An officer who was very much like the officer he himself had been just a year ago.
He didn’t like Michi’s solution on these grounds, and on others as well. There had been three deaths, and he thought Michi was too quick to consider the first two solved. He had a sense that the deaths all had to be related in some way, though he couldn’t guess at what might connect them.
In his office he found Marsden waiting patiently with the day’s reports. Martinez called for a pot of coffee and worked steadily for an hour, until a knock on the door interrupted him. He looked up and saw Chandra in the doorway.
He tried not to envision a target symbol pinned to her chest as she stepped into the room and braced.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” he said.
“It was unfortunate that we couldn’t discuss…” Her eyes cut to Marsden, whose bald head was bent over his datapad. “…that matter we wanted to talk about at dinner today.”
“We can talk about it tomorrow,” Martinez said.
“It would be a little late.” Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. “The lady squadcom had asked me to conduct my experiment tomorrow.”
She wants to find out how much you’re worth before deciding on your arrest.The bitter thought rose in Martinez’s mind before he could stop it.
He sighed. “I don’t know how I can help you, Lieutenant.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. “In order for this to be what you want, it can’t be anything standard. Eithermy standard ortheir standard, if you see what I mean. It has to be something that’s completely yours, and something that hadn’t been done before, or at least not recently.”
Her hands clenched into fists, and this time did not unclench. “I understand, my lord.” From the sound, her teeth were clenched too.
“It’s not easy, I know.” Martinez made a conciliatory gesture. “I’m sorry, but I have no useful ideas for you.” He mentally reviewed the last few days. “I don’t have useful ideas for anyone, it seems.”
Her fists still clenched, Chandra braced, executed a military turn, and marched away.
Martinez looked after her, and in a morbid part of his mind he wondered if Chandra was angry enough to kill him.
THIRTEEN
Martinez was killed the next morning, during Chandra’s maneuver. He was walking off his breakfast with a tour around the deck when Chandra’s voice echoed down the corridor from the speakers at each end. “This is a drill. General quarters. This is a drill. Now general quarters.”
Martinez responded to the call with a brisk walk to his quarters, where Alikhan helped him into his vac suit. If it hadn’t been a drill, he would have headed straight to Command at a dead run and hoped that Alikhan and the vac suit caught up with him later.
When he arrived in Command with his helmet tucked under his arm, the officer of the watch—Mersenne—stepped aside from the captain’s cage and settled himself into his usual place at the engines station. Martinez swung into his couch and called for a status report, all the while looking at his display as the various stations reported themselves ready.
The last symbol flashed, and Martinez reported to Michi thatIllustrious was at quarters. After a modest delay, caused presumably by waiting for other ships to report themselves ready, Chandra’s voice sounded in his earphones. Martinez then passed command of the ship to Kazakov in Auxiliary Command so his crew in Command could devote themselves entirely to the maneuver.
“The experiment assumes that we are six hours into the Osser system,” Chandra reported.
Osser again, Martinez thought. It was almost as if Chandra were repeating his last maneuver, not a good sign if she wanted to impress Squadron Commander Chen.
“Chenforce has entered hot, and we’ve been able to search the system a little more than three light-hours out. No enemy force has been detected. Are there any questions?”
Apparently there were none, because Chandra went on. “The exercise will commence on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.”
A new system blossomed on the navigation displays.
“My lord,” said Warrant Officer Pan, one of the sensor operators, “we’re being painted by a tracking laser.”
“Where?”
“Dead ahead, more or less. A rather weak signal—I don’t think it’s anywhere near—My lord! Missiles!” Pan’s voice jumped half an octave in pitch.
“Power all point-defense lasers!” Martinez said. “Power antiproton beams!”
But by that point they were all dead, and within seconds Chenforce was a glowing cloud of radioactive parties spreading itself into the cold infinity of space, and Martinez’s heart was thumping to a belated charge of adrenaline.
Naxid missiles, Martinez realized, accelerated to relativistic velocities outside the system, then fired through the wormhole along the route they knew Chenforce had to take. The reflection of a tracking laser fired from somewhere in the system provided last-instant course corrections.
Through his shock he managed a grim laugh. Chandra had impressed the squadcom, all right.
He looked at the recording of the attack, slowing the record at the critical moment. Two of the attacking missiles had been destroyed by the squadron’s automated laser defenses. Only a few of the squadron’s lasers had been powered, because lasers kept powered required greatly increased maintenance and replacement of key components.
Martinez keyed open the channel he shared with the Flag Officer Station. “Request permission to run that exercise again,” he said. “I’d like to begin with the antimissile weapons already powered.”
“Stand by,” said Michi’s aide, Ida Li.
Permission was granted a few moments later. Chenforce began the exercise with all antimissile weapons powered, but it didn’t make a difference. Two more missiles were killed on the way in, but the entire squadron was still vaporized twelve seconds after the exercise began.
Michi’s voice came into Martinez’s earphones. “Let’s give the experiment to the people in Auxiliary Control. I want to see howthey handle it.”
Kazakov and her coequals on the other ships did no better, which gave Martinez small comfort.
“I’ll want all officers in my quarters for dinner at fifteen and one,” Michi ordered. “Captain Martinez, can you improvise an exercise to take up the rest of our time?”
“I’ll try, my lady.” Martinez looked over Command, then said, “Choy, Bevins, please lie down on the deck.”
The two warrant officers looked at each other in surprise, then rose grinning from their seats and sprawled between the cages.
“Comm,” Martinez said. “Page the sick bay and tell them to send stretcher parties to Command. We have two casualties.”
He made the next call himself, to Master Rigger Francis. “Decompression in Compartment Seven. Power is down. Send a party at once to rescue any survivors from the Flag Officer Station, which is not responding to any communication. Because the power is down the hatch and will have to be opened manually.”
He thought it might amuse Michi Chen to be rescued by a damage control party.
The next call went to Master Electrician Strode. “All breakers on Main Bus Two broken due to radiation attack. Send a party to replace all breakers, and in the meantime reroute power through Auxiliary Bus One.”
Which risked blacking out parts of the ship, but Martinez judged the risk worthwhile to find out if Strode was actually good at his job.
“Weaponer Gulik,” Martinez called. “A missile in Tube Three of Battery One is running hot in the tube. The outside hatch is jammed and hot gases have disabled the automatic loader. The missile must be unloaded before the antimatter container is breached.”
And so the morning went, as Martinez devised one catastrophe or another to test the crew. Due to a failure somewhere in the chain of command, the stretcher party turned up without their stretchers, but otherwise the crew behaved very well. Strode did not black out any parts of the ship, and the missile was unloaded by a damage control robot before it could detonate. Other crises were dealt with, and Michi sounded pleased at being rescued—it appeared Francis had sent an exceptionally good-looking rigger to head the damage control team.