The Praxis (35 page)

The Fleet's attitude toward sexuality was even less sentimental, if possible, than that of the Shaa. Though officially the Fleet claimed it didn't care who coupled with whom, customs had developed over the centuries to restrain at least a few of the crew's impulses. Division chiefs were discouraged from relations with their subordinates, because of the danger of coercion or of playing favorites. Relations between officers and enlisted were likewise discouraged, at least if they belonged to the same ship—Martinez's connection with Warrant Officer Taen was well within the Fleet's range of tolerance. And relations between the captain and any of his crew was not only considered a violation of custom, but bad luck as well.

A loophole served the officers, however, since they were allowed servants, with whom recreationals were unlimited. But this happened less often than an observer might expect: Martinez suspected that living with a paid companion in the close confines of a warship was too much like the least attractive aspects of a marriage—all the boredom and constraint of living intimately with a person one simply couldn't escape, and all without the relaxation and charm of getting away from routine to visit a lover in her own place.

Corona
had eight recreation tubes, two of them forward and reserved for officers. Martinez properly logged himself into the recreation chamber so that Vonderheydte could page him if he was needed. Martinez was expecting missile launches or some other emergency any second, and there was little time for preliminary caresses or endearments. He was surprised at the desperate quality of his own desires, the unexpected fury of his lust. Kelly mirrored his urgency, lost in explosive pleasure nearly from the start, clutching at him with the little red-knuckled fists at the end of her long, slim forearms.
Alive!
he thought.
Alive!

Afterward, with Kelly's head resting on his chest, he wondered how long he dared remain here, how much he should permit himself to relax. He badly wanted to remain in the small tubelike room scented with the odors of clean sheets and the distant undertaste of disinfectant, to close his eyes, and to let the muscles bruised with high gravities relax into the mattress under the light weight of half a gravity. And he wondered how many of the other recreational tubes on the ship were occupied at that moment, with other crew celebrating their escape from death.

It wasn't a call from Command that brought him to full alertness, but a nearby crash, a sound like the contents of an overfull closet spilling out. A crash that was followed immediately afterward by a long, bellowing laugh.

Well.
This
wasn't supposed to happen.

Martinez dressed, left the tube, and followed the laughter to the captain's cabin, where he found Zhou and Knadjian, along with their partner in crime, Ahmet. All three were stinking drunk on the captain's liquor, and Zhou was sprawled on the floor, far beyond speech or movement.

“Hey there, Lieutenant!” Ahmet said with a wave. “Come join us!”

Sex wasn't the only form of celebration, Martinez reminded himself.

At Martinez's orders, they'd broken into everything in search of the captain's key, and that apparently included the captain's liquor store. Once released from duty for a meal, they'd made their way back to where they knew they could drink themselves into a coma.

Martinez paged Alikhan. “Get these people to couches, strap them in, and make sure they're not in a position to touch a single control,” he said. “Then find every bottle of liquor on this ship, give it to the cooks, and see that it's put under lock and key.”

“Very good, my lord.”

“That includes the stuff in my cabin. And in Garcia's.”

“Yes, my lord. I'll be there directly.”

Martinez rejoined Kelly briefly, and found her dressed and pulling on her shoes. He gave her foot a grateful squeeze—leaning into the tube, it was the only part of her he could reach—and thanked her, with all the sincerity he could muster, for joining him.

“It's not like I didn't have fun,” she said.

Martinez returned to Command, waited the few moments it took Kelly to return, then ordered everyone into vac suits for some sustained acceleration. It was best to put distance between them while the Naxids were inactive, he thought.

It took ten minutes or so for the three inebriates to be stuffed into their suits and strapped down, and a little longer for the cooks to secure the galley. Then Martinez ordered increased acceleration, to four gees this time—his tummy, he realized,
was
a little full for six gravities to sit on it.

Hours passed. Martinez spent his time obsessively studying the displays, watching Magaria's ring on its slow rotation about its planet, speculating about the Naxids' lack of activity.

“My lord,” Tracy reported from her station. “
Judge Kybiq
has increased acceleration.”

Kybiq
was the cruiser that Fanaghee had placed en route to Wormhole 1, blocking
Corona's
escape to Zanshaa.

“Heading for the wormhole?” Martinez asked as he paged through the various displays to find the one that showed
Kybiq.

“No, my lord. Its heading is for Barbas”—the planet next out from Magaria, a sort of failed gas giant, huge, with a solid core and an atmosphere of furious storms. At the moment, its orbit placed it nearly between Magaria and Wormhole 1, which led to the most direct route to Zanshaa. For the next several months Barbas would be convenient for a slingshot maneuver, by which traffic outbound from Magaria would pick up speed by slinging themselves around it en route to the wormhole.

“Any alteration in course?”

“No, my lord.”

Martinez found the
Judge Kybiq
on his display, and as he stared at it, he felt a nervous little suspicion begin to grow in his mind. Why was the Naxid cruiser increasing its speed for the wormhole? Why was it suddenly so urgent to head to Zanshaa?

A few minutes with the plotting computer confirmed his suspicions.
Kybiq
had been accelerating out of Magaria for three days, and it was traveling faster than
Corona
even though its accelerations hadn't been quite so brutal. It was possible that the cruiser could swing around the near side of Barbas and hurl itself for Wormhole 1.

It was equally possible, and a good deal more probable, that
Judge Kybiq
could make a slight, last-minute alteration of course, then slingshot itself around the
far
side of Barbas and head for Wormhole 4 and an interception of
Corona.

The navplot computer did the math. Depending on how fast
Kybiq
accelerated, it would be three to five days before it could make its slingshot, and then another eight or ten days before the interception. Martinez plotted the worst-case scenario. How hard would he have to accelerate to beat the cruiser to the wormhole?

Not bad. To beat the
Kybiq
by half a day, even if the cruiser advanced at chest-crushing acceleration,
Corona
would only have to average a constant 3.8 gees for the next fourteen days. He was exceeding that now, and he'd set the pace before he even knew he was in a race.

He didn't want the Naxids to know he was on to their trick, however, so for the next three days he kept to a regular schedule: accelerating a steady four gees except during mealtimes, when he reduced to a single gravity; with occasional, regular bursts of up to six gees three times a day, for half an hour each time. His body ached, and his ligaments made popping and crackling sounds whenever he moved, but
Corona's
crew was staying the course, if not precisely thriving.

By the time
Kybiq
screamed through its turn around Barbas, subjecting its suffering crew to accelerations in excess of eleven gravities while it was in the planet's gravity well,
Corona
had a comfortable lead, and Martinez pulled even farther ahead by increasing the duration of the six-gravity bursts.
Kybiq
increased its acceleration, but Martinez was able to increase his own proportionally in order to maintain his lead—no matter what the cruiser did, it was going to lose the race, and Martinez took what comfort he could from the knowledge that however much he and his people were suffering, the Naxids' sufferings were worse.

The acceleration was a dreary grind, however. His body ached and his mind felt dulled. His sleep was uneasy, with suggestive and distasteful dreams, and his waking hours filled with the leaden weight and unwashed stench of his own body.

Martinez knew the Naxids had surrendered the race when they opened fire again. The ships around the ring station fired 190 missiles, and then, sometime later,
Kybiq
fired two salvos of thirty-two each and then cut its acceleration, giving up the race officially. The barrages were well-planned this time, each missile taking a separate track to converge on the
Corona
, from many different angles, within the space of about an hour. By the time they encountered the runaway frigate, they'd be traveling much faster than attacking missles had on the first day, and would be much more difficult to hit.

Martinez had over two days in which to plan his defenses. He, Kelly, Alikhan, and other technical-minded crew conferred, ran simulations, conferred again. Martinez began firing his defensive barrages when the missiles were five hours out, and the results simplified things when it came time to use the lasers.

By this time he was too tired to care much how it all turned out. The wild elation of the first day's escape had faded beneath the relentless crush of gravity, and it seemed that death would be a release from weariness and the constant struggle simply to breathe. The display filled with a confusing overlay of explosions and clouds of deadly radiation. He and Kelly and anyone who felt qualified crewed one of the defensive lasers, with the rest turned to automatic:
Corona
was surrounded with its own spiderweb of light, each radial line terminating in an explosion. When in doubt, Martinez launched missiles.

The fight went on for hours while the Naxid missiles vanished one by one in sheets of flame and fountains of angry gamma rays. More missiles flew through the expanding, opaque clouds, and had to be located and destroyed.
Corona's
powerful radars hammered out, trying to locate the dodging, weaving parcels of deadly antimatter. The missiles crept closer and closer. Countermissiles leaped off the rails. Lasers flashed in the darkness. Martinez fired, wiped sweat from his eyes, and sought wildly on the displays for another oncoming warhead, certain that he was missing something—but then he heard a tired whoop from Kelly, who was looking at him with a faded version of her once-brilliant smile, and he realized he'd won, that the missiles were finally gone and that he and the
Corona
were free.

He ordered the ship to decelerate to half a gravity and that a meal be served. He further ordered the spirit locker opened and gave everyone, even his three troublemakers, a shot of their favorite poison. They cheered him; wearily, but they cheered him. Exhausted pride glowed in his breast at the sound of their massed shouts.

There was no question of a recreational with Kelly: they were both too weary.

Fifteen days and four hours after departing Magaria station,
Corona
entered Magaria Wormhole 4 and made an instantaneous transit to the Paswal system. The frigate had twenty crew counting her lieutenant commandant, and thirty-one missiles left. She was traveling just short of twotenths of the speed of light, and could expect to dock at Zanshaa's ring in about another month, depending on how hard Martinez wanted to press her acceleration and deceleration.

Right now he didn't want to press anything. He sent his report via comm laser to the wormhole relay station on the far side of the system, showered himself clean, reduced gravity still further, to a tenth of a gee, and floated to sleep in his own bed for the first time since he'd stolen
Corona
, fifteen days ago on the Festival of Sport.

C
aptain Lord Richard Li was a witness to the moment that saved Zanshaa and the Home Fleet. Fleet Commander Jarlath, trying to get to the bottom of construction delays at the ring dockyard, had called a meeting of dock administrators, civilian contractors, and the officers of ships building and in refit, but his temper rose at the vague answers he received from the administrators and the contractors.

“Do you know your own business or not?” Jarlath finally demanded. The fur on his face stood erect, obscuring his facial features beneath the bristle and making him look like a hairbrush with two huge shaded eyes. The slight lisp, caused by his having to speak around his fangs, became more sinister than comical. “Why have the estimates been exceeded for
Destiny
and
Recovery
? Why can I receive no firm date for the completion of work on
Dauntless
and
Estimable
?”

No firm dates or answers were given.
All these things sort of depend on other things
was the best answer the commander of the Home Fleet received, which happened to be the same answer Lord Richard had been getting since his appointment. His ship was full of noise and workmen, the stink of hot metal and the booming rumble of steel wheels on the big slabs of plastic temporary flooring, but nothing seemed to be any closer to completion than the day he'd arrived.

Lord Richard had been receiving hints of impatience from the private firm he'd hired to decorate the officers' suite, to install his new hutch, cabinets, and bar, to lay in his bathroom the lovely rough slate tiles that Terza had chosen for him, and to paint the hull, pinnaces, and missiles in his personal colors, a sublime burgundy red accented subtly with stripes of purple. The firm couldn't start until the rebuild was finished, and now they were making ominous noises to the effect that if these delays continued, they might have to postpone work for months due to other commitments.

This was far too alarming. Lord Richard had thought the new fleetcom ought to have some idea how his dockyard was run. “I simply don't have the seniority to get so much as a single answer from these people,” he'd told Jarlath. “But they'll have to answer to
you.
”

Now he watched as the commander of the Home Fleet discovered that he didn't have the seniority either.

“I'm calling in the auditors!” Jarlath snarled as he walked down the rim road to the skyhook terminus. “There's got to be thieving going on. It's only pride in the service that keeps me from calling the Legion of Diligence!”

Jarlath made an eye-catching picture as he stalked down the rubberized roadway. He had bleached his fur white in order to avoid the heat of formal mourning garb, and was dressed only in white trunks and a vest, both piped with service green and heavy with badges of rank. His powerful legs and broad haunches propelled his round-bottomed body with purpose and energy, all now directed toward clearing up the mess in the dockyards.

Lord Richard Li had reason to feel pleased with himself. He was already picturing to himself the bath aboard
Dauntless,
the slate tile, the gleaming fixtures of porcelain and copper, steam rising from the scented water as he lowered himself into the tub…and then Jarlath saw Senior Squadron Commander Elkizer, and brought Lord Richard's pleasant fantasy to an end.

The leader of the Naxid heavy cruiser squadron stood with a group of officers and senior enlisted personnel before the massive airlock door that led to Jarlath's own flagship,
Glory of the Praxis.
Elkizer gestured at the airlock, his chameleon-weave jacket flashing the red-on-black patterns of his beaded scales.

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 sign
was
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 ‘the
lawn
approaches'?”

Elkizer tried another path. “I meant no disrespect, my lord.”

Jarlath's tone was savage. “To me? Or to the
lawn?
”

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 I
never
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 your
lawn.
What are you
really
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 he
squalled
—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 vile
mendacity!
By this
assembly,
which you refuse to explain! By sneaking around
behind 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't
care
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 to
occupy 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 will
begin
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—”

“
Fuck
your 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! These
shall 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.

 

A
kzad, 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.”