently seen him—his skin was a healthier shade of gray, and no strips of dead flesh hung from his face. He was out of his body cast and dressed in a viridian dress uniform covered with more silver braid than Martinez had ever seen. Around Tork’s narrow throat was a ribbon on which hung a simple gold disk.
“They gave him theOrb?” Martinez blurted.
Tork gazed from the wall without expression. “To Squadron Commander Chen, greetings,” he said in bell-like tones. “Your full report has been received, along with your request for additional missiles. I can spare no missiles here, but will order as many as I can from elsewhere in the empire and inform your command when you may expect their arrival.”
Can spare no missiles,Martinez thought. Who was Tork planning on shooting his damned missilesat?
“As you can see,” Tork continued, “the Convocation has awarded me the Golden Orb for the recapture of Zanshaa and the victory at Magaria, and they have also honored me by making permanent my rank as Supreme Commander.”
Which explained where all the braid came from. Martinez suppressed an urge to spit on the floor, and sipped his coffee instead.
“As one of my first acts,” Tork said, “I will establish a Committee of Inquiry to analyze the tactical lessons of the war and to prepare a series of recommendations for the Fleet. This committee will be chaired by Fleet Commander Pezzini and will be headquartered at the Commandery in Zanshaa.”