“Shall we then vote on whether Lieutenant Captain Martinez shall be givenCorona? ” Tork asked. “Or shall there be further discussion?”
“Let’s give him the ship, if we must,” said Pezzini. “But can we station him away from the capital? I don’t want to hear that voice again, not if I can avoid it.”
The others ignored this comment and voted in the affirmative.
The Control Board dealt swiftly with other business. Lord Chen tried to vote with the board members who had been in their places the longest, even though he was beginning to develop the suspicion that they too didn’t quite understand what they were doing.
The suspicion was doubled for Lord Chen, because unlike most of the Fleet officers on the board, he sat in Convocation as well. The Convocation had been in almost continual session ever since the day of the rebellion, and significant bills were being passed almost every hour. The Legion of Diligence and the local police forces had been given massive powers of arrest and interrogation. The Antimatter Service and the Exploration Service had both been militarized and placed under the Fleet, which was pleased to increase its administrative heft but hadn’t as yet made up its mind what to do with its new departments. Huge sums were being awarded in new military contracts, not only for providing supplies and maintenance to ships, but for building new ships to replace those already lost and the losses that would inevitably follow from battle. The building of so many new ships required expansion and maintenance of old yards, plus creating new facilities for training the crews that would have to be put aboard the new ships. In addition, new maintenance facilities would be needed for the new ships, and workers to maintain the maintenance facilities, and a lot of work formerly done by Naxids would now have to be done by someone else, all of which would result in a lot of new hires.
The Fleet had barely begun to cope with all this largesse. Large amounts of money were goingsomewhere, and all Lord Chen could be certain of was that none of it was ending up withhim. He owned shipbuilding facilities perfectly capable of making warships, but they were all in the part of the empire presumed to be under the control of the Naxids. The world he represented in Convocation was now commanded by rebels, as were most of his clients and property.
If Jarlath didn’t get the Home Fleet moving soon and recapture all that was lost, Lord Chen knew he was looking at something like ruin.
“May I raise the matter of the petitions we’ve been receiving from my clients and constituents?” asked Lady San-torath. She was the sole Lai-own on the board, and represented the Lai-own home world of Hone-bar in Convocation.
“Hone-bar is as close to Magaria as it is to Zanshaa,” Santorath said. “The inhabitants of Hone-bar are desperate to remain loyal to the Praxis, but fear the enemy. The Fleet has done nothing to protect them—there is only one warship in the Hone-bar system, a light cruiser that is undergoing a rebuild and will not be ready for three months.”
“If we defend Hone-bar, we weaken Zanshaa,” Tork said.
“If Hone-bar falls without a fight,” said the Lai-own, “the confidence of all the people in the Convocation and its administration—and the confidence of the Lai-owns in particular—will be badly shaken.”
“It’s not just Hone-bar,” said Lady Seekin. “If Hone-bar falls, then the Hone Reach is vulnerable.”
Lord Chen felt a chill prickle the skin on his back. Clan Chen had long been invested heavily in the Hone Reach, and he was patron to several of its larger cities. If the Hone Reach were lost, then Clan Chen was in for a huge fall.
“The Reach must be protected,” Lord Chen said automatically. “We can’t let Hone-bar go.”
“We have no indication that the rebels are moving on Hone-bar,” someone pointed out.
“How would we know until it happens?” said Lady San-torath. “The rebels aren’t going to send us a message telling us where they’re going next.”
“They could capture Hone-bar with a single ship, and the Reach with a small squadron,” said Lady Seekin. “Surely we can spare a few ships for its defense, especially since Lord Commander Jarlath isn’t doing anything with them.”
It occurred to Lord Chen that Lady Seekin, the Torminel congregate, was from Devajjo, within the Hone Reach itself. He realized that he and she were natural allies, along with Lady San-torath.
Who else? he wondered. Who else can help us defend the Hone Reach?
Lord Commander Pezzini, he realized. The lord commander’s nephew, the current Lord Pezzini, was patron to at least one of Devajjo’s cities.
“I think we should require Lord Commander Jarlath to defend the Hone Reach,” Lord Chen said. “Particularly since he’s not going to attack Magaria anytime soon.”
Pezzini agreed, loyal to his family, though he brought no more of the board with him. Though four votes wasn’t enough to carry the nine-member board, Tork nevertheless agreed to carry the board’s concern to Jarlath.
“If the rebels detach ships to the Hone Reach, they weaken themselves at Magaria,” Jarlath pointed out. He spoke to Tork during a meal break, whenGlory’s acceleration had been reduced to.8 gravities, and relief warred in his body and mind with weariness and pain. He sat in a comfortable chair in his palatial dining room, eating in blessed solitude, a fine meal of lean meat with a side of liver and another of diced kidney, served warmed to body temperature in its own steaming blood.
Tork appeared in holographic form above Jarlath’s right shoulder, an annoying little wraith. Even more annoying was the three-minute time lag between Tork’s words and his own responses. He got to watch Tork fidget as Tork in turn watched Jarlath gobble raw meat. It wasn’t comfortable for either of them.
“The rebels may be weak at Magaria as it is,” Tork said. “Lieutenant Martinez came within an ace of hitting Fanaghee’s whole fleet with a missile. He may have caused critical damage to her.”
“There is no certain evidence of that.”
Tork didn’t wait to hear Jarlath’s reply before anticipating it and adding his own postscript. “Fanaghee’s force did not reply to Martinez’s attack for days. None of the ships undocked.”
“When they finally acted, they fired over two hundred missiles,” Jarlath said. “That isn’t the act of a crippled force.”
“It was only Fanaghee’s two original squadrons that fired. The captured ships weren’t ready.”
“We can’t assume they’re not readynow.”
By the time Lord Commander Tork’s answer came, Jarlath had finished his meal and gone on to dessert, some meaty marrow bones. He sucked out the contents and crunched the remainder with his back molars. His teeth were still strong, he thought; he had a lot of years left.
“Lord Commander Jarlath.” There was an ominous, discordant chime in Tork’s voice. “You must dosomething. I have served the Fleet for over forty years, and I understand your reasons even if I disagree with them. But the convocates don’t think as we do. They want actionnow, and if you don’t provide it, they mayorder it, and who knows what form their orders will take? The vulnerability of Hone-bar has some of them panicked, and I’m afraid that some of the people—even the people on the Board—may not be thinking straight. This afternoon they were within a single vote of ordering you to detach part of your fleet to guard Hone-bar.”
Tork leaned toward the camera pickups, his fixed, gray expression mournful, but his voice chiming with suppressed passion.
“Hone-bar may declare for the rebels out of sheer terror, and the Reach will follow if Hone-bar defects. For pity’s sake, detach a squadron to defend the Reach, or launch the attack on Magaria and trust yourPraxis — class ships to annihilate the enemy. I would prefer the latter, but I’ll leave it up to you.”
Jarlath considered this appeal as his molars crushed a particularly delectable marrow bone. The blessedly low gravity and fine meal had given him a feeling of well-being, and he thought he might as well leave Tork with the feeling he had accomplished something.