Chenforce flashed through the wormhole to join the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance in their orbit around Chijimo’s star, and were promptly met by a massive flight of missiles, roaring toward them like a hellish blood tide bent on slaughter—and then the missiles reversed, decelerated, and hovered alongside the newcomers like sheep dogs escorting the flock to their pen. Chenforce recovered them all to fill their depleted magazines.
Six days later Chenforce joined the Fleet proper, slotting into the loose formation between the flag squadron and the next astern, and were met by tenders sent out from Chijimo with supplies of fresh food, liquor, and delicacies for the officers. Even the antimatter stores were topped up, though the ships could still run for years on the antihydrogen already in their fuel reservoirs.
With the arrival of Chenforce, the Orthodox Fleet now constituted twenty-eight ships, half of them newly built and crewed. It was the largest collection of loyalist ships since the Home Fleet had launched for Magaria.
After a few hours in which the crew of Chenforce luxuriated in reasonably fresh fruit and vegetables only partially compressed by acceleration, Supreme Commander Tork ordered Michi Chen, all captains, and all first lieutenants, aboard his flagship, the Judge Urhug.
Martinez and the others spangled themselves in dress uniforms and then visited Dr. Xi for spray bottles of a concoction that would deaden their senses of taste and smell—an entire ship crowded with Daimong was a formidable terror to the senses.
The party waited in Daffodil till the last plausible minute before casting off and making their way to the flagship. Martinez noticed that the other Terran and Torminel captains had likewise delayed their arrival.
At the airlock, a Daimong chorus cried out a song of joyous welcome. The sound was both deafening and magnificent, but a disturbing odor of decay was already clawing its way up the back of Martinez’s throat. One of Tork’s staff lieutenants took the new arrivals along corridors strung with wire and conduits to Tork’s suite, where everyone from Tork on down braced to salute Martinez’s Orb.
The table was a clear plastic over a metal framework, and the chairs were plastic too, curved for the comfort of the Daimong anatomy. The metal walls were painted a bilious shade that Martinez could only think of as government green, and ornamented with photos of Tork ancestors, framed degrees and certificates that Tork had been awarded at various points along his career path, and pictures of ships that Tork had commanded.
It was a far cry from the luxurious flagships of the recent past, with their parquet floors, custom artwork commissioned by well-known painters and designers, and exquisite hand-made furniture. Judge Urhug had been built quickly, sprayed with the cheapest paint available, and filled with mass-produced furniture just intelligent enough to hang onto the floor in the event of weightlessness. The urgency of war permitted little else.
“Take your seats, my lords,” Tork said. Strips of dead flesh dangled from his face. His fixed expression seemed fierce, but his voice was a mellow chiming, like distant bells.
Martinez laid the Golden Orb on the table before him and perched gingerly on a chair more suited to the narrower Daimong frame. The ghastly smell was now clogging the back of his throat. He cleared it and took a sip of the water that had been provided in each place.
“I have reviewed Squadron Commander Chen’s report,” Tork said, “as well as reports filed by the individual captains. I am compelled to observe that the record of Chenforce is like no other I have ever encountered.”
At these words Martinez felt a certain optimism rise. Perhaps Tork had mellowed in the last months. Perhaps the success of the raid had convinced him to look on Chenforce as an example to the rest of the Fleet.
“Chenforce has destroyed many of the wormhole relay stations on which our civilization depends,” Tork said. “It has destroyed a planetary accelerator ring and killed many, perhaps most, of the inhabitants of Bai-do. Aboard the flagship we find officers—including the captain!—killed by the crew, murderers who were permitted to run free and to continue their vicious activities for months before paying for their crime. These same enlisted crew were involved in a continuous string of felonies, extortions, and a treasonous partnership with Naxid rebels. We even have evidence of cult activity aboard the ship, sure evidence that the officers did not properly indoctrinate the crew in their responsibilities to the Fleet and to the Praxis.”
Tork’s voice began in as a melodious chiming but built to a furious abrasive monotone, a harrying strident tone that grated on Martinez’s nerves and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Anger flared like a raging fire under his high collar.
“I have to ask myself,” Tork continued, “if these are proper acts of war. Certainly a pirate might boast of wormhole stations destroyed, of the annihilation of a planet, of murder and his allegiance to cults. But are these proper activities for a Peer and an officer?”
He moved his pale bald head to stare at the officers before him.
“I make no judgments,” he said. “I was not at the scene. I tell you only that no such activities will be permitted in the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance. We do not attack planets. We do not attack helpless crew in relay stations. We exist for one purpose only, and that purpose is to engage the enemy fleet in battle—in proper battle—and by destroying them, to end the war that divides the empire. No deviations from this single task will be contemplated or permitted.”
He jabbed at the transparent surface of the table with his long fingers.
“We will engage the enemy and beat him by using the formations and methods that were bequeathed to us by our ancestors, ancestors beside whose greatness we exist as mere shadows. None of the deviant tactics that killed Fleet Commander Kangas will be permitted. The Fleet will exercise proper tactics, properly applied, and these tactics will guarantee victory.”
He leveled a finger along the table, pointing at each officer in turn. “There will be no premature starbursts, my lords! Any formation wishing to starburst must receive the permission of the Supreme Commander before executing the maneuver.”
Again the voice rose to a nerve-scraping pitch.
“All that is important is known! All that is perfect is contained in the Praxis! All innovation is deviation from the Supreme Law! No deviation is permitted!”
“I never expected to be called a pirate by my own side,” Michi said as Daffodil left Judge Urhug’s airlock.
“He makes no judgments,” Martinez said.
And, he thought, Tork might at least have mentioned that they’d vaporized over two hundred enemy merchant vessels, putting a permanent crimp in the Naxid economy, and finished the twenty or more warships that, the Fleet, wouldn’t have to fight at Zanshaa.
“Well,” Martinez said, “we can at least practice the new tactics on our own. We don’t have to tell Tork everything we do.”
But that wasn’t the case. The next day, Tork broke up Chenforce. The light cruiser Celestial, damaged at Protipanu, was sent to the yards at Antopone for repair. The other light cruiser and the frigate were sent to a newly created light squadron. The two Torminel cruisers were made part of an all-Torminel division, and the two remaining Terran ships became the nucleus of the spanking new Cruiser Squadron 9, to which were added the three survivors of the Home Fleet, also crewed by Terrans, three new-built Terran ships that had not yet arrived at Chijimo, and the Bombardment of Delhi, a badly damaged Magaria survivor under repair since the battle.
The lone Daimong cadet—the survivor of the Beacon, lost at Protipanu—who had been haunting Illustrious since the battle, was brought aboard Tork’s flagship; probably, Martinez thought, to be debriefed about any deviations that might have been practiced on Michi’s flagship during his time aboard.
At least Michi commanded the new squadron, so Illustrious remained the flagship.
It was impossible to practice any new tactical system for the simple reason that Michi and Martinez could not trust their subordinates not to rat them out to Tork. Chenforce had been a highly cohesive force, united by victory and by a faith in their commander. Michi could have run forbidden exercises within her old command and stood a reasonable chance that none of her subordinates would inform Tork of their activities. But no such trust existed within Cruiser Squadron 9. Neither Michi nor Martinez dared to suggest any prohibited experiments to the new arrivals.
“Tork’s doing this deliberately,” Michi told Martinez. “He’s trying to isolate everyone he feels he can’t trust, and surround them with strangers.”
“Let’s hope he’s not isolating contagion, but spreading the virus instead,” Martinez replied.
Tork kept his new formations busy with daily exercises, all drawn from the old playbook. Martinez thought Tork’s staff must have been working twenty-nine hours per day planning out the scripts. Every move was planned in advance; every maneuver, every missile fired, every casualty. Ships were judged not on how well they did against an enemy, but on how well they obeyed instructions.
For anyone who had experienced the new-style, free-form experiments that Martinez, Michi, and Do-faq had created, Tork’s maneuvers were agonies of frustration. Anyone who had ever been in an actual battle, Martinez thought, would have observed that real combat didn’t follow anybody’s script, and seen what a useless waste of time Tork’s maneuvers were.
But Tork hadn’t ever been in an actual battle, or in one of Martinez’s experiments. The maneuvers continued, one after another, all dreadfully familiar. Martinez could only hope that Tork had an intellectual equal on the Naxid side.
He had to admit, however, that the maneuvers were atleast giving the new ships practice at basic maneuvers. Their quality, marked by hastily trained crews under newly minted officers, was in general wretched. Even he, as a brand-new skipper aboard the newly crewed Corona, hadn’t been as hapless as these officers.
Light Squadron 14 under Squadron Commander Altasz, which had been on a raid similar to that of Chenforce, arrived three days after Chenforce was broken up. Martinez had once commanded the squadron, and he looked at his old command on the tactical display with a mixture of nostalgia and resignation. None of the old crews were aboard, none of those with whom he’d shared danger from Magaria to Hone-bar. The ships were old friends, but the crew in them were strangers.
Michi wanted to know how Squadron 14 had avoided danger from relativistic Naxid missiles, and queried Altasz in private. Altasz replied that he’d simply blown up every single relay station he’d come across.
“Tork will get another chance to use the word ‘pirate,’” Michi predicted, and later found out that her forecast came true.
Routine in Tork’s command wasn’t all drill and discipline. There was a great deal of visiting back and forth among the officers, and a round of dinners, parties, and receptions. As new-minted ships joined, old acquaintances arrived or sent their greetings. Lady Elissa Dalkeith, Martinez’s first officer on Corona, invited him to a handsome dinner on her new frigate Courage. Small, blond Vonderheydte, who Martinez had promoted to Lieutenant on Corona’s flight from Magaria, invited him to a dinner in the wardroom of his cruiser, where Corona’s escape was recounted in detail to a fascinated group of officers. Ari Abacha arrived aboard Illustrious to drink a bottle of Chen wine and complain languidly about the amount of work he had to do as second officer of the Gallant. Dour Master Engineer Maheshwari, his flamboyant mustachios still dyed a highly industrial shade of red, sent respectful greetings and congratulations from Engine Control of his new frigate. Squadron Commander Do-faq, who had won the Battle of Hone-bar by following Martinez’s advice, made him guest of honor at a large reception, and there he met Cadet Kelly, with whom Martinez had shared a carnal romp after they had narrowly escaped annihilation at the hands of the Naxids, and who stood out of the crowd, with her broad grin blazing.
A letter or video from Terza arrived almost every day. Martinez watched the growing pregnancy with a mixture of awe, desire, and frustration.
One video showed his portrait, which his proud father had printed and set in the foyer of the palace.
There was no word or sign of Caroline Sula. Martinez wondered where she was.
The rounds of social contact made it easier for him to promote his tactical system in casual settings. There were hundreds of officers in the Orthodox Fleet who had never seen battle, some of them of senior rank, and most were eager to hear from those who had. Martinez refought Hone-bar and Protipanu dozens of times at dinners and receptions, and always made a point of mentioning the tactical lessons learned. He was describing the mathematics of the new system to a newly arrived captain from Harzapid, a self-important man with ginger whiskers, and found that the man understood him.
“Oh yes,” he said. “The convex hull of a dynamical system. That’s the Foote Formula.”
Martinez raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”
“The Foote Formula—the system developed by one of the bright young lads assigned to the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid, Lord Jeremy Foote. He was promoting the system among his friends when he was still on his way to the Fourth Fleet from Zanshaa, and once he arrived, he acquainted everyone he could. He’s made quite a number of converts among the younger officers. A pity Lord Tork isn’t keen on it.”
Martinez couldn’t believe his ears. He remembered Foote well, a big, blond cadet with all the drawling arrogance of the elite Peerage, a man who, despite his inferior military rank, did his best to make him feel his social inferiority at every meeting.
“Do you really think Lord Jeremy understands the math?” he said.
The captain seemed surprised. “He devised it, didn’t he?”
“Well, no actually.” Resentment simmered beneath Martinez’s words. “When I was working out the system, I consulted with other officers, among them Lady Sula—the hero of Magaria, if you remember.”
The captain was trying to follow this. “You consulted with Lord Jeremy then?”
“No.” Martinez felt an angry smile draw itself across his face. “Lord Jeremy was the censor aboard Lady Sula’s ship. He had a complete record of the correspondence, and apparently he’s been passing it off as the Foote Formula among his friends at the Fourth Fleet.”
The captain processed this, then turned stern. “Surely not,” he said stoutly. “I knew Lord Jeremy’s father—a worthy heir to the most impeccable ancestors. I can’t imagine anyone in the family doing such a thing.”
Martinez felt his savage grin return. “I’ll be sure to ask him when I see him.”
He was able to do so ten days later, at a reception for the officers of the newly arrived Splendid. The cruiser was aptly named, being one of the flying palaces of the old Fourth Fleet, heavily damaged on the day of the mutiny but now repaired and returned to duty, and with Foote among its junior officers.
Martinez waited until late in the reception, when Sub-Lieutenant Foote was relaxed and talking to a group of his cronies, and then approached. Since the reception was formal and Martinez was carrying the Golden Orb, Foote and his friend were compelled to brace in salute.
“Foote!” Martinez cried with pleasure. “How long has it been?” He transferred the Orb to his left hand and held out his right. Foote, taken aback, took his hand.
“Very pleased to see you, Captain,” he said. He tried to withdraw his hand, and Martinez clamped hard and stepped close.
Yes, it was the same Foote. Large and handsome, with a blond cowlick on the right side of his head and an expression of arrogant disdain that had probably settled onto his face in the cradle.
“Everyone has been telling me about the Foote Formula!” Martinez said. “You absolutely must explain it to me!”
Foote’s heavy face flushed. Again he tried to withdraw his hand, and again Martinez held him close.
“I never called it that,” he said.
“You’re too modest!” Martinez said. He turned to the other officers, the young high-caste Peers whom Foote counted among his equals.
“Lord Jeremy,” he said, “you absolutely must explain to your friends where you first encountered the formula!”
Martinez saw rapid calculation reflected in the pale eyes, and then Foote drew himself up to his considerable height. When he spoke, there was light amusement in his drawl.
“I encountered the formula, of course,” he said, “when I had the duty of censoring Lady Sula’s correspondence with you, my lord. I was struck by the formula’s adroitness in coping with the tactical problems revealed by the Battle of Magaria, and I decided to show it to as many officers as I could.”
Martinez had to give Foote credit for finding the most graceful way out of his situation. Foote had realized that claiming authorship of the formula would only lead to his humiliation; instead he claimed only the role of popularizer.
Martinez gave a broad grin. “You know,” he said, still grinning, still pumping Foote’s hand, “you should have mentioned the real authors of the formula. It would have been more thoughtful.”
Foote’s reply was smooth. “I would have,” he said, “if I’d known for certain who the authors were. I knew that you were involved, and Lady Sula, but the correspondence indicated that other officers had contributed, and I didn’t know their names. And besides…” He glanced over his shoulder, as if in fear of being overheard. “…I recognized the controversial nature of the work. Anyone whose name was associated with the formula was bound to get on the wrong side of certain senior officers.”
“How considerate of you to leave my name out of it!” Martinez exclaimed, with what he hoped was an expression of transparently false bonhomie. “But you needn’t in the future—I’m sure you couldn’t change Lord Tork’s opinion of me in the least.”
Foote only lifted one supercilious eyebrow. Martinez turned to look at Foote’s companions, who were watching the two with expressions ranging from wariness to thoughtful surprise.
“I won’t keep you from your friends any longer,” he said, and released Foote’s hand. Foote flexed the hand and massaged it with the other. Martinez looked from one face to the next.
“Take care with your formulas, now,” he said, “or you may find Foote giving them to all sorts of people.”
Then, with another smile and a wave of the Orb, he turned and walked away.
Given the wide social rounds of the officers, he knew that their exchange would circulate throughout the Orthodox Fleet in days.
Revenge might at best be a petty emotion, he thought, but at times it was a strangely satisfying one. And in something called the Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance, it seemed to have the blessing of higher authority.
The funicular creaked as the strain came on its cable, and Sula’s seat swayed on its gimbals. As the train rose, it passed between the gun emplacements—turrets of heavy, near-impenetrable plastic—that had been placed on the terraces on either side of the terminus. The barrels of antiproton guns thrust from the turrets, ready to turn any attacker into a scattering of subatomic particles.
Sula left the car at the upper terminus and stepped out onto the flagstone terrace. A blast of wind scoured her face. One of the turrets squatted, featureless and ugly, on the terrace before her. It was barely large enough to contain the gun, its crew, and the rotating mechanism. Stubby little ventilators protruded from the top, along with periscopes and antennae. There was a low Naxid-sized door in the back, and it was closed.
Naxid guards dashed about, legs churning, or stood in the lee of the turret, sheltering from the wind. Sula pretended to adjust her long scarf, then took her shopping bag and headed into the city.
Satchel charges, she thought. Deliver enough kinetic energy to the turrets and anything inside was going to get scrambled whether the turrets were breached or not. Unfortunately, the sensitive antiproton ammunition might get scrambled as well, and the result would be an explosion that…well, whatever else it might do, it would at least solve her problem.
Still, it would be nice if they could use those guns.
She wondered when the gun crews got their meals. Surely the doors would open then.
But even if the antiproton guns were disabled or captured, there was no practical way to get a large force up that slope. It was too steep, and her people could climb only slowly and be exhausted by the time they arrived. Plus, any defenders at the upper terminal of the funicular could hold off an army with small arms.
Any large force would have to come up the switchback road on the other side of the acropolis, a route that had its own problems, not the least being that it would be under fire every step of the way.
These calculations spun through her mind as she walked across the High City, emerging by the Gate of the Exalted, marked by the two pillars where the switchback road entered the plateau, a place guarded by another pair of antiproton guns in turrets. Looking to the other side, she recognized the large barrel-vaulted edifice of the Ngeni Palace, with the terrace behind and the banyan that overshadowed PJ’s cottage.
From PJ’s, she thought, she might be able to view the defenses, see when the guard changed and when meals arrived.
Besides, she was freezing.
PJ brightened when she arrived on his doorstep, and he offered her tea and soup.
“I wish I could contribute more,” he said as he watched her eat. “I’m not giving you much information these days. My clubs are almost empty—more servants than members. Everyone who could leave has gone.”
“You’re still very well placed here,” Sula said. “Any information you provide is valuable.” Her attempts to boost PJ’s morale had become so standardized that she could practically recite the lines in her sleep. “I’m counting on you,” she added, “to stay in the High City and keep your ear to the ground.”
“I’m a good shot,” PJ said hopefully. “I could move into the Lower Town and become an assassin.”
Sula mopped the last of her soup with her bread. The soup was flavored with lemon and saffron both, an unusual but in this case successful combination.
“You’re useful here,” she said.
“For what?” PJ said darkly. “You can buy soup in a restaurant.”
“You have binoculars, I assume.”
“Yes. Naturally.”
“I want you to keep an eye on those antiproton guns at the Gate of the Exalted. Check regularly. Find out when the crews are changed, when they’re fed. When the doors in the turrets are open or closed.”
PJ’s look was intense. “You’re thinking of attacking them?”
“I’m thinking I’d like to have a pair of antiproton guns, yes. Or at least the ammunition.”
Her action team had been trained on the weapons, and the stay-behind force under Fleetcom Eshruq had some in inventory, but Sula hadn’t known where, and presumably they’d been captured by the Naxids.
Perhaps the four guns on the High City were the ones that the secret government had once owned. It was only right to take them back.
“Oh, PJ, another thing,” Sula said. “You don’t happen to know any expert mountaineers, do you?”
PJ’s first report was astoundingly detailed. It seemed to Sula that he must have been checking the batteries every half hour, and stayed up all night to make observations. He’d caught the shift changes, mealtimes, the number of guards, the number of officers, and the type of transport that moved them to and from their barracks.
Sula had begun visiting the High City regularly to observe the two turrets overlooking the funicular, but her data only confirmed PJ’s, and in the end she saved herself the commute and assumed the two gun batteries were on the same schedule.
When the cold wind finally spent its last strength howling around the eaves of the High City, she found the answer to the question of when the turret doors were opened—in good weather. The turrets were small and cramped, and the crews much preferred being out of doors, at least when an autumn wind wasn’t blustering around the gray granite battlements of the acropolis.
“So we set the attack on a nice day,” Sula said at a planning meeting. “All we need is to glance at the long-range forecast.”
“We can probably manage that, princess,” said Patel with an easy smile. “It’s climbing that damned rock I’m worried about.”
They were holding the meeting in Patel’s hotel suite, sitting around an elegant chrome-rimmed table that seemed strangely at home with the fussy laquered cabinets, the collected bric-a-brac, and the bright bouquets of fragrant flowers. The room, with its oddities and perfumes, appeared to be a perfectly suitable environment for a man who had offered to fight for love.
“I wish we could rehearse the climb somehow,” Julien said. “We’ve not only got to get ourselves up that cliff, but our gear.” He gave a tight, uncomfortable grin. “And I don’t much like heights.”
It was clear that no frontal assault on the acropolis could possibly succeed. The positions that controlled the two gateways to the High City—the funicular and the switchback road—could only be taken from behind, and that meant first sneaking a force onto the acropolis.
Getting an army up the cliff was a task that would have been impossible in peacetime, when the long granite bulk of the High City was illuminated by brilliant floodlights that would have pinned any climber to the cliff. After the destruction of the ring, the electricity shortage had turned the floodlights off. Even most of the streetlights on the High City were dark, so the area was full of shadows.
The Ngeni Palace was very large, enough to hide two entire action groups until it was time for them to move out.
“We can have them practice on a real cliff,” Macnamara suggested. “Take them out to the country and send them up an escarpment.”
Julien looked at him in something like shock. He was a city boy, and the very idea of countryside was alien to him.
“Can’t we do it in town somewhere?” he said. “Climb a building or something?”
Sula smiled “That might attract attention.” She looked up at Macnamara. “You’ll work out the training schedule for the trips to the country and the climbs. I want everyone to ascend at least twice.”
Julien was dismayed. “Won’t there be snakes and things?” he asked.
Casimir grinned at him. “Yes. Big nasty poison ones too.”
Macnamara sniffed and made a note on his datapad. He had never learned to like the cliquemen, and he wasn’t able to hide it. The Bogo Boys responded with a good-natured condescension that suggested they were hated by a lot more interesting people than Macnamara.
Sula took a sip of her sparkling water and looked at her agenda. “My worry is security,” she said. “This is a big operation. Any leaks and most of us die.”
“Keep the inner circle small,” Casimir said. “Only a few of us should know the actual objective.”
Spence tapped cigarette ash into one of Patel’s elegant ashtrays—hanging around cliquemen, along with a delivery job that delivered tobacco in large quantities, had taught her to smoke.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “What we should do is hide one big operation under another big operation. We tell them to prepare for one thing, and then—on the day—they all get new orders.”
Sula looked at her in surprise. “What’s bigger than taking the High City?”
“Attacking Wi-hun,” Spence suggested, naming the airfield the Naxids used as a base for their shuttlecraft. “That might draw security forces out into the countryside.”
“No,” Casimir said. “We tell everyone we’re taking the prisons and liberating all the hostages.”
Sula looked at him in admiration. “Very nice,” she said. “Storming the prisons will require a lot of the same skills as storming the High City, so we can explain any training exercises. And we’ll put a watch on the prisons, have people take notes about the number of guards, shift changes, and so on, so that if the Naxids find out about it, the data will seem to support the cover story.”
“The security forces will be drawn out of the High City,” Spence said. “There aren’t any prisons in the city center.”
“I’d like to completely isolate the High City if we can,” Sula said. “The High City has all the political and military leadership in their palaces. The mid-level leadership stays in requisitioned hotels on the acropolis, particularly the Great Destiny, and most of the rankers sleep in those hotels in the Lower Town, at the foot of the funicular. If we can keep the officers from their troops, they’re going to have to overcome their own leadership deficit before they can do anything else.”
“Princess,” Patel said, “can’t we kill those officers, somehow, while they’re asleep?”
“I wanted to take out the Great Destiny Hotel early on, with a truck bomb,” Sula said, “but Hong wanted to concentrate on the Axtattle Parkway attack first.” Which had been the end of Hong and the secret army, all but Team 491.
“Can’t we use a truck bomb now?” Patel asked.
“They have barricades all around the hotel. We couldn’t get a truck up to it.”
“Barricades can be knocked down,” said Spence, the practical engineer.
“We’d need heavy equipment to do it,” Sula said. “And how are we going to get that up on the rock?”
Spence flicked her cigarette in the ashtray and shrugged. “All sorts of ways. They have building projects on the High City that can provide us cover, I assume.”
“You’ll handle the arrangements then?”
Another shrug. “Sure.”
“And any truck bombs?”
“Of course.” She smiled. “The bombs are more in my line, really.”
Patel looked at Spence and smiled. “I know just where I can get the equipment we need. A government storage facility, near one of my enterprises. I don’t even think it’s even guarded at night.”
“Let me run up to the High City first and see exactly what’s required.”
Julien looked from one person at the table to the next. “You know,” he said, “I’m beginning to think we’re actually going to do this.”
Casimir looked at Sula and gave one of his rumbling laughs. His eyes were sparkling. “With the White Ghost leading us,” he said, “how can we fail?”
Autumn came quickly on the heels of the Naxid missile. A blast of frigid wind blew in from the northwest, howling around the corners of the buildings like mourners crying their anguish at the death of Remba. The wind blew cold for days. Leaves turned brown and crisp and were blown from the trees before they could display their glories of orange and yellow.
Sula, wearing a windbreaker and with a scarf wrapped around her blond hair, traveled over the High City, confirming the information given by PJ, Sidney, and other informants. She took note of defenses and dispositions, as well as the location of police patrols and the hotels and palaces where security forces slept.
The project began to develop its own astounding plausibility. Naxid defenses in the High City were surprisingly thin. Most of the security forces weren’t barracked on the High City at all, but in the complex of hotels around the train station at the base of the funicular. If the secret army attacked at night and could hold the two routes to the crest of the acropolis, they might have a chance of maintaining a grip on the High City, at least for a while.
Sula didn’t want to refer to her scheme directly; she thought it might tempt fate. Instead she called it Project Daliang, after a campaign fought by Sun Pin, the general of Qi. When Wei attacked Zhao, Zhao appealed for help to Qi. Sun Pin was expected to march into Zhao to help drive off the invaders, but instead marched straight for Daliang, the Wei capital, which forced Wei to abandon its campaign and retreat in disorder.
Sula never explained the significance of the name to anyone. That too might tempt fate.
As the cold wind died and a crisp autumn cooled the high spirits of summer, as explosions and rifle fire continued to shake the windows of the capital, she began to look seriously at her order of battle and to make plans.
With the Naxids weaker than expected, her problems were entirely with her own forces. Her soldiers had never trained for a real battle, and she had no idea whether they could ever fight one. Security was another problem—she knew there had to be informers in her ranks, and so the large massing of the action groups, and the elaborate plans necessary, were going to be hard to keep secret.
While she pondered these difficulties, she made two more appearances in uniform, one in a secret clinic where survivors of the Remba disaster were treated with stolen antiradiation drugs, and again in public during the Harvest Festival—a dispirited business under rationing—where she arrived in the Old Third with a convoy of stolen food, handed out a few copies of Resistance to the startled Torminel survivors of the police massacre, and vanished before the police could reappear.
Again she heard the words “White Ghost,” lisped from a fanged Torminel mouth at the moment when she swung herself out of the cab of the lead truck and into the crowd.
Each appearance was celebrated in editions of Resistance. She began to see graffiti around the city: Long live the White Ghost! For the White Ghost and the Praxis! Down with the Naxids, up with the White Ghost!
The mysterious Axtattle sniper continued to make appearances, not always on the Axtattle Parkway, but always attacking military convoys from a height. Sula found out who he was on his sixth excursion, when he was wounded by counterfire and his family brought him into one of the secret clinics.
The sniper was a semiretired Daimong named Fer Tuga, a hunting guide from the Ambramas Reserve, half a continent away. On his periodic visit to Zanshaa to visit his daughter, he’d take the hunting rifle he left in her apartment and use it to kill Naxids.
The last occasion had gone wrong when the Naxid convoy returned a torrent of accurate fire within a few seconds of his firing his first round. He’d barely escaped with his life.
“The Naxids have got to have something new,” Tuga reported. “Either they saw me behind a darkened window or they saw the bullet in flight.”
It turned out to be the latter. A small mobile phased-array radar system linked by a cleverly programmed computer to automatic weapons platforms.
Sniper tactics at once became much less profitable. Bomb use increased by way of compensation. Bombs began getting larger and more sophisticated, and adapted to different targets.
The Naxids moved more security forces into the capital, which just created new targets.
There were plenty of ways for Project Daliang to fail, and Sula tried to work them all out in advance. She spent long hours with maps of the city and with timetables, trying to arrange for proper rendezvous. Two light earth-moving machines were abstracted from government stores. Prisons were put under observation. Word was passed along the entire unwieldy apparatus of the secret army that action was imminent, and that it would involve taking and holding buildings. Bombs, grenades, and rockets were manufactured and stored in secret depots. Grannies were set to work baking ammunition for the Sidney rifles.
Sula went up to the High City on a day when chill drizzle had turned the funicular’s flagstone terrace dark and wet. She wanted to inspect the empty Ngeni Palace and make certain it was adequate for hiding the Bogo Boys and the other strike troops who were scheduled to come up the cliff.
PJ seemed more cheerful than usual. “I’m happy to show you the old place,” he said, “but when are you going to need it?”
Sula hesitated, sensing something behind his words. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been evicted. Some Naxid clan has requisitioned the property. I got the notice two days ago, and they gave me ten days to get myself and my belongings out.” He gave her a brilliant smile. “I can be useful now. I don’t have to live in the High City. I can move to the Lower Town and become a soldier in the secret army.”
Already calculations were flooding through her mind. “Can we check the weather report?” she asked.
He led her to a desk, and with a few commands she discovered that the cold drizzle would last for another two days, then be pushed away by a high pressure front from the southwest. There would be at least four days of beautiful, sunny, summery weather.
There’s our window, she thought. She hoped six days would be enough.
She straightened and looked at him. “I hope you’ll employ our trucking firm to move your belongings to your new lodgings.”
He shrugged. “I don’t have any belongings to speak of. Not since my father lost all our money.”
“You’ve forgotten the pile of weaponry that Sidney gave us, and that’s still in storage.”
“Oh.” PJ’s eyes widened.
“And surely Clan Ngeni doesn’t want all their furniture and other possessions to go to the Naxids? Or have the Naxids insisted that everything remain?”
PJ looked as if he hadn’t considered this. “No,” he said. “I suppose I can take anything.”
“Then we’ll remove your clan’s stuff for you. And I’ll need to look at the palace after all—assuming, of course, that you don’t mind if we use the place for one last operation.”
“Certainly. Of course.” Anxiety crossed PJ’s expression. “But I really can join the secret army after I’ve left the High City?”
She looked at him. “PJ,” she said, “you’ve always been in the secret army. You were my first recruit.”
He was flustered and, she thought, pleased. “Well yes. Thank you. But I mean a real soldier.”
“You’ve always been a real soldier.”
Surprised delight flushed PJ’s cheeks. “I’ve only wanted to be…to be worthy.”
“You’re more than worthy,” Sula said. “And as far as I’m concerned, better off without her.”
Her words brought an uncomfortable sadness to PJ’s long face. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “She was so bright and lively, and I…” He fell silent.
Something he’d said came to Sula’s mind.
“PJ,” she said, “you mentioned that your father lost your family’s money.”
“Yes. Gambling, and—” He sighed. “—other sorts of gambling too—unwise investments. Stocks and futures and debentures, whatever those are. My father hid the losses for a long time, and I had a very pleasant life for a while, with cars and clothes and entertainments and…” He groped for words. “…the usual. But it was all borrowed money. So I turned thirty-five and then…” He threw out his hands. “Then it was all gone.”
Sula was surprised. She had always assumed PJ lost his money in debauchery. Instead he’d lived a perfectly normal life for a member of his class, oblivious to everything around him, until suddenly his life wasn’t there any longer, and he became the object of pity and contempt that his relatives had tried to sell to Clan Martinez, only to have him rejected by the woman he loved and bundled into marriage with someone else.
Perhaps, she thought, her own life had been easier, since she’d never had any money to begin with.
“I’m sorry, PJ,” she said.
The expression on his face was hopeless. “I know the marriage to Sempronia was supposed to be all about money,” he said. “But I was too useless and ridiculous to take seriously, and—” His eyes were starry with tears. He turned away. “Let’s look at the palace, shall we? I have the key right here.”
Sula followed him across the court and through the cavernous, empty house, filled with silence and ghosts, and gathering dust. She wanted to comfort him, but knew she was the wrong woman for the job.
He was another casualty of Martinez’s ambitions. As was she.
Three days of frenzied work followed, and the long-limbed, stumbling, uncoordinated giant that was the secret army began to pull itself free from the muck in which it hid itself and prepare to take its first great strides. Trucks rolled up to the High City, carrying away Ngeni furniture, replacing it with paint, canvas, medical supplies, and mountaineering gear. Sula rode the trucks along the streets of the High City, making notes on a map of which palaces had guards, and therefore held someone worth guarding. She wondered what would happen to the guards during an emergency, whether they’d stick at their posts or rush to the fighting. She supposed she’d find out on the day.
Storage cabinets were opened and Team 491’s formidable arsenal removed and placed in willing hands. Friends on the police opened a warehouse and over four hundred modern automatic rifles, an equal number of sidearms, ammunition, sets of body armor, and grenades and their launchers became the possession of the secret army. The police didn’t even have to be bribed.
A pair of the scouts watching the prisons were captured, and apparently provided to the Naxids the false information with which they’d been primed. Through the friendly contacts the cliques maintained with agents of law enforcement, Sula learned that the prison guards had been quietly reinforced and that police and Fleet personnel were shifted out of the city center to react to any mass breakout attempts.
The Naxids were apparently satisfied that they were about to spring a trap. So was the White Ghost. Time would tell which of them was right.
At last there came a moment when the last message had been sent, the last weapon readied, the last plan made, revised, and remade. Then, as the sun touched the horizon, Sula walked into the safe house she shared with Casimir and found him dressed in his long Chesko coat with the triangular mirrors, the shining boots, the long walking stick with its glittering globe of rock crystal.
The room had a strange scent of lavender, and she paused in the door in astonishment. He turned to her, the skirts of his coat swirling, and made an elaborate bow.
“Welcome, Lady Sula,” he said. “We’re going out tonight.”
“You’re mad,” Sula said. “Do you realize how much—”
“Everything’s taken care of,” Casimir said. “The soldiers are doing all the work, and the general can relax.” He took a step to one side and revealed the green moiré gown that he’d draped on the bed. “I’ve provided more suitable clothing for an evening out.”
Sula closed the door behind her and took a few dazed steps into the room. “Casimir,” she said, “I’m a complete wreck. I haven’t slept in days. I’m keeping myself going on coffee and sugar. I can’t do anything like this.”
“I have drawn a relaxing bath,” he said. He made an elaborate show of looking at his sleeve display. “Our car will pick us up in half an hour.”
Wondering, Sula walked into the bathroom, shed her clothing, and stepped into the lavender-scented bath. She lay back in the lukewarm water and commanded the hot water tap to open. She added hot water until steam was rising from the surface of the water, then lay back and closed her eyes. It was only an instant before she jerked awake to Casimir’s knock.
“The car will be here in ten minutes,” he said.
She busied herself quickly with the soap, then dried, brushed her hair, applied cosmetic and scent. She stepped naked into the front room to put on the gown, and Casimir watched from a corner chair, a connoisseur’s smile on his face. The gown fit perfectly. He rose from his chair and bent to kiss one of her bare shoulders, a brush of lips on her clavicle that sent a shimmer of pleasure along her nerves.
The car was a long sedan, driven by Casimir’s two Torminel bodyguards. It was the first time she had seen the guards since Casimir went underground, when their conspicuousness necessitated shifting them to other duties.
The car eased its way through the growing shadows and delivered them to the side entrance of a club on the Petty Mount. The place was dark, with a few spotlights here and there, on a table beneath an immaculate crisp white tablecloth, on the gleaming dance floor, on the empty bandstand. A tall Lai-own waitron stood in reflected light by the table.
“Sir,” he said. “Madam.”
The Lai-own poured champagne for Casimir and sparkling water for Sula, then vanished into the darkness. Sula turned to Casimir.
“You’ve done this just for us?” she asked.
“Not entirely for us alone,” he said, and then she heard Veronika’s laugh.
She came in with Julien, both dressed well and expensively, if not with Casimir’s flair for style. Veronika wore her glittering anklet. Sula hadn’t seen her since her exit from jail. Veronika looked at her as she approached, and her eyes went wide.
“They tell me you’re a Peer!” she said. “They say you’re the White Ghost, in command of the secret army!” She waved a hand dismissively. “I tell everyone that I knew you when you were just a math teacher!”
The waitron brought more drinks and their meal. When they finished eating and were served coffee, a four-piece Cree band came in and began setting up their instruments. A shiver of apprehension wafted up Sula’s spine as she remembered the Cree in the haberdashery, the one who had first addressed her as the White Ghost. You are she, he had said.
The Cree with his wonderfully acute hearing must have recognized her voice from the brief video clips in Resistance. Now she wondered if she dared speak in front of the band.
She touched Casimir’s thigh and leaned next to him.
“Are you sure we’re safe here?” she asked.
He grinned. “I have two extraction teams waiting outside,” he said. “Anybody comes, they’re in for a fight.” He nuzzled close to drop a kiss on her earlobe. “And I’ve got the escape route planned. Just like you taught me.”
“After the war,” she said, “the Riverside Clique will be found to have acquired a very dangerous collection of skill sets.”
The band began to play. The two couples stepped onto the dance floor and Sula’s nervousness faded. In the slow dances, she clung to Casimir, her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed, existing happily in a world of sensation: the music that beat in time to her heart, the sway of Casimir’s weight against hers, the deep musky scent of his warm body. In the faster dances, she was content to let him guide her, as he had all evening, a responsibility he accepted with silent gravity. He was focused entirely on her, his face composed in an expression of solemn regard, his dark eyes rarely leaving her face.
The band fell silent. The dancers’ applause was swallowed in the huge empty room. Casimir took her hand and led her to the table.
“This next act is just for you,” he said.
A Terran woman stepped onto the stage in a rustling flounce of skirts, her face and hands powdered white except for round rouged spots high on each cheek. She carried herself like a warrior, her chin high, imperious pride glittering from her eyes.
A derivoo. Sula’s heart surged, and she pressed Casimir’s hand.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Julien raised an eyebrow. “I hope you realize what a sacrifice the rest of us are making,” he said.
The derivoo stood in a spotlight, one of the Cree played a single chord, and the derivoo began to sing. The single strong voice rang in the air, proclaiming a passionate love fated to become anguish, a lover once adoring now turned to stone. Each syllable raked Sula’s nerves; each word seared. The singer proclaimed the confrontation of one lone heart with the Void, pure in the knowledge that the victory of the Void was foreordained.
For the next half hour the lone brave voice faced every horror: sadness, isolation, death, lost love, violence, terror. There was no pity in the world of the derivoo, but neither was there surrender. The derivoo walked proudly into the realm of death, and died with scorn and defiance on her tongue.
The performance was brilliant. Sula stared in silent rapture throughout, except for the moments when she burned her hands with furious applause.
It was the most perfect thing she could imagine, to hear these songs just before making a desperate gamble with her own life. It was good to be reminded that her own existence was just a spark in the darkness, so brief that it scarcely mattered whether it ended now or later.
At the end of her performance, the derivoo held for a moment a pose of pure defiance, then turned and vanished into the darkness. Sula applauded and shouted, but the singer scorned the very idea of an encore.
Sula turned to Casimir. “That was wonderful,” she breathed.
“Yes, it was.” He took her hand. “I watched you the whole time. I’ve never seen an expression like that on your face.”
“Sing like that,” she said, “and you’ll see it again.” She turned to Julien and Veronika. “What did you think?” she asked.
Veronika’s eyes were wide. “I had no idea,” she said. “I’ve never seen derivoo live before.”
Julien loosened his collar. “For me, it was a little intense,” he said, “but she’s a terrific performer, I’ll hand you that.”
The two couples parted. Casimir and Sula returned to the long car with the Torminel bodyguards and followed the vehicles of the extraction team out of the area. When they were alone in the apartment, which still smelled of the lavender bath oil, Sula put her arms around Casimir and gave him a long, grateful kiss.
“That was the most perfect evening I can imagine,” she said.
His body was warm against hers. “I wanted to give you one special night to remember,” he said, “before our time together ends.”
Her nerves gave a leap at his words. She looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
There seemed an extra measure of gravel in Casimir’s deep voice, as if there were an obstruction in his throat, but there was perfect logic in his words.
“Project Daliang will either succeed or not,” he said. “If it fails, we won’t have much to worry about, because it’s likely one or both of us will be dead. But if it succeeds, then you become Lady Sula again, and I stay who I am. Lady Sula lives in a whole different world from me.” He attempted a defiant grin. “But that’s all right. It’s as it should be. I have no right to complain, being what I am.”
Her mind whirled, but she managed to assemble a protest. “That doesn’t have to be true.”
Casimir laughed. “What are you going to do?” he said. “Introduce me to your Peer friends? And what will I be to them? An exotic pet.”
Sula took a step away from him. She felt her face harden into anger. “That is simply not true,” she said.
There was a touch of scorn in his voice. “Of course it is. I’m a cliqueman. The only way I can get into the High City is to fight my way in with an army.”
Angry words boiled up from her heart, but she caught them at the last minute. Don’t destroy this, she thought. She had smashed perfect evenings in the past, and she would smash this one if she wasn’t careful.
“I’m fighting my way in too,” she said.
“Yes. And I know how much it must have cost you to get where you are now.”
Her mind staggered under the certainty that Casimir somehow knew about Caro Sula. How could he? she thought wildly.
“What do you mean?” she said in a whisper.
“The night that Julien was arrested,” Casimir said. “That performance you put on in my office, showing up naked under your coat. I was completely boggled by what you did that night.” He reached out a cool hand and drew a long finger along her bare shoulder. “You haven’t acted like that since, but then you haven’t had to. You got what you wanted—me clear of Julien’s arrest, which you’d arranged so you could get old Sergius on your side in the war.”
Her nerves turned to ice. “Who else knows?” she said.
“I figured it out, but that’s because I was there to see that very impressive show you put on for my benefit. Julien will never guess, but I wouldn’t put it past Sergius to work it out eventually.”
Sula let out a long breath. Her head swam.
“Yes,” she said. “I manipulated you at first.” A nervous laugh rasped past her throat. “Why not? I didn’t know you.” She looked at him. “But I know you now. You’re not someone I can simply use any longer.”
His brows came together. “What accent is that?”
She could only stare. “What?”
“You’re speaking in a different accent now. Not Riverside, not High City.”
Sula cast her thoughts back and reformed the words in her mind. “Spannan,” she said. “The Fabs. Where I was b—I mean, where I grew up.”
“You were on Spannan long enough to pick up the voice, but you left and became Lady Sula, with the swank accent. And that’s what you’ll do again, once we win the war.” He turned away, his fingers pressed to his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve upset you. I shouldn’t have brought this up tonight, not before we make our move on the High City. You need to be focused on that, not on anything I say.”
She watched him, despair rising like a flood to drown her heart. “Look,” she said, “I’m dreadful at being Lady Sula. I’m an absolutely awful Peer.” She followed him, touched his arm. “I’m much better at being Gredel. At being the White Ghost.”
Casimir looked at her hand on his arm. A bitter smile twisted his lips. “You may hate being Lady Sula, but that’s who you are. That’s who you’ll have to be, if we win. And I’ll still be Casimir Massoud, the cliqueman from Riverside. Where does that leave me, when all the Peers come back to run things?”
I am not Lady Sula! she thought desperately. But it wasn’t something she could say aloud, and even if she did, it wouldn’t make any difference.
Sula dropped her hand and straightened, as defiant in her despair as any derivoo.
“It leaves you Lord Sula,” she said, “if you want to be.”
His jaw dropped in astonishment and he turned to face her. “You can’t mean it.”
“Why not?” she said. “You couldn’t be any worse a Peer than I am.”
A trace of scorn crossed his face. “They’ll laugh,” he said. “I’ll be a freak—a cliqueman in a High City palace. Until someone finds out some of the things I’ve done, and then I’ll be tried and strangled.”
“Wrong.” Urgency sent the words spilling in a cascade from her lips. “You don’t remember that I’ve promised amnesties. Once you get your amnesty, you don’t have to go back to your old life. You’re an honored businessman, probably with a medal and the thanks of the empire.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “And what happens then? I sit in a palace and rot?”
“No. You make money.” A hysterical laugh bubbled from deep within her. “You don’t get it, do you? How the Peers made their money? They stole it.” She laughed again. “Only they did it legally! If you have the right connections, if you have the right name, you can wedge yourself into legitimate business and collect your dues forever. It’s not called protection, it’s not called extortion, it’s a patron-client relationship! You just need to learn the right vocabulary!”
Sula couldn’t stand still any longer. She walked the two paces to the outside wall, then walked back again, then repeated the circuit. “There are two ways to take the High City,” she said as she walked. “One is with guns, and we’ll do that in two days. The other way is with the right name, and Sula is one of the right names. You have no idea how ripe the empire is for plunder. The whole place is tottering, and not just because the Naxids have got greedy. I say we turn pirate and leave the place in smoking ruins. What do you say?”
She stopped her pacing and grinned up at him. Astonishment and confusion and chagrin and reluctant understanding worked their way across his face, each in its turn.
“I think you could do it,” he said in a voice of soft surprise.
“We could do it,” Sula said. “I’d need help. I told you I’m lousy at being a Peer.”
“Life is such a strange adventure,” Casimir remarked, and shook his head. He held out his arms. “How can I say no to becoming a lord?”
She stepped into his arms and felt them close tight around her.
There was a little problem with the Peers’ Gene Bank that she would have to resolve, the drop of blood she was required to contribute if she ever married and which could prove her an imposter. The drop of blood that had come between her and Martinez.
But the gene bank was in the High City, and if she won her battle in the next few days, the genetic records of the Sula clan could vanish in the aftermath. Any barrier to marriage would vanish with them.
It wasn’t just the cliquemen, she thought, who were now fighting for love.