“Ah.” This would be his second officer, whom he had met just two days before, and with whom he’d exchanged perhaps three dozen words. A sublieutenant of less than six months’ seniority, with a faint little mustache and a hesitant manner. At the first meeting, Shankaracharya had made little impression, though Martinez had a strong sense that this one, perhaps, would take a lot of work.
“A friend of yours, is he?” Martinez asked.
A faint rose color brightened Sempronia’s cheeks. “Yes. I was hoping that you could, well, look after him.”
“That’s my job,” Martinez said. “But is Shankaracharya likely to need much looking after?”
Sempronia’s flush deepened. “I think he’s very talented. But he’s shy, and he doesn’t put himself forward. You’re likely to trample him into the deck without even noticing he’s there.”
“Well, I promise not to trample him into the deck.” He cast his mind back, uncovered a memory of Sempronia talking to a dark-haired officer at the family’s reception for Caroline Sula.
Her eyes darted from one corner of the room to the next. “He admires you very much. He pulled strings through his patron Lord Pezzini to get aboardCorona. ” Her lips twisted into an S shape. “Of course, he doesn’t know you like I do.”
Martinez approached Sempronia, reached out a hand and lifted her chin, so he could see her eyes at rest. “Is Shankaracharyavery important, Proney?” he asked.
Her lips thinned to a line and she nodded. He kissed her forehead.
“Very well, then,” he said. “I’ll do my best for him.”
Her arms went around him briefly in a fierce hug. “Right, then,” she said. “If you look after Nikkul, Imight forgive you for PJ.”
She dashed from his room then, and he finished packing and called for the servants to carry his gear to the cab that would take him to the maglev station. Alikhan wasn’t available—Martinez liked to think he was looking afterCorona in his absence. He threw his winter overcoat over one arm, took the Golden Orb in its traveling case, marched down the broad staircase to the foyer, and said good-bye to his family.
Outside, snow glittered white beneath Zanshaa’s dark green sky. The antimatter ring arced overhead, with its dockyards and the improvised squadron of whichCorona was a part. The squadron would leave tomorrow, on special duty. Martinez didn’t know where they were bound, knew only that they wouldn’t be made a part of the Home Fleet, because they had been assigned to the Lai-own Do-faq’s command, and not Jarlath’s. He assumed there would be many long days of acceleration before he found out, unless Captain Farfang chose to inform his captains at the day’s meeting.
But it turned out that Captain Farfang couldn’t tell him anything, because he was dead.
“Destinywas finishing its conversion from a Naxid ship to one crewed by Torminel.” This from Dalkieth, his middle-aged senior lieutenant. Her excited voice was high-pitched yet soft, almost lisping, a child’s voice that contrasted with her lined face. “Work was completed on the crew quarters last, so the hardshells had been bunking on the station and only came aboard last night to make final adjustments to the ship’s environment. And you know that Torminel prefer a lower temperature than Naxids, because of the fur.”
“So it wasn’t sabotage?”
“If it was, the saboteur was on the crew and died with everyone else. Because when they programmed the new temperatures, someone lost a decimal point somewhere, andDestiny’s environment was cooled to one-tenth what it should be.”
Martinez was puzzled. “But the temperature change should have been gradual enough to—Oh.”
“Yes,” Dalkieth said. “Torminel have a hibernation reflex. When it gets cold, they just go into a deeper sleep. But even hibernation doesn’t preserve them against an environment below freezing.”
Martinez shivered. “All of them died?”
“All of them. A hundred and twenty-something, dead in their racks.”
“And the guard on the airlock?”
“Destinywasn’t going to be in commission till today. Guards were provided by the Office of the Constabulary, not the ship itself. No one went in or out ofDestiny till early this morning.”
When they found ice coating the walls, and frozen Torminel with frost glittering in their fur. Martinez wanted to lean back in his chair and marvel in awe at the horrific, whimsical blow of fate that had deprived the squadron of both its heaviest ship and its commander. But there was too much to do: two-thirds of his crew were strangers, a figure that included the officers. So far as he knew,Corona and its squadron would still leave the station tomorrow.
“Who’s in command of the squadron?” he asked.
“Kamarullah is the senior captain. Nothing official’s been said, though.”
He rose from behind his office desk, conscious of the football trophies that were still bolted to the wall behind him. Tarafah’s suite had at last been reassembled, and he’d been moved into it, after insisting on triple-strength locks and bolts on the liquor store.
“Right,” he said, “department inspections at 2601.”
“Very good, Lord Elcap.”
He carried the Golden Orb on his inspection—not the one the Convocation had presented him the day before, but the cruder version that Maheshwari and Alikhan had made in the frigate’s machine shop. If the crew drew the conclusion that he appreciated their gift more than that of the Convocation, he would not be disappointed.
The results of the inspection were a little better than he expected, but he’d only completed half of it when Vonderheydte informed him that an urgent, private communication had been received from Squadron Commander Do-faq. Martinez dismissed the crouchbacks, including those he hadn’t yet inspected, and took the communication in his office.
Junior Squadron Commander Do-faq commanded the Lai-own cruiser squadron that had been heading toward Zanshaa from Preowin since the rebellion. Hollow Lai-own bones couldn’t stand much more than two gravities’ acceleration, and he’d been accelerating the whole way. Now that Do-faq bad arrived at Zanshaa, he wasn’t about to slow down: he’d continue a wide, eccentric circuit of the system until shooting off toward whatever wormhole the Fleet had assigned him, and in the meantime he’d command his light squadron, which includedCorona, via remote control.
How Do-faq was going to coordinate his squadrons if he ever had to fight was an open question, given their wildly different performance characteristics. But then, Lai-owns were supposed to be diabolically subtle tacticians, as their performance in the Lai-own War had shown, and Martinez told himself it wasn’t his job to worry about it anyway.
Martinez used his captain’s key to decode the squadron commander’s message, which had crossed the six light-minutes that separated Zanshaa from the Lai-own squadron. When the picture resolved on the display, he saw that Do-faq was a youngish Lai-own for his post, as demonstrated by the dark featherlike hair on the sides of his flat-topped head, the hair that Lai-owns lost on full maturity. His wide-set eyes were golden, and his broad mouth, lined with peg teeth, was set in the weary lines that spoke of nearly thirty days of continual acceleration.
“Lord Captain Martinez,” he said. “Allow me to congratulate you on your promotion and your receipt of the Golden Orb. I hope to have the honor of meeting you in person one day, should the constraints of the service ever permit it.”
Martinez found himself warmed by these civilities. It was always pleasing to discover that your superior officers had a good opinion of you and were willing to say so. He was more accustomed to his superiors pretending that he didn’t exist.
Do-faq slid nictating membranes over his eyes. “The loss ofDestiny has forced me to a number of painful decisions, among them, the reluctant conclusion that Lord Captain Kamarullah is unsuited for command of the squadron.”