Walter Jon Williams - Dread Empire's Fall 03 - Conventions of War

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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
CONVENTIONS OF WAR
DREAD EMPIRE’S FALL 03
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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
WALTER JON WILLIAMS
For Kathy Hedges
CONTENTS
ONE
The woman called Caroline Sula watched her commander die. She…
TWO
He could touch the silk of Sula’s pale, perfect skin…
THREE
“Laredo is too far,” said Fleet Commander Tork. His melodious…
FOUR
This is the official newsletter of the loyalist government-in-exile.
FIVE
“I have always found tragedy to be the most human…
SIX
The bomb was disassembled and brought up to the High…
SEVEN
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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
Chandra walked into Martinez’s office in the middle of the…
EIGHT
Three watches ticked by with nothing for Martinez to do…
NINE
The fourth edition of Resistance flew into the world on…
TEN
Martinez set the wall video to the tactical display, but…
ELEVEN
Martinez marched into Command with his helmet under his arm…
TWELVE
After breakfast Martinez put on his full dress uniform with…
THIRTEEN
Martinez was killed the next morning, during Chandra’s maneuver. He…
FOURTEEN
Resistance, with instructions on building a partisan cell network, was…
FIFTEEN
Sula had some morning deliveries on the High City and…
SIXTEEN
Macnamara failed to procure a large stash of food. Police…
SEVENTEEN
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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
A shimmering layer of afternoon heat stretched across the pavement…
EIGHTEEN
The meeting with Julien’s father occurred three days after the…
NINETEEN
In the morning, Sula made deliveries with Macnamara and Spence.
TWENTY
Time passed. Martinez dined with Husayn and Mersenne on successive…
TWENTY-ONE
Lord Chen’s comm unit began to make an urgent squeak.
TWENTY-TWO
Perhaps, Martinez thought, it was the boredom induced by the…
TWENTY-THREE
Once the Fleet Control Board and their staff had come…
TWENTY-FOUR
Anxiety over the Naxid raid had not improved Tork’s appearance.
TWENTY-FIVE
Once Sergius Bakshi allied himself with the secret government, everything…
TWENTY-SIX
Chenforce flashed through the wormhole to join the Righteous and…
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance grew to thirty…
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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
TWENTY-EIGHT
The technicians at the Ministry of Wisdom were mostly non-Naxids…
TWENTY-NINE
The Battle of Zanshaa was preceded by skirmishes on a…
THIRTY
Sula had thought fighting a war was hard. She discovered…
THIRTY-ONE
Lord Eldey kindly offered Sula the use of his private…
THIRTY-TWO
When Fleet Commander Jarlath advanced toward Magaria at the beginning…
THIRTY-THREE
“I’ve ordered all squadron commanders to give a complete report…
THIRTY-FOUR
A few hours after passing the wormhole, Lady Michi shifted…
THIRTY-FIVE
Countermissiles lashed out. Antimatter fury raged in the space between…
THIRTY-SIX
There were a few hours for rejoicing, just enough time…
ONE
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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
The woman called Caroline Sula watched her commander die. She had liked Lieutenant Captain the
Lord Octavius Hong, though she had distrusted his orders, and she was thankful that he didn’t stand the
torture for long. He had been wounded during capture, apparently, and tortured once already to make
him give up his communications protocols; and he was now too weak to last long under the knives.
When he passed out, the loop of executioner’s wire was passed around his neck and he died.
Hong’s execution, as well as all the others, were broadcast live on the channel reserved for
punishments, one long summer afternoon of blood and torment, entertainment suitable only for sadists
and clinicians.Which am I? Sula wondered. Because she needed to hear the announcer read the names of
the condemned, she couldn’t even turn off the sound to insulate herself against the moans, screams, and
the eerie discordant chimes of dying Daimong. Though there were moments when she had to turn away,
Sula steeled herself to watch as much as she could, and noted the names of every one who died.
So far as she could tell, the entire secret government died that afternoon, from Military Governor Pahn-
ko all the way down to his servants. When Sula had first heard of the secret government’s existence,
she’d pictured an underground bunker packed with communications gear or a lonely cave in the
mountains reached only by a hidden path; but it appeared that Pahn-ko had been captured in a country
house not far from Zanshaa City.
Thatwas the secret hideaway? Sula thought with disbelieving scorn. Pahn-ko might as well have painted
SECRET GOVERNMENT on the roof in large white letters.
The government’s military force died with its leadership. Junior Fleet Commander Lord Eshruq, the
head of the action groups that had volunteered to stay behind under occupation, took a long time to die.
Perhaps the knobby-limbed gray Daimong body was unnaturally hardy, or perhaps the torturers took
special care, since one of Eshruq’s action groups had killed some Naxids on the day they rode in triumph
into the captured city.
But most of the condemned went quickly. There were nearly two hundred loyalists to execute, and a
limited number of torturers. Most of the torments were perfunctory, followed by the garotte, a death
merciful compared to what the state could inflict when it had more time and leisure.
From the bedroom came the amped sounds of saccharine music, mixed with murmurs and moans. One
of Sula’s two teammates, Engineer First Class Shawna Spence, lay wounded on the bed watching a
romantic melodrama, with the sound turned up so she wouldn’t hear her comrades dying.
Sula didn’t blame her.
The apartment was close and hot and smelled of dust and gun oil, disinfectant and sadness. Sula felt the
walls pressing in, the dead weight of dead air. She couldn’t stand it any longer and opened a window.
Fresh air flooded in, and the scent of onions frying on a stone griddle just below her window, and the
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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
sounds of the street, the music and laughter and shouts of the close-packed neighborhood called
Riverside.
Sula took a few welcome breaths as she scanned the slow-moving crowds below. Her nerves hummed
as she saw a pair of uniforms, the gray jackets and white peaked caps of the Urban Patrol. Her lip curled,
an old instinct. Her upbringing, on faraway Spannan, had not been such as to instill in her the greatest
respect for law enforcement.
The police traveled in pairs in a place like Riverside. These two were Terran, but Sula didn’t know if
she could trust that fact to help her. They might not care who their orders came from, so long as their
own position remained intact. They’d subjected people to the arbitrary justice that was a feature of the
old regime, and the Naxids’ orders might not seem any different.
Nor were these two the sort to build confidence. As Sula watched from the window, one ear cocked for
the sound of the announcer on the video, she saw one of the cops collect some graft from the lottery
seller on the corner, and the other help himself to some spiced fry bread from a vendor.
Choke on it,she thought at him, and withdrew into the apartment before they could see her.
The executions went on. Sula’s stylus jotted names and numbers as she busied herself with calculation.
Lieutenant Captain Hong had led Action Group Blanche, which was composed of eleven action teams,
each of three Terrans, plus his own headquarters group of six, with his extra servants, runners, and a
communications tech. Action Group Blanche therefore had thirty-nine personnel. There were four other
action groups, one each for the Cree, Daimong, Torminel, and Lai-own species, and though Sula hadn’t
met any of their members, she assumed they were organized the same way as Action Group Blanche, so
that Eshruq’s whole command would have constituted 195 members, plus his own headquarters group.
Those identified as members of the action groups—“rebel anarchists and saboteurs,” as the Naxids
called them, as opposed to the mere “rebels” of Pahn-ko’s administration—amounted to only 175. Ten,
the announcers said, had been killed while resisting arrest, or in Hong’s luckless engagement on the
Axtattle Parkway.
Three more—Sula’s own Action Team 491—were supposed to have died in an explosion in their
apartment at Grandview, a booby trap that Sula had set off to catch the security forces she knew were
closing in. The story of their deaths was pure propaganda—unless by some miraculous coincidence the
Naxids actuallyhad found three burned Terran bodies in the wreckage—but Sula supposed she might
wring some advantage in being officially dead.
But even counting Action Team 491, that added up to only 180. This left at least some of the loyalists
unaccounted for, and as she added her columns of figures, Sula saw they were all Torminel.
Relief eased her taut-strung nerves. She and her team weren’t entirely alone: there were at least some
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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
other Fleet personnel out there, armed and presumably ready to make the Naxids pay for the capital.
Torminel mightlook like fat-bottomed plush toys come to life, but that was only until you saw their
fangs. They were a species that Sula would rather have on her side than not.
The problem was, she had no means of contacting them. There were backup communications protocols,
but these were the very procedures the Naxids had used to capture most of her comrades. Sula didn’t
dare use them, and she presumed the Torminel wouldn’t dare either.
Nor could she communicate with any of her superiors. They were all off-planet, and none of the action
teams were provided with appropriate transmitters. Hong had such a transmitter, but it had probably
been captured along with him.
The executions continued, messy and bloody now that the executioners were tired. Sula told the video
wall to turn off. She had learned all she could.
Despair fell on her like soft rain. Her mouth was dry. She dragged herself to the kitchen and poured a
glass of water, and saw the bottles of iarogüt piled casually on a shelf. Iarogüt was the cheapest drunk
available, a palatesearing rotgut with a sickening herbal scent, the least attractive form of alcohol Sula
knew, but still the sudden urge to drink struck her with the force of a hammer. One or two bottles, she
thought, and the whole nightmare afternoon would spin away into chemical oblivion…
Her heart throbbed in her chest. Her knees felt watery. She turned and walked back to the front room,
clutching her glass of water as if it were her savior. She took a sip, and then another.
Jangly music floated into the room through the open window. “It’syou, ” cried a voice from the
bedroom. “It’s never been anyone butyou! ”
Sula opened the bedroom door and looked at Spence, who was sprawled on her bed, her wounded leg
on one pillow, her straw-colored hair strewn over another. “It’s over,” Sula said. “You can turn down the
volume now.”
Her voice probably had more bite than she’d intended. Over the last few days she’d had her fill of
Spence’s romantic videos.
“Yes, my lady!” Spence said in proper military style, and from a position on the bed that approximated
attention commanded the wall to silence.
Sula was embarrassed by Spence’s overreaction. “Lucy,” Sula said. “Call me Lucy.” It was her cover
name. Then, “Do you need anything?”
“I’m all right, Lucy, thanks.” Spence shifted her sturdy hips on the bed.
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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
“Right,” Sula said. “Call if you want something.”
Sula closed the door and returned to the figures she’d scribbled on her pad. There was a tap on the door,
and then it opened to reveal Constable Second Class Gavin Macnamara, the third member of her action
team. Tall and curly-haired and ingenuous, he had been Team 491’s runner, traveling through the city on
his two-wheeler to collect and distribute messages. But that had been in the days when there were people
to send messagesto. Now he wandered Zanshaa’s Lower Town at random, collecting what information
he could.
He glanced at the video wall as he entered, his expression tentative. “Is it over?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How was it?”
She gave him a look. “A hundred and seventy-five reasons not to surrender.”
Macnamara nodded and sat on a chair.
“How are people taking it?” she asked.
Macnamara’s open, friendly face clouded over. “They’re trying to ignore it, I think. I think they’re
telling themselves that the condemned were all military, and that it doesn’t apply to them.”
“And the hostages?”
On arrival in the city the Naxids had grabbed over four hundred hostages from the streets, and
announced they would be killed if any more acts of resistance were mounted.
“People are still angry over the hostages,” Macnamara said. “But they’re starting to be scared too.”
“There are thirteen Torminel unaccounted for,” Sula said. “At least three action teams, plus their group
commander.”
Macnamara absorbed this news thoughtfully. “How do we find them?”
Sula could only shrug. “Hang around in Torminel neighborhoods till we hear something?”
It had been a facetious suggestion, but Macnamara took it seriously. “A good way to get arrested.
Torminel cops are going to wonder what we’re doing there.”
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Williams, Walter Jon - [DEF 03] - Conventions of War
Especially as the Torminel were a nocturnal species. Terrans would very much stand out in their
neighborhoods, both at night when the Torminel were active or in the day when they weren’t.
Sula gave it some thought. “Maybe it’s better if wedon’t contact them,” she said. “They’ve got all the
supplies they need to conduct a war right where they are. So do we. If we’re not in touch, we can’t give
each other away.”
Macnamara nodded. “So we’re going to keep on fighting then,” he said.
The option to quit had always been there. To stay where they were and do nothing, to wait for the war
to end one way or another. No one would blame them, not once their superiors had died.
“Oh yes.” Sula could feel the tension twitching in her jaw muscles. “We’re still at war. And I know just
where we’re going to start.”
“Yes?”
“With Lord Makish of the High Court,” Sula said. “The Naxid judge who sentenced our friends to
death.”
An expression of satisfaction settled onto Macnamara’s face. “Very well, my lady,” he said.
High Judge Makish lived in the Makish Palace in the High City, and for anyone who wasn’t a
mountaineer, there were only two ways onto Zanshaa’s granite acropolis: a funicular railway for
pedestrians, and a switchback road for vehicles. Since the seat of the entire government was in the High
City, in the midst of a hostile population, Sula supposed the Naxids would be very careful about who got
onto the acropolis and who didn’t.
After buying Spence supper from Riverside vendors, Macnamara and Sula went to the lower terminus
of the funicular railway at suppertime, when many of the High City’s servants and workers would be
returning to the Lower Town. The usual vendors and street performers had been cleared from the broad
apron in front of the terminus, and Sula saw Naxid guards on the roof of the Central Station across the
street, but otherwise civilian traffic seemed normal, and the line of buses and cabs on the street was
reassuring, though fewer than usual.
“See if you can talk to someone at the bus stop,” Sula told Macnamara. “I’ll go inside the terminal.”
“Are you sure?”
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