Jarlath saw his subordinate and marched toward him. One of the Naxids saw the fleetcom coming and alerted Elkizer, and Elkizer’s four-legged body spun in place, two legs advancing forward, two in retreat, and then braced to attention. One last pattern flashed on the chameleon-weave jacket. Jarlath paused in surprise, then put his head down and marched to Elkizer again.
“What do you mean, ‘dupe’?” he asked.
Lord Richard was surprised at Jarlath’s words, though his surprise was nothing compared to that of Squadron Leader Elkizer, who swayed backward in astonishment, his back bent like a bow. “I beg your pardon, Lord Fleetcom,” he managed. “I did not use that sign.”
Jarlath bobbed his furry head as he loomed over Elkizer. The bobbing wasn’t a nod of affirmation, but a kind of triangulation used by his nocturnal, carnivorous species to fix the precise location of their prey.
“My lord, I spent three years at the Festopath Academy, where Torminel and Naxids shared a dormitory,” Jarlath lisped. “Believe me when I say that during those three years I learned every disrespectful idiom in the Naxid vocabulary, a fact that aided me greatly when I served as Lord President of the Academy a few years ago.” His lips peeled back from his fangs. “So kindly explain to me what you meant when you flashed, ‘Silence, the dupe approaches.’ ”
Elkizer was frozen for a long moment before he managed to speak. “My lord,” he said, “I must insist. I did not use that sign.”
“What signwas it, then?”
There was another long silence while Elkizer searched his thoughts. “The sign can also mean ‘lawn,’ ” he said finally.
“True. So what did you mean by ‘thelawn approaches’?”
Elkizer tried another path. “I meant no disrespect, my lord.”
Jarlath’s tone was savage. “To me? Or to thelawn? ”
Lord Richard watched the confrontation in awe, his nerves urging him to fight or fly. The Naxids were descended from predators who ran in packs, but the Torminels had once been solitary, nocturnal hunters of the heavy forest, pugnacious, persistent, and utterly fearless. Lord Richard thought Jarlath had been angry before, confronting the dockyard superintendent, but now it was clear that Jarlath had barely scratched the surface of his rage.
May Inever piss this one off, Lord Richard thought.
For the first time, Jarlath seemed to notice the crowd of Naxids behind Elkizer, the unusual mixture of high-ranking officers and senior noncoms. “What are these folk doing here?” he demanded. “What is your purpose?”
“My lord,” Elkizer said, “it’s an orientation tour. For new personnel.”
Jarlath panned across the party with his huge shaded eyes. “I see Junior Squadron Commander Farniai, who has been with the Home Fleet for six years. And Captain Tirzit, who was once second officer here at Ring Command. Captain Renzak—you’re on your second tour here, are you not?” His huge eyes swung back to Elkizer. “I’m surprised that these officers require orientation to a ring station they’ve inhabited for so many years.”
“My lord, it’s the others,” Elkizer said quickly. “We are orienting…these others.”
“Petty officers?” Jarlath said. “Constables?” He did the head-bobbing again, zeroing in on Elkizer’s throat. “Please surrender the impression that I am your dupe—or yourlawn. What are youreally doing here, Lord Commander?”
During the long silence that followed, it became clear to Lord Richard that Elkizer had fired all his ammunition and had nothing left in the shot locker but rust and scale.
“My lord, we mean no disrespect,” Elkizer finally said. “We thought you would be in the Commandery.”
All Jarlath’s white-bleached fur stood on end, burying once more his facial features, and hesqualled —the high-pitched yowl his prehistoric ancestors had used to freeze their victims while they pounced. Lord Richard was aware of personnel a hundred paces around stumbling with shock at the sound and turning to stare.
“No disrespect!” he screamed. “By this vilemendacity! By thisassembly, which you refuse to explain! By sneaking aroundbehind my back, while you thought I was in my office on Zanshaa!” Jarlath raised a heavy white fist. “You are up to something, my lord.”
Elkizer’s black-on-red eyes rolled. “My lord, I—”
“I don’tcare for another of your pathetic explanations,” Jarlath said, “even if this time it’s the truth. It is clear to me that you and these other—individuals—are involved in this scheme, whatever it is, because you have too little with which tooccupy your time. Therefore your squadron—and that of Squadcom Farniai here—will depart the ring station at 1701 today in order to participate in maneuvers. Which willbegin with a six-gravity acceleration toward Vandrith, followed by a slingshot maneuver and a full series of war games between your two squadrons, all of which will be designed by my staff for maximum stress on all ship systems—the crew in particular.”
“My lord!” Elkizer said. “We have crew on liberty!”
“Recall them! They have four hours to report.” Jarlath bared his fangs again. “Get moving!”
The Naxids began backpedaling, their booted feet beating at the roadway’s rubberized surface while their trunks remained erect.
“My lord,” Elkizer tried again, “you forget the dinner—”
“Fuckyour dinner!” Jarlath pronounced with satisfaction, and watched as the Naxids turned and sped away as fast as their thrashing feet could carry them.
For the next hour, trapped with Jarlath in the skyhook car as it plunged through the atmosphere to the surface of Zanshaa, Lord Richard and Jarlath’s staff had to listen to the fleetcom fume about the reek of dishonesty he smelled in this command, the general rottenness of everything at the dockyards, and the way the rot had spread to the Naxid squadrons.
“Discipline!”Jarlath said. “Order! Obedience! Theseshall be the watchwords of the Home Fleet from now on!”
“I’ll never think of Torminel as cute, furry pudge-pots ever again,” Lord Richard told Terza that evening. “My dear, the sight of Jarlath in fury was absolutely blood-chilling.”
The two Naxid squadrons, obeying Jarlath’s orders, detached from Zanshaa’s ring after four hours, oriented themselves toward Vandrith, and began the punishing acceleration that Jarlath had commanded.
Elkizer had no choice. His timetable called for the revolt to begin in four days’ time, all Naxids in the Fleet rising at the same moment throughout the empire. If he began early, word might reach other stations, and preparations taken before the Naxids elsewhere could strike.
Plus his instructions had insisted that he take care not to damage Zanshaa or its ring. Zanshaa was the capital of the empire, the place where the Great Masters rested, where the Convocation sat and where the Praxis had been proclaimed. To attack the planet or destroy its ring was unthinkable, near sacrilege. Though firing a barrage of missiles at the Home Fleet in its berths was a tempting prospect, such an attack would destroy the ring, and Naxid prestige along with it.
His planning had been systematic. Like every other Naxid party to the plot, Elkizer had no experience at managing a revolution or at fighting a battle. His lack of experience made him deeply uneasy, and so he strove for a comprehensive plan that left nothing to chance.
Unlike his colleague Fanaghee at Magaria, Elkizer didn’t command the fleet at Zanshaa, and he couldn’t simply order a Festival of Sport that would take the senior officers and most of the crews away from the ships. Instead, Elkizer planned an elaborate dinner for all the senior commanders, captains, and lieutenants, to celebrate the anniversary of the First Proclamation of the Praxis on Sandama. He planned to hold all the senior officers captive while his Naxids stormed Ring Command and all the berthed warships, after which the Lord Senior would proclaim the empire’s new arrangement to the Convocation. The Lords convocate could scarcely be expected to object, with the Home Fleet, the ring station, and thousands of antimatter missiles in the hands of the Naxids.
The plan considered that the chief danger would be a security leak, and so, like Fanaghee at Magaria, Elkizer planned to let people into the secret gradually, as they needed to know. He walked through the ring station several times with his staff, marking each target, planning each assignment. Then he brought in the next group of people, the senior captains and their top noncoms, and it was this group that ran afoul of Fleet Commander Jarlath. If Elkizer’s plans hadn’t been completely wrecked at that point, each captain would have gradually briefed others, the pool of knowledge widening until it encompassed hundreds. Most of the enlisted personnel that composed the boarding parties wouldn’t have understood the full implication of their tasks until they had been completed and Elkizer made his triumphant announcement.
Comprehensive as the plan was, there was no contingency in case the primary plan failed. The day of rebellion arrived with Elkizer’s force out of place. A return to Zanshaa would be suicide, so his squadrons swung past Vandrith, reduced acceleration to a single comfortable gravity, and kept on going, heading in a sedate, determined manner for the Zanshaa Wormhole 3, a course that would lead them, after three more wormhole jumps, to rendezvous with Senior Fleet Commander Fanaghee at Magaria.
There was complete astonishment in the Commandery when this became apparent some three hours later. The duty officer decided not to bother Jarlath, but instead queried Elkizer concerning why he had failed to follow the operational plan.
Over six hours later, when it was obvious that Elkizer had no intention of replying or of following orders, rebellion had been proclaimed in the Convocation, and everyone forgot about Elkizer for a while.
Akzad, the Lord Senior, raised his head and gazed at the convocates ringing the great amphitheater. “Although the Convocation is scheduled this afternoon to debate the creation of a uniform tariff structure in regard to the importation of luzhan from Antopone and El-vash, I should like to exercise a point of personal privilege and raise another matter.”
Maurice, Lord Chen, looked up from his desk, where he’d been going through the guest list for a reception at the Chen Palace—the limitation of parties to twenty-two guests was both a provocation and annoyance, as it inevitably meant leaving people off the list and running the risk of offending them. No tariffs? he thought vaguely. His clan was involved in the importation of luzhan from El-vash, and he would have been happy to see the Antopone tariffs kept high. Anything that postponed the vote had his favor.
Akzad rose from his couch. The corners of his stiff brocade cloak dragged on the ground as he moved—as slowly and grandly as Naxid physiology permitted—to the front of the dais, where he held the copper and silver wand in both hands, like a spear pointed vaguely at the back of the room.
“I wish to speak to a matter involving the survival of the Praxis itself,” he said. “For it seems to many of us that the Praxis is in danger.”
Surprise rose in Lord Chen.Threat to the Praxis?
“When the glory of the Praxis was first revealed,” Akzad said, “it was clear that not all species were at first able to appreciate its profound truths. The Praxis was first apprehended only by the Shaa, who in their wisdom determined to impose their vision of perfection upon all existence, first upon my own species and then others. For the Praxis is based, above all, on the eternal principle of subordination—on every line of authority and responsibility being absolutely clear—and the Shaa understood this before any of us. The Shaa were above us all, but the Shaa were still beneath the Praxis.”
Lord Chen, nodding at these commonplace observations, observed movement among the Naxid convocates. A dozen or so had left their places and were moving in their bolt-and-halt fashion to the front of the room. The Lord Senior continued.