Free The Sundering by Walter Jon Williams Page B

stated the situation as simply and baldly as possible, then sent it to his secretary, Saavedra, to attach the appropriate headings and salutations. “Copies to the files, to Captain Kamarullah, and to Lord Commander Do-faq,” he instructed, and Saavedra gave a disapproving, purse-lipped nod. It wasn’t possible to tell if Saavedra was offended on Martinez’s behalf, or on Corona ’s, or whether he was offended generally with the world. Martinez suspected the latter.
    A few hours later came a signal from Do-faq that the heavy squadron was ceasing acceleration temporarily, as the captain of Judge Solomon had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage as a result of constant high accelerations. It was the sort of thing that could happen even to young recruits in the peak of physical condition, and Martinez was thankful that no one had yet stroked out aboard Corona. In wartime there was very little that could be done for the luckless captain: he’d be taken to sick bay and given drugs and treatment, but acceleration would have to be resumed before long and it was very likely that Judge Solomon ’s captain would die or suffer crippling disability.
    Thus it was that a day and a half later when Corona and the light squadron leaped through Wormhole 1 into the Hone-bar system, they were twenty minutes ahead of Do-faq’s eight ships. The message sent to the Fleet Control Board had not arrived on Zanshaa as yet, and Martinez was still exercising command.
    The Hone-bar system seemed normal. The system was peaceful, loyalists were in charge of the government, and there seemed no immediate enemy threat. Civilian traffic was light, and the only ship in the vicinity was the cargo vessel Clan Chen, outward bound through Wormhole 1 at 0.4 c .
    The Hone-bar system even had a warship, a heavy cruiser that was undergoing refit on the ring, but the refit wouldn’t be completed for at least another month, and until then the cruiser was just another detail.
    Martinez had no plans to go anywhere near Hone-bar itself. Instead he’d plotted a complex series of passes by Hone-bar’s primary and by three gas-giants, the effect of which would be to whip the squadron around the system and shoot it back out Hone-bar Wormhole 1 at top speed.
    The crew was at combat stations, as was standard for wormhole transit in times of unrest. Martinez’s acceleration cage creaked as the engines ignited, driving Corona on a long arc that would take it into the gravitational field of the first of the system’s gas giants. He fought the gravities that began to pile on his bones, and tried to think of something pleasant.
    Caroline Sula, he thought. Her pale, translucent complexion. The mischievous turn of her mouth. The brilliant emerald green of her eyes…
    “Engine flares!” The voice in his earphones came from Tracy, one of the two women at the sensor display. “Engine flares, lord captain! Six…no, nine! Ten engine flares, near Wormhole Two! Enemy ships, my lord!”
    Martinez fought to take another breath.
    Oh dear, he thought. Here’s trouble.

THREE
    P erfect porcelain glazes floated through Sula’s mind, the blue-green celadon of kinuta seiji, the gros bleu of Vincennes, the fine crackle of Ju yao. Fine porcelain was a passion with her, and she often drifted to sleep with illustrations of pots and vases and figurines projected in random order on the visual centers of her brain.
    The forms soothed her, as the touch of the real objects delighted her fingertips. And the ancient words used to describe porcelain— ko-ku-yao-lan, Muscheln, Faience, deutsche Blumen, Kuei Kung, rose Pompadour, Flora Danica, sgraffito, pâté tendre —evoked exotic places and ancient times, the courts and lime-shaded byways of old Earth.
    Her tongue silently formed the words, curling itself around each syllable in sensuous delight. Her silent chant evoked a timeless perfection that was removed from her current situation: unwashed, weary, fighting for every breath. The crew of Delhi