Praxis, p.39
Praxis, page 39
The crisped remains of the dead, little husks of carbon curled like a fetus, were bagged and carried out to the cargo airlock. Sula felt oddly at home amid the dead. She looked at the charcoal on her palms. Take the water out, she thought, and thats all we are.
She found the realization comforting.
Life is brief, but the Praxis is eternal, the first lieutenant read from the burial service. Let us all take comfort and security in the wisdom that all that is important is known.
The dead were blown into space. Afterward, the premiere took Sula aside and told her that the squadron commander had promoted her to sublieutenant in order to fill one of Delhis vacancies.
Really, she thought, I am rewarded for the most extraordinary things.
A day later, lying exhausted in her rack, she overheard one of the other cadets talking about test scores. The cadet had done well and was pleased that shed soon be promoted and no longer had to be envious of Sula.
Sula looked at the woman and thought she remembered her.
Wait a minute, she said. Didnt you take the exams with me at Zanshaa? The ones that didnt signify?
The cadet looked at her in surprise. Didnt you get the announcement? The board decided the exams would count. They need officers too badly. Instead of the exam on the Praxis, theyre relying on testaments of loyalty from superiors.
Ah. Ha, Sula said.
She flung herself to the nearest computer display, called up the results, and found out she had achieved her first.
She thought of Caro Sula sliding into the Iola, the cold brown waters rising up about her, choking her nose and mouth, and she wondered if the equation was balanced now. Did an exemplary career and a couple thousand dead Naxids equal one dead, useless rich girl?
All important things are known. Somehow this didnt seem to be one of them.
Later that day she was supervising a party that was rereeving bundles of electric cable that had shorted out during the battle. Theyd had to pull up a whole corridor of Captain Footes parquet flooring to get at the utility space underneath, and then had to be very careful when balanced on the deck beams, to avoid contact with the pipe of superheated coolant that ran alongside the cable bundles. The coolant that carried the engines heat to the compressors and heat exchanger.
Midday came and the job wasnt completed. Sula sent her party to their dinner, then lowered herself onto one of the beams. The heat rose from the pipe and brought a prickle of sweat onto her face. She balanced there for a moment and looked at her right hand, at the whorls of Gredels traitorous, dangerous fingerprints.
Sweat trickled down her cheek. She took a deep breath, bent down, and pressed her right thumb to the pipe.
I tripped on the beams and fell, she rehearsed. It was an accident.
She kept her thumb on the pipe until she could smell the burning flesh, and only then did she permit herself to scream.
The censors werent used to adversity, and didnt know how to handle the news from Magaria. The initial report Martinez received said the battle was a glorious triumph in which Magaria had somehow not been captured, and that caused Zanshaa to mobilize to the utmost. He sent a message to the Fleet Control Board telling them that, as a squadron commander engaged in offensive action, he needed to know what really happened.
They told him. After he recovered from his shock, he did some calculations and worked out how long it would take the Naxids to arrive at Zanshaa. They would have to decelerate and dock with the Magaria ring to take on new armament and fuel, then accelerate again.
Three months. Three months, perhaps a little longer, before the Naxid fleet could begin the Battle of Zanshaa.
Corona and its Light Squadron 14 was more than halfway to Hone-bar. It would take too long to decelerate and return, so instead the squadron would swing around Hone-bars sun and major planets and slingshot its way back to the capital.
And arrive just ahead of the Naxids, apparently. Whose known ships outnumbered the entire loyalist fleet.
He sent a message urging Roland and his sisters to book passage on the next ship for Laredo, then concentrated on the management of his squadron. He had decreed a whole series of virtual maneuvers, the crews of each ship simultaneously wired into the same scenario. He matched them against each other, against hypothetical Naxid squadrons. He worked them very hard, hard enough that Kamarullah began complaining about him to the other captains. Perhaps the other captains could take comfort from the fact that Corona, with its new crew unused to the ship or their officers, usually failed to distinguish itself in these exercises, performing poorly enough to set Martinez to grinding his teeth. Nor was he the only Corona so affected: he overheard Ahmet complain to Knadjian about the damned newcomers bungling everything, getting in the way and making the ship look bad.
If only Dalkieth were a more driving, ambitious sort of lieutenant. If only Shankaracharya and Vonderheydte had more experience. If only he werent so torn between managing the ship and bossing the squadron.
Capping it all was Saavedras discovery that two tons of flour intended for the mess, which Martinez had signed for, was in fact used machine oil badly in need of recycling. Someone was making a nice profit, apparently, selling Fleet supplies, but that person wasnt Martinez.
Martinez briefly lost his mind. His roars of anger as he marched from his office to the food store and back sent even hardened crouchbacks dodging out of the way and looking for a place to hide until he stomped past.
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 sublieutenants 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. Im the only survivor from my ship. I got picked up by the Delhi, 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 hed received from the Fleet hadnt mentioned any names.
Sulas pointed tongue licked her lips for a second, and then she continued.
So heres what Ive learned: Im the second luckiest person in the universe. And do you know whos the luckiest? The intense green eyes glittered. You are, Sula said. You are, Gareth Martinez. You. Commander of Corona, recipient of the Golden Orb. You. Her lips tightened in a smile.
She hasnt even heard Im a squadron commander, it hasnt been announced. Martinez managed this thought through his wonderment.
When I realized this, I decided to make some resolutions, Sula said. So heres the first:no more whining. No more complaining about my superiors or my lack of patronage or the fact that I dont have much money compared with every other officer in the Fleet. No more whining about She hesitated. about my past. Why should I complain? Im the second luckiest person in the empire.
She leaned toward the camera. And you shouldnt complain either. Youre very entertaining when you do it, and I laugh, but you didnt have any reason before, and you damn well dont have any now. Youre 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 cant 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 hed say.
The comm unit bleeped at him. This is Martinez, he said, and looked into Kellys harassed face.
Its a complete shambles in the weapons bay, my lord. Chau has totally buggered up one of the robots during a reloading, and now hes under arrest for busting Tippel in the chops, and we still dont know what to do with the robot, its blocking everything and its 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 lifeboats 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 lifeboats 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 theyd 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 wouldnt 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.
* * *
A Note on the Calendar
« ^
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 Earths twenty-four-hour day, the hours and minutes are roughly equivalent.
Walter Jon Williams, Praxis
