When he made his evening entry in the log, he saw the message light blinking and found to his surprise that it was a video from Sula.
She wore a sublieutenant’s shoulder boards, he saw; she must have passed her exam. One hand was bandaged and cradled in the opposite arm.
Her complexion was lightly flushed, and flawless, and took his breath away. There was a strange intensity in her green eyes, a kind of fever. Perhaps she was in pain.
“So,” she said, “I lived. I’m the only survivor from my ship. I got picked up by theDelhi, and they lost a lot of people too.” She paused, and with a shock Martinez realized that she must have been the pinnace pilot who destroyed an entire enemy squadron. The report he’d received from the Fleet hadn’t mentioned any names.
Sula’s pointed tongue licked her lips for a second, and then she continued.
“So here’s what I’ve learned: I’m the second luckiest person in the universe. And do you know who’s the luckiest?” The intense green eyes glittered. “You are,” Sula said. “You are, Gareth Martinez. You. Commander ofCorona, recipient of the Golden Orb. You.” Her lips tightened in a smile.
She hasn’t even heard I’m a squadron commander, it hasn’t been announced.Martinez managed this thought through his wonderment.
“When I realized this, I decided to make some resolutions,” Sula said. “So here’s the first: no more whining. No more complaining about my superiors or my lack of patronage or the fact that I don’t have much money compared with every other officer in the Fleet. No more whining about—” She hesitated. “—about my past. Why should I complain? I’m the second luckiest person in the empire.”
She leaned toward the camera. “And you shouldn’t complain either. You’re very entertaining when you do it, and I laugh, but you didn’t have any reason before, and you damn well don’t have any now. You’re the luckiest person in the universe, so what do you have to complain about?”
She leaned back, and the motion must have pained her, because she gave a little wince and cradled her injured hand more carefully. She gave the camera an unreadable look.
“My second resolution,” she said, “is to come looking for you the second fate and the Fleet permit. Two lucky people like us, what can’t we do?” Her eyes turned a little off-camera and she said, “End transmission.”
Slow to master his thoughts, Martinez watched theEnd Transmission symbol for a long time. He reached out a hand to recue the video and run it again, then drew the hand back.
Then he thought about replying, but he had no idea what he’d say.
The comm unit bleeped at him. “This is Martinez,” he said, and looked into Kelly’s harassed face.
“It’s a complete shambles in the weapons bay, my lord. Chau has totally buggered up one of the robots during a reloading, and now he’s under arrest for busting Tippel in the chops, and we still don’t know what to do with the robot, it’s blocking everything and it’s just too big to shove out of the way.”
And what in hell am I supposed to do about it?Martinez wanted to scream.
But then he thought,No whining, and rose from his desk and went to his work.
The Maw gaped wide and red, and tinged with a hint of blood the fine lace of the frost that had climbed halfway up the lifeboat’s cockpit window. Warrant Officer Severin had got used to the cold, got used to his breath frosting in front of him and the fact that his nose ran all the time. He had got used to wearing layers of clothing even in bed, and wrapping himself in a thermal blanket whenever he rose so that he looked like an ambulatory tent. He was used to the moisture condensing on the lifeboat’s walls, and to the activities of the Naxid squadron in the Protipanu system.
The eight ships had finished their long, long deceleration burn and reentered the system, swinging in a leisurely orbit about the brown dwarf and its outer planets. They knew where the wormhole was now, but showed no sign of wanting to pass through it. Whatever plans they’d once had were now altered.
The Naxids had been reinforced. Two more warships, and a pair of fat cargo vessels that had chucked large containers into orbit around the sun for the warships to pick up, containers that Severin suspected held food and fuel. The cargo ships had then gone on to rendezvous with the two message relay stations and occupy them. Severin wouldn’t be getting messages out of the system anytime soon.
The Naxids had fired decoys: an elaborate pattern had been sent in orbit around the Protipanu system. Anyone entering would have a confusing time sorting real targets from false, perhaps a fatal time.
The Naxids were up to something. Severin watched everything on his displays and made notes.
The enemy had plans. And Severin was going to work out what they were.
If only he could keep from freezing.
The Shaa “year” is, so far as anyone knows, an arbitrary period of time unconnected with the orbit of any planet, or the measurement of anything in the natural world. It consists of.84 Earth years, or 306.6 Earth days. Caroline Sula, twenty-three in Shaa measure, is twenty by the reckoning of old Earth.
Planets within the empire of the Shaa each have their own local calendar by which they chart the local year and seasons: but all official business is conducted in reference to the imperial calendar rather than the local.
The Shaa year is divided into equally arbitrary units that demonstrate the Shaa love for prime numbers. The Shaa year is divided into eleven months of 27.9 Earth days each, and each month is divided into twenty-three Shaa days, each1.21 Earth days. The Shaa day is divided into twenty-nine hours, each of 59.98 minutes; and the hours are divided into fifty-three minutes, each 67.9 Earth seconds long. A Shaa minute consists of 101 seconds, each of 0.67 Earth seconds.
There is no Shaa equivalent of the “week,” though many planets have such a period in their own local calendars.
Measurements of time in this work, unless otherwise noted, are exclusively in Shaa measure. Readers may take comfort in the fact that, though the Shaa day is a little longer than Earth’s twenty-four-hour day, the hours and minutes are roughly equivalent.