Praxis

THIRTEEN

Most of Corona’s transit to Zanshaa was rather pleasant. There was some suspense at the start, when Martinez sent his report to the repeating signal station at the far side of the Paswal system and requested all the recent news. It was many hours before bulletins of the failed revolt at Zanshaa arrived, along with information that the Home Fleet still stood between the Naxids and the capital.

Coronahad a home to return to. Once he knew that, Martinez felt he could enjoy himself in his new command.

He set watches and kept the ship at partial gravity for the first six days, allowing everyone a chance to recover from the exhaustion of fifteen days’ desperate acceleration.

Except for the lonely crews of the two wormhole maintenance and relay stations, Paswal was an uninhabited system, dead planets surrounding a bright energetic star in the midst of a globular cluster. It had never been determined exactly where Paswal was in relation to anywhere else in the empire: wormholes could lead anywhere in the universe, and to practically any time. The video views of the outside were spectacular, the cluster’s million stars so closely packed that they looked like a shining wall of diamonds. Paswal didn’t experience anything like true darkness, only a kind of twilight, with the near stars great fiery gems amid the background of brilliants. Martinez sometimes slept with a virtual rig projecting the exterior view into his mind, so that falling asleep and waking were both marked by the blazon of the night, and a million stars walked through his peaceful dreams.

It was three days before he succumbed to the temptation to look at his confidential records. Tarafah’s key opened these, as well as those of everyone else, and it occurred to him that if he was to be the captain ofCorona, he should be familiar with the records of his crew. So, virtuously, he began with the cadets, then worked his way through the warrant and petty officers and on to the recruits. There were few surprises, though it did startle him to discover that Cadet Vonderheydte had been married and divorced twice in his brief service career, which barely added up to three years.

After this display of rectitude, Martinez called up his own records, and discovered that Tarafah had described him as “an efficient officer, diligent in his duties, though needing more polish in social situations.” The estimate nettled him. When had heever been in a social situation with the captain? he wondered. Where had Tarafah formed that judgment? He thought about erasing the last bit, then decided it was too dangerous. Someone might look at the time stamp and discover that the report had been modified on a date when Tarafah was in the hands of the enemy.

Vexed, he went on to Enderby’s report, which was longer and more detailed. “An officer of exceptional talent and ability,” it concluded. “He will have an excellent career if he can restrain his ambition from scheming for awards that would fall to him naturally in the fullness of time.”

Nowthat, he had to admit, was fair.

Martinez glowed, however, when he read Enderby’s final testament, in which he requested that the Fleet Control Board promote Martinez as soon as a suitable command became vacant. The old manhad liked him, had done his best to assure that he’d be promoted…in the fullness oftime.Perhaps even the transfer to the Second Fleet aboardCorona was aimed at assisting his chances: vacancies tended to occur more often on the more remote stations. In charity with all the universe, Martinez decided this had to be true.

The glow of pleasure that accompanied this discovery accompanied him through his first few days of command.

On the seventh day he decided the crew’s vacation was over. He kicked the acceleration up to a full gravity and started a regular series of inspections, each of the ship’s departments in turn. He assigned punishments to Zhou, Ahmet, and Knadjian, the ship’s bad lads-they were to repair all the damage that had been done to the quarters of the captain and the premier lieutenant. As the rooms had been comprehensively destroyed during the search for the command keys, the repairs would take at least till the end of the voyage-and of course he made them stand regular watches as well, so the repair jobs came out of what otherwise would have been their free time. He put Saavedra, the captain’s secretary, in charge of the three for this act of rehabilitation, because he knew that the precise and exacting Saavedra was exactly the sort of person whose fastidious ways would most annoy the malefactors.

A few days into the new regime, he was informed that the Convocation had awarded him the Golden Orb. Alikhan and Maheshwari slipped away for a few hours to the frigate’s machine shop, and at dinner that afternoon made Martinez a presentation.

Martinez had seen a Golden Orb in the Hall of Honor of the Fleet Museum in Zanshaa’s Lower Town: an ornate baton on top of which was mounted a transparent sphere filled with a dense golden liquid that swirled and eddied in reaction to motion, even the motion of a cadet walking past the display. The patterns inside the sphere were fascinating, intricate, the cloud swirls of a gas giant in miniature, patterns wrapped inside patterns clothed inside patterns, an infinite regression of fractals.

The thing about the orb that had most impressed Martinez, however, was that superior officers-evenconvocates — had to brace and salute a Golden Orb when its recipient walked past.That was the sort of power he suspected he could use, abuse, and enjoy.

“We wished to present this to you, in thanks for saving us and for saving the ship.” So said Maheshwari, offering their homemade orb on an overstuffed pillow. This wasn’t the ornate, magical orb that Martinez had seen in the Fleet museum, but a plain plated sphere atop a plated stick, but even so, he felt a surge of delight as the crew stood and broke into applause.

“I believe it is customary to make a speech on such an occasion, my lord,” Alikhan said, with a disturbingly serene smile that Martinez suspected hid the sadistic impulse beneath.

So Martinez stood and made a speech, at first barely knowing what he was saying. He expressed thanks to the crew for their generous and thoughtful presentation. He told them that even if the genuine article were presented to him by the Convocation in full assembly, it wouldn’t mean as much as this. He thanked them also for following his orders when he, a rational being, might have concluded he was mad.

“Wedid think you were mad, my lord,” called out Dietrich. “But then you had that great big pistol, didn’t you?”

There was laughter at that. “Well,” Martinez said lamely, “if you can’t respect the officer, at least respect his gun.”

More laughter. It was an easy audience, fortunately.

Martinez decided it was time for the compliment direct. He spoke more largely on the qualities of a fighting crew, of which his experience was no less theoretical than his audience, but which he made out to be courage, talent, perseverance, and determination in the face of overwhelming odds and near certain death. He implied that the crew ofCorona possessed these qualities in abundance. He said that he could never have achieved anything without the crew’s support, that he would never forget any of them, and that he was proud to call them all his shipmates. “Evenyou, ” he told Ahmet, to general laughter.

He finished by saying that he hopedCorona’s crew could stay together long enough to see the end of the war together, that he hoped they would all return to Magaria, drive the Naxid rebels from the station, and liberate their captain and the other Coronas.

There was more applause as he returned to his seat, and then turned to Alikhan and ordered the spirit locker store opened again, so everyone could toast the return to Magaria.

The next day, Martinez received word that he had been promoted to lieutenant captain and givenCorona. Alikhan acquired shoulder boards from Tarafah’s spare uniforms and put them on one of Martinez’s uniform jackets, which he presented at dinner.

“I believe a speech is customary on these occasions, my lord,” he said, again with his serene, sinister smile.

I’ve alreadysaid everything, Martinez thought, but he had no choice but to stand and say it again. He madeCorona’s crew even more valorous and brilliant than he had the previous afternoon, their dangers more perilous, and the return to Magaria even more glorious. And then, exhausted, he ordered the spirit locker opened.

The next day came word that the Fleet Control Board had awarded him the Medal of Merit, First Class, for his part in the rescue of Captain Blitsharts andMidnight Runner. “It isnot customary to make a speech on these occasions,” he told Alikhan firmly, then ordered the spirit locker opened anyway, to general applause.

Lest anyone feel he was turningCorona into a den of inebriates and slackers, he turned out the whole crew next morning for a muster, inspected their personal quarters, and awarded demerits with a free hand.

Congratulations poured in from family and friends, all relayed by communications laser from the capital. There was a dignified message from Lord Pierre Ngeni, familial greetings from Vipsania, Walpurga, and his brother Roland, a silly video from PJ, and a somewhat warmer greeting from Amanda Taen. Sempronia’s video letter had a different tone. “I was thinking of forgiving you since you turned out to be such a hero,” she said, “but then I had to spend an hour with PJ and I decided against it.” She raised a hand and waved the tips of her fingers. “Good-bye!”

Nothing from Caroline Sula. When no message came he realized that he’d been expecting one, and felt its absence with an impact that surprised him.

As a tonic, Martinez turned his thoughts to patronage. A lieutenant captain was allowed to promote one cadet or warrant officer each year to the rank of sublieutenant. He considered Vonderheydte and Kelly, and realized he didn’t know either one of them well enough to promote them, despite having worked alongside one of them for two months and having been to bed with the other.

Kelly, he realized from a glance at her records, was unsuitable for a lieutenancy. Though she’d shown unexpected talent as a weapons officer,Corona was her first posting, and she needed another year or two of seasoning before she’d be able to handle a lieutenant’s duties.

Vonderheydte was more qualified. He had served as a pilot/navigator and in the engineering division before taking his turn as Martinez’s second in the communications division. When Martinez had been his supervisor, he’d had no complaints against Vonderheydte, and apparently none of his other officers had either. He was eligible to stand for his exams, and was qualified to stand a watch.

Vonderheydte’s only drawback was that he came from a provincial clan, like Martinez, and one from Comador, so it was unlikely that Clan Vonderheydte would ever be able to repay Clan Martinez for the favor done their offspring.

And Kelly might resent Vonderheydte’s promotion. She might believe he owed her some special consideration on account of their having been to bed, for sentimental reasons or on account of ambition or…

Things had changed so much. When he and Kelly had their recreational, they were outlaws on the run from pursuing annihilation. Now he was a captain and she was his most junior officer.

Martinez’s mind was spinning through all these considerations when he realized who he should have been considering all along. He summoned Alikhan to his cabin and offered him the lieutenancy.

“I’m retired, my lord,” Alikhan pointed out. “I’m a thirty-year man. I’m only acting as your orderly to earn some extra money, and for something to do.”

“My guess is that any retired holejumper without a disability is being called back to the service. So it’s not a question of whether or not to serve, but where and at what rank. If you take the lieutenancy, you can really whipCorona into shape, and when you decide to retire once and for all, you’ll be at a higher pay grade.”

For a moment, Alikhan seemed to consider the offer, but then he shook his head. “With all respect, Lord Elcap, I can’t see myself at a wardroom table with all those young officers. I wouldn’t be comfortable, and neither would they.”

“Coronaalso needs a master weaponer.”

“No, my lord.” Alikhan spoke more firmly this time. “I spent thirty years in the weapons bays. I’mretired. ”

“Well,” Martinez rose, “I hope at least you’ll be staying on in your present capacity.”

“Of course, Lord Elcap.” A ghost of a smile passed beneath Alikhan’s mustachios. “What would I do without my hobbies?”

Martinez, uncertain what to make of being Alikhan’s hobby, next offered the lieutenancy to Maheshwari, but the engineer turned down the offer with even less consideration than Alikhan. “Officers have to put up with too much crap,” he said, his even white teeth biting decisively on the last word.

Which left Martinez with Vonderheydte, assuming of course he was going to promote anyone at all. He called the cadet into his cabin for a talk about Vonderheydte’s expectations and abilities. Vonderheydte was expecting to take his exams in the near future, exigencies of the service permitting, and until the rebellion had been studying the subjects in which he was weak. Since then he’d been too busy.

“Do you think there will be exams at all, my lord?” he asked.

“I don’t know. But perhaps we’d better assume there will be.”

Martinez offered to help Vonderheydte set up a program of study and assist him in any subject in which he felt weak, then dismissed him without having made up his mind about the promotion. Instead he summoned Kelly for much the same conversation, and suggested that she and Vonderheydte try to find time to study together.

Her blinding grin flashed out. “When? We’re standing watches back-to-back.”

“That’s true,” Martinez admitted, and added, “I’ll help when I can.” He hesitated, then said, “It’s unfortunate that with so many vacancies, I can’t promote you to sublieutenant, but you just don’t have enough experience.”

“Oh well.” She shrugged. “Too bad the rebels didn’t wait another year.” She looked up at him. “Are you thinking of giving Vonderheydte a step?”

“I’m not sure I know him well enough. What’s your opinion?” She’d been aboard Corona since her graduation, and she knew Vonderheydte better than he did.

“Von would make a good lieutenant,” she said. “He’s conscientious enough, and he admires you.”

“Does he?” Martinez felt vanity give a little jerk to his head. Then he thought about Vonderheydte’s two ex-wives, and said, “Do you know anything about his personal life? His marriages?”

“More than one?” Kelly was surprised. “He only talks about the latest, I guess.” She began to speak, then hesitated. “I’d rather not repeat anything he told me in confidence,” she said.

“I wouldn’t ask you to break a trust,” Martinez said. “But nothing he’s told you would mitigate against his promotion?”

She seemed relieved not to be pressed on the matter. “No, Lord Elcap,” she said.

“Right,” Martinez said. “Thank you.” And before he could think too much about it, he added, “We should probably talk. About the recreational we had some days ago.”

She smiled with her lips pressed together, as if to herself. “I was wondering if you were-well, go ahead.”

“If I was what?”

Kelly shook her head. “You start, my lord.”

He looked at her. “Well,” he said, “you want to do it again?”

This time the grin burst out, along with the incredulous bark of a laugh he’d heard when he asked her the first time. Then she composed her face into a solemn expression. “Well, Lord Elcap,” she said. “As I think I’ve mentioned, I have a guy on Zanshaa. And we’re getting closer to him.”

“We are.”

“And you’re the captain now, and…” She bit her lip. “That’s different, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

There was a space of silence. “Believe me, I’m tempted,” she said. “But we’d better not.”

Wounded vainglory warred in Martinez’s heart with relief. He preferred to think himself irresistible, and disliked evidence to the contrary. He enjoyed Kelly, but having a lover on board was likely to be more complication than he really wanted. “You win on maturity points, I think,” he said.

Displays great maturity,Martinez wrote later in her file. Exercising his powers of patronage for the first time, he also sent a recommendation to the Fleet that Kelly be decorated for coolness and gallantry in shooting down incoming missiles, and suggested the Award of Valor.

He still made no decision about the lieutenancy. Caroline Sula hovered in his thoughts. She needed promotion and a patron in the service, and her record was exemplary.

But it was hard to promote someone who wouldn’t talk to you. He considered sending her the offer, but dreaded her refusal or, worse, her silence.

Eventually the Fleet forced his hand. He received word that they had assigned him a full complement, mainly old hardshells called out of retirement and new drafts fresh from the training schools, most of whom had not yet actually graduated. All were assembling now at Zanshaa and would come aboard as soon as he docked. Martinez knew nothing of two of the three lieutenants assigned to him, but he knew the third, Sibbaldo, with whom he had served as a cadet. He knew him to be a friendless, sarcastic, bullying man, ignorant of his duties and with a talent for making mistakes and then successfully laying the blame on others.

Martinez sent word to the Fleet that he had just promoted Cadet Vonderheydte into a lieutenancy, and though he would be happy to accept his new first and second officers, he regretted that he would have no place for Lieutenant Sibbaldo. Then he walked to Command to inform Vonderheydte of his new status.

That afternoon it was Vonderheydte who had to make a speech. Martinez enjoyed it immensely. He didn’t open the spirit locker, but it turned out not to matter.

“I believe Zhou and Ahmet are operating a still, my lord.” Alikhan’s report came the next morning, as he was folding Martinez’s linen. “They’re buying scraps and leftovers from the cooks and fermenting them.”

“Using the profits from their dice game.” Martinez had already been told about that venture.

“No doubt, my lord.”

“I wonder when they sleep.”

Martinez consideredCorona’s troublemakers for a moment. “Unless drunkenness becomes a problem, I’d suggest we don’t find the still till near the end of the voyage. Then we mete out punishments and fines with a heavy hand, and the dice game’s profits become part of the recreation fund.”

Alikhan’s smile seemed approving. “Very good, my lord.”

“If you find a way to relieve the cooks oftheir illicit earnings, let me know.”

The smile broadened. “I shall, my lord.”

It was twenty-one days before the sphere of Paswal Wormhole 2 engulfed the Corona, and the latter part of the trip was spent in deceleration. Martinez was planning a much gentler return to Zanshaa than the departure he’d been forced to make from Magaria, and unless the Fleet ordered otherwise, he was going to make a pleasant one-gee deceleration the whole way.

From Paswal,Corona passed to Loatyn, an inhabited system with eight billion citizens spread out among two planets and three moons.Corona was in the system for only the eight days it took to cross between Wormholes 2 and 3, and for that brief moment was the only loyalist armed force in the system, since the frigateMentor had left for Zanshaa at the beginning of the emergency.

During the last hour of the transit to Wormhole 2,Corona witnessed the enemy invasion, when eight warships appeared from Wormhole 1. The ships had actually arrived fourteen hours earlier-the distance from Wormhole 1 to 2 was slightly in excess of fourteen light-hours-and they were coming on fast, nearly forty percent the speed of light. A glance at a wormhole map showed that the newcomers must be the Naxid squadron from Felarus, the headquarters of the Third Fleet.

Censors had prevented news of what had happened to the Third Fleet from spreading, but now that Martinez saw the Naxid squadron, he felt he could guess.

Their arrival was a nasty shock, but he calculated that they could not catch him, not unless they followed him all the way to Zanshaa, in which case they’d find themselves in a fight with the Home Fleet, now building its velocity in frantic burns around the system. Through the wormhole relay stations he sent word of the Felarus squadron’s arrival to Zanshaa.

Corona dived into Wormhole 2 and found itself in Protipanu, another uninhabited system. Protipanu was a brown dwarf barely detectible in the visible spectrum. In its earlier, bloated, red giant stage it had gobbled its inner planets, turned the middle planets to rubble through gravitational stress, and boiled the frozen atmosphere off the outer four planets, leaving barren rocks. The result was an absolutely bare inner system, and scattered rings of rocks and ice in the far reaches.

The most impressive thing about Protipanu, however, was the brilliant red cloud, shading into purples and blues, that occupied fully a third of the sky. This was a supernova remnant expanding toward Protipanu and scheduled to arrive in another eight thousand years. The cloud formed a giant flaming hoop in the sky, like a mouth opening to consume the brown dwarf, and had been named the Maw.

Corona was only in the Protipanu system for four hours, the brief time it took to transit the two wormholes. The personnel on the two wormhole relay stations were warned that the Naxids were coming, though only those at Wormhole 2, at the far end, would have a chance to get out of the system before the Naxids overran them. Martinez didn’t know what the Naxids were doing with the relay stations, but he presumed they were occupying them when possible, to make use of the communications system that kept the empire together.

From Protipanu,Corona sped on, spending two days in Seizho before heading through Seizho Wormhole 4 to Zanshaa, the Home Fleet, and safety.

Martinez decided then that it was time to get serious about finding Corona’s illicit still.

They will be coming in thirty hours, thought Shushanik Severin.I have that long to prepare an unpleasant surprise.

“This is Warrant Officer Severin at Protipanu Two,” he replied via comm laser. “Thank you for the warning, Captain Martinez. My congratulations to yourself and toCorona, and the very best of luck to you all.”

Severin could hardly blame Martinez from flying before an enemy squadron that outnumbered him eight to one. It was a pity, though, that he himself was left in the lurch.

Severin was twenty-eight years old and commanded the wormhole relay station. He and his staff of six maintained the powerful communications lasers that transmitted messages through the system, as well as the giant mass drivers that kept the wormhole stable. They normally spent four months on and four months off, and had just begun their new tour when the rebellion broke out. Now, schedules were so disrupted that it was unclear how long they would remain.

The wormhole stations were the domain of the Exploration Service, an organization with a glorious history but one that barely explored anything any longer, its budgets slowly reduced over the centuries as the Shaa grew old and died and lost interest in expanding their empire. Maintaining the wormholes and the communications system were now the Service’s primary tasks, and the two remaining exploration craft were crewed by cadets who built their esprit by reenacting the heroic discoveries of the past.

Severin would like to have commanded a probe through a newly discovered wormhole, but his real reason for joining the Exploration Service was because of his aunt, a commander who could guarantee him quick promotion. The pay was good and he could save money easily, since he had no expenses during his four-month stretches in the station. It was a good service, small and efficient, and everyone based at Seizho knew and liked each other.

Severin didn’t know how he felt about the service being militarized and annexed to the Fleet for the duration of the emergency. He reckoned he could live with it if he didn’t have to take too many idiotic orders from a clutch of useless Peers.

Most wormholes, those strange remnants left over from the formation of the universe, were spherical, presenting the familiar inverted-starscape-in-a-goldfish-bowl appearance that was the standard illustration in elementary texts. Other wormholes were tetrahedral or octahedral or cylindrical. Protipanu 2 was the only torus-shaped wormhole, with a hole in the middle, that was actually in use. The famous yachtsman Minh had once repeatedly dived his yacht through the hole in the center, threading it like a giant buttonhole. Severin enjoyed looking through the broad windows of his command center at the strange sight, the weird hoop of another system’s stars floating in space. He took a kind of pride in it, in being custodian of the most unique wormhole in the empire.

Still, now that there was an emergency, Severin found himself chafing to do his bit. In the old days, the Exploration Service would have been foremost in any action against rebels. So whenCorona’s signal told him that the Naxids were on their way and how long it would be before they arrived, he called a meeting of his staff.

“I think we should strike at the enemy,” he said. “I think we should do something worthy of the traditions of the Service.”

“Such as?” Warrant Officer/Second Gruust was skeptical.

Severin offered Gruust a bite of the spicy garlic sausage he’d been snacking on when the message came.

“I think we should move the wormhole,” he said.

Part of the task of the wormhole station was to keep the wormhole stable. Wormholes could be destabilized over time if more mass went in one direction through the hole than the other, a problem that hardly existed when all that passed through them was solar wind and the odd bit of cosmic dust. Ships, however, were another problem. If more ships passed through the wormhole in one direction, then the wormhole could deform, drift away, or even collapse.

Fortunately for the stability of the empire, the remedy was simple: you simply had to chuck enough matter in the other direction to reestablish balance. Each wormhole station was equipped with a mass driver that could fire colossal steel-jacketed chunks of asteroid material through the hole and into orbit around the other system’s star, where they could be retrieved if necessary and fired the other way. The projectiles were so massive that the driver didn’t move them very fast, but speed was hardly necessary-only a degree of timing was required, so that a ship heading for the wormhole didn’t meet a rock going the other way.

“Move the wormhole?” Gruust asked. “Can we do that?”

“I expect we can.”

Gruust chewed meditatively on garlic sausage. “That would really wreck their schedule. They miss the wormhole, there aren’t any planets out there to swing around. It would take them months to decelerate and return.”

Severin was already on to the next step. “Why don’t you and the others get the lifeboat packed and I’ll warm up the coils?”

The exams Severin had passed to earn his rank had featured a lot of wormhole theory, and he put it to use now. He began firing his heavy, slow-moving bowling balls toward the great torus, and only then started calculating where they would have to hit in order to skate the wormhole across the sky. He figured the first few shots would destabilize the wormhole only slightly and make the rest of his task easier.

Once he had his effects calculated and knew where to aim, he began a regular barrage, firing one bolt after another. Only then did he communicate with his superiors in the Seizho system to ask permission for what he was doing.

It took four hours for the Seizho brass to respond, categorically forbidding Severin to destabilize the wormhole. By then, he’d hurled hundreds of thousands of tons of dense matter through the torus, and had begun to detect motion.

The odor of garlic preceded Gruust into the command center. “Lifeboat’s ready,” he reported. He gazed out the huge plate windows of the mass driver as another giant bolt shot off the rails and toward the eerie, hoop-shaped entity in the far distance.

“Why don’t you look after the drivers for a while,” Severin said. “I want to make sure my personal stuff is on the lifeboat.”

The lifeboat wasn’t as cramped as its name might have suggested: it was designed to keep an entire station’s crew comfortable for the journey to and from the station, a journey that might take a month or more. There was a fully stocked kitchen and exercise facilities, and a library of videos, books, music, and other entertainments.

Severin added a stock of insulated clothing, thermal blankets, and warm socks, then returned to the command center.

“The wormhole’s moving,” Gruust said.

“I know.”

By the time Severin had fired off all his ammunition, the wormhole had moved seven diameters on a diagonal course from the plane of the ecliptic, and the messages from his superiors, who were detecting the huge freight-train-sized bolts flying into their system, were growing frantic. Eventually their messages trailed away: with the wormhole moving, the communications lasers were no longer in alignment.

Severin and his crew had a last meal in the station, noodles in a tomato sauce made fiery by dried chiles, washed down by a dark, toasty beer that one of the crew had made with barley he’d brought onto the station.

The Exploration Service traditionally compensated for their loneliness by eating well.

“You know,” Severin said, “I’m beginning to think we shouldn’t leave the Protipanu system.”

“If we stay here,” Gruust said, “they’ll just take us prisoner.”

“I don’t want to stayhere, ” said Severin. “Not in the station. I thought we’d take the lifeboat and grapple it to one of those big chunks of rubble orbiting past. That way we could keep the enemy under observation, and if the Fleet returns, we can give them the information. And if the rebels leave, we can just reoccupy the station.”

“You’re talkingmonths, ” someone said.

There was some discussion of this. Severin didn’t want to live for three or four months with a crew who resented the orders that put them there. But in the end he had his way, and without pulling rank: the others were used to spending time together in isolated situations, and agreed that wrecking enemy plans was worth the extra discomfort and time.

“It’s going to be cold, unfortunately,” Severin said. “To avoid detection, I’m going to have to power as little of the ship as possible.”

“We should get the thermal blankets aboard,” someone said.

“I already have.”

There was a moment of silence. “Well, at least we’ll have a big pay packet waiting when we return,” Gruust said hopefully.

They moved six months’ food supplies into the lifeboat and cast off. Severin already had chosen his rock, an iron asteroid called 302948745AF-the smaller lumps of rock and metal in the Protipanu system were well charted, since they were all potential supplies of reserve ammunition for the mass drivers.

The Naxid flotilla leaped into the system before the lifeboat actually grappled to its new home, but Severin had anticipated this, and made his major deceleration burn before their arrival. He was now drifting gently toward 302948745AF. He knew he should be able to snuggle tight to the asteroid with just his maneuvering thrusters, and without attracting attention by lighting the antimatter engine.

Floating weightless in the lifeboat’s control station, he watched the tall antimatter torches race toward the wormhole. The Naxids were coming fast, decelerating but still moving at nearly half the speed of light. Severin calculated their trajectories and discovered that they were on course…for where the wormholehad been.

It was perfectly possible for them to find out the wormhole had moved. They could detect it visually or by charting its warp of space-time. But the wormhole had been in the same place since its discovery, and the Naxids had no reason to suspect it might have crabbed away from there.

Still, as the minutes ticked by and the blips raced closer, Severin felt his mouth go dry, and cramp pained his hands as they clamped on the stabilization bars at the control panel. It would require a tiny correction in their course to hit the wormhole, one they might make at any moment…

He held his breath. And the Naxid squadron shot past, a clean miss of the wormhole. The little lifeboat’s crew broke into cheers. Severin could only imagine the consternation in the rebels’ command centers as they realized what had happened to them.

While the Naxids increased the fury of their deceleration burn, Severin knew that he’d delayed their plans, whatever they were, by at least three months, probably a good deal more.

He felt a quiet triumph. He’d done the enemy an injury, done it without having a single weapon to fire at them, and with any luck, he’d be in a position to do them another.

In the days that followed his conversation with Tork, Jarlath and his staff worked endlessly on plans for a Magaria attack, and the harder he contemplated the possibilities, the less possible he found it to resist them.

Martinez’s video report, delivered after a transmission delay of some days, provided little hard information about the damage of his missile strike, but it left Jarlath convinced that the missile must have donesomething. Almost all the shielding on a ring station was on its outer rim, facing the sun as it rotated to protect the inhabitants from solar radiation, andCorona’s missile had hit north of the inner rim. The flood of neutrons and highly energetic gamma rays released by the explosion would probably not have done any lasting damage to the ships, but any crew and ring personnel who were not in a hardened shelter had probably got a fatal dose of radiation.

Martinez might have caused a massacre among the enemy, as well as many of the civilian personnel aboard the ring. Casualties to the dockyard workers and other specialists on whom the Fleet depended could have been high. Though hardened military gear would probably have survived well enough, the ordinary electronics on the ring station might well have been slagged-everything from communications to light and power to the electric carts used to haul supplies to and from the ships. Such damage would have interfered severely with the Naxids’ attempts to refit their captured ships.

If he came in fast, Jarlath thought, if the Home Fleet roared in so quickly that Fanaghee had no time to alter her own dispositions, he might well catch her napping. The only way she could match the abrupt and devastating arrival of the Home Fleet would be to subject her own crews to the same merciless accelerations that he was inflicting on his own personnel. But Jarlath had full crews-his people got at leastsome rest-and if Fanaghee had crewed her captured vessels from out of the Naxid ships,all her ships would have skeleton crews. By the time he met them in combat, Jarlath thought, they’d be beaten into undifferentiated protoplasm by over a month of high gravities and standing continual watches, unable to match his crews in efficiency and combat readiness. They would have no real damage control capability. After all, the three squadrons consisted of ships that had only recently been adapted to their species, and whose controls and capabilities would be unfamiliar.

On the other hand, they would have the advantage of position. Two large planets in Magaria’s system, Barbas and Rinconell, happened to have moved on either side of Magaria Wormhole 1, with a forty light-minute gap between them. Fanaghee could keep her squadrons involved in perpetual slingshots between the two planets, or between Barbas, Rinconell, Magaria, and Magaria’s sun, thus keeping her ships at high speed and in a position to slap at his fleet once it emerged from the wormhole.

Jarlath’s staff, however, had worked out a series of maneuvers that would minimize this advantage.

His primary worry, as he saw it, was that he might be outnumbered. But then he heard from Martinez that the enemy squadron from Felarus wasn’t at Magaria, but at Protipanu, and Jarlath realized that not every enemy ship was joining Fanaghee. The Naxids seemed to be dispersing rather than concentrating their force.

Now it seemed more essential than ever to seize Magaria to prevent the enemy from concentrating.

The appearance of the Felarus squadron at Protipanu sent the Convocation into a paroxysm. If the rebels were dispersing their force, then everywhere was threatened. The Convocation demanded that the Fleet Control Board take steps.

“To protect everywhere,” Tork muttered, and followed the remark with an obscenity.

Accordingly, it was decided to send a force to Hone-bar, which would silence at least some of the critics. The Laiown squadron from Preowin, not yet arrived at Zanshaa, was tasked for this mission, as was the improvised squadron that would be raised by calling in single ships scattered in the capital’s vicinity. It would be led by the captured Naxid cruiserDestiny, now being adapted for the Torminel crew that would soon be placed aboard her.

It was to this squadron that the Corona of the heroic and by now much-decorated Lieutenant Captain Martinez would be assigned.