Imperium Restored Read online

  Dedication

  For KATHY HEDGES

  Dedication

  With thanks to Dr. Michael Wester

  for guiding me through the convex hull of a chaotic dynamical system

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Dedication

  Dramatis Personae

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Appendix: Drink Like a Peer

  About the Author

  Also by Walter Jon Williams

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Dramatis Personae

  Martinez Family and Dependents

  Marcus, Lord Martinez: Terran, patriarch of Clan Martinez, patron to Laredo, Chee, and Parkhurst.

  Lady Martinez: Terran, wife to Lord Martinez.

  Lord Roland Martinez: Terran, Lord Martinez’s eldest son and heir. Convocate.

  Girasole Martinez: Terran, Roland’s daughter.

  Fleet Commander Lord Gareth Martinez: Terran, second son of Lord Martinez, awarded the Golden Orb for conduct during the Naxid War.

  Lady Terza Chen: Terran, daughter and heir of Lord Chen, wife of Gareth Martinez.

  Gareth the Younger (“Chai-chai”): Terran, son of Gareth Martinez and Terza Chen.

  Yaling (“Mei-mei”): Terran, daughter of Gareth Martinez and Terza Chen.

  Lady Vipsania Martinez: Terran, daughter of Lord and Lady Martinez, married to Lord Convocate Oda Yoshitoshi and head of Imperial Broadcasting.

  Lady Walpurga Martinez: Terran, daughter of Lord and Lady Martinez, widow of PJ Ngeni.

  Lady Sempronia Martinez: Terran, daughter of Lord and Lady Martinez, estranged from her family. Married to Nikkul Shankaracharya.

  Lieutenant Lalita Banerjee: Terran female, signals officer on Los Angeles.

  Aitor Santana: Terran male, signals officer on Los Angeles.

  Weaponer First Class Agustin Mpanza: Terran male, orderly to Gareth Martinez.

  Lady Sula, Her Dependents and Associates

  Senior Captain Caroline, Lady Sula: Terran, head of Clan Sula, Fleet officer and former head of the Secret Army. Former leader of Action Team 491.

  Master Constable Gavin Macnamara: Terran, detailed as orderly to Lady Sula, former member of the Secret Army and Action Team 491.

  Master Engineer Shawna Spence: Terran, detailed as orderly to Lady Sula, former member of the Secret Army and Action Team 491.

  Ming Lin: Terran, veteran of the Secret Army, graduate in economics, and Sula’s economic adviser.

  Dr. Serdar Gunaydin: Terran male, physician assigned to Splendid.

  Ricci (male) and Viswan (female): Sula’s signals lieutenants.

  The Fleet

  Fleet Commander Lord Pa Do-faq: Lai-own male, commander of the Third Fleet at Felarus, Gareth Martinez’s former commander.

  Senior Fleet Commander Lady Michi Chen: Terran female, commanding Fourth Fleet at Harzapid. Sister of Lord Chen, aunt to Terza Chen, and Gareth Martinez’s commander.

  Sandra Yuen: Terran female, one of Michi Chen’s aides.

  Senior Squadron Commander Nguyen: Terran, commanding a squadron under Do-faq at Felarus.

  Captain Lord Jeremy Foote: Terran, commanding light cruiser Vigilant and Light Squadron Eight. Veteran of the Naxid War, the First and Second Battles of Magaria, and racing pilot for the Apogee Club.

  Lieutenant-Captain Lord Naaz Vijana: Terran, hero of the Yormak rebellion.

  Captain Lady Elissa Dalkeith: Terran, commanding cruiser Bombardment of Los Angeles.

  Lieutenant-Captain Ari Abacha: Terran, a friend of Gareth Martinez, and a sporting enthusiast.

  Squadron Commander Lord Harvey Conyngham: Terran male, commanding battleship Perfection of the Praxis.

  Lieutenant-Captain Lady Alana Haz: Terran, former premiere lieutenant on Sula’s frigate Confidence.

  Captain Lady Chandra Prasad: Terran, formerly of Martinez’s cruiser Illustrious.

  Lord Nishkad: Naxid male, senior squadron commander (retired), now businessman on Harzapid.

  Captain Hui: Terran female, captain of Staunch.

  Junior Squadron Leader Khalil: Terran male, commands Heavy Squadron Twenty in the Fourth Fleet.

  Fleet Commander Wei Jian: Terran female, commanding defectors from the Second Fleet.

  Captain Yoshida: Wei Jian’s tactical officer.

  Lieutenant-Captains Paivo and Ranssu Kangas: Terran males, twin sons of the late Fleet Commander Eino Kangas.

  Lieutenant-Captain Vonderheydte: Terran male, formerly of Martinez’s command Corona.

  Senior Captain Sizo Mazankosi: Terran female, captain of cruiser Splendid.

  Lieutenant-Captain Lepp: Terran male, captain of frigate Mentor.

  Lieutenant Benedicta Kelly: Terran female, champion yachtswoman with the Corona Club.

  Marivic Mangahas: Terran female, Martinez’s chef.

  Lady Xia Gao: Terran female, second officer on cruiser Defense.

  Senior Squadron Commander Rivven: Daimong male, defector to the Restoration.

  Senior Captain Lord Batur Khan-Niyaz: Terran male, commanding the Fleet dockyard and ring station on Terra.

  Squadron Leader An-dar: Lai-own male, defector to the Restoration.

  Squadron Commander Draymesh: Daimong male, commands Light Squadron Twenty-Two under Do-faq.

  Squadron Commander Farhang: Terran male, one of Wei Jian’s officers.

  Captain Devindar Suri: Terran male, civilian commanding Parkhurst.

  Lieutenant-Captain Bhatti: Terran male serving with the Constabulary.

  Electrician Second Class Raju: Terran female, on crew of Los Angeles.

  Warrant Officer Second Class Filomena Juskiene: Terran female, on crew of Los Angeles.

  Constable First Class Hadad: Terran male, heading police on Los Angeles.

  Master Electrician Park: Terran male, head of electrics department on Los Angeles.

  Rigger First Class Japutra Bliss: Terran female, on crew of Splendid.

  Master Engineer Todd Bliss: Terran male, semi-estranged husband of Japutra Bliss.

  Lord Ethgro Tribe: Daimong, lieutenant-captain on staff at the Commandery.

  Kavasia: Terran male, elderly lieutenant brought out of retirement.

  Exploration Service

  Squadron Commander (First Grade) Shushanik Severin (“Nikki”): Terran, captain of Expedition and puppeteer.

  Lieutenant Lord Chungsun Cleghorne: Terran, premiere lieutenant of Expedition.

  Lieutenant Cressida Toupal: Terran, second lieutenant of Expedition.

  Pilot First Class Liu: Terran, on crew of Expedition.

  Warrant Officer Falyaz: Terran, on crew off Expedition.

  Peers

  Maurice, Lord Chen: Terran. A convocate, member of the Fleet Control Board, and father-in-law of Gareth Martinez.

  Lord Saïd: Terran male, head of Clan Saïd, deposed Lord Senior of the Convocation.

  Lord Mehrang: Terran, patron to Esley, home planet of the Yormaks.

  Lady Koridun: Torminel, the young head of the Koridun clan.

  Lady Distchin: Torminel, absentee patron to Spannan.

  Lady Gruum: Daimong, former patron to the newly settled world Rol-mar, now Lady Senior of the Convocation.

  Lady Tu-hon: Lai-own, head of the Fleet Control Board in the Zanshaa
government.

  Lord Minno: Cree, a banker, heading the Treasury.

  Lord Oda Yoshitoshi: Terran, heir to Yoshitoshi clan and husband of Vipsania Martinez.

  Lord Durward Li: Terran, former client of the Sulas, now client of the Chens.

  Lady Amita: Terran, Lord Durward’s first wife.

  Lady Marietta Li: Terran, Lord Durward’s second wife, a runaway.

  Lord Ngeni: Terran, member of the Convocation, former patron to the Martinez clan.

  Lord Pierre Ngeni: Terran, Lord Ngeni’s son, member of the Convocation.

  Lady Cassilda Zykov: Terran, former wife of Roland Martinez and mother of Girasole.

  Lord Zykov: Terran, Lady Cassilda’s father.

  Lord Eldey: Torminel, a convocate and former governor of Zanshaa.

  Lord Hottash: Torminel male, a convocate.

  Lord Troom Lamong: Daimong, Minister of Right-Mindedness.

  Par-kai: Lai-own female, chair of the Protocol Committee in the Convocation.

  Cliquemen

  Naveen Patel: Terran male, a member of the Commission.

  Julien Bakshi: Terran male, a member of the Commission.

  Sagas: male Daimong, a member of the Commission.

  Linkboys

  Hector Braga (“Lamey”): Terran, sometime gangster from Spannan, lately a lobbyist.

  Gredel (“Earthgirl”): Terran, a street girl from Spannan.

  Others

  Chesko: Daimong, clothes designer in Petty Mount.

  Let-kwai: Torminel male, a doorman.

  Simone Beckwith: Terran female, owner of Stellar Properties on Zanshaa.

  Principal Theel: Daimong, principal of the Zanshaa College of Economics, a semiautonomous division of Zanshaa University.

  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 stra
w-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.