Martinez felt Sula’s muscles grow taut. “If we won the war, they damn well would,” she said. “It’s not as if we’d give them a choice.” She gently detached herself from his embrace and reached for her cup of coffee. “But that wouldn’t happen anyway. The ring isbuilt to be detached from the planet.”
“You’re joking,” Martinez said.
“No. I found that out when I was sent to guard a ring terminus just after the rebellion began—I checked the records to find out where the vulnerable bits of the terminus were. And I found out about the fail-safes built into its structure.” She sipped her coffee. “The engineers weren’t stupid—they wanted to be prepared in case something went wrong. They didn’t want the whole mass of the ring to come crashing down on the planet, particularly with antimatter on board. So the accelerator ring was set into an orbit where, if the cables were broken, the release of centripetal force would gently carry the ring away from the planet, not toward it.”
“But you’d have to break the ring into pieces.”
“Right. The engineers calculated exactly where the scuttling charges would have to be placed. And scuttling chargeswere there, heavily guarded, for years—until the Shaa were satisfied that the ring would stay where they put it.”
“What about the cables? If the ring slipped off the skyhooks, the cables would wrap themselves right around the planet…”
Sula dabbled plum chutney onto her flat bread. “The engineers weresmart. The cable termini are built with release mechanismshere, on the planet’s surface. The cables would be drawn up into space and we’d never see them again.” She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “Imagine the Naxids’ surprise. They’d come expecting to land their government on the ring and take the elevator down to the surface—and they wouldn’t be able to get down to the planet! All their officials would bestuck up there, issuing decrees they couldn’t enforce, at least until they brought enough shuttles from Magaria to land their government.”
By this time Martinez had recovered from his slow surprise at this unorthodox notion and his mind had begun to grapple at its implications. “A hot reception could be arranged for them on the ground. I’d have thousands of soldiers guarding Zanshaa city.”
Sula seemed puzzled. “What good would it do? The Naxids would just flame your army from orbit.”
Martinez felt a triumphant smile split his face. “That’s exactly what they’d do—they’d flame any city—but not Zanshaa.They wouldn’t hit Zanshaa for the same reason thatwe couldn’t drop a piece of the ring on it—it would be a desecration of the most sacrosanct place in the empire. Flame the Couch of Eternity? The Convocation? The Great Refuge? The original Tablets of the Praxis?They wouldn’t dare. ”
A wild mirth brought blood mantling the surface of Sula’s face. “Your soldiers could hold out in the capitalforever!”
He shrugged. “For a long time, anyway. The Naxids would have to shuttle in enough troops to defeat them….”
“…And in the meantime the Fleet would be building its power off in the reaches of the empire.” Sula’s grin was gleeful. “Ready to come back.”
“Ye-es…” Further calculations shrank Martinez’s smile. “Except that the Naxids are building, too. They’d have to be.” He looked at her. “What will the Naxidsdo if we don’t fight for Zanshaa? If we blow the ring and withdraw? What could they do? Come after us?”
The green fire of calculation burned in Sula’s eyes. “They couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because they wouldn’t know where the fleet’s gone. Zanshaa has eight wormhole gates. If the Naxids plunge on ahead toward where theythink we are—even if they get the right wormhole—our fleet could still double back through another gate and retake Zanshaa. If they leave a smaller force behind to hold the capital, that force could be destroyed. They’d have to stay here.” She took a thoughtful nibble of her bread. “Yes,” she nodded, “they’d be stuck here.”
“In which case,” Martinez said slowly, “our forces wouldn’t have to just fall back and stay put. They could go on the offensive.”
Her face was a mask of concentration. “Yes. They could bypass Zanshaa and strike into the areas the Naxids already control. Disrupt trade, hinder resupply…”
“…destroy reinforcements and anything building in the shipyards,” Martinez added.
“While the main Naxid force is stuck at Zanshaa trying to find a way to fightyour army and secure the High City,” Sula said.
“…And after suitable havoc is wreaked, and the new loyalist elements assemble…”
“We rendezvous, return to Zanshaa, and take back the capital!” Sula almost shouted out her triumph. And then her exhilaration faded.
“But who listens to the likes of us?” she asked. “So far as we know, the Fleet is nailed to Zanshaa to defend or die.”
Martinez was mentally adding up the people who might be useful. Lord Chen, he thought, perhaps Lord Pierre Ngeni, the recently promoted Do-faq. Perhaps he could get Shankaracharya to contact his patron Lord Pezzini on his behalf.
And if necessary he could go to Lord Saïd. The Lord Senior had been present when he’d been awarded the Golden Orb, and they’d exchanged a few words—Martinez knew that the head of the government was a busy man, but he suspected that the Golden Orb might be able to win a few moments of the old man’s time.
“We should put together a proposal,” Martinez said slowly. “A formal proposal, listing all the options.” He didn’t want to spring an idea prematurely, before it was developed…he’d made the mistake of doing that with the new tactics, only to encounter ridicule.
Sula’s look was skeptical. “But who will ever read it?”
“I’ll think about that later. Proposal first.”
They cleared away the breakfast dishes, made another pot of coffee, and ordered the surface of the Sevigny table to brighten with its cybernetic options.
They would have to pare their ideas down to a manageable few.
It didn’t pay to be too imaginative in these matters.
Martinez, with Sula’s farewell kiss still tingling on his lips, walked toward the Shelley Palace at midafternoon, his mind saturated with a kind of awe. It was as if his brain had just discharged all its energy like a capacitor, and would require several hours to recover. He and Sula had been so perfect together, their minds working as if in tandem, one filling in details while another leaped ahead to the next point, then the two combining to collaborate on a particularly knotty problem. He no longer had any recollection which idea had occurred to which of the collaborators, it was all one smooth, perfect, ecstatic interface.
It was like wonderful sex. And this was inaddition to the wonderful sex.
He bounded up the stairs of the Shelley Palace as he hummed to himselfOh, the woman on the strand, and as he entered the foyer he encountered his brother. Roland was preparing to go out and gave Martinez a saturnine look as he shrugged into his coat and twitched the lapels into place.
“I’ve been working on family business all day,” he said, “and here you come loitering into the house in the middle of the afternoon reeking of sexual satiation.”
“It’s the uniform,” Martinez said. “The uniform works wonders on the ladies.”
“It seems to have worked its magic on that Amanda person, sure enough,” Roland said. “But you might oblige me by considering a more permanent liaison, as your sister’s done.”
Martinez, smiling to himself, decided not to correct Roland’s misapprehension about the woman with whom he’d spent the night.