The Sundering Read Free Page B

his bitter enemy, would prevent Kamarullah from being too smug in public.
    “My lords,” Martinez greeted.
    “Lord captain,” said Do-faq, flashing the peg teeth in his carnivore muzzle. He was young for his advanced rank, as demonstrated by the dark feathery hair on either side of his flat-topped head, hair that Lai-own lost on full maturity. His manner was businesslike without being brusque. Martinez had never actually met him in person, and had little feel for him as a personality, but Do-faq’s history with Kamarullah suggested that Martinez would disappoint the avian only at his peril.
    The faces of the remaining captains appeared one after another in the virtual display. Do-faq began by summarizing the events of the virtual maneuver in which they’d all participated, and then went on to a detailed critique of each ship’s performance. Corona was cited for tardy transmission of orders to the other ships in the light squadron, as well as ragged performance of those same orders.
    “Yes, my lord,” Martinez said. There was little point in offering excuses.
    He could see the quiet exultation in Kamarullah’s eyes as Do-faq admitted in a brisk tone that his ship had done well.
    Do-faq had ordered a maneuver almost every day, the ships flying in close proximity to one another and linked by communication lasers to provide a shared virtual environment. The maneuvers themselves were highly scripted, and taken from the bottomless archive of Fleet maneuvers that went back millennia. Do-faq called for maneuvers in which the heavy and light squadrons battled each other, or fought side-by-side against a computer-generated enemy; or participated as smaller elements in a larger fleet. No independent action was intended, or contemplated: each ship was judged on how well it followed its orders rather than how well it did against the “enemy.” The side the scenario intended to win was always victorious, and thus demonstrated the superiority of proper Fleet doctrine against tactics that were less proper, and less doctrinaire.
    Corona had consistently ranked low in the standings generated after each set of maneuvers, and the only reason it didn’t permanently occupy last place was that other ships were as ill-prepared as Corona. Maneuvers weren’t very common in the Fleet—they were a dreadful inconvenience, taxing the officers’ capabilities and taking the crew away from important duties such as polishing brass, waxing floors, and keeping the engine spaces sparkling clean in the event of an inspection. In a service that hadn’t fought a war in thirty-four hundred years, social virtues had come to seem at least as important as military ones, and there were crews in Do-faq’s command that had never participated even in a virtual maneuver before joining Faqforce.
    Martinez had to give Do-faq credit for realizing that the war had changed everything. He was intent on turning his command into a proper fighting force, and the daily maneuvers and debriefings were a part of it. Martinez commended this industry on the part of a superior even as he winced at his own ship’s performance.
    “My lords,” Do-faq said in conclusion, his golden eyes shifting from one virtual face to the next. “I am pleased to report that the Fleet Control Board has at last agreed to my repeated requests to send me the records of the Battle of Magaria. I am going to transmit them, coded, to each ship under my command. A captain’s key will be required to open the file. I admonish you to view these records in private, and to be careful with whom you share them.” His transparent nictating membranes closed solemnly over his eyes. “Tomorrow’s maneuvers will be conducted by your senior lieutenants from your Auxiliary Command centers. During that time we will confer again and see if we can discover what the battle teaches us.”
    Martinez felt suspense tingling in his nerves. The government had never officially admitted defeat at Magaria, but instead