"No, my lady. The captain complimented Thuc on his department before killing him."
Again Michi drew in her breath. Her eyes grew thoughtful.
"You can think of no reason?"
Martinez hesitated. "The captain and Lieutenant Prasad… ended
… their relationship yesterday. But if he was going to kill anyone over it, I don't know why it would be Thuc."
Maybe Thuc was handy, he thought.
That night Martinez wore a virtual headset and projected the starscape from outside Illustrious into his mind, hoping it would aid his sleeping mind in achieving a tranquility that had eluded him all day. It seemed to work, until he came awake with his heart pounding and, in his mind, the black emptiness of space turned the color of blood.
Breakfast was a meal eaten without noticing the contents of his plate. He dreaded hearing the businesslike sound of heels on the deck, Fletcher and Marsden and Mersenne, marching to his door to summon Martinez to another inspection.
Even though he half expected the sound his nerves gave a surprised, jangled leap as he heard it. Martinez was on his feet and already half-braced when Fletcher appeared in his open door, wearing full dress, white gloves, and the knife in its curved, gleaming scabbard..
"Captain Martinez, I'd be obliged if you'd join us."
Cold dread settled over Martinez like a rain-saturated cloak.
"Yes, my lord," he said.
As he walked to the door he felt lightheaded, possessed by the notion that everything from this point was predestined, that he was fated to be a witness to another inexplicable tragedy without being able to intervene, that within an hour or two he would again be reporting to Michi Chen while somewhere in the ship crew scrubbed blood from the deck..
Once again Fletcher wanted him as a witness. He wished Fletcher had just brought a camera instead.
Again Fletcher's party consisted of himself and two others. One was Madsden the secretary, but Mersenne had been replaced by Lord Ahmad Husayn, the weapons officer. That told Martinez where the party was headed, and he wasn't surprised when Fletcher took a turn two bulkheads down, and headed through a hatch into Missile Battery Three.
Gulik, the rat-faced little Master Weaponer, stood there braced along with his crew. Once more Martinez watched as Fletcher conducted a detailed inspection, including not just the launchers and loaders but the elevator systems used to move personnel along the battery, and the large spider-shaped damage-control robots used for repairs during high-gee, when the crew themselves would be strapped in their acceleration couches and barely able to breathe or think, let alone move. Fletcher checked the hydraulic reservoirs of the robots, inspected the radiation-hardened bunker where the weaponers would shelter in combat, and then had two missiles drawn from their tubes. The missiles were painted the same green, pink, and white pattern as the exterior of the ship, and looked less like weapons of war than strange examples of design, art objects commissioned by an eccentric patron, or perhaps colorful candies intended for the children of giants. The captain dusted them with his white-gloved fingers-he expected missiles in their tubes to be as clean as his own dinner table-then had them reinserted and asked Gulik when the loaders had last been overhauled.
At last Fletcher inspected the weaponers themselves, the line of immaculately-dressed pulpies, arranged in order of rank with the petty officers at the end.
Martinez felt his perceptions expanding through the battery, sensing every last cable, every last switch. He seemed hyperaware of everything that occurred within that enclosed space, from the scent of oil on the elevator cables to the nervous way Husayn flexed his hands when the captain wasn't looking to the sheen of sweat on Master Weaponer Gulik's upper lip.
Gulik stood at the end of the line, properly braced. Fletcher moved with cold deliberation up the line, his practiced eyes noting a worn seam on a coverall, a tool inserted in its loop wrong way round, a laundry tag visible above a shirt collar.
Martinez' nerves flashed hot and cold. Fletcher paused in front of Gulik and gazed at the man for a long, searching moment with his deep blue eyes.
"Very good, Gulik," Fletcher said. "You're keeping up your standards."
And then Fletcher, incredibly, turned and walked away, his brisk footsteps sounding on the deck, his knife clanking faintly on the end of its chain. Martinez, head swimming, followed dumbly with the rest of the captain's party.
Out of the corner of his eye, as he stepped over the hatch sill, he saw Gulik sag with relief.
Fletcher led up two companionways, then turned to Martinez.
"Thank you, captain," he said. The superior smile twitched again at the corners of his mouth. "I appreciate your indulging my fancies."
"Yes, my lord," Martinez said, because "You're welcome" wasn't quite the effect he was after.
Martinez went to his office and sat behind his desk and thought about what he'd just witnessed. Fletcher had called him to witness an inspection at which nothing unusual had occurred.
Fletcher makes scores of inspections every year, Martinez thought. But he's only killed one petty officer. So how eccentric is that, really?
An hour or so later Lieutenant Coen, Michi's red-haired signals officer, arrived with an invitation to join the squadcom for dinner. Martinez accepted, and over a cup of cold green melon soup informed Michi that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred at the morning's inspection.
Michi didn't comment, but instead asked about contingency plans for the squadron's nearest approach to Termaine, the next day. Martinez outlined his plans while frustration bubbled at the base of his spine.
What are you going to do? he wanted to ask. But Michi only spoke about the Termaine approach.
At the end of the meal he was more baffled than ever.
That night he came awake out of a disordered dream to find himself floating. He glanced at the amber numerals of the chronometer that glowed in a corner of the wall display and saw that it was time for a course reorientation around one of the Termaine system's gas giants, a final slingshot that would send Chenforce racing past the enemy-held planet.
Martinez watched the seconds tick past, and then the engines fired and his mattress rose to meet him.
Two hours later his orderly, Alikhan, woke him with a breakfast of coffee, salt mayfish, and one of Perry's fresh brioche. After this 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's 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 aide 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 chinstrap dangled on her shoulder. Her head was bent, and one hand was pressed over an ear as if to aid herself in hearing.
Even in the bulky suit Martinez could see the tension in her stance. "Stand by," she said, and swung around to Martinez, her face a mask of furious calculation. He braced.
"My lady."
"I need you to take command of Illustrious 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 to completely to hell."
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 simple as possible.
"This is Captain Martinez," he said. "I wished to inform you that the lady squadcom instructed me to take command of Illustrious, 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 as he settled into his couch, that was as bland an announcement as he could possibly imagine. He doubted the curiosity of the watch was in any way softened.
Martinez then 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 the enemy commander was preparing any act of defiance, he had yet to launch it.
The day crawled by like an arthritic animal looking for hole to die in. Every so often the icons on the tactical display would move very slightly in one direction or another, and then everything would be still again.
Crewed pinnaces launched by the warships flashed past Termaine, cameras and sensors sweeping the planet's ring for hidden weapons or warships, the data fed to the sensor operators in Command and Auxiliary Command. Lieutenant Kazakov correlated the data and informed Termaine that the enemy were to all appearances obeying Lady Michi's commands. The Naxids had been building no less than six warships on Termaine's ring, but none had been completed and all had been cast adrift.