Imperium Restored, page 24
Missile launches declined as captains and weapons officers worked out what all that meant in practice. Division Nine drew farther away from the overlapping haze of fireballs and developed a clearer view of the battlespace. Missiles continued to fly out of the cloud, but were destroyed by weapons officers undistracted by any attempt to hit the enemy.
The first view of enemy ships came not from any of the warships, but from a pinnace that had been fired far from the action. Its single cadet had been soaring weightless in a remote corner of the battlespace, her sensors trained on the enemy, she saw three drive signatures appear through the radio haze.
The pinnace pilot didn’t even have the Shankaracharya sensors, Sula knew. She just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Sula’s eleven remaining warships fired over sixty missiles at the three targets, then spread more missiles out as a screen.
Before the screening missiles detonated, multiple Shankaracharya sensors detected four drive signatures emerging from the radio haze. Another sixty missiles were launched, and drove at the enemy through the fireball screen that had just splashed across the sensor battlespace.
Sula’s first launch resulted in three hits, though—from the size of the secondary explosions—two hits were made on decoys, and only the third on a warship. The second wave, emerging from the wall of fire, made a single hit, the target’s erupting fuel causing the radiation counters to tick over.
This is better, Sula thought. She scanned the displays for any more emerging enemies.
But then the big converted cargo ship Lentrec blew up, and Sula’s heart gave a wild leap as she goggled at the displays in utter surprise. No enemy missile had been detected anywhere near the giant ship, and Sula wondered if the enemy had looped some missiles in from a completely unexpected direction, and if more of her ships were about to erupt in antimatter fire.
There were no more missile strikes. Sula considered the possibility that Lentrec had destroyed itself in some kind of monumental accident—with inexperienced crews and jury-rigged missile launchers, there was always that possibility.
However Lentrec had met its end, Division Nine had lost much of its firepower. Even so, Sula almost found herself hoping that Pride of Parkhurst would be next. Once free of the obligation to defend the converted transports, Sula could initiate a battle of maneuver that would give her a better chance of fighting the enemy.
“Message from Captain Hui of Light Squadron Four,” Ricci said. “Deciphering now.”
Within seconds Hui’s face appeared on Sula’s display. “Lady Sula,” she said. “Light Squadrons Four and Seven have been detailed to your assistance. Please let us know how you wish us to proceed.”
About time. Sula drew more lines on her displays, and split her reinforcements to take position on either end of the enemy formation, subjecting the enemy to envelopment.
What Sula needed now was to concentrate on staying alive until the reinforcements arrived. She told Division Nine that two squadrons were being sent to their assistance and to concentrate on defending themselves. “Take shots only when you have a good chance of hitting,” she said. “Concentrate your offensive efforts at maintaining a screen.”
Even with efforts concentrated almost entirely on defense, Division Nine succeeded in killing one more enemy warship before Hui and the reinforcements arrived. Hundreds of missiles began launching at the enemy from multiple directions, and as soon as they were under way Sula received word of Do-faq’s surrender.
“Cease offensive action,” Sula said. “Concentrate on defense until we can discover whether the enemy will obey Do-faq’s instructions.”
The missiles already launched scored hit after hit, and in the end only three enemy warships survived to surrender to Division Nine. Following Wei Jian’s instructions, the surrendered warships unloaded their missile batteries in the direction of nothing at all, and as the missiles detonated in the far distance, they created a wall separating one part of nothing from another.
“Command and weapons systems should remain on heightened alert,” Sula broadcast. “Other divisions may relax their alert status. Recall all pinnaces. Crews should be relieved in shifts in order to take meals and have some time to relax.”
Having said this, she decided to follow her own advice. She unwebbed, unlocked the displays and pushed them out of her way, tilted her couch forward, and put her booted feet on the floor. She turned to Viswan and Ricci.
“I’ll have some drinks and sandwiches sent up,” she said. “If the message traffic isn’t too heavy, you can stand down in shifts.” She used the struts of the cage to help herself to her feet.
“Lady Sula,” said Dr. Gunaydin. “I’ll need you to go with me to sick bay. I must examine you.”
“I’m going to take a shower first,” Sula said. “And then I’ll join you in sick bay.”
“I think—”
“I think I need a shower, Doctor.” Firmly. “I’ll see you soon.”
Sula retrieved her helmet from the net bag and marched to the door just as Captain Mazankosi announced the ship’s relaxed alert status.
Securing from quarters meant the ship’s elevators were unlocked, and so Sula didn’t have to take the stairs to her suite. Her perceptions were still distorted, and the elevator walls leaned toward her in a vaguely menacing way. Once in her brightly painted suite she battled her way out of her vac suit, dumped it on the floor, and headed for the shower. The shower head loomed at her like a long-necked monster. She looked at something else and triggered the water.
When she had fallen into unconsciousness during the Battle of Naxas, she’d succeeded in covering it up simply by removing all mention from her ship’s log, then adding a brief note that the engine trip had been caused by a power spike in a transformer overloaded by the radiation of a near miss.
Sula couldn’t do that here, because Gunaydin was a witness. He wasn’t a line officer and therefore wasn’t in her chain of command—he reported to a separate authority. He had no reason to keep silent about Sula’s collapse in the middle of a battle, and every reason to do his duty and report it.
She’d just have to pass any physical exam with the best score in history. Perhaps no one would pay any attention to Gunaydin’s report. It would be buried in other reports from the battle, and by the time it cycled up his chain of command to his distant superior on Harzapid or even Zanshaa, her few seconds of unconsciousness might have dwindled into insignificance.
Sula rewarded herself with a long, thorough shower, pounding hot water breaking the tension in her muscles, and emerged from the shower cabinet wafting the aroma of vanilla-scented soap. She donned a fresh, clean Fleet-issue jumpsuit, checked the sleeve display for messages, and replied to those in need of an answer. She remembered to call the kitchens and have food sent to the flag officer’s station.
Then she picked up the sweat-soaked clothing she’d worn in the battle and pushed it through the hatch intended for laundry, after which she retrieved her vac suit from the floor and hung it in its locker. Spence or Macnamara could swab it with disinfectant later.
She looked over her suite for something else to do, and then realized that the impulse to linger in her suite had to do with her indecision concerning whether or not to indulge in a recent habit.
She decided.
Sula went to the pantry, unlocked the liquor cabinet, and poured herself a shot of brandy. She drank it, then drank a second. And then, because she didn’t want to go into a medical examination exhaling alcohol fumes, she drank a shot of mint-flavored liqueur, and hoped she could pass off the scent as mouthwash.
She finally reported to the sick bay, where a number of crew were being treated for bruises and sprains they’d received while in high gee. She was shown to the officers’ section, then she waited amid the scent of disinfectant for Gunaydin to arrive. He had her lie on a bed that tracked most of her vital signs and deployed detectors to track the rest.
“Your brain is unimpaired, Lady Sula,” he said. “No stroke, no hemorrhage. Your heart and respiration are nominal, and your nervous system is functioning normally. Your moment of incapacity has no obvious explanation—I would like to investigate further, but for now I will release you to duty.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Sula said, and as she sat up she felt the brandy swirling in her head and took a breath. Gunaydin frowned and looked at her.
“Have you been drinking alcohol?” he asked.
“Celebration,” she said. “Perhaps premature.”
“That sort of celebration is best reserved for the time following a medical examination,” he said. “The alcohol could have skewed any number of tests.”
“Sorry,” Sula said. “Shan’t do it again.”
He was about to say something, but she held her finger up, stalling him, when her sleeve display chirped at her, with a message from Wei Jian.
“From Toley,” Jian said, “we will shape our course directly to Zanshaa. The Fleet Train will resupply us with missiles en route. Badly damaged ships will return to Harzapid for repairs. Ships able to repair without a dockyard will join us on our advance to the capital. If they are not too damaged, captured and defecting ships will be added to our numbers. I will give some hours for initial repairs to be completed, after which I will call for high-gravity accelerations to get us to Zanshaa as fast as possible. End message.”
Another uninspiring recitation from Wei Jian, Sula thought. Not a word of praise or congratulations, no moment of reverence and sorrow for those friends who had been killed, only the next set of orders, delivered like the last in her precise schoolteacher’s voice.
But, Sula thought, if Wei Jian wasn’t going to offer praise or congratulations, that didn’t mean that Sula couldn’t. She’d praise Division Nine till the heavens rang, and include Captain Hui’s two squadrons as well.
She’d send the message from her office, she thought. And on the way she made another stop at the liquor cabinet for a shot of brandy, and decided to bring the bottle along with her.
It took time for the battle to wind down. Missiles were already in flight, and these had to either be destroyed or called off before the opposing ships flew out of the zone of expanding and cooling fireballs and into clear space, where they could get a good look at one another. Wei Jian ordered all surrendered ships to fire their entire missile supply into empty space, instructed them to report their names, designations, captains, and status, and then told them to ready themselves to be boarded.
Shuttles were crewed. Boarding parties went out, composed mostly of weaponers and propulsion specialists, along with a few officers to make sure that Wei Jian’s commands were followed. Los Angeles lost two lieutenants and sixteen crew to help captured ships.
Wei Jian sent a shuttle to bring Do-faq off his ship to her own flagship, the Crisis. There he would be treated as an honored guest, and gently debriefed, after which he would be transferred to a ship in the Fleet Train for the return journey to Harzapid.
Do-faq might be executed eventually, depending on how much the Restoration government wanted vengeance for Nguyen’s ten thousand Terran dead. Martinez was still surprised that Do-faq had actually surrendered rather than going down, like his predecessors, in a blaze of antimatter fire. He would be adjudged a traitor by the government he’d sought to defend, and for their own part, the Restoration was unlikely to view him with anything like charity.
Martinez allowed a warm, quiet celebration to throb through his veins. He had done what he’d set out to do. With the Fourth Fleet he’d created a machine for winning battles and destroying the enemy, and when Wei Jian had taken command, she’d had the good sense to employ the machine as designed.
Figures were totted up. After enduring the relentless ambushes on the route from Zarafan, Do-faq had entered the Toley system with 195 ships, then immediately lost 42 to Martinez’s massive missile strike. By the time Do-faq conceded the fight, he had only 63 ships left in his command, and half of those had already defected or surrendered. Nine were so badly damaged they had to be destroyed after what remained of the crew were taken off, and two dozen had suffered major damage.
Counting Division Nine, the Restoration had come into the fight with 163 warships. Fifty-four had been lost, the largest percentage of which belonged to Michi Chen’s Grand Division of the Van, which had fought the enemy van on equal terms. Thirty-one Restoration ships had suffered damage, and of those eleven would need an extended stay in a shipyard.
High-ranking officers had paid the cost of victory with their lives. Farhang, the commander of the Grand Division of the Main Body, had died with his ship in the final moments of the fighting. Squadron Commander An-dar, the Lai-own who had defected with his whole command at Second Shulduc, had been blown to bits along with his flagship. And Conyngham, the white-haired captain of the battleship Perfection of the Praxis—he who had commanded a heroic defense at Second Shulduc and again at Toley—had died of a cerebral hemorrhage in the midst of combat.
His ship, however, had survived, while both Do-faq’s battleships had been destroyed in the general massacre that had overtaken the enemy main body.
The Fleet of the Restoration had not only triumphed, but survived as a fighting force. Nothing would stop them now from advancing on Zanshaa.
Two days after the battle, Sula received a message in text from Wei Jian.
Lady Sula, it said, a report has reached me of your incapacity in the recent battle. Until the cause of your impairment can be determined and treated, I regretfully conclude that you are no longer fit to command a warship. You are hereby appointed captain of the Pride of Parkhurst, and will follow the Combined Fleet to Zanshaa, where you may receive medical treatment.
Somehow she was not surprised.
Chapter 8
Lord Pa Do-faq did not seem in the best of spirits. He slumped in the place of honor in Wei Jian’s dining room, his tunic rumpled, his golden eyes half-shuttered by nictating membranes. Despite being presented with delicacies catering to the Lai-own palate he had little appetite, and he nibbled absently on intoxicating thu-thu pastilles without showing any signs of intoxication.
Perhaps, Martinez thought, he was regretting not having shot himself after surrendering, as had a number of his officers. Certainly he didn’t have a lot to live for.
His doleful air contrasted with that of the officers of the Combined Fleet, who laughed, spoke loudly, made jokes, offered toasts to one another, and ignored their guest.
Martinez didn’t speak to Do-faq. He had been placed too far down the table, and he didn’t know what he’d say anyway. And Do-faq offered him no attention except when he had to, to stand in the presence of the Golden Orb when Martinez carried it into the room.
Martinez was happy when the dinner was over, and he could pick up his Orb and shuttle back to the Los Angeles. He was walking to the airlock when he heard heels rapping on the flooring, and he turned to see Chandra Prasad approaching.
“Gareth!” she said. “I’ve got some good news.”
“More good news? Let’s hear it.”
She took his arm and steered him in the direction of the airlock. “Remember when we were retreating from Zarafan, and I had the idea of firing a couple hundred missiles at Do-faq’s fleet when he was coming into the Zanshaa system? You told me to go ahead, but we never found out what happened?”
“Of course.”
Chandra was practically skipping by Martinez’s side. She held up a fist. “Twenty-eight ships destroyed! And eight damaged, with three having had to go into dock.”
Martinez looked at her in surprise. “Congratulations!” he said. “How did you find out?”
“One of my lieutenants is now captain of a captured ship. He’s been going through the records, trying to work out how many warships remain in the enemy fleet, and he found a report on what was reported as ‘the treacherous rebel assault on the Third Fleet.’”
“Do-faq should have realized it was a preview of things to come.”
“I’m glad he didn’t,” she grinned.
They approached the airlock’s lobby and found it crowded with officers waiting for their shuttles. They halted, and Chandra’s fingers dug into Martinez’s biceps. “Think how more difficult it would have been to face twenty-eight more enemy ships in the battle.”
Martinez frowned. “They replaced those losses, though. Where did the extra ships come from?”
“New ships built across the empire. Their shipbuilding capacity was larger than we thought.”
“So how many ships can we expect to face at Zanshaa?”
“About forty. The officers will be experienced, but many of the enlisted will be new to the service.”
“We’ll have over a hundred. And we’re all veterans now.”
She gave Martinez a satisfied, catlike smile. “We are.” Her smile disappeared, and her eyes widened. “I was so intent on congratulating myself I forgot about my other news. Have you heard about Lady Sula?”
The mention of Sula’s name still had enough power to slam Martinez’s heart against his ribs.
“Ah,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“Jian’s removed her from command of Division Nine. She’s been reassigned to command the Pride of Parkhurst.”
Outrage shot like plasma fire through Martinez’s veins. “What?” he said. “For what possible—?”
“The rumor is that it’s medical,” Chandra said.
Concern tempered his outrage, along with annoyance at the way his emotions were tossing him around like a figure stuffed with straw.
“Was she injured in the battle?” he asked.
“Splendid wasn’t hit,” Chandra said. “But I suppose there could have been an accident.”
“Or Jian wanted her out for some reason.” He murmured the words, careful not to be overheard by one of Jian’s clique.
“Could be.”
Pride of Parkhurst belonged to his family, Martinez thought. He could shuttle there in order to conduct an inspection of his property, and make sure Sula was all right at the same time. And then the scheme came to a lurching halt.
