“I am no longer young,” Tork said, “but my health remains good. And in any case I need retain my vigor only a few more months.”
After that there was no choice. Tork and his loyalists would block any attempt to promote Do-faq or anyone else.
Lord Chen raised his hand with the others when the vote was called, and Lord Tork was appointed unanimously to command the Home Fleet, charged with the reconquest of Zanshaa and the defeat of the rebels.
Tork threw himself into the work with his usual dedication. He didn’t transfer himself to the Daimong ships right away, but stayed where he had sufficient support staff to keep himself informed of the status of the Fleet throughout the empire.
The Daimong ships continued to Chijimo, where they would dock and receive their weapons. Tork made certain all necessary equipment was shipped from Antopone. The Home Fleet under Do-faq decelerated all the way to Zarafan, then swung around its sun and whipped back to Chijimo.
Reinforcements were on their way. Three ships from the Fourth Fleet that had finished repairs after the battle at Harzapid. Three brand-new frigates, built with astounding efficiency by the Martinez yards at Laredo, were undergoing trials; and the Convocation, mightily impressed, commissioned five frigates more. Thirty-one more ships were nearing completion elsewhere in friendly space, and construction had begun on another sixty.
Fleet Commander Kringan, at Harzapid, apparently heard the call of the trumpets once the news of Kangas’s death reached him. Within three days he’d placed himself aboard a frigate, one that hadn’t yet finished repair, and launched himself for Chijimo with repair crews still aboard. Clearly he was hoping to arrive in time to be appointed commander of the Home Fleet, but unfortunately no one else was hearing the same trumpets, because by the time the frigate left Harzapid’s system, Tork had already received the supreme command.
Lord Chen would be grateful for Kringan’s presence, however. It would be good to have another high-ranking officer on hand in case Tork worked himself into a stroke.
But Tork showed no sign of flagging. He grew leaner and he shed skin at a fantastic rate, but he burned with a fever that his age could not quench. Lord Chen had to admit that no other officer could possibly have been more dedicated.
The Naxids launched no more raids.
“They’ve learned not to make detachments,” Lord Mondi said as they relaxed one evening inGalactic ‘s lounge. “Every time they send a force out on its own, they lose it. Hone-bar, Protipanu, and now Antopone—and since there have been no Naxid survivors, they have no idea what’s doing it to them.”
“So it all comes down to one big battle then,” said Pezzini. “It all comes down to Zanshaa.”
The three traitors were executed two days after their arrest. The Convocation, in the hours following the start of the rebellion, had decreed that the penalty for treason was torture followed by hurling the condemned from a great height. Martinez managed to talk Michi out of the torture on the grounds that the squadron had no professional torturers and that amateurs were bound to make a mess of it. He couldn’t tell whether Michi was relieved by her decision or not.
There were no heights to throw the condemned men from, but Michi managed an approximation.Illustrious was decelerating at one gravity, to swing around the blue giant Alekas and on to another wormhole, so she decided to eject the traitors from an airlock. Once free of the ship, the traitors would no longer be decelerating and would fall into the ship’s burning antimatter tail.
And they would be ejected without vac suits. “Damned if I’ll waste vac suits on them!” Michi snarled. The vacuum might well kill them before they were torn to atoms by the antimatter blast. Martinez didn’t know which death would be worse.
Gawbyan was stoic in the moments leading up to his execution. Francis was contemptuous, and Gulik, who had condemned himself and the others repeatedly during his interrogation, sagged in a kind of bewilderment. He seemed to suggest that it was unfair to execute him. He’d cooperated and freely confessed, and he didn’t understand why he didn’t get a prize from a grateful empire.
They died with ceremony. A party waited at the airlock, Martinez, Michi with her staff, and all the lieutenants except Corbigny, who was on watch. All glittered in full dress. There was a guard, witnesses from each of the prisoners’ departments, and the ship’s band, which played the low, mournful “Death Without Honor” as the prisoners shuffled from the brig in their coveralls.
Constable Garcia stripped from the condemned their badges of rank and seniority. Guards tied their ankles together with white mourning tape, and their arms were taped to their sides. They were then taken into the airlock and loaded onto an apparatus designed to eject the bodies of crew who had died in accident or as a result of enemy action. The apparatus hadn’t ever been used on live crew, so far as Martinez knew, but he imagined the principle remained the same.
The inner airlock door closed smoothly. Garcia stepped to the airlock controls. The band halted at the end of the phrase, and the drummer began a slow, throbbing pulse on the hourglass-shaped drum.
“Evacuate the airlock, Mr. Garcia,” Martinez said.
“Evacuate the airlock, my lord.” Garcia turned to the controls. If there was a sound, a hiss or the throb of pumps, it was covered by the sound of the drum.
If he were one of the condemned, Martinez thought, he’d try to hold his breath and hope to give himself a quick embolism.
Garcia turned back to him. “Airlock evacuated, my lord.”
“Open outer airlock doors, Mr. Garcia.”
The drum thudded on. Martinez was suddenly aware of a furious itch below his right shoulder blade.
“Outer doors opened, my lord.”
“Proceed, Mr. Garcia.”
Ejecting the condemned into space was the matter of pressing a keypad. Martinez hoped they were already dead. Garcia looked into the airlock through the little window, then turned back to Martinez.
“Airlock’s clear, my lord.”
“Close the outer door and repressurize. Lieutenant Mokgatle?”
Acting Lieutenant Mokgatle, who was blessed with an impressive reading voice, stepped forward from the ranks of the officers and read from the service from the dead.
“Life is brief, but the Praxis is eternal,” Mokgatle concluded. “Let us all take comfort and security in the wisdom that all that is important is known.”
He took a neat step back into ranks.
By now the condemned were stripped ions floating on the void. Martinez felt a moment of stillness building around him. The prisoners had been condemned according to law and executed with all the majesty that the traditions of the Fleet could provide. Their comrades had been present, either in person or mustered to observe by video from the mess or from duty stations in the ship. They were witnesses to the fact that the executions had been conducted properly, just as they’d been witnesses to the larceny that had begun the series of deaths.
Mute witnesses, in both cases. The recruits hadn’t been consulted when their own department heads had conspired to rob them, and they hadn’t been consulted when Martinez had proved their guilt and Michi ordered their executions.
Maybe it was time they were taken into their superiors’ calculations.
Lady Michi cleared her throat in a deliberate way, suggesting that she was tired of waiting for something to happen.
Martinez took a step forward and turned to look at the camera that was recording the ceremony.