Logs (dread empire's fall) Read online

  Logs

  ( Dread Empire's fall )

  Walter Jon Williams

  Walter Jon Williams

  Logs

  Lord Gareth Martinez ate alone in his office, staring sourly at the plump buttocks and chubby faces of the naked winged children that so oddly ornamented his office walls. He was served by his cook, Perry, and he dined alone.

  It was normal for him to eat by himself. He was the squadron's tactical officer. A tactical officer was normally a lieutenant, and would mess in the wardroom, a kind of club for the lieutenants. Martinez, a full captain, couldn't take a meal in the wardroom without an invitation. Squadron Leader Chen had her own dining room, as did the flagship's Captain Gomberg. Unless someone invited him, or unless he invited others, his unique status on the ship ensured his solitude.

  He had left the relatively carefree life of a lieutenant behind, but he missed the companionship that life had brought him. He would have traded that companionship for the loneliness of command, but the fact remained that he wasn't in command, and he had to dine alone anyway.

  Perry cleared Martinez' plate and offered to pour more wine. Martinez placed his hand over the glass.

  "Thank you, Perry," he said. Perry took the glass and left in silence.

  Martinez called the tactical display onto the wall, just to make certain nothing new had appeared. Even though the naked children on the walls gazed at the displays as if in fascination, Martinez found there had been no change.

  The flagship Illustrious and six other warships-"Chenforce"-were on an extended raid into Naxid space. Their task was to destroy enemy commerce, not to engage Naxid squadrons, and every enemy vessel at large in the Termaine system had been destroyed by Chenforce missiles within the first few days after the wormhole jump into the system. Chenforce would pass by Termaine itself in three days' time, and had already ordered the commander of the planet's ring station to jettison any ships docked on the ring. Their destruction would provide a close-up demonstration of the raiders' power.

  The raid would last another two or three months. Martinez could look forward to many dinners alone in his office.

  He closed the display and gazed at his desk, at the images of his wife Terza that floated in the midnight surface. He thought of the child they had made together and he was suddenly possessed by a desperate exaltation, a hunger he could taste far more keenly than he had his meal. The idea of a child was a wonder to him, and he felt a sudden blade-sharp longing.

  Suddenly, desperately, he wanted to be with his family aboard the Ensenada, the Martinez family yacht that was taking them from abandoned Zanshaa to safety on Laredo. He wanted to be with Terza, to bask in her tranquil smile and watch the minute progress of the child growing within her. For a brief, intense moment he would have thrown away all ambition in exchange for a quiet life of familial bliss.

  There was a knock on the frame of his cabin door, and he looked up to see Lieutenant Chandra Prasad, the one person on Illustrious with whom he didn't want to be alone.

  "Yes?" he said.

  Chandra entered, closed the door behind her, and walked to his desk. She braced properly at the salute, shoulders flared back, chin high, throat bared-the posture imposed by the Shaa conquerors on all vanquished species, the better to allow their superiors to cut their throat if they felt so inclined.

  "Yes, lieutenant?" Martinez said.

  She relaxed and held out a thick envelope. "From Lord Captain Fletcher."

  The envelope was of a thick smooth paper of a faintly cranberry shade, no doubt custom-made for Captain Fletcher by the foremost paper-maker of Harzapid. The seal on the envelope had many quarterings, reflecting the captain's illustrious heritage.

  Martinez broke the seal and withdrew a card, which invited him to dine with the captain on the next day, to honor the birthday of Squadron Commander Chen. Exigencies of the service permitting, of course.

  He looked up at Chandra. She had auburn hair, a pointed chin, and a mischievous glint in her long eyes.

  "I'll come, of course," he said.

  "Shall I wait for your reply?" Chandra asked.

  Even though the captain's quarters were only a few paces away and the invitation was nothing a sane officer could possibly decline, custom of the service nevertheless required that Martinez reply to a written invitation with a written reply.

  "If you're not required elsewhere," he said.

  The mischievous eyes sparkled. "I am entirely at the captain's service," Chandra said.

  Which was all too true. Lieutenant Lady Chandra Prasad was Captain Fletcher's lover, a situation thorny with the potential for intrigue and service politics. That potential was all the greater for the fact that she and Martinez, at the time both obscure lieutenants of provincial origin, had been involved with each other some years earlier, a tempestuous relationship that featured mutual betrayals and a parting that had left Martinez feeling more relieved than rueful.

  Martinez didn't know if Captain Fletcher was aware of his past involvement with Chandra, and the lack of certainty made him uneasy. His unease was increased by his knowledge of Chandra's character, which was ambitious, restless, and explosive.

  Which was why he didn't want to be alone with her, certainly not for any length of time.

  He got a card and envelope from his desk, and in his best hand wrote a brief acceptance. As he sealed the card in its envelope he had a mental picture of Fletcher touching the card stock with his sensitive fingers and shaking his head at its inferior quality.

  Martinez offered the envelope to Chandra, who was looking down at Martinez' desktop with her head tilted, casting a critical glance at Terza's pictures.

  "It's unfair that your wife is beautiful as well as rich and well-connected," she said.

  "She's also talented, brave, and highly intelligent," Martinez said, and held the envelope clearly in Chandra's line of sight.

  Her full lips gave an amused twist. She took the envelope, then glanced with her long eyes at the naked, winged boy-children fluttering on the office walls. "Do you like the view from your desk?" she asked. "The captain tells me they're called putti, and they're an ancient artistic motif from Terra."

  "I wish they'd stayed there," Martinez said.

  "I imagine you'd prefer naked girls," Chandra said. "I seem to remember that you liked naked girls very well."

  Martinez looked up at her and saw the invitation in her eyes. Suddenly he was aware of the nearness of her, the scent of her perfume. He looked away.

  "Not in such quantity," he said.

  "Don't underestimate yourself. You juggled quite a number of us, back on Zarafan."

  He looked at her again. "It's not Zarafan any more."

  Now it was Chandra's turn to look away. Her eyes passed over the chubby children. "Still," she added, "it's a good deal more cheerful than what the captain has in his private quarters."

  Martinez told himself that he wasn't interested in what Chandra had seen in her visits to the captain's chambers. "Is that so?" he found himself saying.

  "Oh yes." She raised an eyebrow. "It's nothing like what he's got in the public areas."

  Pornography, then, Martinez concluded. The thought depressed him. "Thank you, lieutenant," he said. "I won't take up any more of your time."

  "Oh," Chandra said, "I don't have anything to do. I'm not on watch for hours yet."

  "I have work," Martinez said. Chandra gave a shrug, then braced to the salute.

  Martinez again called up the tactical display. Chandra left the room.

  Martinez glanced at the display and saw nothing new. In fact had no work, not until the squadcom found a task for him or something unexpected turned up on the tactical display.

  Ma
rtinez called up hyper-tourney on the desktop computer and tried to lose himself within a game of strategy and abstract spacial relationships.

  He played both sides, and lost.

  "I have always found tragedy to be the most human of the arts," said Senior Captain Lord Gomberg Fletcher. "Other species simply don't have a feeling for it."

  "There's Lakaj Trallin's The Messenger," said Fulvia Kazakov, the first lieutenant.

  "The choral parts are magnificent, as one might expect with the Daimong," the captain admitted, "but I find the psychology of Lord Ganmir and Lady Oppoda underdeveloped."

  Captain Fletcher's dinner stretched the length of the ship's long afternoon. Every plate, saucer, cup, goblet, and salt cellar on the long table was blazoned with the captain's crest, and the table itself sat in the midst of painted revelry. The walls were covered with murals of banquets and banqueters: ancient Terrans wearing sheets and eating on couches; humanoid creatures with horns and hairy, cloven-hoofed legs roistering with wine cups and bunches of grapes; a tall, commanding youth, crowned with leaves, surrounded by women carrying phallic staves. Statues stood in the corners, graceful seminude women bearing cups. A solid gold centerpiece crowned the table, armored warriors mysteriously standing guard over piles of brilliant metal fruits and nuts.

  The captain was a renowned patron of the arts, and as an offspring of the eminent, preposterously rich Gomberg and Fletcher clans, he had the money to indulge himself. He had ornamented Illustrious with a lavish hand, sparing no expense to create a masterpiece that would be the envy of the Fleet. The hull had been painted in a complex geometric pattern of brilliant white, pale green, and pink. The interior was filled with more geometric patterns broken by fantastic landscapes, trompe l'oeil, scenes of hunting and dancing, forests and vines, whimsical architecture and wind-tossed seascapes. Most of these works had been created in a graphics program, run off on long sheets, then mounted like wallpaper, but in the captain's own quarters the murals had been painted on, and were subsequently maintained, by a pudgy, graying, rather disheveled artist named Montemar Jukes, who Fletcher had brought aboard as a servant and promptly rated Rigger First Class.

  Jukes dined in the petty officers' lounge: no one present at the captain's dinner was anything less than an officer and a Peer. All glittered in their full dress uniforms, but that wasn't unusual, as the captain's wish was that all meals aboard Illustrious be formal, whether they were a special occasion or not.

  Lady Michi, the guest of honor, sat at the head of the table, with the rest below in order of precedence. She was a stocky woman with greying dark hair cut in straight bangs across her forehead. She was the aunt of Martinez' wife Michi, and as part of the marriage compact, arranged by the families, had agreed to take Martinez as her tactical officer, to replace a lieutenant who had died of injuries.

  Fletcher and Martinez sat beneath Lady Michi, and below Fletcher was the first lieutenant, Fulvia Kazakov, her hair elaborately braided and tied into an elaborate knot behind her head, then transfixed with a pair of gold-embroidered chopsticks of camphor wood.

  On Martinez' elbow was Chandra Prasad, her knee pressed familiarly to his. Below them were ranked the other four lieutenants, the ship's doctor, and the cadets

  "There's Go-tul's New Dynasty," Michi said. "A very moving tragedy, I've always thought."

  "I consider it flawed," said Captain Fletcher. He was a thin-faced man with ice-blue eyes that glittered from deep sockets and silvery hair set in unnaturally perfect waves. His manner combined the Fleet's assumption of unquestioned authority with the flawless ease of the high-caste Peer.

  He was a complete autocrat, but perfectly relaxed about it.

  "New Dynasty concerns a provincial Peer who travels to Zanshaa and comes within an ace of taking her place in elite society," Fletcher continued. "But she fails, and in the end has to return home. She ends the story in her proper place." He gave Lady Michi a questioning look. "How is that tragic? Genuine tragedy is the fall of someone born into the highest place and then falling from it."

  Chandra's hand, under the table, dropped onto Martinez' thigh and gave it a ferocious squeeze. Martinez tried not to jump.

  "Which is more tragic, lord captain," Chandra asked, her voice a little high. "A provincial who rises above her station and fails, or a provincial who rises and succeeds?"

  Fletcher gave her a sharp look, and then his expression regained its accustomed poise. "The latter, I think," he said.

  Chandra dug her claws once more into Martinez' thigh. He could sense the anger vibrating in her. The other officers stiffened, their eyes on the drama being played out between Chandra and the captain. They were all aware that she and Fletcher were lovers, and they all could see that the relationship might explode right at this moment, in front of them all.

  It was like watching an accident, Martinez thought. You couldn't stop it, but you couldn't turn away.

  "So provincials shouldn't try to rise in the world?" Chandra asked. "Provincials should stay on their home worlds and let the High City families deal with affairs? The same families that nearly lost the empire to the rebels?" She looked at Martinez. "Where would the Fleet be if Captain Martinez had followed that advice?"

  Though Martinez had to agree that the Fleet was improved by his presence, he preferred not to be used as an example. He knew perfectly well that his every word, uttered in his thick Laredo accent, condemned him as a provincial. He knew perfectly well that the Martinez clan were parvenus who hade elbowed their way into marriages with the highest strata of Zanshaa High City. He knew as well that despite his success the captain considered him a freak of nature, something on a par with a bearded lady or a talking dog.

  He knew, but he didn't particularly feel like rehashing it all at Michi Chen's birthday dinner, particularly since nothing he said or did would ever alter the captain's mind.

  "How much worse would our situation be without Captain Martinez, I'd like to know?" Chandra insisted.

  "Captain Martinez," said Fletcher easily, "isn't a tragic hero, so far as I know. We're discussing theater, not real life." He gave a graceful inclination of his head toward Martinez. "Were a figure like Captain Martinez to appear on stage, it would be a tale of high adventure, surely, not the fall of the great."

  Chandra gave Fletcher a smouldering glare. "The great have abandoned Zanshaa and are running like hell from the enemy right now," she said. "Do you think there'll ever be a tragedy about that?" Her lip curled. "Or will it be a farce?"

  "I think-" Michi began firmly, with the obvious intention of ending the discussion, but at that moment there was a respectful knock on the door. Martinez looked to see a detachment of the cruiser's senior petty officers clustered in the doorway.

  "We beg your pardon, my lady squadcom," said Master Weaponer Gulik. "We would like to make a presentation on the occasion of your birthday, if we may."

  "I would be honored, master weaponer," Michi said.

  Gulik-a small, dour, rat-faced man-squeezed into the room past one of the cup-bearing statues and approached Michi's seat. He was followed by Master Engineer Thuc, a massive, muscled, slab-sided Terran with the goatee and curling mustachios of the senior petty officer. Behind these came the senior machinist, electrician, signaler, and the other petty officers in charge of the ship's departments.

  "We wish to present you with this memento of your time aboard Illustrious, my lady," Gulik said.

  The memento was a scale model of the Illustrious, with the green, pink, and white of Fletcher's paint scheme minutely and exactly detailed. The model was mounted on a brass base built in the cruiser's workshops.

  Michi thanked the deputation, and led the officers in a toast to the department heads. The deputation left, and the dinner resumed, one course after another, each reflecting the genius of Fletcher's personal chef, each course marked by toasts and compliments.

  Martinez was aware of Chandra smouldering next to him, her leg jigging up and down with impatience.

  "You mig
ht have stood up for yourself," she told Martinez as he walked to his cabin after the feast.

  "No one was attacking me," Martinez said. "The worst anyone said was that I wasn't a tragic hero, and I hope to hell that's true."

  "Fletcher's said a lot of things about you," Chandra said.

  "Yes," Martinez said. He opened his cabin door, then turned to her. "But I'm not supposed to know that, am I? Because I'm not supposed to be on intimate terms with the captain's girlfriend, am I?"

  He closed the door on the mask of thwarted fury that had replaced Chandra's face, made his way to his desk, and sat down. From around his neck he removed the disk of the Golden Orb, the empire's highest decoration, and then opened the buttons on his dress tunic.

  After the four-hour formal meal he felt like a bird stuffed and trussed for roasting.

  The winged children on the walls looked at him hungrily.

  Chandra walked into Martinez' office in the middle of the afternoon watch and slid the door closed behind her. She looked at the game of hyper-tourney being played on Martinez' desk top and said, "Well, I'm free of the bastard at last."

  Martinez looked up at her, his mind still filled with the intricacies of velocities and spacial relationships. "Congratulations," he said.

  The color was high on Chandra's cheeks, and her eyes burned with fury. She paced back and forth in front of Martinez' desk like a tigress whose feeding was arriving half an hour late.

  "I finally asked him!" she proclaimed. "I asked him if he'd get me promoted-and he said he wouldn't!"

  "I'm sorry," Martinez said. The words came reluctantly. He didn't want this scene taking place in his presence, and he didn't want to know any of the details of her relationship with the captain.

  Doesn't she have any friends among the lieutenants? he found himself thinking. Doesn't she have anyone to talk to on this ship?

  "Captains can't promote lieutenants," he said.

  "This one can." Chandra said savagely. "You know how those High City officers stick together-all he'd have to do is trade a favor with one of his cousins, Fletcher promotes the cousin's cadet nephew in exchange for me getting my step."