Martinez stared at the screen in complete surprise, and touched the control key. “Page crew Alikhan to the captain’s office.”
Do-faq continued, his voice weary. “The other captains senior to you would, I am certain, be suitable enough for the task. But they lack combat experience—weall lack such experience. All but you.”
The nictating membranes slid away from Do-faq’s eyes, and Martinez found himself staring into the lord commander’s brilliant gold eyes.
“I am willing to appoint you to command the light squadron, Lord Captain Martinez,” Do-faq said. “I realize that you may consider this an undue burden, considering the problems you must be facing inCorona now, with so many new crew and with the other difficulties of a new command. You may decline the appointment without prejudice…”
Martinez paused the message as he heard a knock on the door. He told Alikhan to come in, and as his orderly entered, said, “What’s between Do-faq and Kamarullah?”
Alikhan paused for a moment, then silently slid the door shut behind him. “That would date from the maneuvers back in ‘seventy-three, my lord,” he said. “There was a misunderstanding of an order that led to the maneuver being spoiled. The Fleet blamed Do-faq, and Do-faq blamed Kamarullah, who was tactical officer on theGlory at the time.”
And now I’m in the middle,Martinez thought. The thought failed to depress him.
Nor did the thought of his new and untried crew, the officers he didn’t know, the prospect of captains angry at being passed over, and the certain wrath of Kamarullah. He felt instead the onset of exhilaration, the tingle of blood and mind as he began to grapple with the challenges implied by Do-faq’s offer.
“Thank you, Alikhan,” he said. And after Alikhan left, he told the comm board, “Reply, personal to Squadron Commander Do-faq,” and pressed the cipher key.
The light came on that showed he was being recorded, and he gazed into the camera with a face that he hoped broadcast sincerity.
“Though I fear you’re giving me far too much credit,” he said, “I am nevertheless honored to accept the appointment. I and the squadron will await your orders.”
He had almost saidmy squadron, but had stopped himself at the last second.
That, he decided, would be conceit.
The next call came from Lieutenant Captain Kamarullah. He had a squarish face, a mustache, and the graying temples that suggested Do-faq’s wrath must have genuinely harmed his career—lieutenant captains were generally promoted well before their hair had a chance to go gray.
“You could refuse the command,” Kamarullah said.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Martinez said, “but you know that Do-faq would just appoint someone else.”
“You couldall refuse,” Kamarullah urged. “If the squadron stood united against him, he’d have no choice.”
“I regret the situation,” Martinez said, “but I’ve accepted the lord commander’s offer.”
Kamarullah’s lips twisted. “Regret,” he repeated. “No doubt.”
Martinez looked at the man coldly. “Captain’s breakfast meeting onCorona at 0601,” he said. “You may bring your senior lieutenant.”
He’d get the Golden Orb out of its box, he thought, the real one, to demonstrate his authority.
And ifthat didn’t work, he’d use it to clout Kamarullah on the head.
Two hours before his breakfast meeting, Martinez was awakened by a messenger who had his sealed orders from the Fleet Control Board. He put on his dressing gown, signed for the orders, broke the seal, and read his squadron’s destination.
Hone-bar.Do-faq was taking two squadrons to Hone-bar, over a month away. That would give him time to work up his ship and his squadron, to have both ready by the time they all arrived.
He paged his steward and ordered coffee.
And then he began to make plans.
The Home Fleet continued its colossal acceleration runs, making circuits of Zanshaa and Vandrith, then swinging wider still to include other planets and Shaamah, the system’s sun. It was joined by the Daimong squadron from Zerafan, which was already at speed when it arrived, and was integrated with Jarlath’s forces without trouble.
Do-faq’s Lai-own squadron from Preowin arrived, which would serve to protect the capital while the Home Fleet was away. After a month of punishing accelerations mixed with planning sessions with his staff and (by video) with his captains, after endless simulations of the attack, Jarlath no longer even considered holding his armed avengers back. The thought that all the work and pain might go for nothing was too outrageous to contemplate. He asked permission to attack Magaria, and permission was gladly given.
Forty-four days after departing Zanshaa, traveling at.56c, the Home Fleet swung around Vandrith for the last time and headed for Zanshaa Wormhole 3 en route to Magaria. It would continue accelerating all the way and should be traveling in excess of.7cwhen it first slammed into Fanaghee’s fleet.
Jarlath was weary and in pain, but content with his plans. He knew he was in for a hard fight, but all doubts were gone, and he knew that victory would be his.
What he and everyone else privy to his intentions failed to realize was that the Home Fleet’s plans counted upon the enemy making mistakes, or having suffered critical personnel or equipment losses, or of being unable to fully crew or refit their ships.
All these were dangerous assumptions to make, particularly when one remembered that the Naxids had been planning their rebellion for a long, long time.
Fanaghee had done well with the time she’d been allotted. Martinez’s near-miss with his missile had hit her hard, but not fatally. The electromagnetic pulse from the explosion had raced through the communications net on the ring station and slagged it. All ships butFerogash had been in their berths and connected via cables to station communications, and the EMP had burned along the cables and blown the ships’ comm rigs too.
The military communications net was supposed to be hardened against such an attack, and the stationhad been hardened when it was built. But centuries of maintenance shortcuts had bypassed many of the safeguards, and the results left the Naxid command literally speechless.
The secure design of Ring Command had been compromised more recently, in a retrofit that left a coolant pipe connected to the outside without proper safeguards against flash. Though Ring Command was surrounded by slabs of radiation shielding that should have kept everyone safe, the coolant reservoir and radiator was outside Command proper, and had no defenses against the wall of neutrons and energetic gamma rays generated by Martinez’s antimatter missile. The coolant was instantly vaporized, flashed into Ring Command, and scalded to death every person present, including Senior Captain Deghbal. The catastrophe was discovered many hours later, when Naxid personnel, unable to raise Ring Command after they had repaired their own comm systems, broke into the hardened facility and discovered Deghbal and her crew sprawled where the erupting poison had caught them.
This was the worst of it, however. The station was on alert, all essential personnel were in hardened shelters either on the station or aboard ship, and none of the other shelters were subject to the same design errors that made Ring Command vulnerable. The radiation casualties consisted of a few stray civilians, prisoners from the captured vessels who had been herded to the base skyhook and were awaiting transport to the surface, and their guards.Ferogash lost its sensors but not its communications, though since there was no one to answer, its messages soon took on a plaintive cast.
Fanaghee herself suffered nothing more than humiliation. She was in a skyhook car racing from the planet to the ring when its controls were knocked out, stranding her without communication in Magaria’s troposphere for eleven hours.