Conventions of 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.”

That figured,Martinez thought. Pezzini was a retired fleetcom, a Control Board member who had never seen a missile fired in anger.

Tork continued. His voice was a melodious chime.

“I therefore order Captain Sula, Captain Martinez, and Squadron Commander Chen to report at once to Zanshaa and place themselves at the disposal of the committee.Illustrious andConfidence will go into dock at Zanshaa for routine refit. Lady Michi’s command will remain at Naxas under Captain Carmody, who is promoted Acting Squadron Leader. You will find the text of these orders in an attached file.”

Martinez stared at Tork’s image in shock.He’s taking my ship away?

Ships that went into refit were turned over to dock superintendents and lost their officers and crew.

The harmonies of Tork’s voice were implacable. “Because it would be premature to release any information regarding the battles, or the tactics employed, prior to the report of the committee, I must classify all this information as Highly Sequestered. Any publication or discussion of these matters will be deemed a violation of the Imperial Sequestration Edict and subject to prosecution.

“You will acknowledge receipt of these orders and proceed at once to Zanshaa.”

There was a highlight to Tork’s chiming voice that Martinez suspected was Daimong triumph.

It was all going to be hidden away,Martinez thought. The conclusions of the committee were foreordained. Innovations were a wrong path, and the orthodox tactics with which Tork had captured Magaria were going to be enshrined. Michi’s victories would be explained away or forgotten.

He could imagine already what the committee would say about Naxas. It wasn’t a real battle, it was fought against patched-together converted traders and warships heavily damaged at Magaria. Ofcourse it was one-sided. Under the circumstances, Michi Chen was criminally negligent for losing as many as four ships.

He turned to Michi. “What do we do?” he asked.

Michi’s look was matter-of-fact. “We obey orders.”

“And then?”

Michi considered the question for a half a second or so, then said, “We wait for Tork to die.”

“You could talk to Lord Chen. He’s on the Fleet Control Board.”

She nodded. “I’ll talk to Maurice, of course. But in order for him to reverse an order by the Supreme Commander, he’d need a majority of votes on the board, and I don’t think he’ll get them. Anything he attempts on our behalf will just look like special pleading on behalf of his relatives.” She pushed a plate toward him. “Almond cookie?”

Furious anger raged in Martinez. He put down his coffee cup before he crushed it in his hand.

“We can demand a court-martial,” he said.

“On what grounds?” Michi drummed her fingertips on the desk. “We’re not being sent to jail or ordered to cut our throats. We’re not being punished or reprimanded. That would cause a public outcry, and Tork doesn’t want that. All that’s happening is that we’re being sent to Zanshaa in order to testify before an elite commission.”

“I’m losing my ship,” Martinez pointed out.

“A routine refit.”

Martinez waved an arm. “There’s nothing routine about it! There are dozens of ships damaged in battle that should go into dock beforeIllustrious! And we’re ordered to dock in Zanshaa-the Zanshaa ring is awreck. Weblew it up! It will beyears before the ship gets out of dock.”

Michi looked down at the black, mirrored surface of her desk. “But there will be other ships. Many, many more. The Fleet’s building program won’t end with the war-Maurice told me that in a few years the Fleet will be nearly twice its size at the start of the war.”

Martinez rubbed his chin and felt the bristles that had grown while he was webbed to his acceleration couch. “There will be plenty of ships,” he said. “Fine. But will Tork give us command of any of them?”

Irony touched the corners of Michi’s lips. “At least we’ll have seniority over those he favors.”

Martinez looked up at the bronze woman who was gazing down at him with eerie composure. He wanted to rise from his chair and punch the perfect, serene face.

“Have you told Captain Sula?” he asked.

“No. Though she may have intercepted the message and decoded it herself. Why?”

“Because,” Martinez said, “once she hears Tork’s orders, I wouldn’t want to put her in the same solar system with Tork and a missile.”

Sula’s reaction to Tork’s orders was far from violent. She had known that Tork would retaliate for her defiance at Second Magaria, and she was surprised only at Tork’s moderation. He hadn’t ordered her throat cut; he hadn’t issued so much as a reprimand. She decided this was a measure of how weak Tork felt his own position to be.

If there was one thing she understood, it was the calculations of survival. Tork had killed forty or so enemy ships while losing forty ships of his own. Chenforce had killed nearly forty and lost only four.

Were the facts made available, Tork’s ability would be called into question. In order to justify his Golden Orb and his new permanent rank, the inconvenient data had to be suppressed.

The only surprise was the ingenuity of Tork’s response. He was a more subtle manipulator of the machinery of the Fleet than she’d thought.

After viewing his message, Sula took advantage of the break in deceleration to shower. As the water hammered her sore, gravity-torn muscles, and as the tiny metal-walled shower cabinet filled with the sandalwood scent of the translucent soap, she considered her future.

She had captain’s rank, and captain was higher than she had ever expected to rise. She had her medals. She had a modest fortune.

She didn’t have an army any longer. And very soon she would not have a ship.

She possessed fame, but didn’t particularly want it. Increased fame could lead to increased scrutiny, and someone with her past couldn’t afford that. Perhaps a few years in an obscure posting would be the safest alternative.

On the whole, she had little to complain about.

She had defied Lord Tork not out of a desire for glory, but out of pride. Her accomplishments were genuine. Her pride had not been compromised. Her pride was still alive. Tork could do nothing to take it away.

She had done well enough out of the war.

Then she paused in her scrubbing, thought of Martinez, and smiled. He was not the sort of person who would take Tork’s orders quietly.

He must be going crazy.

“You may not say that we won. You may not say that we destroyed the enemy at a ratio of ten to one. You may not say that we deployed superior tactics, or that any superior tactics even exist. These facts are to be forgotten until Pezzini’s report is released-ifit’s ever released. And you must tell your crew that they may not speak of these things either. We don’t want any of them to get in trouble.”

Martinez looked at his officers and saw their surprise at his vehemence. He forced a smile.

“I want to assure you that the Supreme Commander is very serious about this. The Investigative Service will look into anyone found to be careless with this information.” He gave them all a solemn look. “Careers may be at stake. I don’t want to jeopardize any of your advancement through my failure to emphasize the absolute nature of Lord Tork’s orders.”

He picked up his fork. “Now that I’ve got these unpleasant preliminaries out of the way, let’s enjoy our meal. I believe that Perry has done something brilliant with this tenderloin.”

The others ate thoughtfully as they sat beneath the murals of roistering ancients. Martinez had given them plenty to think about.

And to talk about. He knew there was no better advertisement for a subject than forbidding it to be mentioned. Lord Tork’s orders-at least as interpreted by him-would naturally offend the pride of every member of Chenforce. WhenIllustrious andCourage discharged their crews, and officers and enlisted made their way to new postings, they would take their offended pride with them.

It was ridiculous to command them not to talk about their accomplishments. They would talk in wardrooms over dinner, in drawing rooms over cocktails, and drunkenly in bars. They would boast of their time with Chenforce, of their service under Michi Chen and Martinez, of their own prowess.

They would not let the memory of Chenforce die.

Martinez had also made a point of giving his lecture while the servants were still putting plates on the tables, thus ensuring that the enlisted would also carry their full measure of indignation throughout the Fleet.

There were certain things that Tork could not do. He could not put a number of Peers of the empire under surveillance to make sure they weren’t speaking of their wartime experience, nor punish them when they did. He couldn’t follow the hundreds of enlisted as they moved through the expanded Fleet, or prosecute them en masse, or even discharge them. They too would carry the legend of Chenforce wherever they went.

Sometimes, Martinez reflected, the best way to sabotage a superior was to follow his orders in the most perfectly literal way.

Martinez’s dinner with his officers was the first of several social events after the long, brutal deceleration finally ended, with Chenforce diving through the rings of a gas giant gorgeous with velvet-soft clouds of purple and green, then shaping a new course at a far more moderate deceleration.Illustrious andConfidence wouldn’t have to part from the rest of Chenforce for three more days, and during that time there was constant visitation back and forth. Michi played host to a reception for the captains during which, through heroic effort, Martinez and Sula managed not to exchange a single word. Sula invited Michi to a dinner in her honor, and since Martinez hadn’t been invited to accompany, he in turn invited his former captains from Squadron 31. He gave them much the same speech he had given his lieutenants, and with much the same effect.

The final day, Michi gave a farewell dinner for the captains of Cruiser Squadron 9, in which she thanked them for their loyalty, their courage, and their friendship, and raised a glass to their next meeting. Martinez, who sat at the far end of the table quivering with the barely suppressed impulse to deliver another tirade on the subject of Tork’s order, thought he saw a tear glimmering in her eye.

IllustriousandConfidence set a new course and began their acceleration toward Naxas Wormhole 1 en route to Magaria and Zanshaa. Martinez braced for the inevitable, which came two days later when Michi invited him and Sula to supper.

Michi and Martinez met Sula at the airlock, where a guard of honor rendered the proper formalities as Sula stepped ontoIllustrious. She wore full dress, the dark green of the tunic a subdued reflection of the emerald green of her eyes. The sight took Martinez’s breath away.

Sula faced the squadcom and braced; Michi shook her hand and welcomed her aboard. A tall, bushy-haired orderly hovered behind her right shoulder, a young man Martinez would have been inclined to dismiss if it weren’t for the ribbon of the Medal of Valor on his breast. He was taken off to be a guest of the petty officers’ mess, and Martinez and Sula followed Michi up a companionway to her quarters.

“Interesting decor,” Sula said, eyeing one of the trompe l’oeil archways in the corridor.

“All installed by Captain Fletcher,” Martinez said. “The artist is still aboard.”

He figured she wouldn’t rip his head off if he stuck to the facts.

“That was a Vigo vase in that still life,” Sula remarked.

Michi glanced over her shoulder. “Are you interested in porcelain, Lady Sula?”

Which led to a discourse that took them to the dining room and into the first cocktail. Sula had a mixture of fruit juices, and the others Kyowan and Spacey. Martinez, standing with tingling tongue and feigned nonchalance by the drinks cart, felt Sula’s clinical glance burn like ice on his skin.

Michi turned to Sula. “Lady Sula, I was wondering if I could review the moment in the battle when you moved your squadron to engage the enemy heavies. I have some questions about how you knew which of the enemy to choose as your particular target.”

Sula explained. Illustration would make the explanation more comprehensible, so the party moved to Michi’s office, where they could use the holographic display built into her desk. The tension drawn between Martinez and Sula began to ebb as they reexperienced the fantastic degree of coordination they had felt in the battle, the balance of movement and fire, subtlety and force. Sula’s pale skin glowed. Her eyes danced. She looked at him and smiled. Martinez returned the gaze and found that his laughter matched hers.

The party moved back to the dining room and continued the battle while plates, bottles, and napkins were deployed on the table like ships of war. Michi and Martinez described the Battle of Protipanu, and Martinez talked about Hone-bar. Diagrams were drawn in gravy. Sula recounted her adventures on the ground in Zanshaa.

“Weren’t you afraid of dealing with the cliquemen?” Michi asked.

Sula seemed to calculate her answer for a half second or so. “Not really. I’d known people like them on Spannan, where I grew up, and-” There was another moment of calculation. “Well,” she said, “it’s like with everyone else. You have to calculate your common interests.”

Michi seemed dubious. “Weren’t you afraid that they’d betray you and…well, just take everything?”

Sula calculated again, then grinned. “Unlike good Peers like Lord Tork?”

Martinez burst into laughter. Michi’s laughter was more strained.

Still, Martinez thought, Sula wasn’t being completely candid about something. He wondered what it was.

The scent of coffee floated through the room. The conversation went on well past the tail end of dinner, well into the second pot of coffee. During the long course of the conversation, and with Sula’s agreement, Martinez told her honor guard to stand down-she could leave the ship informally, with no inconvenience. When she thanked Michi, rose, and collected her hat and gloves from Vandervalk, Martinez offered to accompany her to the airlock.

“If you’ll page Macnamara to meet me there.”

Martinez did so. He walked with Sula into the corridor. It was late and nearly deserted; most crew were asleep. Their heels rapped on Fletcher’s polychrome tiles.

Suddenly Martinez was afraid to speak. He was possessed of the certainty that if he opened his mouth, he’d spoil everything, all the intimacy that he and Sula had just rediscovered, and then the two would have no choice but to be enemies forever.

Sula was less shy. She gazed straightforward as she spoke, her eyes not meeting his. “I’ve decided to forgive you,” she said.

“Forgive me?” Martinez couldn’t help himself. “It was you who dumped me, remember?”

Her voice was flat. “You should have had more persistence.”

She came to the companion and dropped quickly down the stair to the deck below. Martinez followed, his heart throbbing.

“You were very insistent,” he said.

“I was upset.”

“But why?”

That seemed the point. He had asked her to marry him, and she had refused him-with anger-and marched off into the Zanshaa night.

Sula stopped, turned, looked at him. He could see the muscles strained in her throat.

“I’m not good at relationships,” she said. “I was afraid, and you wouldn’t let mebe afraid. By the time I got over the fright, you were engaged to Terza Chen.”

“My brother arranged that without telling me.” He hesitated, then spoke. “I called you all night.”

She stared at him for a blank second, then reeled as if he’d struck her.

“I was upset,” she said. “I was-” She shook her golden head. “Never mind what I was doing. I told the comm to refuse all calls.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Martinez felt as if an iron hand had seized his vitals and twisted them. It was like losing her all over again.

“I…forgive you,” he said.

He took a step toward her, but she had already turned and was walking away, heading for the next companion. Martinez followed.

At the bottom of the stair her orderly waited, properly braced. The airlock door was only a few paces away. The words that were on the verge of spilling from Martinez’s tongue dried up.

Sula turned and held out her hand. “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “I’ll see you again.”

He took her hand. It was small and elegant and warm in his ungainly paw. Her musky perfume caressed his senses, and his nerves leaped with the impulse to kiss her.

“Sleep well, my lady,” he said.

And dream of me…

That night Sula dreamed of nothing but the dead. She woke after a few hours with a scream bottled in her throat, and knew that she didn’t dare rest again.

She used her captain’s key to openConfidence ‘s databanks and edited out all references to the blood pressure spike that had shut down the engines during the Naxas battle. Instead she blamed the engine trip on a power spike in a transformer, a spike caused by radiation from a near miss. The transformer was scheduled to be replaced anyway.

There were anomalies in the cover story, and there would be her footprints in the record, but it would take a fair amount of detective work to find them, and she suspected that no one would ever be that interested.

The whole point of the elite commission, after all, was to bury everything that had happened onConfidence. She doubted anyone would look at the official records.

She resolutely refused to think of Martinez as she worked, and did her best to ignore a prickling of her neck hairs that told her he was standing right behind her, looking over her shoulder as she committed a lengthy string of electronic felonies.

I’ve done worse,Sula told the specter.

Martinez, she thought, strolled through life profiting from the death and misfortune of others.

She, on the other hand, was thebringer of death and misfortune. Make the two of them a couple, and the implications were chilling.

If we are ever together,she thought with a shiver,one or both of us will die.

She sent the revised database to bed. It was over an hour to breakfast, and she was still afraid to sleep. She sat up readingThe Greening of Africa, another of her Earth histories.

She still felt Martinez standing behind her, silent and reproachful as the dead.

Martinez spoke to each of his staff in turn to find out if they were willing to stay with him afterIllustrious went into refit. He was allowed to take servants with him from one posting to the next, but he wanted to make certain they were willing.

Alikhan accepted, as Martinez had hoped he would. He knew that Narbonne, Fletcher’s formet valet, didn’t like being Alikhan’s junior, and he wasn’t surprised when Narbonne asked for a discharge.

Montemar Jukes was more problematical. “I don’t think I’m going to need an artist after this,” Martinez said. “I won’t have a ship to decorate.”

Jukes shrugged. “I can save those plans for another day, my lord. But on Zanshaa you’ll have a palace, won’t you, Lord Captain? You and your lady? And won’t that palace need decorating? Perhaps with a full-length portrait of Lady Terza to match the one of yourself.”

“Ah…perhaps,” Martinez said. He didn’t want to admit to himself that a future without Terza was a possibility that lurked somewhere in the back of his mind.

Jukes remained on his payroll, and began contemplating themes for the decoration of a large house.

The surprise was the cook, Perry.

“I’d like to request a discharge, my lord,” he said.

Martinez looked in surprise at the young man standing opposite his desk.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked.

“No, my lord. It’s just that…well, I’d like to strike out on my own.”

Martinez regarded him narrowly. “Thereis something wrong, isn’t there?”

Perry hesitated. “Well, my lord,” he admitted, “sometimes I wonder if you actually like my cooking.”

Martinez was astonished. “What do you mean?” he said. “I eat it, don’t I?”

“Yes, Lord Captain. But-” Perry strove for words. “You don’t pay attention to the food. You’re always working while you’re eating, or sending messages on the comm, or dealing with reports.”

“I’m a busy man,” Martinez said. “I’m a captain, for all’s sake.”

Determination settled across Perry’s expression. “My lord,” he said, “do you even remember what you ate for your noon meal?”

Martinez searched briefly through his memory. “It was the thing with the cheese,” he said, “wasn’t it?”

Perry gave a little sigh. “Yes, my lord,” he said. “The thing with the cheese.”

Martinez looked at him. “I’ll give you the discharge if you want,” he said, “but-”

“Yes, please,” said Perry. “Thank you, my lord.”

Feeling slighted, Martinez wrote Perry an excellent reference, in part so he could feel superior to the whole situation.

That evening, at his meal, he looked at his plate with a degree of suspicion.

What was so special about it? he asked himself.

Sula gave a dinner to thank Michi for her own dinner party, and Martinez, Chandra, and Fulvia Kazakov were invited. Martinez would have been the sole male at the affair if it hadn’t been for Haz, Sula’s premiere.

Sula’s dining room onConfidence was metal-walled and painted a pale, sad shade of green. An overhead duct was a hazard to anyone tall. She had tried to make light of it by painting DUCK! on the duct in red letters. She served Hairy Rogers for cocktails, followed by wine and brandy. Martinez suspected that, as a nondrinker, her knowledge about how much alcohol people could actually consume without falling over was shaky. She was well on her way to getting everyone plastered.

Martinez sobered at the table, where he sat opposite Sula. Each cell in his body seemed to yearn toward her with every beat of her heart. He hardly dared look at her. Instead he did his best to follow the conversation, which was bright and amusing and concerned as little as possible with the war, Fleet business, or politics. The captains might be losing their ships, and all the officers might have a permanent black mark against their names for being a part of Chenforce, but the long, violent contest was over and they had all survived. Healthy animal spirits were rising, and on a pair of tubes soaring between the stars, there were only so many outlets.

Perhaps alcohol was safest, after all.

As the voyage progressed, he saw Sula frequently. There were only two ships, and the officers were social beings. Some kind of party occurred every day, though it wasn’t always the captains who were involved.

Still, it was half a month before Martinez dared to invite Captain Sula to dine with him alone.

He met her at the airlock-she had a different orderly this time, a straw-haired woman, but still with a Medal of Valor. Martinez escorted Sula to his dining room, where he offered her a choice of soft drinks. She had a glass of mineral water, and Martinez, who out of courtesy to his guest had decided to avoid alcohol, had another. Sula looked at the Jukes portrait of Martinez, looking brave and dashing at the head of the room, and smiled.

“Very realistic,” she said.

“Do you think so?” He was dismayed. “I’d hoped for better than that.”

Sula laughed and turned her attention to the murals of banqueting Terrans, the bundles of grapes and goblets of wine and the graceful people wearing sheets.

“Very classical,” she said.

“It only looks old. Let me show you another piece.”

He took her into his sleeping cabin and ordered the lights on, to revealThe Holy Family with a Cat. Sula seemed amused at first, and then a little frown touched her lips, her eyes narrowed, and she stepped closer to the ancient work. She studied it in silence for several long minutes.

“It’s telling a story,” she said. “But I don’t know what the story is.”

“I don’t either, but I like it.”

“How old is this?”

“It’s from before the conquest. From North Europe, wherever that is.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “Martinez, you are really appallingly ignorant of the history of your own species.”

He shrugged. “Before the conquest it was all murder and barbarism, wasn’t it?”

She turned once more to the painting. “Judge for yourself,” she said.

He looked at the cozy little family around their fire, and a warm affection for the painting rose in him. “The picture belongs to Fletcher’s estate now,” he said. “I wonder if they’d let me make an offer.”

Sula looked at him. “Can you afford it?”

“On my allowance? Only if they don’t know what it’s worth.”

She glanced briefly at the other pictures, the blue flute player and the landscape. “Any other treasures?”

He took her into his office. She looked without interest at the armored figures and the murals of scribes and heralds. Then her eyes were drawn downward to the desk, to the pictures of Terza and young Gareth that floated in its surface.

Martinez held his breath. The moment crucial, he thought.

The light in her eyes shifted subtly, like a wispy cloud passing across the sun. Her lips quirked in a wry smile.

“This is the Chen heir?” she said.

“Yes.”

“A healthy child?”

“So I hear.”

“He looks like his father.”

Her eyes followed the images as they floated over the desk’s surface.

“Howis your marriage, anyway?” Her tone was delicate and light, shaded with irony. They were both pretending that she didn’t care about the answer.

“It seemed to go well enough for the first seven days,” Martinez said. “Since then I’ve been away from home.”

“Seven days?” She smiled. “Fertile you.”

“Fertile me,” he repeated pointlessly.

He fought the impulse to take her in his arms.

Not on Michi Chen’s flagship, he thought.

There was the sound of footsteps in the dining room, Alikhan bringing in the first plates of snacks.

Sula brushed past him as she walked to the dining room door.

Moment passed, he thought. Moment survived.

He followed her. Alikhan stood by the corner of the table, immaculate in dress uniform, white apron, and white gloves.

“Master Weaponer Alikhan!” Sula smiled. “How are you?”

Alikhan beamed from behind his curled mustachios. “Very well, my lady. You’re looking well.”

“You’re very kind.” She allowed Alikhan to draw out a chair for her. “What are we eating tonight?”

“I believe we’re starting with a toasted rice paper packet stuffed with a filling of whipped krek-tuber, smoked crystallized sausage, and spinach.”

“Sounds lovely.”

Sheltered beneath Alikhan’s benign presence, Martinez and Sula managed a civil, pleasant meal. The conversation remained on safe, mostly professional topics, though over dessert he finally managed to deliver an outburst on the subject of Tork. He’d had a lot of practice by now, and his diatribe was exceptionally eloquent.

Sula shrugged. “The war returned certain people to power,” she said, “and they were the people who had no use for us to begin with. What did you expect? Gratitude?”

“I hadn’t expected to be treated so badly.”

“We both have our captain’s rank, and our seniority. Even under the best of circumstances we wouldn’t be promoted to squadcom for years, so we’ve done better than we could otherwise have expected.” She sipped her coffee. “They’ll need us again, for the next war.”

Martinez looked at her in surprise. “You think there’ll be another war?”

“How can there not be?” She flung out a hand. “The Shaa put us all in the hands of a six-hundred-member committee. How effective do you think such a group could be in running something as big and complicated as the empire?”

“Not very,” Martinez said. “But they’re going to have the Fleet, aren’t they?”

“Maybe. ButI think that the only thing a six-hundred-member committee can agree on is that they should all have more and more of what they’ve got already. In the past the Shaa kept a lid on the avarice of the lords convocate, but the Shaa are dead. I think we’ll have war within a generation.” She placed her coffee cup carefully in its saucer and examined it in the light. “Gemmelware,” she said. “Very nice.”

“Fletcher had good taste,” Martinez said, “or so I’m told.”

“Fletcher had good advisers.” She put the saucer and its cup on the table and looked at him. “I hope you’re getting good advice, Martinez.”

“About porcelain? I depend entirely on your expertise.”

She gazed at him for a moment, then sighed. “A lot of it hangs on what you like,” she said. “You’re going to have to choose.”

Sula stood in her miserable metal office, looked at the pair of guns mounted on the wall behind her desk and counted the dead in her life. Caro Sula, PJ Ngeni, Casimir.

Anthony, her almost-stepfather. Richard Li, her late captain, and the entire crew of theDauntless.

Lamey, her lover on Spannan, who was almost certainly dead.

Thousands of Naxids, who almost didn’t count because she knew none of them personally.

Each death was a roll of the dice. Against the odds, each time she had come up a winner. For others, luck had not been so generous.

Now Martinez was coming again into her orbit, and she wondered if he realized how much danger he was in. He was the luckiest man she knew-the luckiest in the universe, she had once told him. She wondered if his luck could possibly overcome the ill luck that she seemed to carry for others.

Certain calculations could be made. Fertile Martinez had done his duty, and sired a boy on the Chen heir. Perhaps that meant that his family were done with Martinez, at least for the present.

She wondered how Clan Martinez would take the news if Martinez were to divorce the wife he’d known for all of seven days. Clan Martinez had most of what they wanted, access to the highest levels of the High City, and a Chen heir with Martinez genes. Sula also wondered if Lord Chen would object if his parvenu son-in-law were to decamp and leave him free to marry his daughter to someone with a more suitable pedigree.

Michi Chen also figured in Sula’s calculations, but she had been sent into obscurity by the Supreme Commander and had lost both her ability to reward and punish. She had become irrelevant to the situation.

Even if Clan Martinez proved an obstacle, there were other ways. Sula now knew people who specialized in such ways.

She pictured herself the perfect, doting stepmother, dandling the young Gareth on her knee, letting his tiny fingers play with her medals. Replacing the mother he barely knew, the one who had died so tragically…

Sula basked in that picture for a long, sunny moment, then rejected it. Bloodletting was not a suitable way to begin a new relationship. One wanted to begin with hope, not slaughter.

And besides, she never wanted to put herself in the debt of someone like Sergius Bakshi. Only the worst could come of that.

If things were to proceed, they would have to move in a more conventional fashion, with drama and rage, anger and passion, sorrow and betrayal.

With her at the center of the storm, rolling the dice and letting them fall where they would.

The two ships raced on, accelerating at a steady one gravity. Decks and walls were painted or polished. Meals were cooked and consumed. Parts were maintained and replaced on a regular schedule. Drills were held occasionally, just so the crews didn’t forget how to do their jobs. For the most part life was easy.

Communication with the outside went only so far and no farther. The wormhole relay station destroyed by the Orthodox Fleet, at Bachun between Magaria and Zanshaa, had not been replaced, and neither had other stations destroyed elsewhere in the empire by Chenforce and Light Squadron 14. Communication was perfect within the part of the empire formerly held by the Naxids, and that sphere was ruled absolutely by Lord Tork, from his new headquarters at Magaria. To reach any area outside that zone a courier missile was required, and the two ships generated no news of sufficient importance to justify sending one.

The halfway point was reached, and the ships spun neatly about and began the deceleration that would take them to Zanshaa. Shortly afterward they entered the Magaria system and rendered passing honors to the Supreme Commander on the Magaria ring. A staff officer sent a routine acknowledgment, and that seemed to be that.

Until, a day later, an order was flashed from Tork’s headquarters.

The message consisted of new orders for Sula. After testifying before the elite commission on Zanshaa, she was to take Fleet transport to Terra, where she would begin a term as captain of Terra’s ring.

It was intended aspunishment, Sula realized with delight. Exile for two or more years to an obscure, backwater planet, off the trade routes, which coincidentally happened to be the home of her species.

Terra. Earth. Where she could see with her own eyes the venerable cities of Byzantium, Xi’an, SaSuu. Where she could caress ancient marbles with her own hands and touch the most venerable porcelains in the empire. Where she could bathe in the oceans that had given birth to all the planet’s myriad forms of life.

Where she could walk among the carved monuments of Terra’s history, with the dust of kings clinging to the bottoms of her shoes.

And this was apunishment.

Sula could only laugh.

If Tork only knew, she thought. If he only knew.

Martinez floated through his days in a haze of calculation. Or perhaps fantasy. In the ritualized artificial worlds that wereIllustrious andConfidence, it was getting hard to tell the difference.

Sula was present, and tangible, and beautiful, and he desired her. He saw her every two or three days, but they were never completely alone. If he should kiss her, or even touch her arm for too long a time, someone on the ship-Michi, Chandra, a servant-would see, and within hours everyone on board both ships would know. When they were in company, he tried to avoid looking at her, so that he would never be betrayed by a spellbound gaze.

He distrusted the sense of unreality that surrounded his current existence, and he wasn’t used to doubting himself or his senses, so his doubt made him frantic. The journey from Naxas to Zanshaa was a transition from war to peace, from fame to obscurity, from duty to irresponsibility. The temptation was to forget that there would be a landing at the end, and that the landing would be more or less hard.

In his mind, he bargained with Lord Chen. “You may have your daughter,” he said, “for use as a pawn in whatever unspeakable political games you next wish to play. In exchange you and your sister will continue to support my career in the Fleet-that’s only fair, I think you’ll agree.

“And one other thing,” he added, “I must have the child.”

This fantasy, or calculation, or whatever it was, seemed perfectly reasonable, until he found himself at his desk and looked down at the floating images of Terza and his son, and then it seemed madness.

Sula had walked out on him twice. Giving her a third chance seemed the height of lunacy.

Then he would see her at dinner or a reception, and the fever would kindle again in his blood.

Illustriousflashed through Magaria Wormhole 1 and left Tork’s isolated sphere. All the accumulated news, mail, and video communications from the outside arrived, and met the fantasy head-on.

There were dozens of messages from Terza, ranging from electronic facsimiles of brief handwritten notes to videos of herself with Young Gareth. When Terza spoke to the camera, the infant turned his head to look for the person who was so occupying his mother’s attention, and was visibly puzzled to find no one there. Martinez was completely charmed.

I must have the child.

The one non-negotiable clause in his bargain with existence.

Terza’s later messages showed her relief at the news from Magaria, and then from Naxas. “At least we know you’re all right, wherever you are, even if we won’t be seeing you right away.”

In the very latest message she was aboard a ship. “I’m traveling with my father,” she said. “The Control Board is moving from…well, one secret place to another, and I’m going along as his hostess.”

Terza was going to some new place, he thought sourly, that Michi would know about but he wouldn’t. Sometimes it was hard not to think of the entire Chen clan as a vast conspiracy designed to keep him in the dark.

The next day, Michi invited him for cocktails. The elaborate dinners that had for a month occupied the attentions of the officers and their cooks had faded, to be replaced by teas or cocktail parties or gaming functions. People were putting on too much weight, for one thing, and for another, the delicacies that had been brought aboard at Chijimo, and restocked at Zanshaa, were running low.

He found Michi in her office, not in the long dining room. A snack of flat bread, pickles, and canned fish eggs gave off a whiff of stale olive oil. Vandervalk mixed the drinks in the corner and poured them into chilled glasses. Michi gazed at hers, sipped, and gazed again.

She looked tired, and careful application of cosmetic hadn’t entirely disguised the fine new lines around her eyes and mouth. She looked at her drink as if seeing past it to the end of her active career, and Martinez suspected the view wasn’t to her liking.

“I’ve heard from Maurice,” she said after a moment. “He was as annoyed as we were that the Convocation made Lord Tork’s rank permanent. More so, perhaps-he’ll have to deal with Tork at Control Board meetings, while we won’t have to see him at all.”

Martinez very much doubted that anyone was more annoyed with Tork than he was, but he managed to make sympathetic noises anyway.

“Maurice let me know some of what’s been going on behind the scenes,” Michi said. “Did you know that the government was in touch with the Naxids almost the entire length of the war?”

“Was it like Tork and Dakzad before Second Magaria?” Martinez asked. “Arguing the finer points of the Praxis with each other?”

Michi smiled. “Probably. I imagine they mostly exchanged surrender demands. The Naxids even took ours seriously, after they lost Zanshaa.”

He looked at her, the astringent taste of the cocktail on his tongue. “Really?”

“They tried to negotiate an end to the war. But we insisted on unconditional surrender, and they saw no reason to accept that while they still had a fleet in being.

“After Second Magaria the negotiations got a lot more serious. But apparently they decided to gamble on winning at Naxas, and that we’d accept more of their conditions if Chenforce sailed off into the unknown and then vanished without a trace. But it left them without a leg to stand on when we actually won.”

“They had no choice but to commit suicide,” Martinez said.

“Yes.”

“I can’t say I’m sorry.”

She gave a little shrug that said she wasn’t sorry either.

“I’ve got a video from Terza,” she said. “She seems to be thriving. And Gareth is perfectly adorable, obviously a bright child.”

“Obviously a genius,” Martinez corrected.

Michi smiled. “Yes.” The smile faded. “It’s hard being away from them at this age, isn’t it? I know.”

“Have you heard from yours?”

“Yes. James has matriculated, finally.”

“Send him my congratulations.”

“I will. He’ll be at the Cheng Ho Academy next term.”

That was the Fleet academy reserved for the highest caste of Terran Peers. Michi and Sula had attended it. Martinez had settled for the somewhat less prestigious Nelson Academy.

Michi’s face darkened. “I’m not sure it’s wise to send him into the Fleet. I don’t know what I’ll be able to do for him, with Tork hovering over our careers.”

“I’ll do what I can, of course.”

“Of course.” He was family; that sort of thing was expected. She turned to him. “What about Lady Sula?”

His heart gave a lurch. “Sorry?”

“Do you think she’d be willing to take James on as a cadet?”

There was no reason to think that Sula would be enjoying a command in a few years any more than he would, but he answered that he was reasonably sure Sula would oblige.

“Though you may not want James’s career to be entirely in the hands of those on Tork’s shit list,” Martinez said. “I’m sure we’d help, but you might want to find James a service patron who’s not in the line of fire.”

“I’ll do that, thanks.” Michi took another sip of her drink.

Martinez began to fret about his son. Young Gareth would go into the Fleet, of course, there was no doubt about that, and being a Chen, he would attend the Cheng Ho Academy. The junior officers who had thrived under Martinez would then be in a position to aid his son. A brilliant career was therefore assured.

Unless some malevolent force intervened. Of course Tork would be dead by then, but Tork would no doubt pick a successor.

Martinez sipped his drink, letting the burning alcohol fire trickle down his throat, and wondered if for the sake of his son he should hope that Sula was right, that there would soon be another war.

“That rifle? That’s an improvised weapon, used in the fighting in Zanshaa City. And the other one”-Sula turned to him-“that’s PJ’s gun. He was carrying it when he died.”

Martinez looked at her for a long moment, then at the long rifle with its silver and ivory inlay. “He got what he wanted then,” he said. “He was trying to find a way to join the fighting.”

“He was in love with your sister till the end.”

She didn’t have to explain which sister PJ loved. Not Walpurga, the one he’d married, but Sempronia, who had jilted him.

Martinez had been invited to dine byConfidence ‘s wardroom. The frigate’s lieutenants hadn’t heard his war stories yet, and he expected to enjoy himself relating them.

He had arrived early to pay his respects to Sula.

And to talk to her.

And to see her.

And to feel his blood blaze at the sight.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked. “I can have Rizal boil water.”

“No thanks.” The fewer interruptions by servants, he thought, the better.

“Sit down then.”

He sat in a straight-backed metal-framed chair acquired on the cheap by some government purchaser. Sula’s bare, small, functional quarters were far removed from his own luxurious, art-filled suite.

“Are guns your only ornament?” he asked. “I’d send you some pictures, but I don’t think Fletcher’s estate would approve.”

“You’ve got an artist, don’t you?” Sula said. “Maybe I could commission something from him.”

“Perhaps a full-length portrait,” Martinez said.

Sula grinned. “I couldn’t put up with looking at myself hours on end, especially in a tiny place like this. I don’t know how you stand it.”

Martinez felt an implied criticism in this statement.

“I admire the artistry of it. The sfumato, for example.” It was one of the technical words he’d learned from Jukes while he sat for the painting. “The balance of light and shade, the arrangement of objects on the table that helps to bring the image into the third dimension-”

There was a knock on the door, and Martinez turned to see Haz,Confidence ‘s premiere.

“Beg pardon,” Haz told Sula, “but the wardroom is happy to offer Captain Martinez its hospitality.”

“I’ll see you another time, Captain,” Sula said, rising smoothly.

As Martinez took her hand to say farewell, his mind finally received the message that his senses had been trying to send him for some time.

Sula’s scent had changed. Instead of the musky scent she had worn since she’d joined the Orthodox Fleet, she was now wearing Sandama Twilight, the perfume that he had tasted on her flesh as, over a year ago now, they lay in the vast, hideous canopied bed in her rented apartment.

He looked down at her in shock, his hand still wrapped around hers. She gazed back, her face deliberately incurious.

He dropped her hand, turned to follow Haz to the wardroom, and felt a flow of sheer emotion as it rolled like a slow, implacable tide through his blood.

She’s mine,he thought.

Sula had decided to roll the dice again, three nights earlier when she’d returned from a cocktail party Michi had given for the officers of her sadly reduced squadron. She’d stepped into her little office, her skin still tingling with the awareness of Martinez that she’d felt during the last few hours, and paused to look at the wall behind her desk, the wall with the two rifles.

There was the keepsake of PJ, she and the keepsake of Sidney.

It was only then that she realized that she had no keepsake of Casimir, nothing but memories of frantic nights filled with the sting of adrenaline, the tang of sweat, and the sound of weapons fire. She had put Casimir in his tomb, and sacrificed theju yao pot to his memory. She had intended to join him, to seek her oblivion in a brilliant, clarifying, annihilating blast at Magaria, but pride had intervened.

Very well, she would let pride dictate her course. She would roll the dice on life, not death. She would roll the dice on love, not exile.

She would let Casimir stay buried, and hope that the fantastic Martinez luck would overcome the curse she carried with her.

In her mind, she bargained with Lord Chen. “I can arrange for the return of your daughter,” she said. “Captain Martinez and I were in love before the marriage was arranged. I can arrange for that love to blossom again. The marriage will end, and you will not be blamed by Clan Martinez.

“In return I require your patronage of myself, and your continued patronage of Captain Martinez. And of course Martinez and I will raise the child, who I don’t imagine you’d care to have around anyway.”

And who I need as a hostage to guarantee your cooperation.

She looked at the matter from Lord Chen’s point of view, and saw nothing to object to.

She knew better than to strike any fantasy bargains with Lady Terza Chen. The Chen heir had been born under circumstances that valued her womb over any other part. She was a bearer of precious Chen genetics, to be mixed with other valuable genetics as her family dictated. That Chen genes had been debased by Martinez plasma was, as far as Clan Chen was concerned, a misfortune of history.

Terza had been born a mere carrier of genes, but marriage had turned her into something more formidable. Her social standing was higher than that of her husband, which made her valuable to the wealthy, ambitious clan into which she had married, and who would be inclined to defer to her. In fact-as Sula was inclined to read the situation-it was Lord Chen who was the pawn now, a pawn both of Martinez interests and of his newly empowered daughter, the mother of the new clan heir.

It was unlikely that Terza would wish to return to her earlier role as a mere breeder-in-waiting. Any such change would have to be decided elsewhere. Her husband and her father would have to be in agreement on these basics.

With these thoughts in mind, Sula shaped her new program. Her policy of pride demanded that she not cheapen herself in any way. She did not pursue Martinez.

Instead, she drew him a map. She gave up the Sengra perfume that Casimir had given her and returned to her earlier scent, Sandama Twilight. This, she noticed, seemed to produce an effect-Martinez looked as if she’d hit him between the eyes with a hammer.

Detail was added to the map. WhenConfidence was still two wormhole jumps from Zanshaa, she arranged to rent a spacious apartment in the Petty Mount, in the shadow of the High City. To give herself privacy she made Macnamara and Spence the present of a twenty-nine-day vacation at a resort on Lake Tranimo, two hours from Zanshaa City by supersonic train. “You’re sick of the sight of me after all this time,” she told them over their protests. “And though I love you both, I will be happy not to have to look at you for a while.”

Her cook, Rizal, was given a discharge and permission to return home, though she kept him on retainer in case she needed to produce a meal.

She made certain that Martinez knew of all these arrangements, knew that she would be alone in a comfortable apartment away from the close confines and spying eyes of the High City. She wouldn’t even have any servants around.

She drew the map, but it was up to Martinez to follow it. Pride demanded that, at least.

She received few messages once communication with Zanshaa was restored. The news programs from the capital consisted in large part of executions. She didn’t watch them-she’d seen quite enough of that-but took note of the names.

With the peace, the information possessed by the enemy prisoners was no longer of any value, and batches of them were being flung from the High City every day. All the members of the government, both Naxids and others, officers of the security services, and the members of the ration authority whose lives Sula had spared so the planet would not starve. Now they were all condemned, their lives forfeit, their fortunes confiscated, their clans decimated.

Good,Sula thought.

The tiny revenant of Chenforce flew into Zanshaa’s system, braked, fell into orbit around Zanshaa. Between the ships and the blue and white planet curved a vast section of the broken accelerator ring, a section so huge that it was impossible to tell from close up that it was a mere fragment of what had once been the greatest monument of interstellar civilization. The ring’s smooth flank was studded with antennae, receiver dishes, and vast solar arrays.

In time, fragments of the broken ring would be nudged down to a lower orbit, reconnected to the elevator tethers, then stitched back together. Several large asteroids would be sacrificed to provide enough mass to replace the segments that had been vaporized in the antimatter explosions that had separated the ring sections.

For the moment, though, the ring was still a wreck. Tugs nudged the two warships to bays in the Fleet docks, where they would remain for months, perhaps years, awaiting their overhaul. The ring wasn’t spinning, so there was no gravity, and the crew floated weightless as soon as they released their webbing.

There was no accommodation for officers or crew on the ring. Not only was there no gravity, but the vast empty tube had not yet been pumped full of air. A series of atmosphere shuttles approached the warships and hovered a short distance away while lifelines were rigged. The crew formed in their divisions, donned vac suits, and moved in small groups into the main cargo airlock, where they crawled hand over hand along the lifelines till they reached their shuttles. Their baggage came after them on lines.

Sula waited in the airlock atrium to wish them all goodbye. She stood before the doors, wearing her vac suit but without her helmet, and shook the hand of each of the crew as they passed.

It was harder than she’d expected. Building the secret army and seizing the High City had been her greatest accomplishment, but it had never been her ambition, and she had never trained for such a task. The covert war and the battle for the High City had been a frantic improvisation, and though she was proud of her decisions, it had been too much like a plunge into unknown territory for her to feel comfortable with the memory.

Her training and hopes, however, had always been aimed at the command of a warship, andConfidence was her first. The frigate was small and unlovely, and her quarters a metal-walled box, but she had grown to love this deadly waspish instrument of her will. She had won many victories in its close confines, and not all of them were against Naxids.

The officers and their servants were the last off the ship, and had a shuttle of their own. Sula nerved herself to put on the hated helmet, and managed to contain her terror long enough to slap the faceplate closed and step into the airlock. Seeing the huge blue loom of the planet to one side and the great dazzle of stars on the other calmed her, gave her a sense of scale and helped her forget the confines of the shoe box she wore on her head.

After the transfer, they had to wait on their acceleration couches for the officers fromIllustrious, who took a longer time because they had more crew to transfer. Sula hated every second she was confined in the helmet, and was grateful for more than one reason as she recognized Martinez floating aboard. Even in a vac suit, those long arms and shortish legs were unmistakable.

Everyone webbed in, and the chemical engines ignited. The shuttle trailed fire across half the world before making a series of braking S-turns before Zanshaa City, after which it dropped to a landing at Wi-hun. Sula gazed out the ports and watched the sky turn from black to viridian green.

She was happy to wrench off her helmet as the shuttle taxied to its hard stand. When the big doors opened, they let in a blast of summer heat and the most wonderful air she had ever tasted. It smelled mostly of the volatile chemicals of the shuttle exhaust, but behind the reek she could savor greenery and summer flowers. The air aboardConfidence had been filtered and scrubbed, but still, over time there was a buildup of sweat and dead skin and hair, spilled food and lubricating oil and metal polish, and it produced a deadening musty odor.

In contrast, fresh air was wonderful. It was glorious. It was better than the finest wine.

Sula followed Michi and Martinez out of the shuttle. The docking tubes at the terminal building were incompatible with the doorways of Fleet vehicles, so the officers descended on a metal stairway that had been run out on the back of a small truck. She felt sweat pop on her forehead from the reflected heat of the pavement. Macnamara and Spence helped her out of her vac suit and stowed it in its container.

Final salutes were made, final good-byes spoken. She said her farewells to Haz, Giove, Ikuhara, Macnamara, and Spence. Some of the lieutenants piled into rented transport that had driven out to meet them, and the rest followed the enlisted on a walk across green grass to the train station.

For herself and Martinez, Michi had rented a pair of vast slate-colored Victory limousines, the same model that Casimir had painted eleven shades of apricot. Michi had offered Sula a ride as well, and she had accepted.

Alikhan, Jukes, and Michi’s servants piled the luggage into the second vehicle. Sula, who had brought only the minimum number of uniforms and a pair of rifles, had neglected to acquire statues, figurines, and works of art, and possessed no porcelain blazoned with the Sula crest, no hand-cut crystal, no bed linen, no foam pillows cut to the shape of her head and neck. She simply asked Alikhan to put her vac suit into the baggage compartment of the first car along with her trunk and her rifle cases, and went to join Michi and Martinez in the passenger compartment.

A polite young Lai-own stepped into her path. He held a crisp creamy envelope in one hand, an envelope sealed with a ribbon and a blotch of wax, and a datapad in the other.

“Beg pardon, Lady Sula,” he said. “If you will sign that you have received this?”

She signed the title “Sula” and ducked into the car. The inside of the limousine featured cut crystal vases filled with fresh flowers. The seats were maroon leather and very soft. Michi was dragging a bottle of champagne out of a bucket of ice, and Martinez helped her open it.

Sula opened the envelope, read the contents, and began to laugh.

“What is it?” Michi asked.

“Blitsharts!” Sula cried. “It’s another deposition!”

Michi stared at her blankly. Martinez grinned.

“It’s how we first met,” he said.

Sula and Martinez explained to Michi how they had encountered one another on a mission to rescue the famed yachtsman Captain Blitsharts and his equally famous dog Orange. It was the first time they had worked together, the first time they had experienced the near unity of thought and action that sometimes seemed to make them a part of some higher being.

“Except that once I got to him, Blitsharts turned out to be a corpse!” Sula said.

A Fleet Court of Inquiry had ruled the Blitsharts death accidental, but the insurance company was appealing in civilian court, claiming evidence of suicide, and now a new round of depositions was scheduled.

Michi smiled indulgently as Martinez and Sula relived the past. When the torrent of memory had ceased, Michi undid the top button of her tunic, licked spilled liquid from her fingers, and raised her glass.

“I’d like to make a toast,” she said.

“Wait a minute,” said Sula. She found a glass of sparkling water in the little refrigerator, opened it and poured it into a champagne glass.

“To a campaign well fought,” Michi said.

Sula rang her glass against the others. “And to our next,” she said.

Michi raised her eyebrows at this, but drank in silence.

The limousine left the second vehicle still loading and pulled away. Sula saw that saplings had been planted to replace the trees on the verge of the airfield, those the Naxids had cut to give their guards a proper field of fire.

The Terran driver took the Axtattle Parkway into the city. She had never seen the Axtattle from this point of view, and she looked for the building where she and Action Team 491 had laid their first disastrous ambush against the Naxids. She found the place easily enough. The facade of the building was still pocked by the thousands of bullets the Naxids had fired in response.

“What are you looking for?” Martinez asked.

She told them, described the disastrous ambush and their frantic escape. Other sights visible from the elevated highway triggered additional memories, and she described the Bogo Boys’ ambush of the Naxid flying squads, her visit to the illegal hospital set up for the victims of the Remba bombing, the way she’d visited a Judge of Interrogation in her Green Park home and threatened her into releasing an imprisoned comrade.

She looked at Martinez as she finished this anecdote, and saw a deep, appreciative awareness kindle in his eyes.

It seems she’d impressed him.

Well, she thought.That was good.

“Will you be seeing old members of your army while you’re on planet?” Michi asked.

“Yes,” she said, “absolutely. Though I’m starting with a courtesy call on the lord governor tomorrow, to assure him I’m not here to overthrow him. After that I’m just going to be living quietly for a few days, get over the trip and the time change.”

Another few details added to the map, to let Martinez know that she had no activities planned for the next few days and might be available for a rendezvous.

She’d already sent messages to Julien and Patel, and they were planning a raucous Bogo Boys reunion in four days’ time. She’d visit Sidney when she could, and invite Fer Tuga, the Axtattle sniper, to pay her a visit. She’d also send greetings to Sergius Bakshi, though she wouldn’t see him unless invited.

She wondered what Martinez would think of the more raffish element among her friends. She wondered what they would think of Martinez.

She was looking forward to finding out.

The Axtattle Parkway broke into several avenues as it approached the High City, and the driver chose a route that swept around the north flank of the cliff face and up the switchback road. The ruins of the Naxid bunkers at the base of the acropolis had been cleared, and the unsightly gun turrets at the Gates of the Exalted had been removed.

“Where shall we take you, Lady Sula?” Michi asked.

“Oh. I’m not staying on the High City. I’ve got a place on the Petty Mount.”

Michi looked at her in surprise.

“I’ll take the car back down, if I may,” Sula said. “But I still have to deliver the data foils, and while I was here I thought I’d look around the High City, see what they’ve done with it.”

“Certainly. Take the car if you like.”

Parts of the High City still looked as if a battle had been fought there, and the empty cave where the New Destiny had stood had not yet been filled. But all of the parks and many of the palaces were bright with summer flowers, and dozens of new businesses had opened, none of them aimed entirely at the Naxid trade.

The limousine drew up to the Commandery, and Daimong guards snapped to the salute as they stepped out. The officers paid their ritual visit to the Fleet Records Office, where they deposited the data foils that contained their logs and the official records of their commands, and then returned to the car.

A few minutes later the Victory pulled up before the Chen Palace, where Martinez would be staying as Michi’s guest, a temporary-Sula hoped-prisoner of his in-laws. The doors rolled in silence into the roof. Martinez stepped onto the sidewalk, and bent to take Michi’s hand and help her out of the vehicle. Sula stepped out the other side, into the street.

“My lord!”

Sula looked up at the sound of the new voice, and saw a handsome, assured man of middle years walking forward from the Chen Palace front door. He wore the wine-red tunic of the lords convocate and was leading a party forward to meet the newcomers at the curb. Most of the party were servants, to carry the luggage.

But Sula paid no attention either to Lord Chen and the servants. She looked instead at the tall beautiful black-haired woman who walked by her father’s side, her path a graceful glide despite the infant she carried in her arms.

Sudden bitterness stung her throat. Apparently the Chens had planned a little romantic surprise, not letting their son-in-law know that his wife and child had come to Zanshaa to meet him.

Of coursethe Fleet Control Board would return to Zanshaa as soon as it was safe-ahead of the Convocation, who had farther to travel.Of course the members would bring their families.Of course the new mother would want to show her husband their new child. It was foolish of her not to have anticipated it.

A domestic ambush. And from the secret little smile that Sula saw on Michi Chen’s face, it was clear the squadcom had been a part of the plot.

Sula’s eyes flashed to Martinez, who stood in complete astonishment, his big hands by his sides.

Terza Chen neared, her eyes glittering with profound, triumphant pleasure. Sula had never seen emotion so close to the surface of her face.

Sula could see Martinez only in profile, and she watched the rapid play of feeling that crossed his face, the shock and surprise, the dawning comprehension followed by the frantic sense that he had been trapped.

And then his eyes turned to the child, and they softened in growing wonder. His face began to glow with awe and adoration. He reached out a hand. Terza stepped close and kissed him on the cheek, but his eyes were still on the child.

Sula knew she had lost. She had created a map that Martinez would never follow.

She had rolled the dice, and lost.

She lowered herself back into the car and pressed the stud to roll the doors down. She touched the pad that would open a comm channel to the driver.

“Drive on,” she said.