Not that this was very likely under Kamarullah, Martinez thought, but the sentiment seemed worth expressing. He sent the message, and then paused for a moment outside the wardroom door, as he considered the new dynamics of the squadron.

  Kamarullah's wish had been granted, and he now was in command. But Martinez, his rival, had just won a bloodless victory over the enemy, and more than justified the confidence that Do-faq had placed in him. He'd brought all his captains through the fight without harm, and earned their trust. He could expect decorations and possible promotion, and Kamarullah could not. Kamarullah had just replaced a man who had made history, a commander who had won a great victory and who had earned fame and the thanks of the empire. Kamarullah's victory could only turn to bitter ashes in his mouth.

  The Fleet Control Board had just made Kamarullah an object of ridicule.

  Cheered by this thought, Martinez returned to the wardroom, and accepted Dalkeith's offer of another glass of wine.

  The lord secretary of the Fleet Control Board was a Cree, and he spoke in rounded musical tones like the chuckling of a spring.

  “&I call to Your Lordships' attention,” he read, “Lieutenant Captain Lord Gareth Martinez, commander of Light Squadron Fourteen, who as the first squadron commander on the scene developed the plan of battle which his squadron and mine together followed. I earnestly hope that Your Lordships will consider Lord Gareth worthy of promotion or some other distinction.

  “I also call to Your Lordships' notice the following officers, whose service has been exemplary, and whose contribution to the victory at Hone-bar was by no means negligible&”

  Lord Chen listened to the list of names as relief sighed through his bones. Captain Martinez had achieved distinction in the action at Hone-bar, something that would make Lord Chen's own dealings with Lord Roland Martinez less open to question. In addition to securing the victory, Martinez had saved the Clan Chen, which made Chen's pocketbook less empty and his sense of gratitude more personal.

  “Your Lordships' most recent instructions,” the lord secretary continued, “required me to leave two ships at Hone-bar in order to secure the system and the Hone Reach. As the recent victory has lessened the threat to Hone-bar, I hope my decision to leave only the Judge Qel-fan will meet with Your Lordships' approval. I will bring the rest of my ships to Zanshaa at the most expeditious possible speed.”

  Lord Chen suppressed a smile. In fact the board's instructions in regard to the defense of Hone-bar had been erratic, and tended to change from moment to moment depending on the persuasive power of those members with interests in the Hone Reach. From one day to the next Do-faq had been ordered to defend Hone-bar with his entire command, with his squadron alone, with a single four-ship division, and with a number of ships ranging from one to five. No wonder Do-faq had decided to take matters into his own decisive hands.

  The lord secretary's voice burbled on.

  “I regret to report that I have ordered Captain Dix of the Investigative Service to inquire into the breakdown in communication that permitted the Naxids to surprise us at Hone-bar. Wormhole stations should have observed the approach of the rebels many days in advance, and though the captain of Hone-bar's ring attempted to pass off the breakdown as the fault of a negligent tech, the explanation defies reason, and an investigation should be undertaken if only to clear those officers now under suspicion. I trust that this order meets with Your Lordships' approval.

  “In the eternal light of the Praxis, I remain&Lord Pa Do-faq, Squadron Commander, etc.”

  The lord secretary looked up from his reader. “Shall I repeat any of the message, my lords?”

  “That will not be necessary,” Tork said, answering for them all. His round eyes, mournful in his pale, fixed face, gazed around the broad table. “I am sure we are all aware of how this victory lessens our anxieties. I suggest that the lord secretary be ordered to write a congratulatory reply to the lord squadron commander, and that we all append our signatures.”

  There was a murmur of assent. The lord secretary glanced down at his display and got busy with his stylus.

  Lady San-torath, who represented Hone-bar in convocation, spoke first. “I'm delighted to congratulate Do-faq on his victory, but I wonder if he's not gone too far ordering an investigation of what seems to be a simple communications error. Hasn't the squadcom exceeded his authority?”

  By which Lord Chen knew that the lapse hadn't been a communications error at all. Hone-bar understood its own strategic importance as well as its own vulnerability, and probably at least some members of the elite were aware of the scale of the defeat at Magaria. They had seen the Naxid fleet coming, and had been prepared to make their own peace with the rebels.

  Unfortunately the conspirators hadn't been able to count. They'd known that Faqforce was on its way, and should have known that Faqforce outnumbered the Naxids. That they hadn't cooperated with Do-faq, who after all had the greatest number of missile launchers, did not speak well for their intelligence.

  Chen wondered how much Lady San-torath knew of Hone-bar's plans. Enough at least to know that she might be compromised by any investigation.

  “Better the Investigative Service,” said Lord Pezzini, “than the Legion of Diligence.”

  There followed a significant silence that allowed Pezzini's audience to shudder. Neither the IS nor the legion were infallible, but the legion's mistakes tended to be a lot more lethal, as were, for that matter, its triumphs.

  Pezzini was telling Lady San-torath to shut up and hope for the best. Nictating membranes deployed over her orange eyes, and she fell silent. Chen wondered how much Pezzini knew. Possibly a great deal, since Pezzini's interests also lay in the Hone Reach.

  “Should we not send a congratulatory message to Captain Martinez as well?” asked Lord Convocate Mondi. “He was at least technically in independent command.” Lord Mondi's diction was very precise, without the lisp common in a Torminel.

  Pezzini scowled. “We could make too much of Martinez,” he said. “We've already heard far too much of him.”

  Chen sighed inwardly, and went to work to earn his stipend. “Surely Captain Martinez deserves more than a congratulatory message,” he said. “Even Squadron Commander Do-faq admits that it was his strategy that won the battle.”

  “It was nothing more than any Peer could have done,” said Pezzini.

  “That does not eliminate the fact that Martinez was the Peer who did it,” said Lord Chen.

  Mondi scrubbed with the back of his hand the gray fur beneath one eye. Humans had a tendency to think of Torminel as very large round-bottomed plush toys, a perception of harmlessness reinforced by the lisp common to so many of Mondi's species. Millions of human children slept each night with a stuffed Torminel beside them. Torminel, who were actually nocturnal, predatory carnivores who liked their meat raw, rarely understood why humans so persistently underestimated them.

  “I don't see why Martinez shouldn't be congratulated,” Mondi said. “In fact he should be promoted and decorated.”

  “It is Do-faq who should be promoted,” said Pezzini. “He was the senior officer. And Kamarullah should be promoted as well-it was he the board placed in command of the light squadron, not Martinez.”

  “Why promote Kamarullah?” asked a bewildered Lady Seekin, the other Torminel member of the board. “What did he do?”

  “The Board's decisions must be upheld!” Pezzini snapped. “Martinez has had enough! Kamarullah was our choice for command!”

  “And now,” said Lord Chen, smoothly interceding, “comes our opportunity to rectify that&embarrassment.” He had argued against the supercession, but been outvoted. The professional members of the board, those who served with the Fleet, had insisted on the importance of seniority in maintaining discipline, and a couple of the civilians had been impressed enough by their arguments to fall in line.

  “We could promote Martinez to captain,” Chen continued, “which would automatically put him over Kamarullah. It would not counter this board's earlier decision,” he said to Pezzini's glare, “but reinforce the principle of seniority that this board considers so crucial to the order of the Fleet.”

  “That seems simple enough,” said Lady Seekin. She was one of the civilian members of the board, from Devajjo in the Hone Reach, and the intricacies of military culture often confused her.

  “No member of his family has ever risen as high in the service as Martinez,” Pezzini said. “Now the Board proposes to break precedent again and promote Martinez to captain?” Exasperation entered his voice. “Should we place his ancestors on a plane with ours? Should our descendants compete with his for places in the Fleet? It's bad enough that the Convocation awarded him the Golden Orb, and that we now have to salute him.”

  “One Peer is the equal of all others,” said Fleet Commander Tork. His chiming Daimong voice took on the harsh, dogmatic overtones the other members of the board had learned to dread. “And we do not compete. Not with one another.” He paused for effect while Pezzini tried and failed to suppress a gesture of frustration.

  “Still,” Tork said, “it is not good for one Peer to be favored so publically above others. If Martinez is to be promoted, let it be after his return to Zanshaa. Captain Kamarullah may enjoy command of the squadron until that time.”

  “Martinez will have to leave Corona if he is promoted,” Mondi observed. “A frigate is a lieutenant-captain's command.”

  “Perhaps we should give some thought to his next assignment,” Lord Chen said. He didn't want to be the one to suggest that Martinez should have another squadron, perhaps one of those now building in the distant reaches of the empire, but he would not object if someone else made the proposal.

  “Next assignment?” Pezzini said. “Do you know how many captains are on the list, waiting for commands? We can't jump some junior captain over their heads!”

  “He's a very successful junior captain,” Lady Seekin remarked.

  “It will not do to be seen favoring one officer, however worthy,” Tork said. “Captain Martinez has already achieved honor enough for one lifetime. There are many posts worthy of an officer of talent, and not all of them involve ship duty.”

  Lord Chen concealed his dismay. He would have to do some lobbying among the other members of the board.

  Lord Roland would expect nothing else.

  “How shall we announce the victory?” Mondi asked. “Shall we mention Martinez's contribution as well as Do-faq's?”

  Tork raised his long, pale, expressionless head. A whiff of rotting flesh floated on the air as he raised an arm. “I beg the board's indulgence,” he said, “but I do not believe an announcement should be made at all.”

  The others stared at him. “But it's a victory,” said Lady Seekin. “It's what we've all been waiting for. It's what the empire has been waiting for.”

  News of a victory would give heart to loyalists everywhere, Chen knew. The news would also discourage those inclined to make peace with the Naxids, such as whoever had suppressed those communications at Hone-bar.

  “I do not wish the enemy to learn of their defeat at Hone-bar, at least not yet,” Tork said. “If they learn that a force exists at Hone-bar sufficient to destroy their squadron, then they learn also that this force is not defending the capital at Zanshaa. It might inspire them to attack us here, while we are weak. I beg that the board not release this information until such time as the elements of Faqforce arrive here at Zanshaa.”

  “But wouldn't the Naxids already know?” asked Lady San-torath.

  “Not unless some traitor at Hone-bar told them,” said Tork. “But if there is treason there, it appears to be at the top. If it hasn't infected the wormhole relay stations, then no messages will go to Magaria or any other rebel stronghold. To the rebel high command it will seem as if their squadron vanished. They may not even see anything wrong with that-they know they don't control communications. It may be some weeks before they grow anxious. And before they know for certain that Kreeku's force was destroyed, I want Faqforce here, and guarding the capital.”

  Lord Chen took a discreet sniff of his perfumed wrist as Tork's vigorous gestures propelled the scent of rotting meat into the room.

  “Very well reasoned, my lord,” he said. “I agree that the release of the information should be delayed.”

  That would give Chen a little time to work on the other members of the board in the matter of Martinez's promotion and assignment. Perhaps he could contact his sister Michi and ask for suggestions.

  In the meantime, however, the board occupied itself with totting up numbers. Kreeku's ten heavy cruisers could be wiped from the Naxid column of the ledger.

  At the moment, Zanshaa was protected by Michi Chen's seven heterogeneous ships from Harzapid, the six bruised survivors of the Battle of Magaria, and several hundred decoys-missiles configured to resemble a large vessel on radar, and which might absorb at least some of the enemy's offensive power before being blown to bits.

  But the six battered ships from Magaria were at the moment practically useless, since they needed to dock with Zanshaa's ring station in order to undergo repairs, to replace their depleted missile batteries, and to take aboard Lord Eino Kangas, the new fleet commander the board had finally appointed after much wrangling. Even then Bombardment of Delhi was probably too damaged to fight without spending months in dock. That was why Faqforce was crucial: Do-faq's fifteen ships would more than double the capital's defense. But of those fifteen, Martinez's eight ships of the light squadron had likewise expended most of their ammunition at Hone-bar, and would likewise have to decelerate, dock, and replenish.

  Once that was done, the defenders would have twenty-five ships-or twenty-six, if you counted Delhi-still decisively outnumbered by the thirty-five ships last seen at Magaria. The odds against the loyalists were even worse if the eight Naxid ships last seen at Protipanu joined the Naxid main body-and why wouldn't they? Zanshaa was the whole war. Once the Naxids were in command of the Zanshaa system, the government on the ground would have no choice but to capitulate under the threat of antimatter fire rained from above.

  “We must win,” Mondi muttered, and drew snarling lips back from his fangs.

  Lord Chen felt weariness seep into his mind like spring meltwater into the soil, slowing and chilling his thoughts. They had been over these figures meeting after meeting. “This business of replenishing ships' missiles takes far too long,” he said. “A month or more to decelerate, time in dock, a month or more to get up to speed so that you're not a sitting duck when the enemy shows up.”

  “At least the enemy is under the same handicap,” Mondi said.

  “The Fleet is not designed for this sort of war,” said Tork. Despair edged his chiming tones.

  The Fleet was designed to sit in space and bombard helpless populations, or to make overwhelming surprise attacks on barbarians whose level of technology was lower than that of the empire. The Fleet had not been designed to fight another fleet with the same technology and tactics, let alone one with advantage in numbers.

  “Why can't we just load up a big cargo ship with missiles?” Chen asked. “Accelerate it and just keep it in orbit around the system? Any ship needing a supply of missiles could rendezvous with it and resupply. They wouldn't have to drop their velocity to zero to dock with the ring.” He thought of Clan Chen burning its way toward Zanshaa, just ahead of Faqforce. “I can even supply the ship,” he said, then mentally added, Lord Roland permitting.

  “I've considered this,” Tork said. “The enemy will be on our necks before the ship could be modified, loaded, and accelerated to useful velocities.”

  “We'll have your tender ready in time for the next war,” Pezzini added, teeth biting down on his sarcasm.

  “What if the enemy doesn't come on schedule?” Lady Seekin asked. “What if they attack and we beat them? Wouldn't it be useful to have missile reloads ready at hand, so that we could pursue them?”

  Tork's long, mournful face remained, as always, expressionless, but there was a profound silence before he raised his head to gaze at the others. “I can't help but think that this war will change the way the Fleet operates. After this war, I don't see that our ships will spend so much of their time in dock, where they're vulnerable to rebellion and mutiny. Some of them, certainly, must be kept in orbit, where they can be useful in an emergency. And these tenders could be a part of that scheme, even if they're completed too late for the decisive battle of this war.”

  “We need warships,” someone said. “If we're going to spend imperial funds, let's buy something that will kill Naxids.”