“Nothing, my lord. Negative.”

Panic began to stroke Martinez’s nerves with feathery fingers. The Fleet had wisely made it impossible for a junior lieutenant such as himself to dischargeCorona’s awesome weaponry on his own initiative. The captain and each of the lieutenants carried keys with codes to unlock the frigate’s weapons, but no less than three of the four keys had to be turned at the same moment in order for the weapons to be fired.

Even the defensive weapons, the point-defense lasers, were useless without the three keys. And the odds were, the Naxid ships were going to be firing at him very soon.

“Have you checked everywhere else?” Martinez asked. “The drawers? Under the mattress?”

“Yes, my lord. Still negative. I can go to the captain’s office and repeat the procedure.”

“No, I’ve got to accelerate.”

“If you can give me two minutes, I can at least get the equipment there. When acceleration starts, I can jump in the captain’s rack. It won’t be as comfortable as a proper acceleration couch, but it’ll serve.”

For the couple hours of life that remains to us, Martinez thought.

“Very good,” he said. “You’ve got two minutes.” And broke transmission.

“We’ve cleared the ring,” Eruken reported.

“Pilot, zero our momentum.”

“Zero our momentum, my lord.”

“Two minutes to acceleration. Mark.”

“Mark two minutes to acceleration,” Mabumba said, but Diem raised a hand, like a boy at school asking permission to leave the classroom.

“My lord?” he said. “I’ve been looking at your plot and, ah…” An exaggerated grimace distorted his thin, pale face, as if he were anticipating being whacked on the head for his presumption. “It’s illegal,” he said. “You’re—We’re—flying far too close to the ring for safety.”

Martinez looked at him and tried to don his omnipotent face. “But am I actually going tohit anything?”

“Ah…” In confusion, Diem stared at the plot. “Not…not as such, no. No collisions. Just all sort of…of proximity problems.”

“Then we’ll stick to the plan, Diem.” He turned to the engineer’s station. “Mabumba, give the crew a one-minute warning.”

“Very good, my lord.” Again the warning wailed, and Mabumba’s voice boomed through the ship. “One minute to acceleration. One minute.”

In one minute, Martinez thought, I am either going to be a hero or the greatest criminal in the Fleet since Taggart of theVerity.

“Everyone take their meds.”

He reached for the med injector stowed in a holster below his chair arm, and shot into his carotid a drug that would keep his blood vessels supple and help prevent stroke during high gees. The others in Command did the same.

“Eruken, withdraw radar reflectors.”

“Radar reflectors withdrawn.” The composite, resinous hull ofCorona wasn’t a natural radar reflector, and in order to make navigation and traffic control easier, the frigate carried several radar reflectors. Martinez figured there was no point in making a target out of himself.

“Twenty seconds to ignition,” said Mabumba.

“Engines, fire on the navplot’s mark,” Martinez said.

“Firing on the navplot’s mark, my lord.”

“Ten-second warning, pilot.”

Again the warning screeched up and down the scale. Martinez could feel his blood thunder in answer.

“By the way, Navigator,” he shouted over the alarm, “you might as well kill that proximity alarmnow. ”

Then a giant boot kicked him in the spine as the engines fired, andCorona was on its way.

An officer may order the immediate death of a subordinate under which circumstances?

1. On recommendation of a duly appointed Court of Inquiry.

2. When the subordinate is found in arms against the lawful government.

3. When the officer possesses evidence that the subordinate is guilty of a capital crime.

4. Under any circumstances.

Sula touched her writing wand to the fourth and correct answer, then touched the icon that called for the next question. She knew that military law was so draconian, there was little room for error or laxity of interpretation.

She also knew that military law was a lot less draconian in practice than in theory. There were relatively few captains who went around offhandedly whacking the heads off their subordinates, because in theory every citizen was the client of a patron Peer whose duty it was to supervise their welfare. While from experience Sula knew that many Peers couldn’t be bothered with such duties, it nevertheless remained a possibility that if a Peer felt that one of his clients had been treated unjustly, he could make inquiries and cause trouble, and the result could be a suit in civil law that might drag on for decades. Captains who wanted to punish a subordinate severely would cover their backs by appointing a Court of Inquiry, and though they were not obliged to follow a court’s recommendations, they usually did if they wanted to avoid problems later on.

Sula sped through the next few questions secure in the knowledge that she was doing extremely well on the exams. Military law was her weakest subject barring interpretation of the Praxis, and so far the questions weren’t difficult.

A first definitely seemed within her grasp.

She tapped the butt end of her wand on the screen as she contemplated the next problem, which had to do with jurisdiction among the various military and paramilitary organizations on a ring station outside the military base proper, and then the door to the exam room banged open.

“Scuuuuum!”

Sula could thank years of conditioning for the fact that her mind continued to gnaw on the problem even as she leaped to her feet, chin high, throat bared.

“My lord?” The Daimong proctor seemed more flustered than the cadets. “Why are you—”

The intruder was Terran, and wore the uniform of a full captain. “We have an emergency situation,” he said. “The exams are canceled. All Fleet personnel are to report to their stations. Those who have no current assignment are to report to Ring Command, Personnel Section.”

“But my lord—” the Daimong protested.

“Now, scum!” The captain’s order was directed toward the cadets, not the exam proctor.

The cadets crowded for the exit. The problem of jurisdiction slowly faded from Sula’s mind, and she looked about her with growing astonishment.

The proctor appeared not to know what to do. She was making attempts to contact someone on her desk comm, but seemed to be having no success.

Emergency situation, Sula thought, and then ran to the changing room to get out of her robes and into her uniform. Despite the buzzing speculation of the other cadets, her mind was still trapped in the pattern of exam questions.

Examinations for lieutenant,she thought,have been canceled for the following reasons:

1. On the whim of a superior officer.

2. Because we say so.

3. Lieutenants’exams have never been canceled.

The correct answer, of course, was the third.

Lieutenants’exams have never been canceled.

Which meant that whatever was going on, it was big.

Coronaducked and darted and sped along the southern edge of Magaria’s ring, the slim form of the frigate obscured by the brilliance of its blazing tail of annihilated matter. Martinez felt himself pressed deeper and deeper into the acceleration couch, spreading into the supportive gel like a piece of putty pressed into a mold. The weight of the pistol was a fierce pain digging into his right hip.

He may have blacked out as acceleration approached ten gravities, butCorona didn’t stay at such speed for long, just enough to achieve escape velocity once it was time to dodge out from the ring station and onto a course for Magaria Wormhole 4.

He was using Magaria’s ring for cover, knowing that the Naxids would never dare fire at him for fear of hitting the ring. And when it was time to break cover and dash for the wormhole, he kept the rim directly betweenCorona and the Naxid squadrons.