Elkizer was frozen for a long moment before he managed to speak. “My lord,” he said, “I must insist. I did not use that sign.”
“What signwas it, then?”
There was another long silence while Elkizer searched his thoughts. “The sign can also mean ‘lawn,’ ” he said finally.
“True. So what did you mean by ‘thelawn approaches’?”
Elkizer tried another path. “I meant no disrespect, my lord.”
Jarlath’s tone was savage. “To me? Or to thelawn? ”
Lord Richard watched the confrontation in awe, his nerves urging him to fight or fly. The Naxids were descended from predators who ran in packs, but the Torminels had once been solitary, nocturnal hunters of the heavy forest, pugnacious, persistent, and utterly fearless. Lord Richard thought Jarlath had been angry before, confronting the dockyard superintendent, but now it was clear that Jarlath had barely scratched the surface of his rage.
May Inever piss this one off, Lord Richard thought.
For the first time, Jarlath seemed to notice the crowd of Naxids behind Elkizer, the unusual mixture of high-ranking officers and senior noncoms. “What are these folk doing here?” he demanded. “What is your purpose?”
“My lord,” Elkizer said, “it’s an orientation tour. For new personnel.”
Jarlath panned across the party with his huge shaded eyes. “I see Junior Squadron Commander Farniai, who has been with the Home Fleet for six years. And Captain Tirzit, who was once second officer here at Ring Command. Captain Renzak—you’re on your second tour here, are you not?” His huge eyes swung back to Elkizer. “I’m surprised that these officers require orientation to a ring station they’ve inhabited for so many years.”
“My lord, it’s the others,” Elkizer said quickly. “We are orienting…these others.”
“Petty officers?” Jarlath said. “Constables?” He did the head-bobbing again, zeroing in on Elkizer’s throat. “Please surrender the impression that I am your dupe—or yourlawn. What are youreally doing here, Lord Commander?”
During the long silence that followed, it became clear to Lord Richard that Elkizer had fired all his ammunition and had nothing left in the shot locker but rust and scale.
“My lord, we mean no disrespect,” Elkizer finally said. “We thought you would be in the Commandery.”
All Jarlath’s white-bleached fur stood on end, burying once more his facial features, and hesqualled — the high-pitched yowl his prehistoric ancestors had used to freeze their victims while they pounced. Lord Richard was aware of personnel a hundred paces around stumbling with shock at the sound and turning to stare.
“No disrespect!” he screamed. “By this vilemendacity! By thisassembly, which you refuse to explain! By sneaking aroundbehind my back, while you thought I was in my office on Zanshaa!” Jarlath raised a heavy white fist. “You are up to something, my lord.”
Elkizer’s black-on-red eyes rolled. “My lord, I—”
“I don’tcare for another of your pathetic explanations,” Jarlath said, “even if this time it’s the truth. It is clear to me that you and these other—individuals—are involved in this scheme, whatever it is, because you have too little with which tooccupy your time. Therefore your squadron—and that of Squadcom Farniai here—will depart the ring station at 1701 today in order to participate in maneuvers. Which willbegin with a six-gravity acceleration toward Vandrith, followed by a slingshot maneuver and a full series of war games between your two squadrons, all of which will be designed by my staff for maximum stress on all ship systems—the crew in particular.”
“My lord!” Elkizer said. “We have crew on liberty!”
“Recall them! They have four hours to report.” Jarlath bared his fangs again. “Get moving!”
The Naxids began backpedaling, their booted feet beating at the roadway’s rubberized surface while their trunks remained erect.
“My lord,” Elkizer tried again, “you forget the dinner—”
“Fuckyour dinner!” Jarlath pronounced with satisfaction, and watched as the Naxids turned and sped away as fast as their thrashing feet could carry them.
For the next hour, trapped with Jarlath in the skyhook car as it plunged through the atmosphere to the surface of Zanshaa, Lord Richard and Jarlath’s staff had to listen to the fleetcom fume about the reek of dishonesty he smelled in this command, the general rottenness of everything at the dockyards, and the way the rot had spread to the Naxid squadrons.
“Discipline!”Jarlath said. “Order! Obedience! Theseshall be the watchwords of the Home Fleet from now on!”
“I’ll never think of Torminel as cute, furry pudge-pots ever again,” Lord Richard told Terza that evening. “My dear, the sight of Jarlath in fury was absolutely blood-chilling.”
The two Naxid squadrons, obeying Jarlath’s orders, detached from Zanshaa’s ring after four hours, oriented themselves toward Vandrith, and began the punishing acceleration that Jarlath had commanded.
Elkizer had no choice. His timetable called for the revolt to begin in four days’ time, all Naxids in the Fleet rising at the same moment throughout the empire. If he began early, word might reach other stations, and preparations taken before the Naxids elsewhere could strike.
Plus his instructions had insisted that he take care not to damage Zanshaa or its ring. Zanshaa was the capital of the empire, the place where the Great Masters rested, where the Convocation sat and where the Praxis had been proclaimed. To attack the planet or destroy its ring was unthinkable, near sacrilege. Though firing a barrage of missiles at the Home Fleet in its berths was a tempting prospect, such an attack would destroy the ring, and Naxid prestige along with it.
His planning had been systematic. Like every other Naxid party to the plot, Elkizer had no experience at managing a revolution or at fighting a battle. His lack of experience made him deeply uneasy, and so he strove for a comprehensive plan that left nothing to chance.
Unlike his colleague Fanaghee at Magaria, Elkizer didn’t command the fleet at Zanshaa, and he couldn’t simply order a Festival of Sport that would take the senior officers and most of the crews away from the ships. Instead, Elkizer planned an elaborate dinner for all the senior commanders, captains, and lieutenants, to celebrate the anniversary of the First Proclamation of the Praxis on Sandama. He planned to hold all the senior officers captive while his Naxids stormed Ring Command and all the berthed warships, after which the Lord Senior would proclaim the empire’s new arrangement to the Convocation. The Lords convocate could scarcely be expected to object, with the Home Fleet, the ring station, and thousands of antimatter missiles in the hands of the Naxids.
The plan considered that the chief danger would be a security leak, and so, like Fanaghee at Magaria, Elkizer planned to let people into the secret gradually, as they needed to know. He walked through the ring station several times with his staff, marking each target, planning each assignment. Then he brought in the next group of people, the senior captains and their top noncoms, and it was this group that ran afoul of Fleet Commander Jarlath. If Elkizer’s plans hadn’t been completely wrecked at that point, each captain would have gradually briefed others, the pool of knowledge widening until it encompassed hundreds. Most of the enlisted personnel that composed the boarding parties wouldn’t have understood the full implication of their tasks until they had been completed and Elkizer made his triumphant announcement.