Plus the six Laredo cruisers wouldn’t get their crews for many extra months, if ever.

  No, she decided, she’d have to go to Zarafan ready to fight.

  Though if Splendid and Mentor failed, the entire division would pay the penalty.

  Chapter 4

  “As I see it, I have no option but to engage,” Sula said. “I can’t let an enemy force run mad on their way to Laredo, destroying not only six new cruisers but whatever commerce is still operating in that region. I have some ideas concerning how I can keep the enemy on their heels, so at least we’ll give a good account of ourselves. End message.”

  Martinez paused the video message before the orange end-stamp appeared, and looked for a long moment into Sula’s blazing emerald eyes. His heart throbbed uneasily against his ribs.

  I can’t help her, he thought.

  The Fourth Fleet had left the Zarafan system three days earlier, and the message had been relayed to him via the wormhole stations. He viewed it from his quarters as he was drinking his cocoa and preparing for bed.

  Even if he replied, Sula would be in the Colamote system before the message reached her, and possibly she would already be engaged.

  Sula’s green eyes gazed from the screen without blinking. Martinez had sent her away, and now she was in peril along with her entire command, and it was his fault.

  Sula had never commanded an independent force of warships in battle—she had always served under others. Martinez could only think that they should be facing this together.

  The cocoa was turning sour on his tongue. Martinez unfroze Sula’s image, and after the orange end-stamp appeared, he said, “Reply to message,” and then paused to collect his thoughts.

  “I’d say ‘Fortune attend you,’ but you won’t need it,” he said finally. “I’ll look forward to your report, so I’ll know just how badly you thrashed them.

  “I will forward your message to Fleet Commander Jian, who seems to be in charge of us all.”

  He hoped he sounded more sanguine than he felt.

  The three enemy warships—presumed to be new ships built in the Antopone yards—had the drive signature of heavy cruisers and were decelerating to swing around Colamote’s sun, presumably with the intention of then accelerating toward Laredo. Sula assumed they were intended to cut Laredo off from the rest of the Restoration, but along the way they’d run into the six Laredo cruisers coming toward them—ships that had no fighting crews and no missile loads, only civilians enough to manage navigation and the engines. The Antopone warships would destroy them in a few seconds, then sail on to menace Laredo itself.

  Sula spent twenty sleepless hours in conference with her captains and put an experienced officer aboard all three of the big transports to make sure they followed Sula’s instructions without making amateur mistakes. Sula couldn’t spare officers for the smaller transports, but they mattered less in Sula’s plan, and Sula would be happy if all they managed was to avoid colliding with other ships.

  Eventually she was alone in her office staring at the gray walls. She could sense the exhaustion pressing in on her, but caffeine and adrenaline was keeping it at bay.

  She would probably die very soon now. She had no brave or stirring message to send to the universe outside her command, in part because everyone she liked and cared about was already here, on the ship with her, and would either survive along with her or die in the same annihilating flash that killed her.

  Martinez was outside the ship, of course, but she was too tired to sort through her feelings where he was concerned. Fuck him, she thought.

  But there was one thing she’d left undone, and if she were to die it would be undone forever. She checked her personnel files to find who was in command of the Fleet dockyard on Terra, and then addressed a message to him. She straightened her uniform tunic and brushed her junior fleet commander’s shoulder boards.

  “To Senior Captain Lord Batur Khan-Niyaz, greetings. This is Junior Fleet Commander Caroline, Lady Sula, commanding the Ninth Division of the Fleet of the Restoration. I’m afraid I’m going to give you a distasteful order—I wish you to locate a Daimong named Lord Peltrot Convil, formerly of the Manado Company on Sulawesi. Once you’ve found him, I require that you send a party to the planet’s surface to put him against a wall and shoot him. Act with all deliberate speed. If anyone questions your actions, refer them to me.”

  She nodded at the camera. “I assure you that the action is necessary. This is Lady Sula—Long live the Restoration of the Praxis. End message.”

  Sula didn’t bother to review the message lest it give her second thoughts. Instead, she ciphered it herself and put it in the message queue.

  Everything dies, she thought. Nothing matters.

  “My lady?” Shawna Spence appeared in the doorway. “Do you require anything?”

  “Sleep, mostly,” Sula said. “You heard?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Sula gave Spence a searching look. “Any comment?”

  Spence hesitated only a brief moment. “He deserves it.”

  Years ago, when Sula had commanded the dockyard on Terra’s ring, Lord Peltrot had grown sufficiently vexed with Sula that he’d sent an assassin to kill her. The assassin had missed Sula but killed her cousin Ermina instead, and had then been shot dead by Macnamara.

  The official investigation had failed to connect Lord Peltrot to the crime, but Sula knew better. She had owed Peltrot Convil a death for a long time, and—about to lead an inferior force into combat—it was time she paid that debt.

  The Ninth Division made the transition to Colamote accompanied by a dozen decoys, making the division look to enemy sensors to be twice its actual size. Sula sat in her acceleration cage in the flag officer’s station, and wore her viridian dress uniform tunic with its double row of silver buttons, her medals, and the shoulder boards of a junior fleet commander. She kept her eyes on the displays as the black speeding digits counted down the time till the transition.

  The transition itself was imperceptible, marked only by the racing digits shifting from black to orange and counting up instead of down, and by the plot going blank for a few moments until the navigation system updated their position. The enemy ships appeared exactly where they were expected to be, three antimatter engine flares bright against the starry background.

  The relative positions of the two fleets were unusual. The wormhole to Antopone was on a bearing close to that of the wormhole to Zarafan, but farther away from Colamote’s sun. Thus the enemy ships were “behind” the Ninth Division, both aiming for the same point near Colamote’s sun so that they could swing onto their course for Laredo. Sooner or later, they were bound to collide.

  This also meant that the enemy could not avoid action if Sula chose to begin a fight. Both forces were decelerating, but the enemy had started with higher velocity and were overtaking Sula’s ships. All Sula had to do was shift her vessels from her current line of bearing to that of the enemy, and the two forces would inevitably come into close action. If the enemy shifted to another line of bearing, Sula could match them. If they increased their deceleration to forestall combat, Sula could increase her own deceleration by the same amount, and the action would still take place.

  It had occurred to Sula not to decelerate at all but to run at full speed for Laredo and hope the enemy wouldn’t catch her. But this would betray her weakness, and the transports weren’t built to sustain the sorts of accelerations standard in warships. The enemy would overtake the Ninth Division, and the battle would happen anyway.

  If combat was inevitable, Sula thought, then it had better be on her terms.

  And it had better be victorious combat.

  Sula’s pulse beat high in her throat, and her mouth was dry. She took a quick drink of water from a squeeze bottle, then looked at the camera pickup.

  “Transmit to unknown squadron, video and audio both,” she told her signals staff. “Send in the clear.”

  She deliberately relaxed the muscles of her face while she mulled her message, then adopted a stern, formal expression. “To unknown vessels,” she said. “This is Caroline, Lady Sula, commanding the First Battleship Squadron and Division Nine of the Fourth Fleet. Identify yourselves, and if you are hostile to the government of the Restoration, prepare either to surrender or be blasted to atoms. Message ends.”

  Sula reached for her squeeze bottle again, took another drink, and speculated how the enemy commander might react when the message reached him, in about four minutes. It would follow soon upon the appearance of an armada from the Zarafan wormhole, which would be alarming enough even without a battleship squadron in the mix.

  The battleship squadron was problematic, however, as the Restoration was known to have only a single battleship, Perfection of the Praxis, which was completing construction at Harzapid when the war broke out. The enemy would have to wonder where the other two came from, and the only possible answer was that they had at some point defected—a possibility that would not enhance enemy morale.

  Of course, that interpretation depended entirely on whether the enemy was willing to consider that Sula’s force contained battleships at all. The three big transports were large enough, but their drive signatures were different from any Praxis-class ship. Sula intended to make that less obvious by having her ships aimed straight at the enemy, with the drive plume partly obscured by the body of the ship.

  Though if the enemy declined to believe they were faced by battleships, Sula anticipated a way to convince them. But Sula hoped they would be so startled by the appearance of a Restoration flotilla that they wouldn’t do any kind of analysis at all. And the best way to keep the enemy from thinking, Sula thought, was to behave very aggressively from the very start and keep them so busy reacting that they had inclination to perform any analysis.

  “Message to all ships,” Sula said. “All ships to alter course to a heading of two hundred forty-six by zero zero one absolute. Increase acceleration to one point five gravities. Execute in three minutes—mark.”

  Sula was a little concerned that not all the civilian captains would be quite up to managing the maneuver with only three minutes’ warning, but all ships responded promptly. Splendid cut its engines while it swung to its new heading, and Sula’s acceleration cage swung free on its gimbals. In a moment of alarm Sula realized she had forgotten to strap herself in, and she seized the cage supports with both hands just before the engines cut in again, and she dropped back into her seat.

  The Ninth Division was now heading to intercept the enemy ships at a greater rate of acceleration, a move calculated to increase the sense of alarm in the enemy.

  She wondered if they would react to the word surrender or bluster about it first. She had her answer nine minutes after she’d sent her message. A Lai-own appeared on her video display, gazing at her with golden eyes set wide atop his muzzle. He wore a viridian fatigue jumpsuit, which argued that he’d been doing some informal duty when he was suddenly called to Command. The feathery hair on either side of his head was still dark, which meant he was young for commanding an independent force.

  “Lady Sula,” he said. “I am Senior Captain Sen-thar, commanding the cruiser Steadfast. We operate under orders from the Commandery in Zanshaa and must inform you that we shall defend ourselves if attacked. End message.”

  Sula laughed. “Not exactly a clarion cry of defiance,” she said aloud, and was rewarded by a guffaw from Ricci.

  “Enemy ships are maneuvering,” Viswan said.

  Sula turned her attention to the displays and saw the three cruisers shift into a formation contributing to overlapping defensive fire. The maneuver wasn’t executed with any great precision, and Sula guessed that the crews were new recruits serving with a very few experienced officers.

  She also quietly rejoiced that the enemy was commanded by a Lai-own. The hollow bones of the flightless avians wouldn’t support accelerations of more than two and a half gees, which meant that the enemy absolutely could not outmaneuver Division Nine.

  She looked up Captain Sen-thar in the database and discovered that he’d participated in the Naxid War as a lieutenant in charge of a supply vessel shuttling between the six planets of the Seizho Reach. He hadn’t been anywhere near combat and owed his advancement to arrangements made ahead of time by family friends in the service.

  Which made him, sadly, rather typical of a ranking officer in the Fleet.

  “Your message has been received,” Sula replied, “and I commend your resolution in the face of certain death. Were I you, I’d be wondering about the competence of those in the Commandery who sent you and your brand-new ships and your half-trained crews into this situation. Quite a number of senior officers have been led to question foolish orders in this way, which has resulted in an encouraging number of defections to the Restoration.”

  She leaned a little closer to the camera, in hopes of developing a degree of intimacy between herself and whoever was listening.

  “I would like to remind you that I mentioned the possibility of surrender. You and your crews would be fed, housed, and held in comfort until the conclusion of hostilities. We have no reason to kill you, and after the fighting is over, we hope to work together to reestablish proper government, rebuild the Fleet, and lead the empire out of chaos.” She affected to consider the situation.

  “Your crews are inexperienced and have no choice but to trust you to make the correct decisions. There seems little point in getting them all killed because of a stupid error in judgment made in the Commandery . . . though if you insist, we will reluctantly oblige.” She ventured a smile. “We will be sending you some entertainments that may lighten the mood while you make what will doubtless be the most important decision of your lives. End message.”

  When the camera light went out, Sula leaned back on her couch and laughed, then thought that perhaps the laughter was a little premature and should perhaps wait for a triumphant resolution of the situation. She was trying to bluff a superior force, and in Sen-thar she might find someone willing to call that bluff.

  In which case, Division Nine might survive only a few more hours. Not only did the enemy have nearly twice her number of missile batteries, but her own warships would be distracted by the necessity of defending the cargo ships, none of which had any defensive armament.

  “That was a very good performance, Lady Fleetcom,” said Viswan.

  “I have my moments,” Sula said. “Ricci, have you sent the videos?”

  “Doing so now, Lady Fleetcom.”

  She’d decided to send a selection of Nikki Severin’s satiric videos, featuring puppets in the guise of Zanshaa’s leaders, gleefully engaging in corruption, bribery, and scapegoating while building their personal fortunes. She wondered if anyone in the enemy force would find them funny.

  Sula looked at the displays and calculated that, unless someone changed course or acceleration, the two forces would meet in about sixteen hours. She didn’t think Sen-thar would reply immediately, and she decided that as she hadn’t really slept in two days, she might try to get some rest in the meantime. She tipped her couch forward, put her feet flat on the floor, and rose. She massed one and a half times her normal weight, but it was perfectly possible to walk under these circumstances if she took care.

  “I’m going to my quarters,” she said. “Forward any important messages.”

  She cautiously trudged toward her suite. Though the staff in Command was maintaining a high state of alert, Splendid had not yet gone to general quarters, so most of the ship’s company was going about their normal business. They braced to attention as she passed, and as she looked into their faces, she saw mingled curiosity and concern, but very little fear. By now they must have gained a good idea of the situation, but they seemed to be trusting her to deal with the matter.

  She hoped the trust was warranted.

  Still in her uniform, Sula dropped onto her bergamot-scented bed and closed her eyes. Tracks of distant ships painted themselves on the backs of her eyelids. Bright storms like missile strikes bloomed against her retinas. She was aware that somewhere a digit counter was flashing as it ticked up toward the meeting with Sen-thar’s ships, and as it counted she could feel her anxiety rising.

  She had thought she was prepared, and she’d explained her plan to her subordinates, but it was always possible that she’d missed something. Sula had never before had the sole command of ships in battle; she had always served under Lord Tork, Martinez, or Michi Chen. The thought came to her that, if she made any kind of mistake, she would be responsible for the Restoration’s first defeat in combat.

  And with that thought, sleep became impossible.

  She dragged herself from her bed to her dining table, ate some cheese and cold cuts with flat bread, drank honeyed tea, then plodded again to the flag officer’s station.

  The bare beige room was silent. Video displays played themselves in silence on the walls. Ricci monitored communications, while Viswan had gone for a meal. Sula dropped onto her couch and pulled the displays down in front of her. Nothing on the plot seemed to have changed, the digit counter flashed ever upward, and the room was so quiet she could hear the sigh of air through the ventilators. The displays blurred before her eyes . . .

  “Good shot,” said Captain Mazankosi. She stood beneath a black, tangled tree with her rifle tucked under her arm, the sun gleaming on her bright hair. The scent of propellent tainted the air. A spotted beast was stretched out on the ground before her, its fangs bared in death and two bloody wounds visible on its chest.

  “Very close range,” Sula said. “Couldn’t miss, really.”

  “Look,” said Mazankosi. “The creeper creeps.”

  A thorny vine was writhing like a snake across the mossy ground, twisting and flopping its way toward the dead animal.

  “It’s looking for the blood,” Mazankosi said. She prodded the vine with the barrel of her rifle, and the vine wound around the barrel and Mazankosi drew the barrel upward, bringing the vine with it. Mazankosi viewed the vine at close range. She reached out a hand and touched a thorn, then drew her hand away and showed Sula the dot of blood on the pad of her forefinger.