Two of the suited figures had wrestled a missile out of its tube and were now guiding it through a tangle of robotic limbs between it and the disposal bay. At least the missile hadn’t received its antimatter, and was therefore relatively light.
How long?Martinez clenched his teeth. He thought about shouting out, “Crew in the weapons bay!” which would presumably halt any future accelerations.
No. No acceleration would occur without Tarafah’s command, and if Tarafah gave the order, he could announce the danger in time.
Or so he hoped.
Another missile was being wrenched out of its tube, by a single straddle-legged figure braced against the weapons bank. At least the footballers could be counted on for brawn.
A message flashed across screens. “Message from Flag,” he found himself repeating.“Second Division, alter course in echelon to two-two-seven by three-one-zero relative. Accelerate at four-point-five gravities. Execute at 28:01:001 ship time.”
He glanced at the time display. That was six minutes from now.
He was never more thankful for the regulation that made certain his helmet was sealed. He touched his controls and said into his helmet mic, “Page Crewman Alikhan.”
“My lord?” The answer came within seconds.
“You’ve got five minutes before the next acceleration.”
There was a moment of silence as Alikhan calculated the odds. “Three missiles remaining. We’re not going to make it.”
“No. Get the people to the acceleration couches, and I’ll tell the captain what’s happening.” Martinez looked at the hopeless situation, the awkward crew in their vac suits guiding a missile past the tangled arms of the robots, then said, “Halt that. Wait a minute.”
He paused to think his idea through. “No, what you do is this: get someone on the robot controls; have the others yank the missiles from the tubes and then just hand them to the robot manipulator arms. The robot can hang onto them till the maneuver is over. There’s no antimatter and no danger, and after the maneuver’s completed, you can finish the job manually.”
“Very good, my lord.” Alikhan cut his comm very fast, and from then on Martinez had to watch in silence. Alikhan himself bounded out of the frame, presumably to Weapons Control and the robot controls. The other crew popped the hatches, pulled the missiles, and boosted them gently in the direction of the functioning robot. In another few seconds the robot’s manipulator arms snatched the missiles from midair and then froze.
The suited figures bounded from the weapons bay in the direction of their armored shelter. Martinez looked at the time display:26:51:101 .
Two minutes to spare.
“Oh, it was a shambles in the weapons bays, my lord,” Alikhan said as he buffed Martinez’s number two pair of shoes. “No one was in charge. The master weaponer was so drunk he couldn’t manage a single order that made sense or had anything to do with the situation. One of our two weaponer/firsts was a footballer, and so was one of the weaponer/seconds. And the two cadets who usually help out—nice young people, really, they’re learning fast—were stuffed into pinnaces and fired out of the ship.”
“I’m glad I thought to put you on the scene,” Martinez said. “But still, I could have got you killed.”
Alikhan put the shoe down and tapped the inactive communications display on his left sleeve. “I had Maheshwari on the comm. He would have aborted any accelerations if we’d still had anyone in the weapons bay.”
Martinez nodded slowly. The senior petty officers had their own networks, their own intelligence, their own way of surviving the officers who the Fleet had placed over them.
If you can find a master specialist who isn’t a drunk, isn’t crazy, and who retains most of his brain cells,Martinez’s father had told him,then grab him.
Martinez blessed his father for the advice, and helped himself to whisky from his private stash, the dark-paneled cabinet under his narrow bed. On taking command, Captain Tarafah had repaneled the officers’ quarters—and his own—with rich, dark mahogany, complemented by brass fixtures and dark tile with a white and red geometric pattern. Officers’ country was now scented faintly with lemon oil, at least when it didn’t whiff of brass polish.
Martinez needed the whisky, having just finished a double shift, standing watch in Command whileCorona picked up its pinnaces and spent missiles, and Tarafah and the senior lieutenant shuttled to the flagship for a debriefing with the other captains and the fleetcom. The neat whisky scorched Martinez’s throat, and he could feel his bruised muscles begin to relax.
“I’m glad we’re not in a real war,” he said. “You would all have been shot through with gamma rays.”
“In a real war,” Alikhan said, “we would have stayed safe in our bunker and used a different bank of missiles.”
Martinez fingered his chin. “Do you think the captain will find out what happened?”
“No. The jammed robots were repaired as soon as we secured from quarters. The damaged missile will be written off the inventory somehow—there are all sorts of ways to make a missile disappear.”
“I take no comfort in this knowledge,” Martinez said. He took another sip of whisky. “Do you think the captainshould find out?”
By which Martinez meant,Do you think the captain should find out that wesaved him during the maneuvers?
Alikhan looked sober. “I’d hate to end the career of a thirty-year man just short of retirement. And it’s the master weaponer who’d be blamed, not the footballers.”
“True,” Martinez said. He hated the idea of doing something clever and no one ever finding out. But getting the master weaponer cashiered would not endear him to Alikhan, and he found Alikhan too valuable to offend.
“Well,” he shrugged, “let it go. Let’s hopeCorona doesn’t get into a war before the master weaponer retires.”
“Hardly likely, my lord.” Alikhan brushed his mustachios with the back of a knuckle. “Coronahas survived worse commanders than Tarafah. We’ll get her through it, never fear.”
“But willI get through it?” Martinez asked. He sighed, then reached into the mahogany-paneled hutch beneath his bed and withdrew another bottle of whisky. “This might help your cogitations,” he said. “Don’t share it with anyone in the Weapons Division.”
Alikhan accepted the bottle with gravity. “Thank you, my lord.”
Martinez finished his drink and decided not to pour himself another, at least not yet. The example of the master weaponer was a little too strong. “Too bad it’s the only reward you’re going to get for saving the captain from disgrace.”
“It’s more than I usually get,” Alikhan remarked—and, with an ambiguous smile, braced in salute and left.
Two days later, after the last of the meetings in which the commanding officers refought the maneuver, Fleet Commander Fanaghee announced a Festival of Sport that would take place at Fleet facilities. Teams from every ship in Fanaghee’s command would participate, andCorona’s football team would face Magaria’s own champions from theBombardment of Beijing in a special match. Tarafah announced an intensified program of training for his team, beginning immediately, before the ship even docked.
When Martinez crawled off his watch that night, he didn’t stop at one drink. Or at two.
EIGHT
The bank was built of granite, a miniature Great Refuge complete with dome, probably to suggest permanence, but now, in the absence of the Great Masters, perhaps suggesting something else. Wesley Weckman, the trust manager, was a young man with a prematurely grave manner, though the style of his glossy boots and his fashionable bracelet of human hair suggested that his life outside the bank was not as sedate as his working hours.
“Interest has stayed at three percent in the years since you entered the academy,” he said. “And since you’ve returned most of your allowance to the bank since that time, I’m pleased to report that the total sum now exceeds 29,000 zeniths, all of which I can put in your hands when your trust fund matures on your twenty-third birthday.”
Which was in eleven days. Which made her, in Terran years—she had once known someone who calculated “Earthdays”—just past twenty.
Sula briefly calculated what 29,000 zeniths might buy her. A modest apartment in the High City, or an entire apartment building in a decent section of the Lower Town. A modest villa, with extensive grounds, in the country.
At least a dozen complete outfits from the most fashionable designers of Zanshaa.
Or one perfectly authentic rose Pompadour vase from Vincennes dating from four centuries before the conquest of Terra, conveniently up for auction at the end of the month.
Given prices like that, Sula figured the antimatter bombs had broken a lot of porcelain.
It was a ridiculous fantasy to spend her entire inheritance on a vase, but she felt she’d been working hard for a long time now and deserved a moment of complete irrationality.