Imperium Restored

Book 3: Novel of the Praxis

by Walter Jon Williams

Genres: Women's Fiction; Space Exploration; Space Marines

Synopsis

“Interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.” —George R.R. Martin

Blending fast-paced military science fiction and space opera, the third and final volume in a dynamic trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Praxis, set in the universe of his popular and critically acclaimed Dread Empire’s Fall series, comes a tale of blood, courage, adventure, and battle in which the fate of an empire rests in the hands of two lovers.

Shattered Victory

Star-crossed lovers Gareth Martinez and Caroline Sula have decisively beaten the forces of the corrupt Zanshaa government. It seems all there’s left to do is to travel to the capital of Zanshaa to reunite the empire under the banner of the Restoration. Before they can sweep up the pieces, though, it’s revealed that any advance would spring an enemy trap. To make things worse, their opponents have more resources than Martinez and Sula could have imagined, and a superior force is now aimed at the heart of the Restoration.

Shattered Love

But before Martinez and Sula can contend with the gathering enemy forces, a surprising act of violence on Sula’s part threatens their relationship—and damages their trust. Hurt and confused, Martinez sends Sula into exile while he tries to recover from his broken heart. Somehow, these two lovers must repair their relationship in order to defeat this new enemy threat... especially when more than love is at stake. 

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Release date: September 20, 2022

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 496

Sample

Chapter 1

The woman called Caroline Sula knelt on the floor, a scrub brush held in both hands as she methodically erased every last trace of blood. The fumes of the cleaning fluid stung her nostrils. She’d scrubbed with a standard household cleaner the previous night, but in the hours since she’d done some research and acquired a liquid that would destroy human DNA. When she was done, there would be no evidence that Lamey had ever been in her Celestial Court apartment.

She’d searched through Fleet stores and found a mirrored pier glass to replace the one into which she’d put two bullets, plus a new carpet that would substitute for that in which she and Gareth Martinez had wrapped Lamey’s body. The replacements now waited outside on a motorized cart.

Sula let go of the scrub brush and leaned back to view the floor. The floorboards were compressed dedger fiber sculpted to look like expensive wooden planks of pale gold, and their grain could easily hold trace evidence invisible to the naked eye. She leaned left and right to view the floor from different angles, to make sure she’d covered every bit of it with undiluted cleaning fluid.

As she examined the floor, she reached blindly behind her for the crystal wine goblet she knew was there. She found it, raised it to her lips, and drained it.

Aside from a few experiments as a teenager, Sula had always been a nondrinker. There had been alcoholics in her life when she was young and she wanted very much never to be like them, and the easiest way to do that was not to drink.

But now she was finishing her second bottle since the previous evening and finding that alcohol helped to soften the knowledge that with those two bullets she’d fired into her ex-lover, she’d wrecked her every happiness and every hope. Not because she’d killed Lamey, who after all had threatened and assaulted her, but because she’d done it practically in front of Gareth Martinez, who had walked into her apartment while the pistol was still hot in her hand and the blood pooled beneath Lamey’s body.

The fact that he had helped her roll the body in a carpet and hide it in a Fleet storage facility, and given her advice on disposing the evidence, didn’t change that he then left, presumably forever.

Despair’s talons, blunted slightly by alcohol, clawed at her heart. If only she had managed to assemble an explanation of what had happened . . . but her imagination had failed her, and the truth had seemed unconvincing even to Sula.

I did it for you.

While accurate, the claim didn’t sound credible.

Sula put the wine down, scrubbed a few places she’d missed, then rose with the brush in her hand and walked toward the dining room. She paused by the dining table, set for two, with the scattered remains of the supper she had planned to share with Martinez. She’d been picking at the food all night as she’d paced and ground her teeth and replayed the evening in her mind, bullet by bullet, drop by bloody drop. You think Terza won’t fight you? Lamey had snarled. And when Terza calls her husband to heel, what happens to Earthgirl’s dreams then?

The threat of Terza Chen had been enough to bring Sula’s pistol out of its holster.

And Earthgirl’s dreams had died anyway.

 

Sula replaced the carpet and the mirror, then took the old pier glass to a disposal center and left it there. To prevent anyone from wondering why there were two bullet-sized holes in the glass, Sula smashed the mirror with the butt of her gun and left crystal shards strewn across the container floor.

Then she went back to Celestial Court and took a long shower, after which Sula put on her undress uniform and only then noticed that her sleeve display was quietly alerting her to the fact that a message awaited her.

From the Office of Fleet Commander Martinez.

Well, here it was. She felt an invisible hand close on her throat, and the hand that triggered the display trembled.

The message was in text, and was sent by Lalita Banerjee, one of Martinez’s signals techs. Sula read the orders saying that she had been appointed commander of Division Nine of the Fourth Fleet.

“Ah. Hah,” she said.

Yesterday there hadn’t been a Division Nine. Martinez had wanted her off his ship so badly that he’d created a unit just for her, and done it overnight.

Further investigation showed that Division Nine wasn’t much. Splendid was an elderly heavy cruiser, though rebuilt in the Naxid War, and Mentor was a fine modern frigate. But the rest of the division was a bewildering and heterogeneous array of civilian vessels, from launches to transports to huge immigration ships. Apparently, Martinez was handing her every stray vessel in the Zarafan system that could be crewed by Terrans.

Once she reread her orders it all made sense. Sula was to take her division in the direction of Laredo, where she would somewhere encounter six light cruisers built by Lord Martinez in his own Laredo dockyard. The cruisers would be crewed by a skeleton force, for Laredo had no facilities for training Fleet personnel and no corps of instructors to do it.

Training would be Sula’s job. Since the Fourth Fleet’s arrival at Zarafan, thousands of enthusiastic Terran volunteers had offered their services as recruits. About 40 percent were retired veterans of the Fleet, or had at least served a hitch or two; but most had no experience whatever in the military, and had served mainly as a raucous, unruly annoyance while Martinez and his staff tried to round up enough instructors to teach the untrained volunteers their duties.

It would be Sula’s task to take the instructors and the recruits with her, and on the way to train them to crew the six light cruisers being sent out from Zanshaa.

The task was, she surmised, impossible—but then it hardly mattered, because the war had already been won at the Second Battle of Shulduc, and Gareth Martinez would, within days, lead the Fourth Fleet to the capital of Zanshaa and the imposition of peace. Sula and her Division Nine would arrive months later, after the celebrations were over and the important decisions had already been made.

But then she really didn’t care about that. Let Martinez have the glory. Her war was already lost.

Sula sat at the dining table and looked through her instructions again while she nibbled at a piece of stale bread left on the table overnight. Then she called Shawna Spence on her sleeve display.

“My lady?” Spence answered. She was a straw-haired, pug-nosed engineer a few years older than Sula, and she had been detailed as one of Sula’s orderlies since the Naxid War. Spence had played a vital role in the Zanshaa underground and had established a bomb factory that over time had rocked Zanshaa to its foundations.

“I’ve been appointed to command Division Nine,” Sula said. “I’ll need you and Macnamara to clean out my quarters on Los Angeles and take off all my personal supplies. Make sure to include the chef’s pantry.”

Spence mastered her surprise—she knew about Sula’s relationship with Martinez, and—like Sula, like the whole Fleet—had probably expected that Sula would remain aboard Bombardment of Los Angeles as Martinez’s tactical officer, and lover, for the rest of the war.

“Yes, my lady,” she said. “Where will we be taking your supplies? What ship?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Sula said. “I’ll be inspecting the ships later today and choose one for my flag. Take the supplies to your quarters, or to mine, until I can give you more information.”

“Yes, my lady.” Spence hesitated. “My lady, have you heard the news? About the Third Fleet?”

A cold warning finger touched Sula’s spine. “No,” she said. “What—”

“Do-faq has arrived in the Zanshaa system with the Third Fleet. Apparently, he found some way to kill Nguyen and all his men.”

Shock passed through Sula’s nerves like the pressure wave of an explosion. When the Accidental War started, Terran ships throughout the empire had abandoned their posts and fled to Harzapid, where Squadron Commander Michi Chen had managed to seize the entire Fourth Fleet and provide a haven for what became the Restoration.

The only Terran ships unable to escape to Harzapid were based at Felarus, home of the Third Fleet. Any route to Harzapid would pass through Zanshaa or Magaria, both of which remained in the hands of enemy forces large enough to annihilate the Terrans. Accordingly Senior Squadron Commander Nguyen had barricaded himself and his crews in their ships and announced that any vessel departing Felarus would be fired on. The result had been a stalemate, with Nguyen badly outnumbered but still in a position to obliterate most of the Third Fleet in vicious point-blank combat with antimatter weapons.

The understanding that Nguyen had paralyzed the Third Fleet had been so widely accepted that no one in the Restoration had thought to question it. But it now appeared that the Third Fleet had managed to break free of Nguyen’s blockade and fly to the rescue of the Zanshaa regime. Not counting the Terran ships, the Third Fleet had at least 150 warships, twice the number in Martinez’s command.

To make things worse, the Third Fleet was under Fleet Commander Do-faq, a Lai-own who had proved a successful, imaginative leader in the Naxid War, and the opposite of the rigid, hidebound commanders the Zanshaa regime had employed thus far. Do-faq would not be a pushover.

Suddenly, in Sula’s revised calculation, those six ships from Laredo began to assume a much greater importance.

She tried to focus her attention on the problem of how to accomplish Division Nine’s mission, but her sleepless night got in her way, and she decided the only way to deal with the issue was to visit her command in person.

Which meant a change of uniform, plus a car, a driver, and the Golden Orb.

 

Normally one of Sula’s staff would drive her where she needed to go, but they were busy collecting Sula’s belongings from Los Angeles, and it would be undignified for a division commander to drive herself, or to use a self-driving vehicle, so Sula was obliged to request a car and driver from the pool.

The driver, a lanky youth with deep brown skin and the traditional round flat cap of the chauffeur, braced to the salute as Sula marched from the sprawling complex that was the Residence of the Lord Commander of the Dockyard. That august personage would be Martinez, who might, Sula thought, be watching from his office window as Sula stepped into view. Not wishing to give Martinez or any other observer a hint of the turmoil that whirled through her mind, she kept her back straight and her chin high as she approached the ovoid automobile, told the driver to stand at ease, and took the back seat.

“Take me to the Splendid,” she said. The driver had to consult a guide to find where the ship was berthed, and then the car pulled away on its silent electric motors, made a U-turn, and left the Fleet dockyard altogether.

Zarafan had never held a large Fleet base like those of Zanshaa or Harzapid, and so half of the seventy-five warships of the Fourth Fleet were berthed away from the Fleet docks, in civilian areas. Splendid was moored nose-in to Zarafan’s antimatter-generation ring, amid banners urging workers to Prioritize Safety! and Work for Ultimate Victory! It was time for the midday meal, and the open spaces were full of dockyard workers, veteran Fleet crouchbacks, and half-disciplined new recruits heading for nearby canteens or gathering in groups to share food brought from home.

The personnel tube leading to Splendid was guarded by a pair of constables in their red belts and armbands, and these stared at Sula as she stepped from the car. With her pale gold hair, ivory skin, emerald eyes, and fearsome reputation, she was one of the most recognizable people in the empire, and her very appearance seemed to have tripped several circuits in the constables’ heads, so they were a bit tardy in bracing to the salute.

“At ease,” she told them as she walked into the docking tube.

The tube was lit by bright white spots every three or four paces along, and the air had a disinfectant tang. She reached for the safety rail as her feet seemed to stumble, and a lance of pain pierced her head. Sula paused, half-raised a hand to her forehead, and then the pain throbbed and faded slightly, like a dangerous character vanishing into an alley, one who might reappear at any instant.

Was this a hangover? she wondered. Up till now, her experience of hangovers consisted of feeling superior while other people suffered.

Walking cautiously, she stepped into a small wedge-shaped room in the nose of the ship and encountered another military constable and a cadet, who took one look at her and snapped to a trembling salute, chin lifted to bare her throat to any reprimand Sula might care to inflict with her curved ceremonial knife.

Sula had left her ceremonial throat-cutter back at Celestial Court, but she had armed herself with the empire’s highest decoration, the Golden Orb. This was a golden baton topped with a transparent sphere filled with golden liquids of varying densities and shades, colors that swirled inside the sphere like the clouds of a gas giant. Anyone serving in the Fleet or the civil service was obliged to salute the Orb on sight, which meant that in any large crowd there were always people leaping up, like falling dominoes in reverse, to freeze in an attitude of rigid respect until released, either by the holder of the Orb or by a merciful death.

It was best, she’d decided, to make a powerful first impression.

“Stand easy,” Sula said. “Where is Captain Mazankosi?”

The cadet’s first reply stammered to a halt before it quite started, and she cleared her throat and began again. “The captain is on the surface of the planet, my lady. Visiting friends.”

“And the premiere?”

“He’s at a meeting at the Office of the Fleet Surgeon, Lady Fleetcom.”

“Trying to get a proper doctor for the ship?”

“Yes, Lady Fleetcom. We have only a Pharmacist Second Class at present.”

Sula reckoned she ought to be able to find a doctor for Splendid, but she’d save that task for later.

“Who is the senior officer aboard?” she asked.

In the end she was given a tour of the ship by the third officer, a warrant officer/first that had been promoted to lieutenant due to the general shortage of trained, competent personnel. Sula knew that Splendid had fought well enough at First and Second Shulduc to have survived the deadliest battle in the history of the empire, and so she didn’t anticipate finding much wrong. Too, she hadn’t heard any complaints about Captain Mazankosi, or any of the other officers, but that didn’t mean there weren’t things to complain about.

It was immediately apparent that Splendid wasn’t a taut ship, or at any rate it wasn’t taut at present. After Second Shulduc, a triumphant conclusion to the war had been assumed by all and disciplinary standards had been somewhat relaxed. Before the battle the crouchbacks had been confined to their ships for months, undergoing constant drills and often enduring high accelerations for days at a time. The feeling was that the exhausted crews deserved a little rest, a little celebration.

Sula had herself relaxed and celebrated and fallen into bed with the man who had been her obsession for ten long years. And for the two months she’d been with Martinez she’d been happy, an emotion sufficiently unfamiliar to become the subject of suspicion.

She had been right to be suspicious.

The old ship, she found, had in the recent past received a respectful upgrade. Captain Mazankosi—or whoever commanded prior to Mazankosi—had been fond of light woods accented with red chesz-wood molding, which gave the ship a bright, varnished appearance that served as a welcome contrast to the dark panels and brass fixtures more common in the Fleet. Custom-woven carpets muffled the crew’s clomping steps. Sula had to hope it was all fireproofed as per regulations.

She found the flag officer’s quarters being used as storage for fresh fruits and vegetables, but Sula didn’t hold it against whoever had stacked it there.

Pain throbbed behind Sula’s right eye. “Have all this stuff cleared out,” she told the third lieutenant, “and make it suitable for me by the end of the day. I’ll also bring two orderlies, a chef, and two signals techs, so you’ll have to find lodging for them. For now, take me to Command. I have to send a message.”

Command was under the authority of another cadet, this one looking no more than sixteen. Watching everyone in the room struggling out of their acceleration cages in order to brace at the salute had its comic aspect, but Sula took pity on them before they got entirely to their feet and sent them back to their couches.

“Who’s on signals?” she asked.

“Here, Lady Fleetcom.”

Sula stepped to the shoulder of the warrant officer crewing the signals station. “Send to Captain Mazankosi: ‘Splendid now appointed flagship of newly formed Division Nine. If you don’t hurry to the ring, you may miss her departure. Signed, Sula, flag officer, Division Nine.’”

The warrant officer’s eyebrow lifted as he sent the message. Get used to it, Sula thought. She didn’t know if Mazankosi had acquired permission to visit her friends on the surface, but she knew damned well that the captain of a warship shouldn’t be so distant from her command, not during a war as perilous as this one.

She contacted Spence, Macnamara, and the others of her staff, and told them to report aboard Splendid by the end of the day and to bring all their gear as well as her own. She then sought out the pharmacist second class and got an analgesic for her headache, which she drank with a tall glass of water.

Her headache ebbed as her driver took her back to the Fleet dockyard for a visit to the frigate Mentor. She closed her eyes, saw Lamey lying dead in her Celestial Court apartment. The look of horror on Martinez’s face as a bouquet of white lu-doi blossoms fell from his hand. Felt the awkward weight of the body as it was rolled in the carpet.

Felt the gaping hole in her chest where her heart had been.

“We’ve arrived, my lady,” the driver said.

Lieutenant-Captain Lepp was aboard Mentor and guided her on a brief inspection tour, and it was immediately apparent that the frigate was happy under its captain. The ship and its crew had a buoyant air that spoke of confidence in themselves, their officers, and their ship. The ship had become the center of their world, their home, and they would not hesitate to fight for the ship and one another.

Mentor had been part of the Home Fleet before defecting to the Restoration under Senior Squadron Commander Kung, and had survived the deadly battle of Second Shulduc that had killed Kung and so many of his crews. The battle had been bitter seasoning, but the pulpies had come through it very well.

“I suspect we’ll be leaving station as soon as practicable,” Lepp said. He was a glossy young man with a crooked smile and artfully waved dark hair, and he carried himself with a relaxed sort of assurance designed to set everyone around him at their ease.

“Yes,” Sula said. “If Mentor needs anything prior to departure, make sure you send parties to get it.”

“We’ve had practice,” Lepp said. “When we were here with Squadcom Kung, we looted Zarafan’s ring of everything useful before we left.”

Sula looked at him with interest. “Division Nine has some very large ships with very large cargo holds,” she said. “I think you should consult with their officers to organize some plundering.”

“Those ships are full of young recruits with nothing to do.” Lepp smiled. “They’d probably enjoy a stretch of plundering.”

“I want every missile launcher on the ring carried onto the immigration ships,” Sula said. “And the missiles to go with them. Can I count on you to do that?”

Lepp offered a little bow. “I’ll do my absolute best, Lady Fleetcom. But first, may I offer you a drink, or something to eat?”

“Thank you, no,” she said. “I have other ships to visit.”

The first of the giant immigration ships, Pride of Parkhurst, was owned by the Martinez family and built to carry thousands of people at a time to the worlds of Chee and Parkhurst, opened since the Naxid War to settlement under Martinez’s sponsorship. Sula stood with the ship’s captain on a promenade cantilevered above a voluminous concourse and watched masses of recruits swarming over the open space. Some were organized into classes taught by experienced personnel, and some were working in simulators that had been brought onto the ship from Fleet stores, but most just wandered around the area, talking with their friends or sharing bottles. The concourse was noisy and disorganized, and hardly made a suitable teaching environment.

Among the recruits were a few Naxids, conspicuous for their centauroid bodies and distinctive, darting movement. The Naxids wore civilian dress even though they were here in the character of instructors, for they were experienced Fleet crew who had been eased out of the service when their fellow Naxids had rebelled under the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis. Like most of the Naxids in the empire, these had never been a part of the rebellion but had nevertheless been dismissed from the military and some of the security services as a precaution.

If they were loyal, Sula thought, they would now get a chance to prove it.

Using her sleeve display, she called former Senior Squadron Commander Nishkad, once a respected officer of the Fleet, now a successful businessman. It was Nishkad who had recruited the Naxids who now served as instructors on Parkhurst and other ships, and he had come to Zarafan to discuss higher levels of cooperation with the Restoration hierarchy.

Sula waited for Nishkad’s flat head with its graying, worn scales and red-and-black eyes to appear on her sleeve display.

“Greetings, Lord Squadcom,” she said.

“It is a pleasure to see you, Lady Fleetcom,” Nishkad said. “How may I serve you?”

“We need many more experienced personnel,” Sula said. “Can you provide them?”

 

Martinez had about a thousand orders to issue, and he was grateful for the tedious work, because the monotony dulled the anger, regret, self-reproach, and desolation that stormed through him. Retreat. Evacuation. The fleet of the Restoration, on the heels of its greatest victory at Shulduc, was now being forced to flee Zarafan before Do-faq charged into the system with a superior force. While he, who needed Sula in the fight against the enemy, had sent her away because he couldn’t abide the thought of ever seeing her again.

He worked from his thronelike chair in the Residence of the Lord Commander of the Dockyard, a palatial complex with hand-painted tiles, handsome, handmade furniture, and shining sculpture in the abstract Devis mode. Masses of flowers in tall glossy celadon vases sent their soft aroma whispering through the room. The previous occupant of the office, Lord Trie-var, had been captured by Martinez personally and was now a prisoner, and Martinez wondered who would occupy the office after he left. He thought about wrecking the place before leaving the ring, but decided that the Restoration’s energies were better directed elsewhere.

Aitor Santana, one of his communications specialists, looked up from his desk. “Your brother would like to speak with you.”

“Put him on my screen.”

Roland appeared in the depths of Martinez’s desk, his expression harassed. The two brothers strongly resembled each other, with olive skin, dark hair and eyes, and lantern jaws. They also shared the provincial Laredo accent that marked them as standing outside the empire’s ruling caste.

“We’ll be clearing station in a few hours,” Roland said. He was a politician, and had been involved in unsuccessful negotiations to end the war. The time for politicians was at an end, and he would flee to Harzapid as fast as his shuttle could carry him away.

“Have a safe journey,” Martinez said automatically.

“Have you seen Hector Braga?” Roland asked. “He’s not responding to my calls.”

Braga, the political fixer whom Sula called Lamey. Martinez experienced a moment’s tactile memory, dragging Braga’s body through the side door of the van, then the bang as Braga’s lolling head hit the frame.

Martinez shook off the memory and tried to feign an expression of compassion. “Roland,” he said. “Have you lost your bagman?”

“I offered him a ride back to Harzapid,” Roland said.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to go to Harzapid,” Martinez said. “Lord Mehrang wants him arrested for misappropriation of funds.”

Roland shrugged. “He can come or not. But if he doesn’t leave with me, can you arrange for him to get away from Zarafan somehow? I don’t want to hand him over to the Legion of Diligence—he knows too much, for one thing.”

“Do you really want me to send him on to Laredo? He’ll try to pitch his planetary development scheme to our father.”

“We can tell our father not to receive him. Father’s a busy man.”

All of this discussion, Martinez thought, about a man already dead.

“I’ll see what can be done,” Martinez said. “Anything else?”

“No,” said Roland. “Just that I have every confidence that once again you and Lady Sula will manage to give us a glorious victory.”

Martinez felt himself wince at Sula’s name. “Let’s hope,” he said.

He returned to his tasks, which involved accelerating repairs of the war-damaged ships, making certain that every ship’s magazines were filled with missiles, that each vessel was charged with antimatter, and that the larders were crammed with victuals. Most of the Fourth Fleet had already left the ring and were on their way to Harzapid, and Martinez needed to get the rest away before Do-faq decided to use them for target practice.

“Lord Fleetcom.” Aitor Santana again. “Squadron Commander Prasad for you.”

Chandra Prasad commanded one of the divisions that had already departed Zarafan’s ring, and she was already far enough away for there to be a delay of a few seconds between a transmission and the reception of its reply.

“Gareth,” she said. “I have an idea for creating some mischief.”

“Directed against the enemy, I hope.”

She grinned. “I hope so too.”

Martinez and Chandra Prasad had been lovers years ago, when they were both attending a Fleet communications class. The course of the relationship had been stormy, and each had cheated on the other, then blamed the other for the cheating. Chandra’s passage through life had remained turbulent, and Martinez was content to have her in another ship, on another trajectory.

For a moment Martinez experienced a realization that ex-lovers flying away from him might be a subtheme in his life.

Chandra passed a hand through her metallic red hair. “Do-faq is bringing his ships toward Zanshaa, correct?” she said. “We have pictures of them entering Zanshaa’s system through Wormhole Five with their deceleration torches pointed straight at the camera, correct? And presumably the camera is on Zanshaa’s ring?”

“That’s a reasonable conclusion,” Martinez said.

“So let’s accelerate a pack of missiles to relativistic speed, shoot them toward Zanshaa, then put them right on the track from Zanshaa out to Zanshaa Wormhole Five. They’ll be on a direct line for Do-faq’s force. With luck we can knock some of them out. It looks as if he hasn’t bothered to deploy decoys.”

Martinez considered this. They had missiles to spare, with the “Fleet Train” of cargo ships bringing a seemingly endless supply from Harzapid.

“It would be better if we could find a way to track Do-faq’s ships as the missiles were coming in,” he said.

“I’m sure the Zanshaa system is filled with radars and laser range-finders,” Chandra said. “And if I were on Zanshaa and a hundred fifty warships were heading my way—even friendly warships—I’d want to know where they were.”

Martinez nodded. “Plausible. Can you launch the attack with your division?”

She seemed pleased to be asked. “Certainly. How many missiles should we launch?”

“At least two hundred.”

Her grin was blinding. “Very good, Lord Fleetcom.” The orange end-stamp filled the screen.

Martinez turned to his work and felt a lance of pain along his spine. He had been bent over his desk for hours, and he’d had no food all day, only cup after cup of coffee. He rose and felt his vertebrae crackle as he straightened and drew his shoulders back. He turned to look out the grand windows of the Lord Commander’s office and viewed the courtyard below, the guards checking identification at the gate, the uniformed men and women moving in and out. In the last few hours they seemed to have acquired an air of urgency, moving briskly about their errands. News of Do-faq’s arrival in the Zanshaa system had spread quickly among them, and they walked with steely determination.

Martinez walked across the soft carpet of his office, twisting his upper body left and right to loosen his cramping muscles. His stomach rumbled. There were penalties when you skipped dinner in order to hide a corpse. He sent to the kitchens for a couple sandwiches, considered another pot of coffee, then decided he’d already had too much caffeine and asked for Citrine Fling.

His other signals tech, Lalita Banerjee, came through the gilded double doors. She was a plump, gray-haired, grandmotherly woman who had retired as a warrant officer/first with thirty years’ service, then rejoined the Fleet at the outbreak of the Accidental War. Martinez had promoted her to lieutenant, which had surprised her greatly but made her the senior officer of his signals section, which he preferred because Santana had scant experience.

“My lord?” Banerjee said. “There is still a roomful of petty officers waiting to see you.”

His own misery combined with the press of events had driven from Martinez’s mind the fact that he was interviewing for a new orderly. His longtime servant, Khalid Alikhan, had died at Second Shulduc, and since then Martinez had been making do by borrowing Sula’s orderly, Gavin Macnamara. Macnamara had barely tolerated him—he was convinced that Martinez would break Sula’s heart, and had failed to foresee that it would happen the other way around.

Even if Macnamara wouldn’t soon be departing with Sula, the situation was untenable, and Martinez needed a new servant. Alikhan had left a very substantial void, one that would be difficult to fill.

“Are any of them promising?” Martinez asked.

“A couple. And there’s another who says he knows you.”

“Yes?”

“A Master Rigger Zhou, my lord.”

The name struck no chords of memory. Zhou was a common enough name, though, and it was possible Martinez had met the rigger at some point and forgotten.

“I’ll start with Zhou, then,” he said. “Send him in.”

Recognition dawned the moment Zhou slouched into his office, a confiding smile on his face and the Corona medal gleaming on his chest. Zhou walked to Martinez’s desk and braced, and Martinez let him stand for several seconds before releasing him from attention.

“Master rigger, ...