Praxis

TWELVE

Captain Lord Richard Li was a witness to the moment that saved Zanshaa and the Home Fleet. Fleet Commander Jarlath, trying to get to the bottom of construction delays at the ring dockyard, had called a meeting of dock administrators, civilian contractors, and the officers of ships building and in refit, but his temper rose at the vague answers he received from the administrators and the contractors.

“Do you know your own business or not?” Jarlath finally demanded. The fur on his face stood erect, obscuring his facial features beneath the bristle and making him look like a hairbrush with two huge shaded eyes. The slight lisp, caused by his having to speak around his fangs, became more sinister than comical. “Why have the estimates been exceeded forDestiny andRecovery? Why can I receive no firm date for the completion of work onDauntless andEstimable?”

No firm dates or answers were given.All these things sort of depend on other things was the best answer the commander of the Home Fleet received, which happened to be the same answer Lord Richard had been getting since his appointment. His ship was full of noise and workmen, the stink of hot metal and the booming rumble of steel wheels on the big slabs of plastic temporary flooring, but nothing seemed to be any closer to completion than the day he’d arrived.

Lord Richard had been receiving hints of impatience from the private firm he’d hired to decorate the officers’ suite, to install his new hutch, cabinets, and bar, to lay in his bathroom the lovely rough slate tiles that Terza had chosen for him, and to paint the hull, pinnaces, and missiles in his personal colors, a sublime burgundy red accented subtly with stripes of purple. The firm couldn’t start until the rebuild was finished, and now they were making ominous noises to the effect that if these delays continued, they might have to postpone work for months due to other commitments.

This was far too alarming. Lord Richard had thought the new fleetcom ought to have some idea how his dockyard was run. “I simply don’t have the seniority to get so much as a single answer from these people,” he’d told Jarlath. “But they’ll have to answer toyou. ”

Now he watched as the commander of the Home Fleet discovered that he didn’t have the seniority either.

“I’m calling in the auditors!” Jarlath snarled as he walked down the rim road to the skyhook terminus. “There’s got to be thieving going on. It’s only pride in the service that keeps me from calling the Legion of Diligence!”

Jarlath made an eye-catching picture as he stalked down the rubberized roadway. He had bleached his fur white in order to avoid the heat of formal mourning garb, and was dressed only in white trunks and a vest, both piped with service green and heavy with badges of rank. His powerful legs and broad haunches propelled his round-bottomed body with purpose and energy, all now directed toward clearing up the mess in the dockyards.

Lord Richard Li had reason to feel pleased with himself. He was already picturing to himself the bath aboardDauntless, the slate tile, the gleaming fixtures of porcelain and copper, steam rising from the scented water as he lowered himself into the tub…and then Jarlath saw Senior Squadron Commander Elkizer, and brought Lord Richard’s pleasant fantasy to an end.

The leader of the Naxid heavy cruiser squadron stood with a group of officers and senior enlisted personnel before the massive airlock door that led to Jarlath’s own flagship,Glory of the Praxis. Elkizer gestured at the airlock, his chameleon-weave jacket flashing the red-on-black patterns of his beaded scales.

Jarlath saw his subordinate and marched toward him. One of the Naxids saw the fleetcom coming and alerted Elkizer, and Elkizer’s four-legged body spun in place, two legs advancing forward, two in retreat, and then braced to attention. One last pattern flashed on the chameleon-weave jacket. Jarlath paused in surprise, then put his head down and marched to Elkizer again.

“What do you mean, ‘dupe’?” he asked.

Lord Richard was surprised at Jarlath’s words, though his surprise was nothing compared to that of Squadron Leader Elkizer, who swayed backward in astonishment, his back bent like a bow. “I beg your pardon, Lord Fleetcom,” he managed. “I did not use that sign.”

Jarlath bobbed his furry head as he loomed over Elkizer. The bobbing wasn’t a nod of affirmation, but a kind of triangulation used by his nocturnal, carnivorous species to fix the precise location of their prey.

“My lord, I spent three years at the Festopath Academy, where Torminel and Naxids shared a dormitory,” Jarlath lisped. “Believe me when I say that during those three years I learned every disrespectful idiom in the Naxid vocabulary, a fact that aided me greatly when I served as Lord President of the Academy a few years ago.” His lips peeled back from his fangs. “So kindly explain to me what you meant when you flashed, ‘Silence, the dupe approaches.’ ”

Elkizer was frozen for a long moment before he managed to speak. “My lord,” he said, “I must insist. I did not use that sign.”

“What signwas it, then?”

There was another long silence while Elkizer searched his thoughts. “The sign can also mean ‘lawn,’ ” he said finally.

“True. So what did you mean by ‘thelawn approaches’?”

Elkizer tried another path. “I meant no disrespect, my lord.”

Jarlath’s tone was savage. “To me? Or to thelawn? ”

Lord Richard watched the confrontation in awe, his nerves urging him to fight or fly. The Naxids were descended from predators who ran in packs, but the Torminels had once been solitary, nocturnal hunters of the heavy forest, pugnacious, persistent, and utterly fearless. Lord Richard thought Jarlath had been angry before, confronting the dockyard superintendent, but now it was clear that Jarlath had barely scratched the surface of his rage.

May Inever piss this one off, Lord Richard thought.

For the first time, Jarlath seemed to notice the crowd of Naxids behind Elkizer, the unusual mixture of high-ranking officers and senior noncoms. “What are these folk doing here?” he demanded. “What is your purpose?”

“My lord,” Elkizer said, “it’s an orientation tour. For new personnel.”

Jarlath panned across the party with his huge shaded eyes. “I see Junior Squadron Commander Farniai, who has been with the Home Fleet for six years. And Captain Tirzit, who was once second officer here at Ring Command. Captain Renzak-you’re on your second tour here, are you not?” His huge eyes swung back to Elkizer. “I’m surprised that these officers require orientation to a ring station they’ve inhabited for so many years.”

“My lord, it’s the others,” Elkizer said quickly. “We are orienting…these others.”

“Petty officers?” Jarlath said. “Constables?” He did the head-bobbing again, zeroing in on Elkizer’s throat. “Please surrender the impression that I am your dupe-or yourlawn. What are youreally doing here, Lord Commander?”

During the long silence that followed, it became clear to Lord Richard that Elkizer had fired all his ammunition and had nothing left in the shot locker but rust and scale.

“My lord, we mean no disrespect,” Elkizer finally said. “We thought you would be in the Commandery.”

All Jarlath’s white-bleached fur stood on end, burying once more his facial features, and hesqualled — the high-pitched yowl his prehistoric ancestors had used to freeze their victims while they pounced. Lord Richard was aware of personnel a hundred paces around stumbling with shock at the sound and turning to stare.

“No disrespect!” he screamed. “By this vilemendacity! By thisassembly, which you refuse to explain! By sneaking aroundbehind my back, while you thought I was in my office on Zanshaa!” Jarlath raised a heavy white fist. “You are up to something, my lord.”

Elkizer’s black-on-red eyes rolled. “My lord, I-”

“I don’tcare for another of your pathetic explanations,” Jarlath said, “even if this time it’s the truth. It is clear to me that you and these other-individuals-are involved in this scheme, whatever it is, because you have too little with which tooccupy your time. Therefore your squadron-and that of Squadcom Farniai here-will depart the ring station at 1701 today in order to participate in maneuvers. Which willbegin with a six-gravity acceleration toward Vandrith, followed by a slingshot maneuver and a full series of war games between your two squadrons, all of which will be designed by my staff for maximum stress on all ship systems-the crew in particular.”

“My lord!” Elkizer said. “We have crew on liberty!”

“Recall them! They have four hours to report.” Jarlath bared his fangs again. “Get moving!”

The Naxids began backpedaling, their booted feet beating at the roadway’s rubberized surface while their trunks remained erect.

“My lord,” Elkizer tried again, “you forget the dinner-”

“Fuckyour dinner!” Jarlath pronounced with satisfaction, and watched as the Naxids turned and sped away as fast as their thrashing feet could carry them.

For the next hour, trapped with Jarlath in the skyhook car as it plunged through the atmosphere to the surface of Zanshaa, Lord Richard and Jarlath’s staff had to listen to the fleetcom fume about the reek of dishonesty he smelled in this command, the general rottenness of everything at the dockyards, and the way the rot had spread to the Naxid squadrons.

“Discipline!”Jarlath said. “Order! Obedience! Theseshall be the watchwords of the Home Fleet from now on!”

“I’ll never think of Torminel as cute, furry pudge-pots ever again,” Lord Richard told Terza that evening. “My dear, the sight of Jarlath in fury was absolutely blood-chilling.”

The two Naxid squadrons, obeying Jarlath’s orders, detached from Zanshaa’s ring after four hours, oriented themselves toward Vandrith, and began the punishing acceleration that Jarlath had commanded.

Elkizer had no choice. His timetable called for the revolt to begin in four days’ time, all Naxids in the Fleet rising at the same moment throughout the empire. If he began early, word might reach other stations, and preparations taken before the Naxids elsewhere could strike.

Plus his instructions had insisted that he take care not to damage Zanshaa or its ring. Zanshaa was the capital of the empire, the place where the Great Masters rested, where the Convocation sat and where the Praxis had been proclaimed. To attack the planet or destroy its ring was unthinkable, near sacrilege. Though firing a barrage of missiles at the Home Fleet in its berths was a tempting prospect, such an attack would destroy the ring, and Naxid prestige along with it.

His planning had been systematic. Like every other Naxid party to the plot, Elkizer had no experience at managing a revolution or at fighting a battle. His lack of experience made him deeply uneasy, and so he strove for a comprehensive plan that left nothing to chance.

Unlike his colleague Fanaghee at Magaria, Elkizer didn’t command the fleet at Zanshaa, and he couldn’t simply order a Festival of Sport that would take the senior officers and most of the crews away from the ships. Instead, Elkizer planned an elaborate dinner for all the senior commanders, captains, and lieutenants, to celebrate the anniversary of the First Proclamation of the Praxis on Sandama. He planned to hold all the senior officers captive while his Naxids stormed Ring Command and all the berthed warships, after which the Lord Senior would proclaim the empire’s new arrangement to the Convocation. The Lords convocate could scarcely be expected to object, with the Home Fleet, the ring station, and thousands of antimatter missiles in the hands of the Naxids.

The plan considered that the chief danger would be a security leak, and so, like Fanaghee at Magaria, Elkizer planned to let people into the secret gradually, as they needed to know. He walked through the ring station several times with his staff, marking each target, planning each assignment. Then he brought in the next group of people, the senior captains and their top noncoms, and it was this group that ran afoul of Fleet Commander Jarlath. If Elkizer’s plans hadn’t been completely wrecked at that point, each captain would have gradually briefed others, the pool of knowledge widening until it encompassed hundreds. Most of the enlisted personnel that composed the boarding parties wouldn’t have understood the full implication of their tasks until they had been completed and Elkizer made his triumphant announcement.

Comprehensive as the plan was, there was no contingency in case the primary plan failed. The day of rebellion arrived with Elkizer’s force out of place. A return to Zanshaa would be suicide, so his squadrons swung past Vandrith, reduced acceleration to a single comfortable gravity, and kept on going, heading in a sedate, determined manner for the Zanshaa Wormhole 3, a course that would lead them, after three more wormhole jumps, to rendezvous with Senior Fleet Commander Fanaghee at Magaria.

There was complete astonishment in the Commandery when this became apparent some three hours later. The duty officer decided not to bother Jarlath, but instead queried Elkizer concerning why he had failed to follow the operational plan.

Over six hours later, when it was obvious that Elkizer had no intention of replying or of following orders, rebellion had been proclaimed in the Convocation, and everyone forgot about Elkizer for a while.

Akzad, the Lord Senior, raised his head and gazed at the convocates ringing the great amphitheater. “Although the Convocation is scheduled this afternoon to debate the creation of a uniform tariff structure in regard to the importation of luzhan from Antopone and El-vash, I should like to exercise a point of personal privilege and raise another matter.”

Maurice, Lord Chen, looked up from his desk, where he’d been going through the guest list for a reception at the Chen Palace-the limitation of parties to twenty-two guests was both a provocation and annoyance, as it inevitably meant leaving people off the list and running the risk of offending them. No tariffs? he thought vaguely. His clan was involved in the importation of luzhan from El-vash, and he would have been happy to see the Antopone tariffs kept high. Anything that postponed the vote had his favor.

Akzad rose from his couch. The corners of his stiff brocade cloak dragged on the ground as he moved-as slowly and grandly as Naxid physiology permitted-to the front of the dais, where he held the copper and silver wand in both hands, like a spear pointed vaguely at the back of the room.

“I wish to speak to a matter involving the survival of the Praxis itself,” he said. “For it seems to many of us that the Praxis is in danger.”

Surprise rose in Lord Chen.Threat to the Praxis?

“When the glory of the Praxis was first revealed,” Akzad said, “it was clear that not all species were at first able to appreciate its profound truths. The Praxis was first apprehended only by the Shaa, who in their wisdom determined to impose their vision of perfection upon all existence, first upon my own species and then others. For the Praxis is based, above all, on the eternal principle of subordination-on every line of authority and responsibility being absolutely clear-and the Shaa understood this before any of us. The Shaa were above us all, but the Shaa were still beneath the Praxis.”

Lord Chen, nodding at these commonplace observations, observed movement among the Naxid convocates. A dozen or so had left their places and were moving in their bolt-and-halt fashion to the front of the room. The Lord Senior continued.

“But since the passing of the Great Masters, these perfect arrangements have been replaced by those less perfect. In place of the ideal, in which the species first exposed to the Praxis imposed its will on all others, we now have an equivalence among the species speaking in Convocation.”

More of the Naxids were moving to the front, forming a line in front of the Lord Senior’s dais. Lord Chen looked left and right, seeing puzzled frowns on the faces of his colleagues.

“Where is the critical principle of subordination?” Akzad asked. “Where are the lines of authority? That is why, when it became clear that the last Shaa would soon pass, there was founded on Naxas the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis.”

Lord Chen sat bolt upright, his astonished mind reluctant to come to grips with the implications of Akzad’s words. Others were faster than he: old Lord Said was already on his feet, a fierce scowl on his hawk-nosed, mustached face. The oldest representative of an ancient, deeply conservative clan, he was not about to stand still for any such radical innovations as a self-appointed committee to save the Praxis, not when the Praxis was under the guardianship of Said himself and the other lords convocate.

“Is this treason?”Said demanded, his voice ringing clear in the vast room.

Akzad ignored the interruption. “In order to save the Praxis, we must restore the principle of subordination! In the place of the Shaa must stand those who have the greatest and longest exposure to the purity of the Praxis!”

“Treason! Treason!”Said called. Others began to echo him. One of the Torminel delegates leaped onto his desk and waved a furry fist. Fully half the hundred-odd Naxid convocates were now lined up before the dais. The rest seemed bewildered, half on their feet or still prone on their couches.

“You are not recognized!” Akzad countered, pointing the wand at Said. He touched one of the wand’s silver rings, boosting his own amplification to shout over the disorder.

“Throughout the empire on this day,” he said, “loyal citizens are acting to save the Praxis in accordance with the instructions of the Committee! Warships, ring stations, and other installations are being seized!” He swept his wand across the arc of the lords convocate. “It is your clear duty to obey the orders of the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis! You are commanded to resume your seats and place yourselves under my command!”

“I’ve heard enough of this!” Said’s trained rhetorician’s voice boomed out over the assembly even without the benefit of amplification. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I know what to do when I see a traitor!”

And then, despite his eighty-odd years, the gray-maned convocate picked up his chair and headed for the aisle, brandishing the chair over his head. “Death to traitors!” he roared.

Lord Senior Akzad had planned to present his demands in the knowledge that they would be enforced by the hundreds of antimatter missiles commanded overhead by squadron leaders Elkizer and Farniai. Akzad and his followers demonstrated enormous courage in following their instructions from the Committee and demanding the surrender of the Convocation even through the two friendly squadrons were four days’ hard acceleration away, and headed in the wrong direction, while any missiles remaining above remained in possession of the Fleet.

Absent military power, Lord Akzad might have considered arming himself or his followers with weapons. But weapons had not been mentioned in his instructions, and a massacre of the convocates was never what the Committee intended. They wanted obedience, and they expected to get it. The thought that the lords convocate might resist them violently had never entered their minds.

And so, in the end, Akzad faced the Convocation armed only with his courage and a copper-plated wand. When Lord Said marched down the aisle and hurled his chair at the Lord Senior, Akzad lost all control of the situation.

“I demand that you return to your seat!” he called. “Those who do not submit will be punished!”

But few paid him any heed. More chairs followed the first. Lord Chen himself, though possessed the entire while by a disbelieving sense of unreality, picked up his chair, marched to the front, and flung it at the Naxid in the brocade robe, the one who stood on the dais, who waved his wand and called uselessly for order. Not even the Naxids who stood before the dais in solidarity with their leader knew how to respond-they remained silent, unmoving, no more able to believe what was happening than anyone else.

The Lord Senior was giving orders, and they were being disobeyed. None of them had ever seen such a thing before. None knew how to respond.

By sheer chance it was Lord Chen’s chair that hit the Lord Senior, clipping Akzad on the side of the head and knocking him to his knees. A roar of approval went up from many of the convocates, and the loyalists surged forward.

At this threat the Naxids at last responded. Lord Chen, standing at the front of the amphitheater and staring in wonder at his own success, suddenly found himself flattened by a charging Naxid. He hit the ground and felt the grinding impact of the Naxid’s boots as the quadruped trampled him. Pain jolted him as he bit his own tongue.

All sense of unreality vanished. The taste of his own hot blood in his mouth, Lord Chen began to fight for his life.

Even though at least half the convocates either remained in their seats or had fled, the Naxids were still outnumbered by the loyalists. Chairs were inefficient weapons, but they were better than the Naxids’ bare hands.

Lord Chen nearly gagged on the overwhelming odor of rotting flesh, even though the flesh in question belonged to the chair-swinging Daimong who knocked the Naxid off him. There were shouts, screams, thuds, the screech of an outraged Torminel, the agitated chime of Daimong voices. Lord Chen managed to fight his way to his feet, and then the press of bodies threw him up against the dais.

Akzad was on his feet again, shouting and brandishing the wand, oblivious to the blood that poured from his head wound. Everything had gone far beyond his, or anyone’s, control. Even the sergeant-at-arms stood perplexed: he was supposed to guard the Convocation against intruders, not take part in a brawl of one group of convocates against another.

“To the terrace!” Lord Chen could still hear Said’s magnificent baritone carrying over the sound of the riot. “Take them to the terrace!”

Battered into submission and seized by the angry convocates, the Naxids were dragged through the wide side doors of the amphitheater. Terrace furniture was knocked and kicked aside as the Naxids were dragged to the stone parapet and tipped over the brink, to fall 150 paces down the stony cliff. Akzad, in his torn ceremonial cloak, was hurled down with the rest, as were a dozen loyalist convocates, accidentally knocked over by the crowd or dragged to their deaths by Naxids clinging to them in desperation.

Lord Chen, gasping for breath, leaned for support on the parapet. His head swam as he stared at the carnage below, the scatter of centauroid bodies lying broken on the stones. The furious anger that possessed him had faded, and he looked down at his dead colleagues with growing astonishment, not only at what had just happened, but at his own part in it.

He was Maurice, Lord Chen, of Clan Chen, which had been at the absolute top of imperial society for thousands of years. Chens had served in the Convocation for all of that time, representing themselves and the interests of their clients, all beneath the stabilizing power of the Praxis.

Not one of them had ever participated in a riot in the Convocation chamber. Not one had ever killed a fellow convocate with his bare hands. In all the long history of the empire, nothing like what happened today had ever occurred. This act was completely unprecedented.

Lord Chen thought that what he was seeing below him, broken on the stones, was not just the bodies of legislators, but the old order itself.

“We must reconvene!” Again Said was shouting. “The Convocation must reform!”

Lord Chen filed with the others into the Convocation. Smashed and scattered furniture lay on and around the speaker’s dais like a scattering of old bones. The convocates retrieved the usable furniture and borrowed more from colleagues who had fled or died. Lord Said was proclaimed temporary chairman, though he was forced to conduct the meeting without the Lord Senior’s wand, which had disappeared and was never to be found.

The Convocation immediately passed on a voice vote a measure outlawing the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis, whoever and wherever they might be. Another vote proclaimed that the penalty for belonging to the organization would be dismembering. Then someone else suggested flaying, and the merits of flaying and dismembering were debated. After which a Terran lady convocate with a torn uniform tunic and a blackened eye rose to suggest that since the first lot had been thrown off a cliff, the rest should be as well.

Of such fascination did the convocates find this debate, and the ten or so laws they passed that day, that it was fully an hour before anyone thought to call the Commandery and inform the Fleet of the menace to the empire. And, once Fleet Commander Jarlath was informed, it was another hour before anyone bothered to tell him of the Naxid squadrons’ disobedience.

The empire was as inexperienced at quelling rebellion as Elkizer had been at making it.

Jarlath immediately ordered his three cruiser squadrons in pursuit of Elkizer. They left the ring and blasted toward Vandrith at over ten gravities’ acceleration with only partial crews aboard, but were gone less than an hour before Jarlath realized the pursuit was fruitless and recalled the ships.

Jarlath had begun to realize that he might be in a much more dangerous position than he’d supposed. A little information about what Akzad had said about the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis had reached him, and he gathered that large numbers of Naxids were involved. He had also remembered Elkizer marching around the ring with a group of senior officers and military constables, and with a burst of amazement realized that Elkizer had been rehearsing the boarding and capture of all non-Naxid ships.

There were 341 warships in the Fleet. Of these, sixty-eight, or nearly twenty percent, were commanded and crewed by Naxids, eight entire squadrons of six to ten ships each plus the odd ship here and there on detached duty. Of these squadrons, two had been stationed at Zanshaa with the Home Fleet, two at Magaria with the Second Fleet, one with the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid, one with the Third Fleet at Felarus, one squadron at the Naxid home world of Naxas, and the last at Comador.

Communications lasers immediately burned with urgent messages directed to fleet and squadron commanders at Harzapid, Felarus, and Comador. Additional messages went to ships at more remote stations. It would take days for some of the answers to come back, even pulsed at the speed of light through the relay stations at the wormhole gates, and Jarlath suspected that when the answers came, he wouldn’t like them.

He hesitated before sending messages to Fanaghee at Magaria and to the commander at Naxas. But on further consideration, he decided there was nothing to be gained by remaining silent. He queried Naxas as to its status, and sent a message to Fanaghee telling her of the mutiny of his two squadrons, and ordering her to intercept them.

Then he added up the figures in his head again, and didn’t like them any better than he had the first time.

Magaria was the key, he decided. If Fanaghee and her force stayed loyal, then the empire would survive what was to come.

Ifnot …Well, Jarlath thought, he would try to maintain an air of confidence.

It was only then, nine hours after Elkizer had disobeyed orders and bypassed Vandrith, that Jarlath remembered that there was one Naxid warship remaining on the station, the brand new light cruiserDestiny, which was ten days from completion-or so the dockyard superintendent had maintained for over a month now.Destiny had its crew and officers aboard, but had yet to be towed to the completion arena to receive its missiles, defensive weapons, and to test its propulsion systems with their first charges of antimatter.

Jarlath ordered the Military Constabulary to seize the ship. They were met with small-arms fire from the ship’s officers.Destiny ‘s crew ran out of the ship into the dockyard, where they began hurling homemade explosives and incendiaries. It was two hours before they were all rounded up and shot. Eight million zeniths’ worth of stores and dockyard equipment had to be written off.

Shortly after making his report on the incident, Jarlath received a reprimand complaining that he had shot the rebels instead of throwing them off a cliff, as prescribed by a new law passed that afternoon by the Convocation.

That was how the first day ended.

The message from the Commandery to Fanaghee at Magaria took twenty hours to arrive. It took another twenty for the reply to get back to Zanshaa. Fanaghee expressed alarm over the mutiny of Elkizer and Farniai and announced that she was dispatching the Second Fleet to intercept the rebels.

“Very good, Lord Commander,” said Lord Convocate Maurice Chen, who by virtue of the fact that he’d demonstrated martial skill by clouting the chief rebel on the head with a chair, had been deemed worthy of a promotion out of Oceanographic and Forestry and onto the Fleet Control Board. “It must be a relief to know that Magaria is safe,” he said to Fleet Commander Jarlath.

“Idon’t know it,” Jarlath replied. His fingers twirled little angry knots into his fur. “I don’t know if I credit Fanaghee’s report, or for that matter if I wish to.”

He ordered Fanaghee to provide detailed reports on the status of every ship under her command, the reports to be provided in video form and by the captains of the individual ships themselves. Which should make it clear, he thought, whether the captains could speak for themselves.

As he feared, there was no reply to his message. He informed Lord Chen and the rest of the Fleet Control Board that Magaria had fallen to the rebels.

There were five squadrons at Magaria. If the Naxids controlled them all, Fanaghee’s force would now be equal in number to the five squadrons remaining in the Home Fleet, and once Elkizer and Farniai joined her, she would have the advantage.

In which case, he knew he might as well surrender hope of recapturing Magaria. It would be all he could do to hold Zanshaa.

The next bulletin came from the Third Fleet at Felarus. Its Naxid squadron had departed the station unexpectedly on what its commander claimed was a training exercise, then opened fire on the rest of the Third Fleet, still moored to the ring station. Antiproton beams, intended as an antimissile defense, had been used offensively, and at point-blank range. Warships were blown apart, along with critical parts of the ring station. The Naxid barrage hadn’t been as severe as it could have been, which indicated that they were exercising a degree of restraint, perhaps out of compassion for their fellows, perhaps simply because they intended to return and capture Felarus’s ring later. Despite the rebels’ self-restraint, half the ships of the Third Fleet were destroyed, and the rest severely damaged. Because of additional damage to the repair facilities of the ring station, it would be many months before any of Third Fleet’s ships could be used against the rebels.

A puzzled message arrived from the commander of the ring station at Comador. The Naxid squadron based there had departed the station and were making their way out of the system, refusing communication. The station commander wished to know if the squadron was flying away on an exercise that he hadn’t been told about.

Jarlath also had to presume that the squadron at Naxas was lost.

From Harzapid alone there was good news. The commander of the single Naxid squadron, as inexperienced at staging a rebellion as anyone in the Fleet and far from any advice from the ruling council on Naxas, had marched his followers into Ring Command and sent forth a public announcement to the effect that he was now in charge. After recovering from her surprise, the commander of the Fourth Fleet organized storming parties and retook Ring Command. Unfortunately, this precipitated another point-blank battle with antiproton beams, but this time the loyalists weren’t caught unprepared. The Naxid ships were destroyed, at a cost of a third of the loyalists damaged or destroyed. That left enough ships to form two squadrons.

Jarlath ordered that any captured rebels be thrown off a cliff, if one was conveniently at hand, and otherwise be shot.

The victory at Harzapid gave Jarlath two more squadrons, four once damaged ships were repaired, and Jarlath took heart. He counted no more than ninety ships in the enemy fleet, and these included single ships on detached duty and the squadron from Comador, a station so remote that its renegade squadron would take months to arrive near the scene of any prospective action. This total also included the three squadrons captured at Magaria, which were not fitted for Naxid crews and thus would take some time for the special requirements of a centauroid species to be made.

Once Jarlath called in the Daimong squadron from Zerafan-only ten days away if he ordered a brutal, maximum acceleration-he would have fifty-four ships in the Home Fleet, which should suffice to hold Zanshaa until further help arrived. Squadron Commander Do-Faq’s Lai-own squadron at Preowin could arrive in forty days, necessarily at a much more gentle acceleration due to the less robust Lai-own physique. Individual ships could also be called in, enough to eventually make a squadron of small vessels.

Unfortunately, the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid was at least three months away. But after those three months were past and the Fourth Fleet arrived, Jarlath could be reasonably certain that any offensive he launched toward Magaria would stand a good chance of success.

In the meantime, Magaria preyed on his mind. Its ring was an enormous arsenal of missiles, parts, shipyards, and training facilities, a far superior facility to anything else the rebels possessed. Magaria also had the seven wormhole gates that could send an enemy force to much of the empire. If he could retake Magaria, Jarlath knew he could rip the guts out of the rebellion.

Instead he took steps for the defense of Zanshaa. Having put himself aboard his giant flagship, called in all crews and filled all ships with weapons, fuel, and supplies, he launched the remaining squadrons of the Home Fleet five days after Akzad’s abortive rebellion, and then began an acceleration toward Vandrith. This was not a pursuit of Elkizer’s fleeting squadrons, which by now were well out of reach, but rather, an attempt to give the Home Fleet some delta-vee so if an enemy attacked, the defenders wouldn’t be sitting ducks and massacred.

For the first few days of the emergency Sula ended up guarding a skyhook terminus again, though this time her party was armed with automatic rifles rather than stun batons, and one mustachioed petty officer was in charge of a tripod-mounted antimatter gun that would dispose of armored vehicles, or, indeed, anything at all. Only military personnel with valid identification were permitted on the cars, and Naxids were flatly forbidden to ride the skyhook under any circumstances.

The official stories being broadcast were confused and contradictory, indicating that something had happened that the censors didn’t know how to spin. The story they eventually settled on was that the Lord Senior and a group of his followers had tried to seize the government and killed a number of convocates, but were promptly flung off a cliff by indignant legislators. Two squadrons of the Home Fleet had rebelled as well, but these were now in flight. Fleet Commander Jarlath and the rest of the Home Fleet would soon depart to take vengeance on behalf of the established order.

Sula supposed that most of this was true, or true enough, except the part about the heroic convocates killing the traitors themselves. The Convocation had never done their own dirty work before, she thought: why start now? But looking at the news reports in more detail, Sula saw that it was possible to draw other conclusions.

She knew that the two rebellious squadrons were crewed by Naxids. The list of the traitorous convocates included only Naxids, whereas those convocates martyred by their treachery were all non-Naxids. And she had been ordered to forbid Naxids to ride the critical skyhook. From all of this, certain conclusions could be drawn.

Sula was quicker at math than Jarlath, and she didn’t like how the numbers were adding up either.

After two days of standing watch at a mostly deserted skyhook terminus, she received a call on her sleeve display from Captain Lord Richard Li.

“I’m calling to renew my offer of a place onDauntless,” he said. “We’re filling up the crew, and I expect we’ll be leaving station in a matter of days.” He hesitated, then added, “I haven’t heard officially yet, but the rumor is that your exam results are going to be thrown out. If you want to take the exams again, you’ll have to wait months and reapply.”

Hopeless bitterness filled Sula. “I understand,” she said. That left her with little option but to accept Lord Richard’s offer and get into the war. It was clear that those with experience in combat would have an increased chance of notice and promotion: to miss the war would be to throw her career to the winds.

Lord Richard smiled. “Before you answer yes or no, I need to tell you the rest of the bad news. I can’t take you on as a lieutenant. Lord Commander Jarlath is insisting that all crews be made up with experienced officers-he doesn’t want anyone learning on the job, not when so many lives may depend on it. I have to say that I agree with him. So if you come aboard, it will be as a pinnace pilot.” From out of Sula’s sleeve display, he gave her what he probably thought was an encouraging look.

“Iwill see that you’re promoted as soon as possible,” he said. “The next time one of my lieutenants is rotated or promoted out ofDauntless, you’ll have the place.”

That is, of course, if she survived her career as a pinnace pilot. Which, in a real shooting war, was not the surest way to bet.

Still, an appointment under a rising young officer, with the promise of promotion to come, was the best offer she was likely to get. It was certainly better than guarding a skyhook while brooding over her lost exam results.

She managed a smile. “Certainly,” she said. “Where do I sign?” At least it would get her away from the ongoing Blitsharts trial, which, with its appeals, might go on for the next decade.

Whatever task the Fleet assigned Sula lately, it assigned her a sidearm to go with it. Her first job aboardDauntless was to enslave the civilian workers. Jarlath, two days into the rebellion, had remembered with fury his experience with the dockyards-had remembered theDiscipline! Order! Obedience! he had pledged as the watchwords of his administration-and realized he neededDauntless and the capturedDestiny more than he needed the goodwill of the dockyard staff. He therefore ordered the captains to keep the civilian workers aboard, without allowing them leave or contact with their friends or families, until the work was done to the captains’ satisfaction.

Lord Richard, nearly overcome with glee at this order, placed armed guards at the personnel and cargo hatches, and told the workers that if they didn’t complete their tasks before the Fleet Commander orderedDestiny to leave the station, they would just have to come along to the war. So Sula spent half of each day mounting guard inside the cargo hatch, a sidearm on one hip as she listened to the litany of sad, desperate reasons why one person or another had to leave the ship. The endless succession of plaintive excuses wore on her patience and left her with no pity for the imprisoned workers whatever, and in the end she gave them a cold, green-eyed stare. “Odds are I’m going to die in combat,” she told them. “Why shouldn’t I take a few of you with me?” After that they avoided her.

Jarlath gave the fleet less than a day’s notice before leaving Zanshaa, an announcement that set the workers into a frenzy. Sula’s final task before leaving was to supervise workers carrying boxes of the captain’s slate tiles into storage, where they would remain until such time asDauntless found another few weeks in dock. Lord Richard seemed wistful as he watched them go by: the last captain’s tilework of asteroid material, filled with gaudy splashes of glittering pyrite, was really not to his taste, and the paneling in his cabin, in which yellow chesz wood was accented with trim of scarlet ammana paste, was not his style either.

It wasn’t long before Sula concluded that Lord Richard was a good captain. He had visited every department on the ship and spoken to everyone good-naturedly, displaying his crinkly-eyed smile. He’d had a knack for distinguishing what was important from what wasn’t, and rarely hounded his crew over the latter. All unlike her last captain, Kandinski, who tried to pretend that the crew didn’t exist except as imperfect mechanisms to keep his paneling buffed and his silver polished, and who never spoke to his crew unless issuing a rebuke.

Dauntlessmanaged to depart Zanshaa ring on schedule, with the rest of the Home Fleet. Sula found that she didn’t regret leaving Zanshaa. The capital hadn’t been lucky for her.

Not thatDauntless was shaping up to be any better.

“The Convocation wishes to know when you plan to launch your assault on Magaria.” The speaker was the elderly Senior Fleet Commander Tork, a Daimong whose long, mournful face belied the fervor that added a monotonal harshness to the chimes of his voice. Tork was the chairman of the Fleet Control Board, one of the five active or retired officers who served alongside the board’s four politicians.

Jarlath reclined on his acceleration couch aboardGlory of the Praxis, while the Fleet Control Board’s holographic images floated before his eyes. Suffering from four days’ hard acceleration, his bleached-white fur by now showing its black and gray roots, Jarlath knew he hardly presented his best face to his superiors.

“The enemy outnumbers us,” he said. “Once the Zerafan squadron joins, I’ll have fifty-four ships. Once Elkizer joins Fanaghee, she’ll have fifty-nine, and we can assume that squadrons from Naxas or Felarus will join as well.”

“You assume that Fanaghee will be able to convert all the captured squadrons to Naxid use by the time you arrive.”

“My lord,” said Jarlath, “I cannot afford to think otherwise.”

“And you also assume that she’ll be able to crew all her captured ships.”

A headache thudded dully behind Jarlath’s eyes. He had been over this with his own staff a dozen times.

“Her personnel will be overworked and overstrained, but it can be done,” he said. “If she strips much of the ring station of its personnel, she’ll have adequate fighting crews, though her damage control won’t be as efficient as ours.”

“But if she strips the ring station personnel,” Tork replied, “she won’t have enough dock workers to refit her captured ships.”

“She can bring workers up from the planet. Most of the inhabitants of Magaria are Naxids, and we have to presume they’ll sympathize with the enemy council.”

“You forget that you have the battleship squadron.”

Jarlath closed his weary eyes. “I have not forgot.”

“You have sixPraxis — class ships to the enemy’s one.” A metallic bray of triumph entered Tork’s voice. “Each battleship is the equal of a squadron!”

Then let’s send the battleships by themselves and win a glorious victory, Jarlath thought viciously, but he suppressed his anger. His weary muscles dragged his eyelids apart. “A hit by an antimatter missile will destroy a battleship as easily as it will destroy a frigate,” he said.

“You are being too cautious, my lord commander.”

Jarlath let the two-gravity acceleration drag his lips from his fangs. Enough was enough. “If your lordships give me a direct order to attack immediately,” he said, “an order inwriting, I shall of course obey.”

There was a long silence from the board members. Then Lord Chen spoke.

“I ask you to understand that there is much anxiety in the Convocation. The fall of Magaria has effectively cut us off from a third of the empire. Many of us have friends, clients, and other interests in the area controlled by the rebels.”

Lord Chen looked more than a little anxious himself. Jarlath remembered that he owned a shipping company, one that presumably had many ships and cargoes in enemy-controlled space.

“I too have friends on the other side of Magaria,” Jarlath said. “Throwing away the Home Fleet will do them no good.”

After the meeting came to an end, Jarlath wondered if he were wrong and the others right. One great strike at Magaria might well end the rebellion. The Naxids might not be ready. Jarlathwanted to make that strike. But the odds gave him caution.

Eight days later, engines burned fire and piled on the gees as Jarlath swung his ships around Vandrith for the return journey to Zanshaa. He was traveling one-fourteenth of the speed of light, and would continue accelerating and performing slingshot maneuvers around the system’s planets until he was traveling at least.5c, fast enough to avoid immediate destruction from any of Fanaghee’s ships tearing out of Magaria at eighty percent of the speed of light.

It was then that word came fromCorona and Lieutenant Martinez. Having escaped from Magaria to the Paswal system, Martinez was at last able to send his report through a wormhole relay station that Fanaghee didn’t control.

The Convocation responded to the news with raptures. Martinez,Corona, and its crew were voted the Thanks of the Convocation. Every crew member would be decorated, and Martinez himself would receive the Golden Orb, the empire’s highest military decoration, which had not been awarded in eight hundred years. Martinez and his descendants were awarded the right to have their ashes entombed in the Couch of Eternity, alongside the Great Masters. And aCorona monument would be dedicated somewhere in the High City, its location yet to be determined.

The Convocation also reconsidered the matter of Captain Blitsharts’s rescue, and decided that Martinez’s participation was worthy of the Medal of Merit, First Class. As this decoration was not within their gift, they recommended that the Fleet Control Board award the decoration.

The Convocation also passed on to the Fleet Control Board its recommendation that Lord Gareth Martinez be promoted immediately and given a command commensurate with his new rank.

“Well,” Lord Chen said, “we can confirm him inCorona. There’s a vacancy, after all.”

“But have you heard himtalk? ” objected Lord Commander Pezzini, the only other Terran member of the board. “He sounds like such a-an unsuitable person for command rank. An accent like that belongs in the engine bays.”

“He is a Peer, however he talks,” pronounced Lord Commander Tork, “and all Peers are equal beneath the Praxis.”

Pezzini made a sullen face at this, but he had learned not to dispute Tork on the subject of the Praxis. Tork’s ideas of the Praxis were, like the Praxis itself, firm, unchanging, and unyielding, and very much like Tork’s ideas about everything else.

“Besides,” Lord Chen said, “I see from his record that his last superior, Lord Commander Enderby, recommended him in his final testament for promotion. It’s the custom of this board, as I understand it, to follow such recommendations whenever possible.”

“It would be awkward,” said another voice, “if wedon’t promote him. How could anyone employ him then? What captain is going to want a lieutenant who holds the Golden Orb?”

“Let us vote on the recommendations of the Convocation and of Lord Commander Enderby,” Tork said. “Let it be moved that Lieutenant Lord Gareth Martinez be promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Captain, effective from the date of the rebellion.”

There were no dissenting votes, though Pezzini wearily raised his eyebrows. “None of his ancestors have ever risen this far in the Fleet,” he said. “We’re setting a precedent here.”

Tork raised a hand, wafting to the board the faint scent of his perpetually rotting flesh. Chen raised a hand meditatively to his chin and surreptitiously inhaled the cologne he’d applied to the inside of his wrist.

“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.

“I want to question Martinez myself about any damage he may have done,” he said. “In the meantime I’ll order a harder acceleration. If I’m going to Magaria, then I’m going to go infast.”

Jarlath gave the orders, unaware that he had just crossed an invisible line, the line between refusing absolutely to go to Magaria and a willingness to contemplate the attack.

Once he had crossed that line, Jarlath found it increasingly difficult to return.