Two hours later Alikhan woke him with a breakfast of coffee, salt mayfish, and one of Perry’s fresh brioche. Afterward, Alikhan began assisting him into his vac suit in preparation for the walk to the Flag Officer Station.
Everyone on the ship knew the hour at which general quarters would be called, and most were now struggling into their vac suits, or would be shortly.
The suit checked its own systems and displayed the result on its sleeve display: all was well. Martinez took a last sip of coffee, then took his helmet from Alikhan and dismissed him to go to quarters, where he’d don his own suit with the aid of another weaponer.
Martinez clomped down the corridor, awkward in the suit, and dropped down two decks to the Flag Officer Station. Michi was already present, along with her aides Li and Coen. Michi stood with her back to him, her helmet off, her hair tucked into the cap that held her earphones and the projectors of the virtual array. The unfixed chin strap dangled on her shoulder. Her head was bent and one hand was pressed over an ear as if to hear better.
Even in the bulky suit Martinez could see the tension in her stance. “Stand by,” she said, and swung around to him, her face a mask of furious calculation. He braced.
“My lady.”
“I need you to take command ofIllustrious immediately. Something’s happened to Captain Fletcher.”
“Has he—” Martinez began.Run amuck with a kitchen knife, perhaps? He couldn’t seem to find a way to phrase the question tactfully.
Michi’s words were clipped and curt, nearly savage. “There’s a report he’s dead,” she said. “Now get to Command and take charge before things go completely to hell.”
ELEVEN
Martinez marched into Command with his helmet under his arm and confusion warring with frustration in his heart.
“I am in command!” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Per the squadcom’s orders!”
Heads turned, faces peering at him from over the collars of their vac suits. Chandra Prasad looked at him from the command cage. A lock of her auburn hair curled across her forehead from under her sensor cap.
“Captain Martinez is in command!” she agreed.
Martinez stepped toward her. “Lieutenant,” he said, “do you wish to confirm with the squadcom?”
Amusement touched the corners of her mouth. “I just got off the comm with her, Lord Captain. She told me you were coming.”
Martinez sensed the drama that had marched in with him begin to deflate.
“Very well,” he said.
Chandra tipped her couch forward and rose to her feet. “Course two-two-five by zero-zero-one absolute,” she reported. “Accelerating at one gravity, and are currently moving at .341c. Our closest approach to Termaine will occur in approximately a hundred and ten minutes. We are not yet at general quarters.”
“Sound general quarters then,” Martinez said.
“General quarters!” Chandra called.
The alarm began to chime. The command crew reached into the net bags attached to their couches, pulled out their helmets, and began to lock them onto the connecting rings of their collars.
Chandra paused with her helmet halfway over her head. “My position at quarters is normally at signals,” she said.
“Take your position then, Lady Chandra.”
“Yes, my lord.” As she walked by him she lowered her voice and said, “Your luck’s holding, Captain.”
Martinez shot her a murderous glance, but she’d already passed. He took his seat, the couch swinging with his weight as he webbed himself in. He reached above his head for the command display and locked it down in front of him.
He donned his helmet, and at onceIllustrious turned more distant. All the noise in Command faded—the creak of the acceleration cages, the bleating of displays trying to call for attention, the distant rumble of the ship’s engines. More apparent was the hiss of the air inlet and the polyamide scent of the suit seals. Martinez turned on his suit microphone and tuned to the channel he shared with the signals station. “Comm,” he said. “Test, test.”
“I hear you, Lord Captain.”
He looked over Command. The murals Fletcher had installed were antique military scenes, horsebacked officers who looked like bolsters in odd, overstuffed clothes, all leading bodies of men who carried firearms that featured nasty long knives on the ends. Below the officers’ bland gaze Martinez saw only the backs of the helmets of the crew sitting at their stations. IfIllustrious had been his own command, he would have known their names by now: as it was, he knew only the three lieutenants and a handful of the others.
He wondered how much they knew about why he was here. It was a certainty that whatever they knew or didn’t, they were probably boiling with questions.
Martinez shifted to the channel that allowed him to address everyone in Command, then paused to collect his thoughts. It was difficult to pass on information that he did not himself possess. He decided to keep it as simple as possible.
“This is Captain Martinez,” he said. “I wished to inform you that the lady squadcom instructed me to take command ofIllustrious, as Captain Fletcher has been reported ill. I don’t know any details, but I’m sure that Captain Fletcher will return to command as soon as circumstances permit.”
Well, he thought,that was as bland an announcement as he could possibly imagine. He doubted it went very far toward softening the curiosity of the watch.
Martinez then called Michi to let her know that he’d arrived in Command. The call was taken by Michi’s aide, Lady Ida Li, who presumably passed it on.
He called up the tactical display and familiarized himself with the situation: Chenforce on its way to pass by Termaine, the two pinnaces and their squadrons of missiles ahead, Termaine surrounded by a cloud of ships that had been cast off and abandoned. If Fleet Commander Jakseth was preparing any act of defiance, he had yet to launch it.
“Lord Captain?” The voice was familiar, and a glance at his display showed that it belonged to Husayn, the weapons officer.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” Martinez answered.
“I was wondering if I’m likely to have to light the weapons board.”
Which was very tactful of Husayn, and Martinez mentally awarded him a few points. At the moment neither he, Husayn, or anyone else aboardIllustrious could fire its population-crushing array of weaponry. No single officer could do that, not until certain conditions were met.
Three officers—either the captain and two lieutenants or three lieutenants on their own—would have to turn their keys to unlock the weapons board, and at least two of those keys would have to be turned in different parts of the ship.
Martinez’s key was useless for the task—it wasn’t configured for a line officer in the correct chain of command. He would have to organize three of the lieutenants.
“Very good, Lord Lieutenant,” he said. He called the first lieutenant, Fulvia Kazakov, who was stationed in Auxiliary Command, ready to take charge ofIllustrious if Command and all senior officers were blown to bits, and had her insert her key along with Husayn and Chandra Prasad.
“Turn on my mark,” Martinez said. “This is not a drill. Three, two, one, mark.”
Husayn’s display brightened as all weapons went live.
“Thank you,” Martinez said. “Stand by.”
Lighting the weapons board was the most dramatic thing that happened until it was time to darken the weapons board again. The day crawled by like an arthritic animal looking for a hole to die in. Every so often one of the icons on the tactical display would move very slightly in one direction or another, and then everything would be still once more.
The pinnaces flashed past Termaine, cameras and sensors sweeping the planet’s ring for hidden weapons or warships and feeding the data to the sensor operators in Command and Auxiliary Command. Lieutenant Kazakov correlated the data and informed Termaine that Fleet Commander Jakseth was to all appearances obeying Lady Michi’s commands. The Naxids had been building no less than six warships on Termaine’s ring, but none were completed and all had been cast adrift.
Martinez wasn’t asked to kill a few billion people. Instead, in a voice that breathed relief with every syllable, he targeted each of the abandoned ships cast off from the ring, warships and civilian craft both, and sent missiles on their way to destroy them. He divided the missiles equally among the ships of Chenforce so that no one ship’s magazines would be depleted too quickly.
He watched the missile bursts blossom in the display, as the expanding, overlapping spheres of superheated plasma momentarily obscured Termaine and its ring. When the plasma cooled and dissipated, the ring was still there, presumably much to the relief of Fleet Commander Jakseth.