Another couple months, he thought pleasantly, and the cruiser would fit him like a glove.
Chenforce made a high-gravity burn around Arkhan-Dohg’s sun and hurled itself for Wormhole 3, its presence marked by the radioactive dust that had been its relay station. No Naxid missiles barred their way.
On the other side of Wormhole 3 was Choiyn, a wealthy world with five billion inhabitants and considerable industry. Four uncompleted medium-sized warships, large frigates or light cruisers, were cast adrift from its ring and destroyed, along with half a dozen merchant ships that had been unable to clear the system in time.
No Naxid attack threatened, but to be safe, Michi vaporized all the wormhole stations anyway, lest they provide tracking data to the enemy.
Martinez was busy with drills, inspections, and minutiae. Rao, Francis’s replacement, produced revised 77-12s that corrected Francis’s elisions, and Martinez’s inspections showed that Rao’s data were not in error.
Cadet Ankley, who had been made Acting Lieutenant after Phillips’s suicide, spectacularly lost his temper when an inspection of his division had turned up some chaotic inventory, and had to be returned to the ranks of the cadets while Cadet Qing was promoted in his place.
This failure was balanced by Chandra Prasad’s success. Her exercises had Chenforce pelted by relativistic missiles from all directions, and also compelled the squadron to confront a wide variety of Naxid attacks, the enemy converging on Chenforce from various headings and with a wide variation in velocity. It was a big surprise when a virtual Naxid squadron starburst to mirror Martinez’s new tactics, and Chenforce had a murderous fight on its hands that ended in mutual annihilation. The sting of this humiliation stayed with Martinez for some time, but eventually he concluded that if the war went on long enough, the Naxids were bound to adopt the new tactics or something like them, and that the Fleet should be ready with countertactics.
If only he could think of some.
After Choiyn came Kinawo, a system that featured a main-sequence yellow star orbited by a blue-white companion so furiously radioactive that the system was bereft of life except for the crews of a pair of heavily shielded wormhole stations, both of which were quickly destroyed. Chenforce would transit Kinawo in six days and then enter El-Bin, a system with two habitable planets, one heavily industrialized and the other covered with grazing, herdsmen, and their beasts.
El-Bin also had four wormholes, each of which offered a different possibility. Which meant that El-Bin was the last possible place to make a certain decision, and whatever way that decision went, it would effect the outcome of the war.
Martinez invited Lady Michi to supper the night before the squadron was to transit to El-Bin. He had Perry pull out all the stops and prepare a ham, a duck that had been preserved in its own fat, and dumplings stuffed with cheese, smoked pork, and herbs. When Michi arrived, he greeted her with cocktails, pickles, and cheese huffers. She seemed undefinably different, and more attractive. Studying her, he decided the difference was the hair. She still wore it at collar length, with straight bangs across the forehead, but somehow the style suited her more now than in the past.
“You’ve changed your hair,” he said, “but I can’t work out how.”
She smiled. “Buckle. Since he doesn’t belong to Captain Fletcher anymore, I thought I’d take advantage of his availability.”
“He’s done a splendid job. You’re looking very well.”
She patted her hair. “Now that Buckle’s on staff, I think you’ll find some more attractive crew walking about the ship.”
“I’ll look forward to that.”
Martinez sat Michi at the place of honor in the captain’s dining room and had Alikhan open a bottle of wine. The plates arrived, each served by Narbonne in its turn, and Michi was impressed by the vast quantity of food that kept rolling out of the kitchen.
“I won’t keep my good looks for long if I eat all this,” she remarked.
“I’d be alarmed for you if you ate everything,” Martinez said, “but I can have Perry prepare a package of leftovers for you. He’d love it, I’m sure—score points againstyour cook.”
“I’d rather not have my cook in a mood to poison me, thanks all the same.”
Over coffee and fried ice cream they began a discussion of that morning’s exercise, in which Chandra had set a pair of converging Naxid squadrons on a virtual Chenforce.
“Prasad is proving useful,” Michi said. “I’ve completely changed my mind about her.”
“Yes?”
“Before I took her on staff, I thought I disliked her. Now that I’ve had a chance to work with her closely, I realize that I hate her guts.” She scowled, her brows meeting. “She’s ambitious, she’s unscrupulous, she’s tactless, and she’s ill-bred. But she’s too good, damn it. I can’t get rid of her.”
Martinez didn’t disagree with this estimate, and though he was pleased at having unloaded Chandra onto his superior, he felt it would be tactless to show it.
“I’m sorry she’s so turbulent,” he said.
“I have to wonder what Kosinic saw in her,” Michi muttered.
Martinez stared at her. “Kosinic and Chandra were…?”
“Yes. It began over a year ago, when Kosinic first joined my staff and Prasad had a job on Harzapid’s ring. I’m not sure it continued after Kosinic was wounded, because that’s when Prasad came aboard and began her relationship with the captain.” She scowled. “I suppose Kosinic lacked the strength of character to resist her.”
Martinez feigned a fascination with his coffee cup.Is Chandra killing all her ex-lovers? he wondered, and then wondered whether the one guard outside during the night watches was enough.
“Interesting,” he said.
Michi raised an eyebrow. “Do you think so? I think it’s squalid.”
“No reason it can’t be both.” Surprise about Chandra and Kosinic swam through his mind, and then he wondered about Michi’s reaction to the business. Perhaps she’d had a little crush on her young protégé? With an effort he pushed speculation to the side. He had other things in mind.
He looked at Michi. “I have some ideas, my lady, of a tactical nature.”
A delicate smile touched her lips. “Yes? This supper isn’t purely social then?”
“I hoped to show you a pleasant evening in exchange for having to listen to my ideas—well, idea, there’s only one.”
“The dumplings have made me generous. Go on.”
Martinez took a deliberate sip of his coffee, the bitter taste welcome after the sweet dessert. He put his cup carefully in the saucer. “I’d like to make the case for an attack on Naxas.”
Michi smiled. “I was wondering when you’d suggest an attack on the enemy capital. I was making little bets with myself about it.”
“The Naxids have fifty warships in their fleet,” Martinez said, “and we know that forty-three of them were in the fleet that took Zanshaa. That leaves seven at Magaria and Naxas combined. There was a small squadron of five ships at Naxas at the beginning of the war, and I’d bet they’re still there. I’d also be willing to bet they haven’t been reinforced.
“Chenforce has seven ships, though admittedlyCelestial was damaged at Protipanu and can’t fight at full efficiency. Our magazines are depleted by about a third, but we have new tactics, good morale, and a tradition of victory. One attack at Naxas can overwhelm the defenders and put the enemy government at our mercy. It might be the winning stroke.”
Michi gave a long sigh. “You have no idea how tempting you make it all sound.” She placed her hands flat on the table before her, fingers extended. “But we don’t know that the enemy government is still on Naxas. It might well be in transit to Zanshaa.”
“That’s a risk,” Martinez admitted.
“Plus it’s not as if the Naxids don’t know where we are. They may have sent reinforcements to Naxas. Even if we get there first and defeat the five ships, a rescue force may still arrive, and we’d have another fight on our hands, with magazines running empty from the previous fight.”
“Yes.”
“And of course they may have completed some of their new ships and sent them to Naxas. And we might not be lucky. And of course my orders specifically order menot to go to Naxas.”
“True.” Martinez nodded.