Hong made a last transmission telling the remaining teams to go to ground, and then he, too, fell silent.

  Sula stripped back her camouflage hood, took off her helmet, and turned off her radio comm. She took out the hand comm that had been dedicated to this mission, stripped the batteries, flung it from the car with enough force to shatter it on the curb, and then lay back on the seat and gave herself up to weariness and the sense of bitter defeat.

  We're going to have to get better at this, she thought.

  If we live.

  * * *

  EIGHTEEN

  « ^ »

  By the time they arrived in their own home area Spence's leg was too stiff and painful to permit her to walk, so Sula had Macnamara drive to the Riverside apartment they all shared. The car was parked in the alley behind the building, and Sula opened the door to the back stair, the one with the door that led from the second floor landing to their kitchen. As the laughter of children echoed down the stair, Sula helped the bandaged Spence get on Macnamara's back, and then stayed with the car and its military gear as Macnamara carried her up the stairs to her bed.

  “Some kids in the stair saw us,” Macnamara said when he returned. “I told them it was a boating accident, that she got her leg caught between a boat and the quay.”

  “What made you think of that?” Sula asked in amazement, but Macnamara only shrugged. She stuffed a pistol down the waistband of her trousers in back, made sure the weapon was covered by her civilian jacket, and left the car to Macnamara.

  “Go to your private lodgings,” she told him. “I'll look after Spence. Make your rounds normally tomorrow morning, but make sure you check the position of the flowerpot before coming into the aparrment.” She hesitated. “If you get a signal that there's something waiting for us at a mail drop,” she said, “don't pick it up yourself. Pay someone else to do it, and make sure he's not followed when he gives it to you.”

  Macnamara was startled. “That'll give away the location of the drop,” he said.

  “There are plenty of mail drops,” she said. “There's only one you.”

  She left Macnamara to contemplate this and bounced up the stairs, past the small children who had laid out a toy tea set on the landing, and slipped into the apartment. She moved the flowerpot in the front window from No one's here to Someone is here and it's safe, and then went in to check on Spence.

  Sula unbound the field dressing and inspected the wound. As Spence had suspected, the bullet had driven clean through the right calf. There was very little bleeding. The calf was swollen, the skin smooth and taut as the skin of a grape and beginning to turn blue, but the wounds seemed relatively clean, with no great amount of tearing, and Sula found no foreign matter in the wound after she cleaned it, no splinters or bits of cloth. She sprayed on antibiotics and fast-healer hormones, put another field dressing on, a dressing that contained even more antibiotics and fast-healer hormones, and then loaded a med injector with a standard painkiller, Phenyldorphin-Zed.

  Spence tilted her head back, brushing the hair back from her neck, and Sula pressed the injector to Spence's carotid. Sula's heart gave a sickly throb in her chest. Blackness rimmed her vision. She realized her hand was trembling.

  “Maybe you'd better do this yourself,” she said.

  Sula had to leave the room before the hiss of the injector came to her ears. From the front room she stared down into the busy street, seeing the vendors with their racks and carts, the people who moved along the street in thick crowds but who never seemed to be in a hurry.

  Frustration scorched Sula's nerves. None of these people knew that a battle for Zanshaa had been fought and lost that day. It was very possible that none of them would ever know unless the Naxids chose to tell them.

  Sula thought of Guei crawling down the hall with his eye socket pouring blood. The voices of Team 317 calling for help as bullets tore the air around them. Caro Sula, her face slack with narcotics, lying with her golden hair spread on a pillow as her best friend fired dose after dose of Phenyldorphin-Zed into her neck&

  Sula slammed her fists down on the windowsill and marched back into the room she shared with Spence. Spence looked back at her past half-lowered, drugged eyelids, the injector still in her hands. The room smelled of disinfectant.

  “Can I get you anything?” Sula asked. “Would you like something to eat?”

  “Can't eat.” Spence made a vague gesture at the wall. “Video, maybe?”

  Sula told the video wall to turn on, and settled on her bed to help Spence watch one of her romantic dramas. The hero was an older man, a Peer, handsome and cynical; the heroine was young and astoundingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to unlock the hero's personality, if not unhinge his sanity altogether: he disgorged a perfectly stupendous amount of jewelry, clothing, and trips to exotic climes before dismissing a long-time mistress and installing the heroine in his High City palace. The heroine seemed bewildered and faintly distressed by much of this, but she understood the meaning of the palace at least, and consented to the Peer's offer of marriage.

  Sula, who had more experience with older, cynical Peers than Spence, watched the ludicrous goings-on with growing impatience. Her mother, she knew, would have loved this story, had in fact done her best to live it-she had spent most of her life in service to some man or other, her chief problems being that her beauty tended to attract admirers from another end of the social scale than the Peerage, and that most of these were married already.

  Her mother, who she had not seen in years.

  Claustrophobia began to press on Sula's mind with cotton-wool fingers. She was in the apartment waiting, and for what? A handsome Peer with a fistful of jewelry? A horde of Naxids with guns? For Martinez, to carry her off to his palace in the sky, the palace that Maurice Chen had bought for him?

  Sula made sure Spence was comfortable and then went out into the streets. Laughter and chatter rose around her while gunfire echoed in her skull. The first action against the Naxids had been a catastrophe. Action Group Blanche was in ruins, and the survivors in hiding. The Naxids were doubtless installing their government in the High City at this exact moment.

  Simply for a place to go, Sula went to the Grandview apartment, a walk that took her over the better part of an hour. She studied the building for a while, then decided that it was unlikely the Naxids were waiting for her as yet. There were belongings she might as well fetch out, and some preparations it might be worth her while to make.

  She saw a light on in the apartment of the toothless old concierge, and an idea occurred to her. She bought a newssheet from the vendor on the corner, walked to the apartment, and stuck a head in the concierge's door.

  “Mr. Greyjean?”

  “Yes, miss?” The old man shuffled toward her from the kitchen, carrying in one gnarled hand a plate with a piece of toast.

  “I wonder if I might ask a favor of you.”

  “Of course.”

  Sula eased the door shut behind her. “Mr. Greyjean, do you remember that when I first moved in, you thought I was a Fleet officer?”

  “Oh yes, of course. Do you mind if I eat my toast while it's hot?”

  “No I don't,” she said, “and I am a Fleet officer.”

  “Ah.” Greyjean munched toast, which caused more of his consonants to disappear than usual. “Well, I always thought so.” He gave a watery glance around his room. “Would you like to sit down, my lady?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She perched on the edge of an elderly, overstuffed chair; Greyjean sat on a small sofa. “I'm here to fight the Naxids, you see,” Sula said. He nodded. “So,” she continued, “the Naxids might well come looking for me.”

  Greyjean nodded. “Well yes, that makes sense.”

  “And if they do&” Sula handed him the newssheet, neatly folded into quarters. “Could you put this in your kitchen window, so that I could see it from the outside?”

  Greyjean contemplated the thin plastic rectangle. “In the window, you say?”

  “Yes. You could keep it by the window, you know, and then just prop it up if the Naxids come.”

  Light colors were recommended for these sorts of signals: the white plastic sheet would stand out well against practically any background.

  Greyjean rose from his sofa and shuffled toward the kitchen, his plate in one hand and the newssheet in the other. Sula followed. Greyjean put the sheet in the window, pinning it in place with a terra-cotta pot that held a ficus.

  “Will this do, my lady?” he asked.

  “Yes, but only if the Naxids come.”

  “Of course, yes.” He took the white rectangle out of the window and placed it under the potted plant. “I'll just keep it there,” he said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Greyjean.”

  Greyjean shrugged and took another bite of his toast. “My pleasure, my lady.”

  Sula reached into her pocket, took out a twenty-zenith coin, and put it on his plate. His eyes widened.

  “ Twenty zeniths?” he said. “Are you sure, my lady?”

  He might never have held twenty zeniths in his hand in his life.

  “Of course,” Sula said. “You're entitled. You're working for the government now.” She winked. “The real government.”

  For a long moment Greyjean considered the apparition on his plate, and then took the coin and slipped it into his pocket. “I always wanted government service,” he said, “but I never had the right schooling.”

  Chenforce sped from Aspa Darla Wormhole 2 into Bai-do, the ships coming in hot, their radars pounding away as they began maneuvering the instant they passed the wormhole. Martinez had his eyes fixed on the displays, and in the radio spectrum found, as he suspected, a black, dead system, with the only radio sources being the system's star and its single inhabited planet. He switched to optical and infrared censors, and found rather more. Large numbers of merchant ships burned at high accelerations for wormholes leading out of the system.

  “Targets,” Martinez reported, and with a sweep of his fingers so categorized them on the tactical display.

  “Assign targets to weapons officers within the squadron,” Michi said. “Tell them to launch missiles when ready.”

  And in the meantime the familiar message had automatically been broadcast, and was being repeated every few minutes: “All ships docked at the ring station are to be abandoned and cast off so that they may be destroyed without damage to the ring. All repair docks and building yards will be opened to the environment and any ships inside will be cast off&”

  The Naxids at Bai-do had known they were coming for days and had ordered everyone in the system to switch off their radars. It would be many hours before Martinez had a complete picture of the system. He had very little anxiety on that score, since they'd entered through a wormhole that was at a great distance from the system's sun, and any warships guarding the system would be much closer in.

  “&Any ship attempting to flee will be destroyed&”

  For the first two days Bai-do seemed a repeat of Aspa Darla. No warships were discovered. Merchant ships in flight were destroyed, and most crews had enough warning to escape in lifeboats. No drunken Captain Hansen appeared on comm to object to the annihilation of his vessel. Large numbers of ships were cast off from Bai-do's ring, and a pair of pinnaces were launched from Judge Arslan to inspect the ring and to make certain orders were carried out.

  A modest round of dinners and parties continued, though under strict orders for superior officers to restrain the amount of drinking as long as the squadron was in enemy space. Martinez played host to a party of lieutenants and cadets aboard Daffodil, and Fletcher once more had Michi and her staff as guests for a formal supper.

  “Your ring will be inspected to make certain that you have complied with these orders&”

  The crew of Illustrious was reasonably light of heart when they strapped into their action stations for the two pinnaces' closest approach to Bai-do. The pinnaces would pass no closer than a quarter of a light-second, but the powerful sensors on the small craft would be able to see perfectly well into the open hangar bays, yards, and docks, and relay the information to the flagship.

  After supper at Fletcher's table, Martinez felt heavy-lidded and drowsy in the warmth of his vac suit, and he adjusted the internal atmosphere to a more bracing temperature. The two signals lieutenants murmured in soft voices as the pinnaces, on their approach, began feeding Illustrious packets of intelligence from their communications lasers. Idly, Martinez moved the pinnaces' feed onto his displays, and only then noticed the flashes in the corner of his tactical display.

  “Missile flares!” Martinez said in perfect astonishment. “Missile flares from the station!”

  His drowsiness was inundated by a wave of adrenaline that slammed into his bloodstream with the force of a tsunami engulfing a coral atoll. Martinez banished the pinnace feeds from his display and enlarged the tactical array. The accelerator ring had fired a pair of missiles, each clearly aimed at one of the approaching pinnaces.

  “All ships!” Martinez said. “Defensive weaponry to target those missiles!”

  It was an order he felt he could safely give without Michi's approval. Michi herself was shouting to her signals officers.

  “Message to Ring Command! You will disable those missiles immediately&”

  Too late, Martinez thought. The display showed an event that had happened twenty-three minutes ago. By the time Michi's message flashed the twenty-three light-minutes back to the ring station, the missiles and the two defenseless boats would have had their rendezvous.

  It was barely possible that the squadron's defensive lasers might knock down one or another of the missiles, but guessing where a jinking missile would be in twenty-three minutes was a task better suited for a fortune-teller than a weapons officer&

  The voices of the Terran pinnace pilots crackled into life in Martinez's headset, announcing in voices of surprising tranquillity the appearance of the missiles. They would attempt evasive accelerations, all the while continuing their automatic scan of the Bai-do ring with their sensor arrays.

  Any evasion was pointless. In order to avoid the streaking missiles, the pinnaces would have to accelerate so heavily as to crush their passengers. The only hope for the pilots was that the missiles weren't actually trying to kill them, but to create a screen between the pinnaces and the ring station in order to prevent observation.

  After Michi's message was sent to Ring Command, there was a sudden cold silence in the Flag Officer Station.

  “&Failure to obey orders will mean the destruction of the ring&”

  The remembered words burned through Martinez's mind like fire.

  The threat had been made. But a threat meant nothing unless there was the will to carry it out.

  “Captain Martinez,” Michi said in a new, cold, inflectionless tone, “please plan an attack on the Bai-do ring.”

  “Very good, my lady.”

  The plan had been made ages ago when Chenforce was still circling Seizho's sun, and Martinez needed only to update the tactical situation before presenting it to the squadron commander. Michi glanced at her tactical display only briefly. There was a new hardness in the set of her mouth.

  “Convey the plan to the squadron, captain,” she said. “Prepare to execute on my command.”

  “At once, my lady.” He could not make himself reply with the words, “very good.”

  Martinez passed orders to each ship in the squadron. Michi leaned her head back on her couch support and closed her eyes. “The bastards are testing us,” she said in a nearly inaudible voice. “After Koel, the Naxid command has had time to issue orders to the Bai-do ring, and to others as well. They want to find out if we'll actually carry out our threats.”

  “After we destroyed the Zanshaa ring,” Martinez said, “why would they think we'd stick at Bai-do?”

  Michi had no answer. Martinez, a sickness chewing at his belly, watched his display, saw the pinnaces standing on tails of flame in mad frenzies of acceleration as they tried to escape the fate that pursued them.

  The heavy acceleration was a mercy in a way, because the pilots were almost certainly unconscious when the missiles found them.

  Martinez looked for a long, terrible moment at the silent expanding plasma spheres at his display, and then raised his eyes to Michi. There was black anger in her eyes, as well as a horror at the order she was about to give.

  “Captain Martinez,” she said. “Destroy the Bai-do ring.”

  Martinez found that his lips formed an answer. “Yes, my lady.” He touched the transmit pad and gave the orders.