Table of Contents

- Disaster

- When the Lion Feeds

- Lion Country

- The Adventurer and the Toad

- Chimera

- We Fly

- The 100 MPG Carburetor and Other Self-Evident Truths

- New Moon Wolf

- The Teacher

- Not For Ourselves Alone

- Kiss From a Queen

- Ember of the Past

- Imperium Resource

- The Siege of Denver

Baen Books

Free Stories 2015

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Disaster © 2015 by Ryk E. Spoor

When the Lion Feeds © 2015 by John Lambshead

Lion Country © 2015 by Whit Williams

The Adventurer and the Toad © 2015 by Ryk E. Spoor

Chimera © 2015 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

We Fly © 2015 by K.B. Rylander

The 100 MPG Carburetor and Other Self-Evident Truths © 2015 by Robert Buettner

New Moon Wolf © 2015 by David B. Coe

The Teacher © 2015 by Robert Conroy and J.R. Dunn

Not For Ourselves Alone © 2015 by Charles E. Gannon

Kiss From a Queen © 2015 by Jeff Provine

Ember of the Past © 2015 by Mike Kupari

Imperium Resource © 2015 by Jody Lynn Nye

The Siege of Denver © 2015 by Brendan DuBois

A Baen Book Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

eISBN: 978-1-62579-380-5

Disaster

by Ryk E. Spoor

Sue Fisher tried to force herself to stay awake. Three more hours of this. If only something would happen!

But nothing ever happened in Orado Port Control. Once in a great while a starship would arrive — an event scheduled usually years in advance — or somewhat more frequently one of the inter—system shuttles or the few private vessels would want to dock. Mostly, though, it was just the automated manufacturing pods, bringing raw materials from the asteroid mining operations to be sent down the beanstalk to the ground, or collecting manufactured cargo or key materials from the ground and distributing them around the system.

If I actually had to do anything, that would make it less boring. But all of that was automated. The only reason she was there — the only reason anyone would be here on the Port Control Deck — was that regulations stated that a qualified human observer would be present at all times in case of emergency. AIs could handle virtually any situation a human could — usually better. It would take something extraordinary to make the AI even consider cutting a human into the loop, or for Sue to decide to override the machine herself.

And the last time there had been an emergency in Orado system had been —

ERRRRT! ERRRRT! ERRRRT! ERRRRT!

Sue snapped out of her half—daze, adrenalin washing through her in a cold tingle that drove subtle spikes into her gut as she focused, triggering a situational download to her retinals.

The first thought she had was a starship? There isn’t one due for at least six months, the Explorer’s Compass out of Vellamo.

But the second thought was spoken, as enhanced imagery from the distributed telescopic array materialized. “Oh my God.”

It was one of the Initiative line of colony vessels, immense transports three kilometers long and over a kilometer wide that carried colonists and cargo to and from the now dozens of colonial worlds that could be over a hundred lightyears from old Sol. Sue had seen Initiative class ships twice before, beautiful graceful spindles with a perfect, sparkling circle of a habitat ring standing out from the central body.

Except that this one was anything but perfect. Chunks were gone from the hab ring, cut in what seemed impossibly smooth arcs, as though some titanic spacegoing shark had taken a series of bites out of that circle of carbonan, titanium, and steel.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. What in the name of God happened to her? You can’t attack a ship in Trapdoor, and even if you could, how could you find a ship between the stars? But if it wasn’t an attack, what was it?

Even as she was taking in that horrific sight and trying to grasp what it meant, she saw that there was an incoming transmission.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Orado Port, this is Outward Initiative, out of Earth,” it began. But not in the calm, measured voice of a ship’s AI, which nearly always controlled communications, but the exhausted, worn, yet triumphant tones of a human being. “Request assistance immediately. We have suffered severe damage on multiple ship systems, we have multiple severely injured people on board who require medical assistance, and our remaining ship systems are unreliable. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Orado Port, this is Outward Initiative, out of Earth . . .”

She sent a query to the station, and once again found herself stunned. According to the schedules received eight months ago, Outward Initiative should still be en route to Tantalus! Her closest approach shouldn’t have brought her closer than ten light—years from Orado!

Focus! Her brain had finally caught up to the situation. She restrained the impulse to try to respond directly by radio; Outward Initiative had arrived about one point two billion kilometers outsystem from Orado Port, meaning that the Mayday itself had taken over an hour to get there. Unfortunately, that part of the Orado system currently had almost nothing there. Odds were that she really was the first person to hear that terrible message, and if she tried to respond by radio, it would take hours just to ascertain the ship’s condition and decide what kind of help was needed and could be sent.

But there was an alternative. “Orado Port,” she said aloud.

“Yes, Sue?” answered the Port’s AI instantly.

“Relay that alert to the Portmaster immediately, even if you have to wake her up from a dead sleep. Alert the Alabastra and Vilayet that we will probably need towing duty and they should prepare to intercept Outward Initiative and help bring her home, and they’ll need to have medical personnel aboard. This is a rescue operation; I don’t see a Nebula Drive deployment yet, and with that much damage they certainly won’t be able to do short—range Trapdoor hops, so I don’t think they can come in by themselves. Also, make sure that President Jami is briefed. Whatever happened here . . . I don’t think anyone’s ever seen it before.”

“No reasonably parallel situation is found in my databanks,” Orado Port said. “That is why you were immediately given full authority. What are your intentions?”

She was already pulling on her EVA suit, settling her helmet over short—cropped blonde hair. “I’m taking Raijin.”

ii.

Raijin lay before her, a perfect sphere of polished silver and glass cradled in a setting like an egg cup, every feature of airlock, impulse jets, Trapdoor coils, and all others meticulously set as flush with the surface of the sphere as possible. At her approach, the circular airlock door swung open, and she could feel her omni establishing full link connections, readying the little ship for launch. I wonder if —

“I’m here, I’m here!” came a somewhat breathless voice behind Sue.

The sight of the cheerful face under too—curly—to—restrain hair made Sue smile with relief. “So you were here. Thanks, Orado!”

“It was the obvious next step,” the station replied.

Sue extended her hand; the other took it. “Dr. Pearce, I’m glad you were able to make it. Orado’s briefed you?”

“Well, summarized, yes,” Dr. Carolyn Pearce said. “I can’t really believe it myself. Do we have any idea what happened to — “

“None. That’s why we’re heading out.” She noted the black case — a far more advanced version of the legendary “black bag” of traveling physicians — and nodded. “That’s all you need?”

“Without holding us up much, yes.” Dr. Pearce clambered into Raijin with practiced ease; she’d been one of the physicians of Orado Station for twelve years, much longer than Sue had been here. Sue could hear the harness snapping shut around the doctor even as Sue got into the pilot’s seat. “Raijin, prepare for launch immediately.”

The spherical perfection of Raijin was the key to its unique performance. It, and all the other “Lightning” rescue and courier vehicles were designed to allow the most carefully controlled Trapdoor jumps possible. A normal Trapdoor vessel had to take roughly thirty seconds for a minimum jump, and had what amounted to a startup and cooldown time that was short but variable. However, “variable” when dealing with something moving at roughly seventy times the speed of light meant that you might end up ten million kilometers to either side of your ostensible target with only a total startup/cooldown variation of one second.

But Raijin could boast a maximum variation in endpoint location of less than one hundred thousand kilometers, a hundred times better than standard commercial drives and ten times better than even tuned Trapdoor drives on more standard craft. Moreover, its minimum jump time had been reduced to about one second, meaning that it could manage jumps of about twenty million miles with good accuracy. The perfect sphere simplified the field interactions immensely, making it possible to approach the theoretical minimum responsive times of the Trapdoor Drive.

Combined with a built—in fusion reactor to drive a nuclear rocket, the Trapdoor Drive, or an extremely large—volume Nebula Drive, this gave Raijin and its siblings the ability to carry messages from point to point, or more importantly rescue people at speeds far in excess of any conventional drive ship, if the job could be done by no more than three people.

“Orado Station, this is Raijin. We are prepared for launch. Check our flight path.”

“Flight path is clear. Launching now.”

The bottom literally dropped out of the “egg—cup” in which Raijin sat, and the spherical ship shot outward. The launch bay was located on the edge of the rotating ring of Orado Station, and thus the centripetal force which had kept her sitting solidly on that surface was gone, releasing Raijin to follow the commands of Newton for a few minutes before she would end up sneering at him and Einstein both.

“Wheee!” she heard from Dr. Pearce’s seat, and despite the gravity of the situation Sue chuckled. It was a rather fun way to launch.

“Glad you like it, Doc. Some of my passengers have been less than thrilled with that process.”

“I’ll bet they hate roller—coasters, too. How long to Outward Initiative?”

“Depends on how good I am today.”

According to the data, Outward Initiative had been at one billion, two hundred and fifty—three million, five hundred thousand kilometers from Orado Station at time . . . mark. Fortunately, the huge ship hadn’t entered “hot” — going at high relative speed — or it would have taken a long time to adjust her speed to match. The relative speed was about five kilometers a second, well within Raijin’s twenty kps delta—vee from its nuclear jet. That also wasn’t fast enough to matter much at Trapdoor speeds, so she discounted it for the most part.

That’s just under a one—minute jump.

The key to real performance here, however, depended on the pilot. Even the best AIs yet made could not match human gut instinct on the final instantaneous adjustments to the field just before jump. Some liked to claim this was proof of some ineffable human superiority, a sense beyond the material; Sue thought it simply showed that current AIs didn’t quite know how to integrate everything from the tactile feedback on the controls, the sound and vibrations transmitted through the ship, the miniscule variations in the system readouts, and simultaneously apply it to the external conditions that were fed to a modern pilot through their retinals and haptic simulation links — that could make the pilot very nearly be a part of the ship.

“Well, here goes. Orado Station, Raijin preparing for in—system Trapdoor jump, estimated time fifty—nine point seven seconds.”

“Confirmed, Raijin. Jump when ready.”

She grasped the controls, both physically and mentally, concentrated on the feel of the ship. Nice balance. Resonance sounds almost perfect. Very slight beat coming from coil seven… about five point seven hertz.

She nudged the jump parameters just a hair… and activated.

A faint green sparkle shimmered and Orado Station — and the stars themselves — disappeared. Raijin was now hurtling through a lightless void, the Trapdoor Space. The only light that existed there was from Raijin itself, but its perfectly spherical exterior had no angle or vantage to project light upon itself, nor to provide a view, so the screens were darker than the waters of distant Europa’s oceans, a perfect blackness that made ebony and pitch seem bright.

“You said fifty—nine seconds?”

“Turned out to be fifty—nine point six nine seven seconds by the jump command. The exact full time of transition varies slightly.”

“You changed it?”

“A bit. Felt right. If my instincts are still good; been a long time since I had to try this.” She felt the usual tension rising. “We’re about to find out. Here it comes. Jump completion in three, two, one –”

The stars sprang into existence again — and in the first screen, to the lower left, something that was not a star, something large enough to show signs of structure.

Sue let out a completely unprofessional whoop of triumph. I can see it without magnification! We’ve got to be less than six thousand kilometers away!

“Outward Initiative,” she said into the radio, “This is Lieutenant Susan Fisher, pilot of Raijin, S&R out of Orado Station.”

“From Orado?” came the same voice that had given the Mayday. “Thank God! Raijin, do you have any medical personnel on board?”

“Outward Initiative, this is Dr. Carolyn Pearce,” her passenger said. “I am a fully qualified physician, frontier, traditional, and nanomedical.”

The relief in the voice was palpable. “Wonderful. This is Masashi Toriyama, acting captain of Outward Initiative.”

“We’re on our way, Captain,” she said, checking vectors and activating Raijin’s nuclear rocket. Acceleration shoved them both back in their seats. “We’ll be matching with you within an hour.

“Now that we’re close enough to talk — can you tell us what happened?”

“Something I’ve never seen before — nor heard of. We were cruising along on Trapdoor just as smooth as you like, and suddenly the field stability alert starts screaming. We followed the book, authorized an emergency stop, but the field oscillations were so out of control that it took us thirty seconds just to damp them enough to do the shutdown.”

“Jesus,” Sue heard herself say. “Oscillations? You’re saying that the Trapdoor Field is what did that to you?”

“Oscillation depths were increasing so fast that if we’d been a second or two slower in reacting it might have bit straight through into the main hull,” Toriyama said. “As it was… well, you saw. Took five chunks out of the hab ring, compromised the integrity of the ring itself — part of what took us so long to get here was that we had to repair the ring well enough to keep it rotating.”

The hab ring — as its name implied — was where most people lived; it rotated, providing effective gravity for the crew and passengers. But that meant… “How many people…”

“. . . did we lose?” Captain Toriyama’s voice was grim. “Fewer than we might have, I suppose. We happened to be in an emergency drill at the time, so everyone except a skeleton crew was in the lifeboats already. No one was killed in the living quarters, but we lost six lifeboats out of the hundred twenty on board. Wasn’t the worst of it, though, the bad luck was just starting. We lost all three of our ships’ doctors — two were on the lifeboats and the third . . . well, she was too close because she’d gotten a call that someone was sick on one of the boats and the captain gave her permission to go tend to them.”

“That was a violation of —”

“Lieutenant, I’m fully aware of that. So was he. But routine . . . routine kills, whenever routine stops. You know that. We’d had twenty-odd of these drills and everything had gone just fine.”

Sue shook her head, but she couldn’t argue with Toriyama, either. There wasn’t an organization in the world that didn’t start to relax when nothing broke the routine and everything kept working fine. It was the price you paid for working with humans. “Never mind, Captain. Go on.” Raijin vibrated to minor thrusts, as the automatic systems adjusted their vector to match more closely with Outward Initiative.

“Well, like I said, we lost six lifeboats and all three doctors. Total of sixty-two people, mostly colonists.” Sue’s omni informed her that this was out of a complement — passengers and crew — of one thousand, one hundred, and fifty-seven. “That was bad enough, especially since it included Chief Master Sergeant Campbell, our head of security and navigation and piloting backup. But it wasn’t long after we got shut down and started trying to fix the vital damage that people started getting sick.”

“Sick?” Sue repeated. A disease at the same time?

“Good God,” Dr. Pearce said. “Trapdoor intersection radiation pulse, yes?”

“I’m impressed,” Captain Toriyama said. “Took us a while to figure that one out.”

“I was present at the cleanup for an accidental ground activation of a drive.”

The thought of even a small Trapdoor drive being activated at ground level made Sue shudder. “So where the field was cutting off those chunks, it was also causing big radiation bursts.”

“Exactly.”

“Were the lifeboats taken intact or . . . not?” asked Dr. Pearce.

“Thinking of survivors? Let me check.” There was a pause. “It looks like LS-88, LS-5, and LS-42 disappeared in a single piece. The others were . . . cut apart, one way or another. I don’t know if they actually stayed intact when they . . . fell across the field.”

“You have recordings?”

“Some, but they’ll need some cleanup, at the least. The Trapdoor radiation pulses damaged things severely. The lifeboats themselves are heavily shielded, but the hab ring is light and relies on ship systems to keep them protected from radiation when we’re traveling in interplanetary mode; of course, there’s normally no radiation in Trapdoor space except what we bring with us.”

“How many people were affected by the radiation sickness?”

“Two hundred thirteen — most of the skeleton crew, unfortunately, plus a lot of passengers whose shuttles were near the intersections; despite the shuttle shielding a lot of people got hit hard. We lost fourteen — one of them the Captain, which is why I’m acting captain now. About half of the others recovered fairly well, but we’ve had to improvise nanostasis for the rest; I’m hoping Dr. Pearce can help out there.”

“I am sure I can. If you’ve kept them alive this long, they’ll make it. Anyone else?”

“Unfortunately, yes. We had to repair and re-balance the hab ring so we could rotate and give most people some gravity again, and then we had to replace Trapdoor coils and balance the field . . . well, there were injuries, both among the remaining crew and the passengers.” His voice dropped to a confidential tone. “We’ve also got several Bemmies on board, and that hasn’t helped matters.”

Sue let out a long breath. The genetically engineered amphibious version of the aliens discovered on Europa were viewed by many with a combination of suspicion, concern, and sympathy. There had been several very well publicized breakdowns of the early generations, and many people didn’t like being around them — with “didn’t like” ranging from mild discomfort to raging anti-alien sentiment or plain old-fashioned phobia, since — by human standards — they could be pretty scary, like a combination of a vampire squid and a slug weighing up to three hundred kilograms.

Add that kind of xenophobia to the panic on board a vessel limping into port after an inexplicable accident . . . “Have there been any… incidents?”

“None yet, but I’m real glad we’re here now. The Bemmies’ pod didn’t get away unhurt, though; one of their younger children was on board one of the lost lifeboats.”

“What? Why weren’t they all on the same boat?”

“Harratrer followed procedure; he went to the nearest lifeboat, as the emergency rules dictate, rather than making his way four lifeboats farther down.”

So in addition to all this, there’s a bereaved family of Bemmies. Never dealt with that before.

Outward Initiative now loomed up hugely, the great ring arching above and below as they approached almost perfectly aligned with the immense ship’s main spindle-shaped body. “All right, Captain, I’m going to have to pause and pay attention as we dock. We’ve got towing vessels en route, and Dr. Pearce will tend to your injured. Once I’m on board, my job — our job — will be to figure out what happened.” She grasped the controls and looked somberly at the shredded remains of the hab ring. Because if this can happen once… it could happen again.

iii.

“Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Fisher, Dr. Pearce,” Captain Toriyama said. Sue was slightly surprised to see that while many of his features were as Japanese as his name, his skin was the color of coffee without much cream at all; he was also tall and not bad looking at all, and would probably be even better looking without the circles under his eyes and the worry lines engraved on his face. Next to him was a woman who looked to be about forty-five, some gray in her brown hair, tanned, narrow-faced with keen brown eyes.

“Thank you, Captain.” Despite all the efforts of modern nanofilters, she could still catch a faint whiff of burned electronics. The air must have been foul for a while after the disaster. “Two tow vehicles, Alabastra and Vilayet, will be arriving here in a few days. Have you prepared a room for us to work in?”

“The day briefing room is where we did most of our decisionmaking after the disaster. We could use that, as long as you don’t mind microgravity; it’s in the center of the main hull.” He looked to Dr. Pearce and gestured to the woman next to him. “Doctor, this is Janice White; she’s an RN and the closest thing to a doctor left on the ship.”

Pearce and White shook hands. “You have a medical facility intact?”

“Mostly intact. You’ll see when we get down there, Doctor. Follow me.”

As the other two departed to address the pressing medical issues, Sue recalled herself to her own mission. “Microgravity isn’t a problem for me,” she said. “That will do just fine. Lead on.”

As Toriyama led her down a corridor and then to one of the spoke elevators which connected the hab ring with the main body, she noticed something strange. “My omni’s not connecting with your shipboard network, Captain, just some local comm nets.”

“That’s because the shipboard network is still mostly down, Lieutenant. All the major AIs were taken out by the radiation pulses, and we really haven’t had the luxury or, really, resources to devote to trying to fix or replace them. Assuming that the replacements work. No, don’t ask me how the radiation got to the central core; we’ve got a lot of guesses but no proof.”

The elevator doors slid open; Sue jumped slightly at the sight of a horse-sized creature with three hook-clawed, multibranched arms or tentacles.

“My apologies,” the creature said in a deep, slightly buzzing voice. “I should not have been waiting so near the doors.”

“No, it’s not your fault at all. I knew there were Europans on board. I’m Lieutanant Fisher.”

“My formal name is Kryndomerr, but please call me Numbers.”

Toriyama was noticeably relieved by her reaction. “You’ve worked with Bemmies before?”

“During my undergrad work on Luna, yes. Call me Sue, then, Numbers. I would guess you’re a mathematician?”

“That is my profession. Analysis of datasets for anomalies is one of my specialities, which would seem a useful talent for this investigation, yes?”

“Yes indeed. Glad to have you aboard, Numbers.” Now that they were in the central body, there was virtually no sensation of gravity — the radius of the main hull was less than a tenth of that of the hab ring — so she followed the big Bemmie by extremely long, flat jumps. “You’ve assembled all the data on the event?”

“As much as we could without the automatics, and the damage that we have sustained,” Numbers said. “That is not quite as complete as we would like.”

They reached what was obviously the briefing room, with microgravity chairs, presentation projectors, and other accoutrements of such locations, including a zero-g coffeepot. Sue turned to Captain Toriyama. “Captain, prior to the disaster, what was your position on Outward Initiative?”

“I was second in command with a primary responsibility for the engineering department.”

About what I thought. “Then, Captain, I must request that you leave and not involve yourself in the investigation further. A board of inquiry will have to be convened into this event, and you will be directly involved. If I find evidence of negligence or other irregularities, this may reflect poorly upon you; at the same time, if I find no such evidence, that work must be clearly done separate from your involvement.”

Some of the worry lines deepened; he had clearly understood from the beginning that he might be held responsible for the disaster. “Yes, Lieutenant. That’s why Numbers here is available. He was a colonial, not one of the crew. I have had a list of other colonials you may be able to consult, for information separate from that of the crew.”

Well done. “Good work, Captain. I appreciate your cooperation.”

Captain Toriyama saluted and then turned, departing the briefing room without a backward glance.

She looked over at Numbers, who was arranging a number of articles in careful order. “Colonists? I didn’t know that they were yet allowing you —”

“We are the first,” Numbers said; the pride in his voice was unmistakable. “Our pod petitioned extensively for the opportunity, from the oldest to the youngest. It was the proudest day of our lives when we were notified that we had been selected for this opportunity.” The vibrant shifting patterns on Numbers’ skin — generated by bioluminescent chromatophores similar to those seen on Earthly squid — suddenly grew muted and dim. “Little Harratrer was especially happy to go, because it meant he could stay with his best friend.”

“Harratrer is the one of your people who was lost?”

The Bemmie expanded and then contracted, causing his body to bob up and down — the closest equivalent to a nod that they could manage. “He was called ‘Whips’ and was my second son. Studying to be an engineer, and was near the top in his class.”

And his best friend was obviously a human, since this is the only Bemmie family aboard. Interesting. “My sympathies, Numbers.”

“Appreciated, Sue.” He completed his placing of objects (with appropriate adhesion clips to keep them from moving) on the table. “Might I ask about your profession? You piloted Raijin to us with frightening precision, but you are now an investigator?”

Sue laughed. “My official title is Emergency Watch Officer, which basically means ‘person that you hope doesn’t have much to do’. My job’s to respond to emergencies the automatics don’t know how to handle. Piloting’s my avocation, investigation and handling of emergency procedure’s my responsibility, and engineering analysis is my main professional training.”

“I see. You have the skillset to get to an emergency quickly, the training and authority to run an investigation, and the professional knowledge to understand how the emergency happened.”

“Basically. There aren’t many of us in any given solar system, which is good . . . because it means that there aren’t enough emergencies like this to require more. Modern safety systems are extremely good.”

She floated to the table. “Records of the event from all systems . . . testimony from witnesses . . . video recordings . . . prior maintenance data . . . you’ve done a good job pulling this together.”

A ripple of light and color showed Numbers appreciated the compliment. “I simply thought about what I would need to fully understand the event.”

“Well, you seem to have thought it out well.” She strapped into one of the seats; floating at random was a pain. “Let’s get started, then.”

iv.

Sue shoved her hair back and forced it back under the restraining clip. “Well, now I’m even more mystified than I was before.” She drifted over to the coffee dispenser, filled the transparent carbonan cup again.

Numbers floated nearby, chaotic patterns flickering over his hide. “Yes.”

“I’d expected to find a flaw somewhere — neglected maintenance, a mistuned coil, a one-in-a-million abrupt coil failure, something. The symptoms sure looked to me like some kind of beat between coils that turned out to have a positive feedback resonance. But . . .” Sue shook her head.

“Agreed. Instead, we have found nothing but exemplary records of service, coil condition monitoring records showing micro-tuning being regularly performed to maintain an overall synchronization less than one micro-Hertz, absolutely nothing to show a fault anywhere in either maintenance or design. No apparent manufacturing or component flaws, either.”

“No. Those would almost all show themselves immediately in the synchronization data, if nowhere else.” She looked across to the Bemmie’s two visible eyes and grinned. “Good news for Captain Toriyama and his crew, anyway.”

“Yes. There will still be a Board of Inquiry but this part will be mostly formality.”

Her smile faded as she looked down. “But knowing what it isn’t doesn’t help so much. We need to have an answer for what it was, or at least whether it’s something that could happen again.”

“I have acquired data on all known lost ships,” Numbers said. “I assumed that if anything like this had occurred before, we would already know about it. Therefore, if this phenomenon had been encountered by anyone else —”

“ — the ship would have been completely destroyed. That fits with the recordings; Captain Toriyama was right in guessing that his ship would have been completely destroyed if they had been a second or two slower to respond. Good thinking.”

Sue checked status first. In the last few days, the tow ships had arrived, docked and deployed their oversized Nebula Drives. Outward Initiative was finally underway to Orado; it would of course take a few months to actually reach Orado from this far out. Sue was tempted to go back to Orado Station using Raijin, but she really did have everything to do the investigation here.

She took a sip of coffee, resettled herself in the seat. “All right, let’s see if we can get anything from that data.”

Her omni displayed the data as a multi-dimensional plot of glittering stars, showing time and date of loss, type of ship, location of loss, ship size, and many other factors. The first thing that struck her was that there was too much data from the past. “I think we should filter to, um, nothing more recent than about fifty years.”

“Why fifty years?”

“Because that was about the time that they deployed the current Trapdoor Coil design and basic operation guidance. Ships before then would have had some of the flaws the redesign was intended to eliminate.”

Numbers buzzed pensively. “That will heavily reduce our numbers.”

“I know, but it doesn’t do any good to look at data that’s on ships not built like this one.”

“True. It’s just that with delays on the order of a year between scattered systems, and months even on closer systems, propagation of records and data can take years. We’ll be missing a lot of the most recent info.”

“Let’s try it anyway.”

The plot darkened, then reappeared, this time with far fewer dots — but still quite a few. Across human-settled space, we’re using a lot of FTL vessels.

There didn’t seem to be a clear pattern here. “Do you see anything?”

“No, I . . . ” Numbers’ multibranched arms slowed, froze. “Wait. Let me try something.”

The display darkened again, and then suddenly rematerialized. The scattering of dots representing lost ships had returned , but now they were mostly grouped into two separate populations, one low down and spread out along the x-axis which seemed to account for about seventy percent, one higher and focused far down the x-axis, though with still considerable spread, that comprised twenty-five percent of the total; the remaining five percent were scattered separate points.

Sue sat forward abruptly, knocking the sealed coffee cup away; she ignored it for now, as it was practically indestructible and not large enough to hurt anyone. “Well, that is interesting. What are our axes?”

“Estimated travel distance at loss for the x-axis, versus maintenance score history on the y-axis.”

Sue stared. “That means that most losses in the last fifty years fall into two separate categories — one group is what you’d expect, ships that weren’t maintained too well. But the other . . . ”

“ . . . is ships with extremely high maintenance scores — usually new ships, or commercial vessels like this which try to keep all the drive systems in tip-top shape for efficiency and economy of operation! Yes, yes!” Numbers quivered and patterns like strobing squares and triangles circled across his body. “How fascinating! Not at all what I would have expected.”

“I certainly wouldn’t have.” Sue’s brain raced, trying to make sense of this. It was an assumption in essentially any engineering discipline: keep your machine in top condition, and it was less likely to suffer failure. But this graph seemed to say that you were actually safest if you kept it is ‘pretty good’ condition — not neglected and mistuned, but not perfectly tuned and polished either, and that made no sense.

Except, of course, it had to make sense. The division was too clear to ignore. “What’s the p-value on this division?”

“Extremely low — about 0.00004.”

“So essentially no chance that this just a random artifact in the data.” She rubbed her chin. “Freaky, as a friend of mine might say. Why hasn’t anyone else noticed this?”

“Well, I can’t say that no one has, but it’s only been relatively recently we’ve been accumulating enough data to make this pattern obvious. For all I know, of course, there could be a paper on it already published and on its way from Earth.”

The coffee container gave a rippling chime as it struck the table; she caught it and put it back where it belonged. “You know what this means?”

“Probably not in the sense you intend. What?”

“There’s some kind of flaw in the current design. A subtle one, but just the kind of thing that doesn’t show itself for years until enough people are using it, or when you extend the design to some new regime. Can you sort this by size of ship?”

“Certainly.”

The new plot showed what she suspected. “Looks like this disproportionately affects larger ships, don’t you think?”

“Yes; p of less than 0.009. What sort of phenomenon are you talking about?”

“Well . . .” she searched her memory for a good example. “Oh, here’s one engineering students have looked at for years — the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on Earth, back in the 20th century. They built this really long, very narrow and shallow bridge over a deep canyon that had regular high winds. The design might have been fine somewhere else, under other conditions, but where it was it got exposed to winds of the right magnitude to induce really severe aeroelastic flutter that ended up tearing the bridge to pieces. After the fact they figured out what was going on, but no one really thought much about it beforehand, and it was really some minor design changes that led to the disaster.”

“Oh. I think I remember that, but my instructors called it an example of runaway forced resonances.”

“Argh,” Sue said, rolling her eyes. “It’s been mis-taught like that for centuries, I suppose it always will be. It looks like a resonance effect, I’ll admit. But it’s not, really. Resonance comes from a natural frequency of the structure, like my coffee container here,” she bounced it on the table, causing a ringing chime before she caught it, “being stimulated by some external force. If the stimulation’s in-phase with the natural frequency or frequencies of the object, the resonance can build.”

“But this isn’t a resonance effect.”

She shook her head. “No. The coils were all pretty much perfectly in tune. No sign of beats or resonances between them. The field was about as perfect as a crystal . . .” she trailed off as a sudden idea struck her.

“What is it, Sue?

She picked up the coffee container, stared at its shining crystal perfection. “Perfection . . . that might be it!”

The big Bemmie gave a momentary flicker of reddish annoyance. “Might be what?”

Lieutenant Sue Fisher sat forward eagerly. “Come on, Numbers — I’ve got some simulations for you!”

v.

Portmaster Michael Ventrella gestured for everyone to sit as he entered. “We’re not a huge organization, let’s not get too formal,” he said. “I hereby convene this official Review and Inquiry Report for incident OR-7-FTL, the event which resulted in crippling damage to colony vessel Outward Initiative. Are representatives of all interested parties here?”

Captain Toriyama stood. “I am Acting Captain Musashi Toriyama. I represent both the crew of Outward Initiative and the Colonial Initiative Corporation, as there is no ranking official of the corporation present in Orado system.”

Sue saw the Portmaster raise an eyebrow. “That puts this doubly on your head, sir. You understand that you may be in the position of having to remove yourself from command, or worse, if you or those under your command are found culpable?”

“I do, sir. But as the current commanding officer of Outward Initiative, the corporate directives are clear as to the fact that I also represent the company, and there are hardly any representatives of CIC here at the moment; I understand a new office is under construction and will be occupied in four to six months —”

“Never mind, then, Captain. As long as you understand your position, we can proceed.” Toriyama seated himself.

The androgynous person who rose next was someone Sue already recognized. “Len Bowie, Ambassador for the System,” they said. “We will represent the interests of the citizens of the System who were aboard Outward Initiative and, if it is acceptable to you, those of the few citizens of other colonies who do not have representatives present.”

“The System,” in Bowie’s context, meant “the original solar system”; Earth’s system was fairly well united, unlike most of the scattered colonies, and its massive population and industrial base still dominated humanity’s policies.

“That is acceptable. Lieutenant Fisher, you represent Orado Port and the investigative team?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good enough. Let’s get this underway, then. I’m not much for formality, so we’ll just move forward as makes sense. Lieutenant, you want to start?”

Sue stood up. “Thank you, Portmaster. Just to review, a quick summary of the events: Outward Initiative was slightly more than halfway through its journey to Tantalus, a new colony a bit over a hundred lightyears from Earth. There had been no incidents of note during the journey, and all systems were operating at nominal.

“At 17:35 local ship time, during a routine emergency drill, a fluctuation developed in the Trapdoor field. This fluctuation grew at a tremendous rate, completely overwhelming automated attempts to damp it down by stabilizing the field generators further. An alert was immediately sounded and the crew attempted to counter the fluctuations sufficiently to shut down the Trapdoor drive safely. They did in fact achieve this by attempting a synchronized unbalancing of the drive coils — a risky approach, but probably the only one that would have worked, given later data. However, this was not achieved in time to prevent severe damage to the hab ring and the loss of six lifeboats and, at the time, sixty—two people. Radiation pulses also caused a cascading shutdown of multiple systems, including all shipboard AIs. “

She played an excerpt of the logs she’d been able to recover — the sudden eerie half-appearance of a starfield, the green blazing fire of a Trapdoor field shearing through metal and composite, the shocking destruction of the proud colony vessel in a matter of seconds.

“With the Trapdoor Drive finally shut down, the Outward Initiative was in normal space, severely damaged. It required two and a half weeks to use onboard resources to sufficiently repair and reinforce the vessel and allow it to rotate again; during that time, the extent of radiation sickness became obvious, affecting over two hundred crew and passengers, of which nearly half had to be kept in nanostasis. Those lost from the immediate and subsequent events included all three medical doctors and the ship’s commanding officer, as well as others.

“Nonetheless, basic repairs were completed, the Trapdoor coils rebalanced sufficiently to fit the changed profile of the Outward Initiative after the damage, and the ship made a relatively uneventful emergency trip here to Orado, the closest colony to their path at the point of failure, a trip of slightly less than two months.”

“A question, if I may?”

She looked over at the Earth system representative. “Yes, Mr. Bowie?”

“You mention that six lifeboats were lost. Were any sufficiently intact to function?”

“We believe three of them were physically intact. Whether any of their shipboard systems still functioned remains in question.”

“Have any search and rescue ships been dispatched to search for survivors?”

She glanced at Ventrella, who rolled his eyes but nodded. “No, sir, there have not.”

Bowie’s blue eyes narrowed. “Then may I inquire as to why not?”

“The short answer is that it would be a waste of time and energy. Do you wish a longer answer?”

The eyes met hers. “Yes. One with sufficient detail to satisfy me, unless the answers are inherently unsatisfying.”

Sue chuckled. “All right, sir. In a way, they are inherently unsatisfying. The best answer is that, as the old book says, ‘space is BIG’. Even with the recordings of the event that we’ve been able to recover from Outward Initiative, we can at best determine when by shipboard time the lifeboats were severed from the ring. But they, and the final shutdown of the Outward Initiative, were separated by up to thirty seconds, and thus by millions of kilometers. If Outward Initiative had been able to do the search itself, right then, the lifeboats could probably have been recovered. But the starship’s sensing suites were badly damaged, those of the lifeboats undoubtedly were worse off, and Outward Initiative was in no shape to search.

“But we can’t actually tell exactly where that accident happened. There are a few flashes of a starfield in the moments during the oscillation, and of course clear images after the ship stopped, but that is not in any way good enough to locate the accident to within better than, say, a volume the size of the entire Earth System, with nothing to serve as a marker. The lifeboats measure perhaps thirty meters long; finding a thirty-meter object in a volume billions of kilometers in radius is a very nontrivial task.

“We’d also expect, if anyone was on them, they would attempt to make it to the nearest colony — here. There are Trapdoor drives on those lifeboats, although they have to run periodically rather than constantly; so we actually haven’t quite reached the point at which we would expect to see them arrive; it took more than two months for Outward Initiative to make it here and at best the lifeboats woult take nearly three times that long — almost six months — to make the trip. There is, unfortunately, effectively no way to detect them underway.”

“I see. But from your tone I presume you do not expect them to arrive?”

“Well… LS-42 and LS-88 had more than enough rations to survive that long. LS5. . . well, maybe, but they had a Bemmie on board who would have needed a lot more food, plus the dry environment on the shuttle would not have worked well for his survival. More importantly, though, simulations based on the damage suffered by Outward Initiative indicates that many shipboard systems would have failed. LS88 might have had the right combination of personnel on board to survive — if they weren’t irradiated to death — but the others . . .”

Bowie nodded. “Understood. My apologies for the diversion.”

“Not at all. It was an important question.” She took a breath. “Returning to the main point of this meeting . . . First, let me address what is undoubtedly the most pressing question.

“It is our considered finding, backed by physical evidence as well as modeling and deduction, that the crew of Outward Initiative were in no way responsible for what happened to their vessel. Indeed, the record shows that they had taken exemplary care of their ship throughout its lifetime, maintaining it to the highest standard of civilian or, truth be told, military organizations. This was a ship, and a crew, that others would use as an example. In addition, their swift and efficient actions on the day the disaster happened were in fact responsible for saving the lives of most of those aboard; a delay of another second or two could easily have led to the destruction of the entire vessel.”

She could see Toriyama’s shoulders sag in relief; he closed his eyes, then opened them, smiling brilliantly. “Thank you, Lieutenant!”

“I thought you’d like to find out your fate right away,” she said. “Good work, Captain.”

“Then,” said Bowie, “what was the cause of the disaster? An unexpected component failure?”

Sue grinned. “Oh, no, sir, something much more interesting, and something that has apparently destroyed thirty-seven vessels in the last fifty years.”

She projected an image with her omni so the others could see it — a stylized representation of a Trapdoor vessel like Outward Initiative, with the Trapdoor field shimmering around it, a long ovoid shape some distance from the vessel’s hull. “Most of you are aware that a Trapdoor field is generated by precisely spaced coils of a particular design, which must be properly in phase to generate an effective Trapdoor field. Biases of the coils allow effective navigation, directing the ship, although most navigation consists of pointing the ship in the desired direction in normal space, then activating the drive.

“In most cases, the drive envelope fluctuates slightly; this is partly due to variations in the . . . well, spacetime characteristics, I guess would be the best way to put it, of Trapdoor space. In essence, Trapdoor space isn’t completely featureless. The other fluctuations, much more noticeable, are from slight mismatches between Trapdoor coils, and at a “beat” rate between 5 and 500 Hertz, or cycles per second, most commonly at particular peak frequencies which have to be damped out because they are resonance frequencies between the field coils — they could cause the fluctuations to go out of control. And in fact, that was what I initially thought had happened.”

The simulated field showed oscillations of the field swiftly progressing to a destructive level.

“However, once we started looking at the data, that just didn’t fit. First of all, as you can see from the simulation there, such an oscillation tends to actually cause the field to ‘pucker’ inward at the ends, trying to turn the field into a sort of donut shape; this would usually result in damaging the main ship body at its fore and aft ends. You can get radial spiking, but it’s rare.

“More importantly, the data showed that the coils weren’t just acceptably balanced, they were exceptionally well-balanced. This was one of the best maintained ships I have ever had the privilege to examine.”

“Well?” the Portmaster said after she paused. “Don’t keep us in suspense, Lieutenant. It wasn’t sabotage, was it?”

“No. In all honesty, in a way, the crew of Outward Initiative caused the accident — just not in any manner they could possibly have predicted.”

“What? How?” demanded Captain Toriyama.

“By doing your maintenance too well,” she said.

There was silence, then Bowie laughed. “All right, Lieutenant. Answer us the riddle.”

“Resonance was the key,” she said. “Both Kryndomerr — the Bemmie mathematician — and I looked at the phenomenon and thought resonance, just from the way it all happened, but that seemed impossible. But then we happened to think about what it is that makes a really good resonance work.

“Think about the classic trick of breaking a wineglass by singing or playing a note. There are three key requirements. The first is that there be a known resonant frequency; the second is that the energy input — the sound — be constant and of a sufficient volume to keep the vibration increasing; and the third is that the target object be sufficiently high quality and sufficiently rigid that it doesn’t dissipate the energy internally, thereby failing to vibrate to destruction.”

The others nodded.

“Well, Trapdoor space, as I mentioned, isn’t completely uniform. And as it is the Trapdoor field that is an interface between the ship and Trapdoor space, any nonuniformity acts directly on the field, causing the variations I mentioned earlier. So —”

“My God.” Toriyama had clearly seen it. “There’s some kind of underlying pattern — a field structure — in Trapdoor space. And if you have a well-enough maintained field . . .”

“. . . and you travel long enough, not adjusting your course, leaving your field effectively ‘rigid’, so to speak, and your field just happens to have the right size to vibrate at the right wavelength . . . yes. The intersection between the field and the space itself creates a positive feedback resonance that swiftly builds up out of control.” Sue showed them the graph that Numbers had created. “This was the real clue; Kryndomerr first saw this and pulled it out of the data. An entire population of well-maintained and mostly very large vessels going missing on long-run missions, whose fields — partly due to the development of standards in design, operation, and maintenance — have similar effective surface areas with respect to Trapdoor space.”

The Portmaster was frowning. “Are you certain of this?”

Sue considered. “As sure as I can be without running actual experiments. Kryndomerr and I came up with models showing how it worked, and demonstrating that the resonance was very likely to proceed along the radial dimension as experienced by Outward Initiative. In addition, the simulations and accident statistics indicated that this phenomenon may be a greater danger along particular routes and directions, meaning that the ‘structure’ of Trapdoor space has a systematic variation that may give us more clues as to the actual nature of the Trapdoor space.”

Ventrella nodded. “Then you must summarize this report and have it transmitted to as many locations as we can reach. We don’t have many ships available to go long distances, but we’ll have to figure something out. This is vital information and we must get it to all the large colony and transport ships as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ventrella looked at the others. “Given this, I think this meeting is complete. Do any of you have any remaining questions?”

After a pause, he stood. “Good. Inquiry complete; this was, effectively, an Act of God; no one could have predicted it given the known information at the time, and the crew did everything they could to minimize the damage to both ship and personnel. I will so state in the record.”

She waited for the others to leave, shaking Bowie’s hand and — after a hesitation — giving the relieved Captain a hug as well as a handshake.

Once the room was otherwise clear, she turned. “Portmaster?”

“What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”

“In the report — I want to include a full research writeup, for publication in the Journal of Interstellar Spaceflight.”

He looked at her quizzically. “Well, of course. That’s good research there, and worth probably more than one paper. Not bad for someone normally doing disaster inspection. What’s the problem?”

“There’s one thing I need to make sure of . . .”

vi.

Numbers stared at her with all three eyes, one of them flicking back and forth to look at the display near him. “The ‘Kryndomerr Resonance’?”

“You and I did the work together, but you were the one who first found the pattern that showed something was causing well-maintained ships to disappear, and then did the hard work of deriving the function and building the models that showed that it actually worked the way we thought.”

The Bemmie’s hide showed a doubtful blue-and-pink pattern. “You were the one who came up with the basic idea, though.” She saw, past the big alien, his pod or family, waiting at the nearby shuttle.

“Resonance? Come on. We both thought ‘resonance’ at the beginning, we just couldn’t figure out how there could be a resonance once we saw the maintenance records,” Sue said. “Yes, I did come up with the idea that a near-perfect field might resonate, but you were the one that came up with the model that showed that it could actually happen. Numbers, thousands of people thought it should be possible for people to fly through the air, the idea was ancient, but only the Wrights, Langley, Whitehead, and a few other pioneers who made it real.”

Two eyes closed, the other narrowed, as different colors and patterns chased across Numbers’ body. “Is that the only reason you put my name on the effect, and my name first on the paper that you actually wrote? I’m terrible at writing.”

She laughed. “All right, no, it’s not. You guys have enough roadblocks in your way getting ahead in our society. It costs me nothing but a little credit to put your name first, and this is a big, splashy, important event in the history of space travel. If you get a lot of the credit, it will show a lot more people how much you have to contribute, not just by diving and swimming and so on, but in thinking fields, just as much as us. And you did do a lot of the work, so it’s not in any way a lie.”

The big Bemmie rubbed his arm-tendrils uncertainly for a moment, then relaxed. “Then . . . thank you, thank you very much, Sue. I’ll make sure to always mention you if anyone asks.”

She gave the alien a friendly slap on the back. “I’d expect no less, given how I’ll be talking you up.” She looked at her omni display. “Your family’s continuing on? You’re sure?”

“Yes,” he said emphatically. “Whips . . . Whips would not want his loss to stop us. We were honored beyond all other pods in being chosen; we cannot give up now, or it is possible that it will be a long time before any of our people is given the chance again.” His colors muted again for a moment. “And it has now been nine months. More than enough time for any survivors to have made it here . . . and longer than any of them could have survived.”

She held back a reflexive, well-meaning offer of hope. Kryndomerr was right; there weren’t enough supplies on any of the lifeboats to allow them to survive to this point, and even fewer supplies had been on LS-5, the boat that Numbers’ son had been aboard. “My sympathies again. But I’m sure you’re right.” She gripped the bases of two of his arms with her hands, the equivalent of a warm handshake. “Good luck on Tantalus. And maybe I’ll find a way to come out that way and visit.”

“Please do. My pod . . . my family would be honored to have you as a guest.”

She stood and watched as Numbers and his family — Windharvest, Dragline, and Pageturner — boarded the shuttle to Outward Initiative. All four of them stopped just before boarding and gave her a wave-and-flattened-bow that was the deepest sign of respect, echoed by the solemn color pattern on each. She waved and bowed back; a few moments later, the landing shuttle launched and was gone.

Sue stood there a moment, just letting the quiet efficiency of Orado Station soak into her. She thought back to the time just before Outward Initiative’s arrival, and felt a pang of guilt. I was wishing something would happen then. I should always remind myself what ‘something happening’ means in space. This “something” had cost over two hundred people their lives. Some might have died long after the others, drifting in space in non—functioning shuttles; they obviously had not survived.

From now on, she promised herself, I will be happy to have nothing to do.

She smiled, and headed towards Port Control. Back to what I devoutly hope will be many years of boring duty!

FIN.

When the Lion Feeds

by John Lambshead

Lady Trouble, that was how Hawthorn always remembered her.

The Kit Kat Klub was the sort of place considered sophisticated by the sort of people who considered themselves sophisticated. Anything unchromed was plastered in plushly padded leather in a particularly repellent shade of purple.

In one corner a female singer in a shimmering dress slashed so low that you could see her fundamentals crooned about the evils of wealth. Behind her three bored looking young men in evening dress variously beat, blew and stroked musical instruments as if they were filling in time while waiting for the main feature.

Hawthorn lost a little money and won a little in return on the gaming tables while waiting for a contact who never arrived. The enigmatic message that had brought him to this den of lethargy was a bust. He finished his drink and disposed of his glass onto a tray carried in an overhead grip by a waitress in a spangled leotard.

Then she walked in.

Walk is a simple verb implying one foot placed in front of the other in steady sequence. Such a definition did not even begin to adequately describe her progress. She glided across the room on heels higher than the mark up on the club’s drinks.

Hawthorn watched her, not something that caused him undue pain. Hair fashionably styled in sea-green waves flowed over her bare shoulders matching the color she had chosen for eyes nestling deep within the maroon mask perched on her nose.

She slowed when she reached the roulette wheel. Spectators moved aside—but she hesitated before taking a place at the table. Although she might have seemed serene to the unobservant, Hawthorn noticed an infinitesimal tremble when she placed a handful of coins on spin-positive. A spin bet gave only a one third chance of a win, less the House’s zero, worse than the fifty-fifty of even-odd but better than the one fifth chance of a color and much, much better than the probability of choosing a number.

“No more bets.”

The croupier tossed a silver ball with a practiced flick of the wrist. It slid around against the spin of the plate until descending far enough to hit the grid with a protesting rattle. He damped the wheel with the edge of his hand.

“Twenty-two wins, evens, green and spin-positive.”

The croupier pushed the lady’s winnings onto the table and she let them ride: spin-positive won again. She bit a finger in indecision before transferring the pile to spin negative.

“Forty-seven wins, odd, blue and spin-negative,” said the croupier, after the little ball of destiny had finished bouncing.

He replaced the lady’s winnings with a few high-denomination coins as her impressive heap of loot threatened to spill over onto neighboring bets.

She let the money ride.

Hawthorn pursed his lips. She had won three times on a one third probability. The chance of winning and losing was exactly the same on each spin of the wheel and she had no greater chance of disaster on the fourth try than the first but letting a bet run changed the odds perniciously. Sooner or later the gambler would lose and a quick mental calculation suggested to Hawthorn that she now had less than a one percent chance.

The ball rattled. When it dropped into the slot a collective groan arose from the table.

“Zero,” the croupier said unemotionally, raking in all the cash.

He could afford to be phlegmatic. Win or lose, it wasn’t his money.

The lady took it well. Perhaps there was the merest hint of a quiver of her lips and a glistening in her eyes but she walked across the room to the bar with her nose in the air. Behind her the roulette wheel rattled into life once more.

She selected a stool two seats up from Hawthorn and ordered a drink. When the barman brought the heavily diluted offering she fiddled in her purse. A sneer formed slowly on the barman’s face like a fungal infection.

“I believe it is my turn to pick up the tab,” Hawthorn said, flipping a coin on the bar. “And I’ll have what the lady is drinking.”

“Thank you,” she said, after the barman had left. She drank deeply. “Who’re you?”

“Knight,” Hawthorn said, taking the stool beside her. “Jeb Knight.”

The name Hawthorn was not entirely unknown in certain circles and he wasn’t looking for trouble. He was never looking for trouble—but trouble had a way of seeking him out, nonetheless.

“Well you saved my blushes tonight, Jeb Knight,” she said, holding her glass up in salute before taking a generous gulp. “I doubt I’d enough cash left to pay.”

“And you are?”

She gave a small bow.

“Desole Frawline, at your service, sar.”

She spoke precisely with an accent hinting at a genteel upbringing but her voice had a brittle edge that intrigued Hawthorn. She sounded like someone clinging by the fingertips to normality.

“I admire your bravery.” Hawthorn shook his head. “It takes guts or stupidity to let your winnings run like that, and you don’t seem foolish.”

She laughed over-brightly and finished the rest of her drink in a single gulp.

“Not bravery or stupidity but desperation. I’m no worse off for losing.” She shrugged. “But you don’t want to hear my sob story.”

“On the contrary, I like stories,” Hawthorn replied.

He signaled the barman for refills. Hawthorn could be a surprisingly good listener when someone interested him—and he found her very interesting. Her story was not unusual in itself, merely the details varied, her parents dead, no siblings just a beloved grandfather with a nasty wasting disease needing complex, regular and very expensive genosurgery. Eventually the money ran out. Many of the ‘Stream’s population carried molecular time bombs in their DNA from the biowars. Every so often something unpleasant erupted and doomed an individual.

Naturally nobody would lend money to a dying man, but a bank would to his granddaughter. Her contract as an indentured servant was very sellable should she default. And of course, default she duly had.

“And someone has bought your contract?” Hawthorn asked.

She nodded, blinking back tears.

“The bastard who owns this club,” she said bitterly. “That’s why I chose to gamble here. It would’ve been sweet to have bought back my contract with his own money. I guess it won’t be too bad working here. I’ll just have to get use to wearing spangled leotards.”

Hawthorn thought she might have to get used to a lot more than that.

She fished a miniaturized datapad out of her grip and slid off the stool.

“Excuse me for a second,” she said, heading for the lady’s convenience.

Hawthorn ordered another round and considered. He hauled his own battered heavy duty pad out of an inside pocket and dropped it on the bar. A smile flickered across Hawthorn’s face when it gave a little chime and flashed a message. So she was not as naive as she looked, checking him out by interrogating his pad with her own.

He grinned. Knight was an old and favored alias so his pad would insist that it belonged to an entirely respectable and solvent gentleman of that name no matter how deep she looked. However, her search was entirely superficial, merely the behavior of a sensible woman confirming the identity of a strange man who approached her in a bar.

Still, one check deserved another. He opened her slim grip bag and examined the contents. There was little of a personal nature, just the usual grooming devices without which no lady can pass through her front door.

A quick check via his datapad confirmed that an indentured service contract had been taken on a Mistress DS Frawline which would activate within the week unless redeemed. He tapped the pad with his thumb to dig deeper and it slipped. He made a grab but for it and dropped her bag in the process

It fell onto the foot rail with a clang ejecting a cosmetic tube. The top flipped off but fortunately the container was unbroken. Hawthorn retrieved both and was replacing the cap when he was struck by the most unusual nozzle on the perfume dispenser. For some reason it was fashioned to look like the business end of an ion pistol.

He inserted a nail into a small slit in the tube and flipped open a cover exposing a button. Hawthorn was a curious man who was inclined to trip switches and depress buttons just to see what happened but in this case he restrained his natural impulses. Before he replaced the top he sniffed the nozzle. It didn’t smell of anything much.

When she returned, Desole discovered Hawthorn flipping through some files on his pad. “The owner of this club is a certain Ramos Neddard and he’s sitting over there.”

Hawthorn inclined his head.

“No don’t look. He might recognize you.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” she replied. “We’ve never met.”

Actually, Neddard didn’t seem particularly interested in Desole, which was odd since Hawthorn assumed that he had at least looked at her picture before buying her. Not everyone looked good in a leotard, especially not the spangled variety.

“What happened to your grandfather?” Hawthorn asked.

“He died anyway,” she replied.

Hawthorn nodded, half expecting the answer.

“Maybe I can help,” he said.

“I don’t want your money,” she cut in quickly.

“I wasn’t going to offer you any,” Hawthorn replied truthfully.

He had an aversion to handing stacks of coin to young woman he’d just met in a bar, no matter how fair their countenance or unfortunate their life history. But he was bored, she was interesting and her countenance was fair.

The club owner on the other hand was not fair. He looked like the product from a biowar experiment to cross a man with a yeti. His compatriots sat around the same table were no more prepossessing. An anthropologist might have waxed lyrical at their resemblance to an early stage of human evolution but Hawthorn doubted if even their mothers loved them.

“Perhaps I might persuade Master Neddard to release you.”

“And why would he do that?” she asked.

“Possibly I could appeal to his better nature,” Hawthorn replied, piously.

Desole looked skeptical. Across the room Neddard laughed coarsely at some witticism from one of the gorillas sat at his table, slapping a passing spangled leotard across the bottom by way of emphasis.

“Or perhaps not,” Hawthorn said.

A couple of nights later a new punter strolled into the Kit Kat Klub. He was about the same build as Hawthorn but there the resemblance ended. His hair was brown and his skin olive brown, matching dark brown eyes not at all like Hawthorn’s blond hair and blue eyes.

Rather more unusually, the punter wore clothes far more fashionable, which is to say far more expensive, than either Hawthorn or most of his fellow ‘Streamers. But what really marked the punter was the expression of credulous imbecility that he wore on his face like a badge of honor.

Hawthorn was very attached to that look. It had served him well over the years. When he opened his wallet to buy a drink he made sure the barman saw a clip of purple Manzanita sovereigns that would have choked a fleek.

He wandered around the tables, making the odd wager, usually losing. He bet according to whim or whether he discerned some lucky omen in the crease of a card or the play of light. Such a punter warms the cockles of the club owner’s heart. The odds are shaved to favor the house even against the most able players but a gambler who believes in lucky omens is a gift from the gods.

Hawthorn returned to the bar for a refill of distilled water contaminated with the merest trace of plum brandy. He expressed his disappointment at the lack of action in the club in an accent so refined that it would have made a Brasilian Senator brush up his vowels.

“The real players meet in a back room,” the barman ventured.

“And how does one obtain entry to said back room?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

The barman painted an ingratiating smile across his mouth. At least,Hawthorn chose to believe it was a smile rather than acid indigestion. The man looked over Hawthorn’s shoulder and nodded. Hawthorn had a good view of the gaming room in the mirror behind the bar and so noticed Neddard and some cronies sliding out of a side door.

Only a few minutes passed before a spangled leotard arrived to conduct Hawthorn into the inner sanctum. The Kit Kat back room decor was utterly Spartan in comparison to the public areas. Paint uncurled from the walls and the ceiling showed the residue of thousands of cigarettes. In one corner stood a desk, and spare gambling equipment was stacked around suggesting that the room doubled both as office and store.

A light cluster hanging from a flexible arm lit a low table in the center of the room. Hawthorn suspected that table was normally where they counted up the night’s takings and that the cluster included cameras.

Three of the four chairs around the table were taken, the club owner sitting on the left.

“I’m Neddard. Understand you want to play a real game?”

“If the stakes are high enough,” Hawthorn said, boldly.

“Siddown,” Neddard pointed to the empty chair.

“This is Eddy and that’s Frog,” Neddard said indicating his companions with his thumb without taking his eyes off Hawthorn.

“Peebleford,” Hawthorn replied, “Quinton Peebleford.”

He held out his hand but received only sneers in reply.

“Bring us some drinks in an hour or so, honey,” Neddard slapped the girl’s rump, apparently his normal way of communicating with the female staff.

The girl shuffled out.

“We’re playing Chase The Lady, Eddy’s in the chair.”

The aforesaid Eddy produced three cards and turned them over to show the Queen of Spades and the two red knaves. He picked one of the knaves up with his left hand and the other two cards with his right, queen under the knave, before placing them face down on the table and sliding them slowly in what appeared to be a futile attempt to randomize their position.

“Lay your bets,” Eddy said.

Hawthorn sighed. They took him for a complete mug. Chase The Lady was the oldest con in the world. Eddy had probably switched the positions of knave and queen by dealing the bottom card first. Hawthorn couldn’t win. That was the point.

“Sorry gentlemen, I’m out,” Hawthorn said.

“Now wait a moment….,” Neddard half rose.

Hawthorn held up a hand, palm out.

“My dear old nanny made me promise never to play Chase since her father lost his potting shed in a game. Can’t go against poor old nanny, eh?”

Neddard took a deep breath.

“Okay, how about Landsknight?”

“Don’t think I know the rules.”

“No worries, we’ll teach you.”

“I like to play with new cards. Nanny was very particular about germs.”

Neddard turned an interesting shade of purple. He stomped over to the desk and retrieved a handful of sealed packs from an unlocked drawer.

“Happy now?” Neddard snarled, throwing the packs down. “Nanny have anything else to say?”

Hawthorn shook his head.

“Well, apart from sorting out the table limit in advance.”

Landsknight turned out to be another Faro variant. The banker dealt a card clockwise to each player face up finishing with himself, discarding any matches until each player had a card of unique value. He then placed a bet. Each player running anticlockwise matched or raised the bet placed immediately to his right or dropped out. Betting continued in circuits until all but the dealer was out, the pot limit had been reached, or there were no more raises. The dealer then turned over cards from the deck and the first match to a player’s card scooped the pot.

Faro depends entirely on luck so win and lose tends to balance out over the course of an evening’s play. Neddard won the first hand but he dealt Hawthorn the ace of spades on the second.

“My lucky card,” Hawthorn informed the group.

He bet heavily to the table limit, scooping a decent pot when everyone else dropped out. Hawthorn had a lucky night and was a fair way up when the girl came back with a tray of drinks.

“You took your time,” Neddard snarled.

“The coms are down,” the girl replied, defensively. “I didn’t get your signal.”

Neddard glowered at the waitress, who shut up.

“Well, ring Gary in the morning and tell him to get round here and fix them like bloody quick.”

“You can’t get the staff these days,” Hawthorn said, sorrowfully.

Neddard treated him to a suspicious glower that Hawthorn deflected with a smile of sublime innocence.

Gary would have a job finding the fault because the cause of the room’s isolation was a very powerful and very illegal processor in Hawthorn’s datapad.

Then the girl dropped the tray.

Dropped as a verb barely covered the situation, she flung the tray across the table as if she’d been goosed by a cattle prod. All was instant mayhem with much jumping up and swearing and knocking over of chairs. Hawthorn enthusiastically added to the confusion, patting spilled liquid off the girl with a monogrammed handkerchief sporting the initials QP. It’s the little things that matter when you set up a legend.

“I’ll get more drinks,” said the girl and disappeared.

The other men sat back down, but Hawthorn remained standing

“Thank you for an instructive evening,” he said, scooping up his winnings.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Neddard shouted.

“Where indeed,” Hawthorn replied, sonorously. “Personally, I expect to go to Heaven. How about you?”

“What about giving us a chance to win back our money? Frog asked.

“I haven’t got all night,” Hawthorn replied, pointedly.

“One round,” Eddy said. “No limit.”

“Yeah, no limit,” Neddard repeated.

He spoke quietly but his eyes glittered like a broken blade.

Hawthorn pretended to consider.

“Okay, one round,” he said.

Hawthorn had won the last hand so it was his turn to deal. He dealt himself the ace of spades and whooped with delight.

The pot accumulated quickly.

“Too rich for me, I’m out,” Neddard said leaning back in his chair after Hawthorn had bumped the bet by fifty sovereigns.

“Me too,” Eddy turned over his card face down in the time honored tradition.

“Just you and me then,” Hawthorn said to Frog.

Frog matched the bet, which took pretty much all he had left, so Hawthorn raised by a thousand crowns.

“Lend me a stake, mates,” Frog asked.

After a little deliberation, just enough to look convincing, Eddy and Neddard slid the necessary funds across to Frog who pushed them into the center of the table.

Hawthorn smiled.

“I believe we said no limit.”

His eyes never left Frog’s face.

Very slowly Hawthorn took a clip out of an inside pocket of his jacket and opened it to reveal ten one-thousand sovereign coins.

The room went very silent.

He slid the coins onto the stake pile. “Raise you.”

Frog’s eyes bulged with emotion. Either his name was an exceedingly unlikely and unhappy coincidence or it had been bestowed late in life by ill-mannered acquaintances.

“I’ll write you a note,” Frog said, voice hoarse with emotion.

“I only take cash,” Hawthorn replied.

He started to pile up his winnings. “As I said earlier, gentlemen, thank you for an instructive evening.”

“Wait,” Neddard replied.

He went to his desk and pulled out a fake drawer to reveal a safe which he unlocked by tapping it with a key while wiping his hand across a pad to activate a DNA reader. Inside among various papers were wads of coins. Neddard quickly sorted out high value sovereigns and crowns and dumped them on the table.

“That do as a match?”

“Why not?”

Neddard grinned like a man who had just heard his rich old uncle Arthur was dead.

Hawthorn slowly peeled a card off the deck—the ace of hearts.

Neddard looked at Eddy.

“That wasn’t the hand I gave you,” Eddy said. “You palmed a new deck.”

Hawthorn looked puzzled, “but you were teaching me the game so when you palmed a hand I assumed it was allowed.”

Eddy snarled wordlessly and leaned forward.

The men had failed to notice that Hawthorn had a foot resting on the edge of the table. He straightened his leg, smashing the table edge into Eddy’s knees. The man screamed and pitched forward. Hawthorn seized Eddy’s head in both hands and thrust his forehead down until it and the table top made violent contact. After that, Eddy lost interest in the proceedings.

Frog rushed Hawthorn, apparently keen to take up matters on Eddy’s behalf. It might have been wiser if he had timed his move to coincide with his larger accomplice but he hesitated just a microsecond too long. Frog ran straight into a croupier’s rake that Hawthorn had found stacked beside his chair. The butt of the handle caught Frog right on the Adam’s apple like the point of a spear.

Hawthorn just saw Neddard’s fist on the edge of his peripheral vision. He flung himself up and to one side. It was just far enough that Neddard struck his shoulder rather than his head. The man had a punch like a hydraulic ram. The impact spun Hawthorn back against the wall and numbed his left arm.

Neddard closed with a triumphant if inarticulate roar. If his fighting style had a fault it was that it ran along predictable lines. He drew his fist back and launched a tremendous blow. Hawthorn had honed his skills at the Wagener Gentleman’s Sporting Club, taking the Fisticuffs Cup three years running. He tilted his head to the right and Neddard’s blow skimmed his ear on its way into the syncrete wall.

Fortunately, Hawthorn had also learnt to fight in places of entertainment other than a gentleman’s club, places where the clientele had never heard of sportsmanship and would have mugged a gentleman on sight. He gave Neddard a Clearwater Kiss, so named after the drinking dives in Port Clearwater where sailors and dockworkers gathered to exchange philosophical opinions.

Hawthorn brought his forehead down on the bridge of Neddard’s nose, producing a sharp crack of breaking cartilage. Neddard staggered back, blood streaming between his fingers in red splatters looking for all the world like avant-garde artwork. Hawthorn took a step forward, kneed Neddard in the balls and rabbit punched the back of his neck as he folded.

“The bigger they are…,” Hawthorn said, rubbing his shoulder and arm to get the circulation going.

He checked out the room. Eddy still snoozed face down across the table. Frog gurgled strange sounds. He was on his knees with both hands around his throat. Hawthorn searched the desk until he found a standard coin clip which he stuffed with high denomination coins from the safe. Then he went back to the table and quickly retrieved hundred and thousand crowns scattered amongst the debris.

Frog gurgled and wheezed the whole time. For some reason this began to irritate so Hawthorn shut the goon up by kicking him in the head. There was still loot among the carnage when Hawthorn regretfully decided he had to go before he outstayed his welcome. Greed could kill.

On the way back down the corridor he bumped into the waitress carrying a tray of drinks. He helped himself to one.

“The boss is in a relaxed mood. You can have the rest of the night off,” he said to the girl, who gaped at him as if he was talking in tongues.

Hawthorn downed the brandy and replaced the glass. He shot the cuffs on his jacket and strolled off whistling a popular song about a girl from Port Trent who was no better than she should be.

He met Lady Trouble in an upmarket bar the next day. She drank tea and he drank brandy. Hawthorn took out the money clip and casually flipped it onto the table.

“Not a bad haul even after I’ve removed my original stake.”

“Wonderful,” Desole said, gazing at Hawthorn with adoring eyes.

She snatched up the money clip. She obviously believed in keeping her valuables close to her heart because she hugged it to an ample chest.

“Now I can pay off my contract.”

“Or on the other hand, I could do it for you.”

Hawthorn dexterously retrieved the clip, ignoring Desole’s squeak of protest at the intimacy of his touch.

“I couldn’t possibly put you to the trouble,” she said, trying to grab his hand.

Her eyes flashed and her accent slipped a bit.

“Helping a lady is never a problem for a gentleman,” Hawthorn said, adopting a noble look.

He avoided her hand and slipped the clip back into his pocket.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “Gosh I must look a frightful mess.”

She opened her bag, found a comb and pulled it through her hair. Next out came the tube of perfume. She took off the top, casually lifted the flap with a manicured nail, pointed the nozzle at Hawthorn and pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

“I don’t think your perfume would suit me,” Hawthorn said.

She frantically repressed the button again. Still nothing happened. Hawthorn took the tube from her unresisting fingers.

“The thing about ion pistols, Judy,” he said, turning the tube around to show her a tiny hole in the base, “is that they are delicate. One little prick with a needle is all it takes to put them out of action, especially miniaturized weapons disguised as something else.”

For a moment she gazed at him blankly then to his surprise she threw her head back and laughed.

“You knew,” she said accusingly, reverting to her natural Port Trent dock accent. “You knew all along who I was.”

“Oh come off it, Judy,” he said. “You have form from Manzanita to Oxford. As for the heart wrenching sob story, the dead grandfather was a tad too much. And your name—Desole Frawline—damsel in distress. Puhleese!”

“Perhaps so,” she said. “But I could never resist a joke.”

Hawthorn sipped his brandy.

“What I can’t work out is why you thought a complete stranger in a bar would be able to rob Neddard’s mob on your behalf?” Hawthorn asked.

“Hardly a complete stranger.” She grinned. “Everyone knows that Jeb Knight is really Jeb Hawthorn. So all I had to do was float the right bait to get you to the club that night.”

Hawthorn sighed. So she was the behind the contact that never showed. Clearly it was time to retire his favorite alias.

She stood up to go. “Oh well, win some, lose some.”

He rose as too, as a gentleman should. Impulsively she hugged him and kissed him long and hard on the mouth.

“Until the next time Jeb,” she said, walking out of his life.

Hawthorn ordered another brandy and stayed to finish it. After downing the last drop he got up to leave. He automatically checked for the clip in his pocket.

It wasn’t there.

He remembered the hug and kiss. Classic misdirection while she picked his pocket. His face darkened with anger. No one treated Jeb Hawthorn like a mug, no one. He went after her.

The doorman stopped him, holding out an envelope. “A lady said to give you this, sar.”

Inside Hawthorn found the money clip and a note. He opened it and read.

“I took out half for my share as it didn’t seem fair that I should get nothing for pointing you at Neddard. The ion gun would only have incapacitated you, incidentally, and as a mark of respect I have added a ten crown coin of my own money to your share. I have always believed that when you lunch with the lion you let him have the lion’s share.

Judy Grady.

Hawthorn burst out laughing. Maybe she had earned her share. He almost gave the ten crowns to the doorman as a tip but he changed his mind and gave that astonished worthy a hundred crown coin instead.

He kept the ten crown bit and had it made into a ring.

Lion Country

by Whit Williams

Early night was a good time, the calm before the storm. The heat rising from the ground kept the locals quiet for the first few hours; time to sleep, or read, or just contemplate. Currently I was contemplating murder. Should I suffocate my partner with the trash bag or shoot him up with a morphine overdose? Anything to stop the snoring. My thoughts were interrupted by the Ambulance rocking to the right. I turned and stared into the face of a good sized lion staring expectantly. This I remembered was why you keep the windows up. “What?”

“I don’t mean to scare you, man, I just—” The lion’s reply was interrupted with a loud belch.

“Back up, man.” I gestured with one hand while covering my nose with the other. The mix of rancid meat and booze that permeated the lion’s breath was horrendous. The lion pushed away from the window but still had his paws on the door. “Back up!” The lion dropped off the side and took a few steps rearward. “What do you want?”

“I don’t mean no harm, man. Can I get some change to get something to eat?”

“What? You’re a lion, go hunt something”

“Man, I got TB. I can’t catch anything. Come on, anything you got I’ll take.”

That seemed true enough. Enhancement had not saved the big cats from the diseases of Africa and I had no doubt he would take anything other than a bath or a job. “I’m sure you would. I don’t have anything for you.”

At that the lion started looking past me and I realized Nick was looking over my shoulder now. “How about you, man, can you help me out?” Nick shook his head and managed to light up a smoke in the same gesture. I suddenly felt my day brightening exponentially with lions to the right of me and cancer to my left. “Hey, can I get a smoke, at least?”

“I thought you had TB?” I waited for an answer. The lion just stared past me, as I was no longer of interest. Nick handed a cigarette over. I snatched it and flipped it to the lion’s feet. He lipped it up and disappeared around the back. “Lions.” Lions were always a problem, had been for my entire paravet career at least. The ambulance leaned to the left suddenly and now Nick had the lion in his face. He cracked his window.

“Let me get a light.” The lion spoke out of one side of his mouth while the other side stuck the cigarette through the opening in the window. After Nick lit the end the lion dropped down and walked away into the darkness.

Sure lions had responded to enhancement better than any other species, but what had they done with it? Elephants had prospering communities; chimps practically owned the entertainment industry. What did lions do?

“721,” the radio came to life a half hour later, signaling the games had begun.

“21, go ahead.”

“Emergency response. Tenth and Robert Mugabi. Person down, unknown problem. Third party caller.”

Nick shifted into drive and we lurched into the air. As the ambulance struggled to stabilize on its well-worn ground skirt we headed towards an island of lights in the distance. The tall grass gave way to broken pavement as we crossed into the outskirts of Okavango City. Just a block inside the concrete, on the sidewalk in front of a liquor store, was five hundred pounds of the biggest waste of lion I had ever met. Even before Nick had set the truck down, I was out the door with flashlight in hand. I walked up and tapped the beast on the shoulder. “Brutus!” Nothing but snoring in response. I tapped harder. “Brutus, wake up.” Still nothing but snores. I dug through the mane and found an ear. Pinching it between my thumb and flashlight got a shudder. I twisted a bit more and he opened his eyes. “Brutus, you can’t sleep here man, get up.” Brutus rolled to his belly and stared blankly, slowly registering my presence. “You’ve got to go somewhere else.”

“I can’t,” Brutus slurred.

“Why not?”

Brutus held up his paw revealing a thorn. I shrugged and reached for my Leatherman. When the surgery was over I could hear the sirens of Animan Control in the distance. “So, Brutus, unless you’re going to the vet or the pound you need to find a new place to sleep.”

“What’s wrong with sleeping here?”

“What’s wrong is that concerned citizens drive by this corner and call 911 sending me out to wake you up.”

“Well, where am I supposed to go?”

“I don’t care, try the woods.”

“It’s dark out there, man, and there’s crazy people out there.”

“You’re a lion, Brutus!”

“Man, I’m old. I can’t see well.”

I held my hands up in frustration and shook my head. When I looked back Brutus was gazing past me. I turned around expecting to see Nick and for the second time that night I came face to face with our cigarette bumming lion. “What do you want?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders in answer. “Get out of here!” He turned and shuffled off. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a disposable pen light. “Here,” I said placing the light between Brutus’ lips. “Now you gotta go.” Brutus got up and lumbered off unsteadily. Halfway down the alley he fell over in a pile of trash. I shrugged in defeat; at least he was out of sight. I turned back to the truck and reached it just as the boys from Control arrived. I waved them off and got back in. Nick was looking at me furiously.

“And now scarecrow, for you a heart,” I joked.

“Man, are you nuts? That was a lion out there!”

“Two, actually, what of it?”

“Look, I don’t care what you think of them, they’re still dangerous. Wait for the boys in blue next time.”

“If we waited for Animan Control on every call we would never get anything done. Besides which they would just talk him into going to the ER. This way he’s only wasting our time, and less of it.”

“Is it worth your life?”

“What’s he going to do, steal my beer?” I laughed. “Oops, left it at home. King of the beasts? Overgrown niphead pussycats.”

“Predators,” Nick reminded me.

“Obsolete tourist attractions.”

Nick shook his head at me. “They say they’re the smartest animals now since enhancement.”

“Actually, we’re the smartest animals, Nick. Yes, they responded well to genetic drugs, so what? What do they do with it? Drink, sleep, fuck, and beat up their families. Wow, that’s an enhancement for you.”

“They’re not all like that.”

“Yeah, when’s the last time you were inspired by a lion? I mean really impressed, not in an after-school-special-he-overcame-his-challenges kind of inspired. When have you ever thought, ‘god, I wish I was a lion.’”

“Okay never, but maybe if they were able to live like lions they would be different. Maybe if they could still hunt?” Nick shrugged. “I don’t know but maybe.”

“They’d be too busy hunting the nip to—”

“721.” Interrupted again.

“21.”

“Emergency response. Baboon Park. Leopard fight in progress.”

“21 clear,” answered Nick. “Please have Animan Control en route.”

“Leopards,” I crowed. “Now that’s a respectable animal; independent, reclusive, never calls 911.”

“This one did,” Nick responded to my jibes.

“Bet you lunch it’s a third party caller, non-leopard.”

Nick just shifted into drive and we glided down the street. He didn’t take the conventional route back the way we came and across the plains, he was going straight ahead. The pavement dropped away and we drove towards a break in the trees. Flying the canals was dangerous, and if Nick were a rookie driver I wouldn’t have gone for it. The canals were quick but there was always the chance of hitting a hippo. Hippos remain a basic species, too stupid to dodge traffic, but strong enough to knock it over and totally intolerant of accidents.

Despite my arguments, Nick’s point about the hunting was true. After enhancement lions faced all sorts of challenges. Many of the staples of their diet had also been enhanced, making them citizens and therefore off limits as prey. If that wasn’t enough, the lions were generally outnumbered by everyone. In a democracy that doesn’t work to your advantage. The buffalo in particular were merciless in their pursuit of legal sanctions. Some even called for reparations for millions of years of predation. The biggest blow though was a general restriction on hunting. It seems it wasn’t enough for the lions to avoid the intelligent Animan, they also had to avoid hunting the non-enhanced in any area where they might disturb herbivore Animan. Since the Lions were so outnumbered, hunting-free areas grew exponentially year after year until most lions subsisted off processed meat from the store or, more often, the state.

Sure enough, I was right about the caller. A zebra mare with a pair of foals stood talking to the cops as we arrived. “This is the third night in a row for this nonsense,” I heard as we walked up. The cop looked at her patiently, notebook in hand. “My children can’t sleep like this, I tell you.”

“So if it’s happened three nights in a row why did you call us today?” asked the AC officer.

“I don’t get involved in leopard business as a rule. But this has to stop. Tonight they went on for a long time and I think this one over here is hurt bad.” She gestured with her head to the left.

“Well, did you see anything, ma'am?”

“No, those leopards are hard to see but they sure make a racket when they fight. Are you going to put a stop to this or not? I can’t sleep, my children can’t sleep, this ain’t no way for decent people to have to live. I think all of them, lions, leopards, the whole bunch ought to be locked up or moved away or something.”

The cop sighed and turned towards the direction she had indicated. We followed him into some trees and looked around. “I’m up here,” came a voice over our heads. Looking up I saw a leopard that had obviously got the worse end of a serious social discussion. One eye was swollen shut and his shoulder was bleeding.

“What’s going on, sir?” asked the officer. The leopard shrugged in answer.

“You all right up there?” I asked.

“Yeah, man,” he answered. “I’ll be okay.”

That was enough for me and I turned to go. Nick was more persistent. “Well, come on down and let us check you out. It looks like you need stitches.”

“I don’t believe in human medicine,” said the leopard. “I’ll be all right, thanks.”

“We’re getting complaints from your neighbors,” said the cop. “What’s going on between you and this other leopard?”

“Man, I’m just protecting my property. Where were you when that big bastard was stealing my stash?”

“Your stash?” asked the cop.

“Over there,” the leopard gestured at another tree.

“Someone robbed you?”

“Not someone,” the answers getting louder now, “that big leopard across the street stole it.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“Look at those claw marks on the trees. That didn’t come from no baboon. And there’s only one leopard I know with claws that big.”

“Okay, so what’s missing?” asked the cop.

“Mostly food. A little cash.”

“Nip?” asked the cop looking intently.

“Man, do I look like I do that shit?” answered the leopard disgustedly.

“No. Leopards never do it, they just sell it.”

“Man, fuck you. Do you want to investigate my robbery or do you want to bust my balls?”

“Okay, but I’m going to need a look at your stash in order to file a report.”

“Do what you got to do. I ain’t got nothing to hide.”

“Just out of curiosity,” asked the cop, “you ever heard of a bank?”

“Man, I’m a leopard; we keep things in trees, okay.”

The AC officer called for a detective and a print team to check the claw marks. We walked over to the other leopard’s grove. This leopard pad was a different set up all together. Viewed from the outside it was a just another collection of trees. Inside, however, was primitive luxury. It brought to mind those safari camps of the well-to-do that were often pictured in the history books where the books reminded everyone of how horrible we had been to animals before enhancement. There were lights in the trees and three huts in a half circle with air conditioners running off a generator. A small campfire warming skewers of fresh meat completed the circle. On the other side of that fire was a leopard print couch. As we got closer I saw that the couch contained a leopard perfectly camouflaged against it. The leopard sat up and I saw that he was indeed a big leopard. Lying next to him was a young female leopard. “Take a walk, doll,” said the male, and the female slipped off the couch and went into a hut. “How can I help you gentlemen?” he asked.

“Hey, is that real leopard?” I said pointing towards the couch. I got a sneer in response.

“You get in a fight today?” asked the cop.

“I was attacked and I defended myself.”

“Do you know anything about his stash getting robbed?”

“Wasn’t me, man, was a lion.”

“Lion?”

“Yeah, you know lions, always trouble.”

“Lions don’t climb trees,” remarked the cop.

“This one does. Enhancement man. He’s learned and adapted. Sneakiest lion I ever saw. He’s hit me twice already. Why do you think I got all the extra security?” The leopard nodded upwards. In the trees, manning the lights, several baboons stared down at us. They were invisible as we approached because they were behind the spotlight casings. In our new position I could just make out their outline and see the eyes, but I couldn’t tell if they were armed.

“You hire baboons?” The officer shook his head. “Baboons working with leopards, what next?”

“It’s a new world, man,” said the leopard. “I’m an equal opportunity employer.”

“What do you do for a living exactly?” asked the cop.

“Oh, security, repo, hunting. You know, leopard stuff.”

“Leopard stuff, you mean sneaking around, robbing stashes, nip, that sort of stuff?”

“That ain't what I said,” answered the leopard. “Look around, do I look like I need to rob stashes?”

“Well, then can I take a look at your stash?”

“You got a warrant? No? Then I guess not.”

“All right then, I’ll let the detectives talk to you. You ever been arrested?”

“Once or twice.”

“Good,” said the cop, “that will save us from having to take a claw print.”

“You can take them if you want,” answered the leopard, “they won’t match. It was a lion, I’m telling you.”

As we got back in the truck I said, “I think I’m in the mood for some good old fashioned un-enhanced chicken.”

“I was thinking Chinese,” Nick responded.

“It’s your dime.”

#

There is a critical time that all in the emergency veterinary service must face daily. That is the time between when you pay for your food and when you actually have it in hand. I’ve never discovered what property of the digestive system makes hunger intensify once cash leaves your hand, but our wait in the Chinese take out stand was filled with the usual apprehension and fear of interruption.

“721.”

“21,” Nick groaned into the radio.

“721. Lion attack, Mbogo Homes. Animan Control on scene.”

Mbogo Homes was a mystery to me. Why would anyone name a lion project after a word that means buffalo? Nothing made sense down here anyway so I had long since given up wondering. As we pulled into the project all we had to do was head for the flashing lights. There were AC patrol cars everywhere. We followed the general trail of boot prints and walked into an apartment. Inside a lioness was acting hysterical while two others tried to calm her down. “Ma'am!” said the cop standing in front of her obviously exasperated. “Can you just tell me how this started?”

“It’s the same old reason as always,” she said. “He wants to kill the children so me and my sisters will have sex with him.”

“So he’s the new pride leader?” asked the cop.

“He ain’t my pride leader,” she answered. “I don’t need another man. I just want to raise my kids."

Having lived through enough of these scenes I was bored already. “Hey, anybody hurt here?” There was a general shaking of heads and I turned to leave. One of the cops stopped me and said the perp needed some attention. We went over to the patrol cars and lying on the ground, all cuffed and smelling strongly of pepper spray, a male lion moaned his displeasure. “There is nothing I can do for you, bud,” I started. “That stuff just takes time to wear off.”

“Man, you gotta help! It burns! I can’t breathe!”

“You’re breathing fine or you wouldn’t be yelling at me,” I answered. I put my stethoscope in my ears and listened to his lungs just to make sure.

When I was done Nick started asking him questions. Nick was always generating paperwork for me. “What’s your name?” Nick asked. The lion answered with a gargled mixture between a purr and a growl.

“Not your new name.” I said, “The one on your license.”

“Leo,” the lion answered.

“Oh, your parents were original,” I half laughed.

One of the cops handed Nick the lion’s ID, bringing a halt to the questioning for a while. He then turned to me and said, “He’s got a dart in his back.”

Lion darts, or restraint darts as they have been politically renamed, were a wonderful invention. The dart had a wire that made it act as a big tazer knocking lions flat. The darts also injected a cocktail of Haldol and Versed to keep him down. They also had a barbed tip, which meant they had to be cut out. This wasn’t too difficult to accomplish in the field. The trick was getting a pepper sprayed lion to lie still while you did it. Despite the challenge, we were on our way shortly, after a quick slice of the scalpel and some minor suturing.

“You got anything for the spray?’ asked the cop with the license. “He has to ride in the back of my car all the way downtown.”

“Try Johnson’s baby shampoo. It’s the best neutralizer,” I answered.

“You got any?”

“No.”

“Why don’t you guys carry that?”

“Why don’t you?” I asked. That got a blank stare out of him. You can sum up the trouble with, and the need for, the public safety apparatus in four words: "That’s someone else’s job." In fact, you can sum up most of life's problems that way.

Walking back to the truck I couldn’t help but express my sense of humor. “Why is it always Leo, or Aslan, or Mufasa? Does everyone have delusions of grandeur? Where’s Lambert, where’s Clarence, where is the cowardly lion, I ask you?” Nick ignored me and drove towards food.

#

We managed to eat this time, but at a different place since we were far from where we started. This meant Nick had to pay off the bet twice, once for the lost meal and once for the one we got. With food in his belly Nick becomes philosophical. “You ever read Aesop?” Nick asked as we were pulling away.

“Once or twice, why?”

“You ever hear the one about the lion who wanted to get married?”

“Let’s see… The lion wants to marry a human girl and the father is afraid to say no, so instead he expresses fear for his daughter. So the lion removes his teeth and claws to appease him and they just laugh at him for it.”

“That’s the one. Did you ever think about what that story's about?”

“Well, I believe the official explanation is ‘love will tame the wildest.’”

“Yeah, well, I got a different take on it,” Nick explained. “I think these lions today are all just like that lion.” I raised my eyebrows in interest. “They’ve given up their claws and teeth, figuratively speaking, and no one respects them. Nor do they know what to do with themselves anymore.”

“Well, that’s interesting, Nick,” I responded, “but I have an alternate opinion.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“He who gives up his teeth and claws deserves all the pain and suffering he can get.”

Nick let out a disgusted sigh at that. “You thought of that yourself did you?”

“No, it’s actually from Ben Franklin.”

“Ben Franklin said that?”

“Well, it’s paraphrased,” I answered. “The actual quote is he who trades freedom for security deserves neither.”

Nick was quiet for a while after that, but then he started up again, all psychological this time. Nick read a lot and couldn’t help but share his opinions about his partners. “You know, man, I don’t think you really hate lions.”

This was true. My feelings about lions ranged from frustration to disgust, but I never really hated them. Yet I was intrigued by his statement, so I sat back and gave Nick my most inquisitive look. “Oh?”

“No, I think you hate yourself.”

I responded with a head tilt and thoughtful frown to egg him on further.

“I think somewhere you’ve lost your teeth and claws and don’t know what to do with yourself. I think you’ve lost respect for your job and take it out on your patients. And it ain’t fair to them or me.”

“Hmm,” I responded. “Now that you mention it, I think I hate my mother and father as well. I think I’ll retire now and go grow roses or something. Any other advice, Dr. Spock?”

“Yeah, quit. Retire. Find something else to do before you drive me and yourself insane.”

“Well, I tell you what Nick, you step up and trade those EVT numbers for medics and I’ll step down and leave it all to you.”

“721!”

“No rest for the wicked,” as I keyed up. “21.”

“Lion Attack. Corner of Simian and Abbey. Multiple calls, possible multi patients.”

Nick looked at me in alarm. “Hyena Town!” was our simultaneous exclamation.

I have often wondered why God created lions. And I have often come to the conclusion that it must have been to kill hyenas. The legendary warfare between the two species had continued long beyond enhancement until one day the world had had enough. In a major “stop the violence” campaign, also known in less polite circles as the "get these damn hyenas off my lawn" campaign, an old solution was brought forth. The hyenas were given a reservation. The state provided the hyenas with a large tract of land complete with stocks of un-enhanced game, and security to keep out the lions. Of course the lions resented all of this, as they made up too small a voting block to have their own land grant, but they really hadn’t lost out. It took the hyenas a short decade to render their paradise into a slum. Wild hyenas were efficient eaters. They ate everything up to and including the bones. Being hyenas with a free meal ticket, however, they ate the choice and left the rest to rot. It got so bad that for a time the EVT’s kept losing personnel to Hyena Town hazmat, as there was so much need to clean up the carcass-ridden reservation they were paying top dollar to anyone willing to do it. Add to that a population boom, fueled by the combined forces of zero competition and zero murder by lion, and pretty soon the hyenas had traded their lush forests for a jungle of concrete and glass.

Of course, every goodhearted lion still held genocide in mind for hyenas, as did all hyenas for lions, but the forces of authority had eliminated the natural solution to both problems. They say that the two species share such enmity because they are food competitors. Today it seems to me they compete over nothing but sleaze. As in all things, an individual hyena cannot compare in that category to a lion, but the problem was that you never dealt with an individual hyena. I have been to car accidents in Hyena Town that were apparently so catastrophic that they shook the earth with the force to give squads of sidewalk bystanders whiplash. I have delivered little hyena babies to the tune of laughing males crowding around for a free peep show. I have even beaten hyenas off of other hyenas that were comatose from drugs or seizures and unable to protect themselves from theft. Lions were lions, but Hyena Town just sucked.

We had a good distance to cover, so we took a shortcut through the canals again and came in through the H’town back door. The back door is also affectionately known as the “ass end” because, like most state projects, conditions suffered in direct proportion to the distance from the public face. As we cruised past lewd graffiti and marula speakeasys, I could see the familiar wake of offal in my mirror. Finally the alley we had been traveling poured us into Broadhead Highway. Nick turned so sharply that we almost slid across a lane, and then he picked up speed and began eating miles. As we topped a big hill I could see a commotion of hyenas a few blocks away in the Little Five Points of H’town. I could also see that we were going to be the first on the scene. This meant I had to quickly assess things and decide how many more units we really needed. Too few and you lack manpower. Too many and someone else does.

Nick pulled up hard at the intersection and I took a quick look around. I could see hyenas milling about making that chatter that sounds like laughter. Most of them weren't hurt, but were likely bystanders or witnesses. There were several that were injured, though. I counted eight in various levels of walking wounded status. Some were actually walking, others sitting, but all with relatively minor wounds. Well, wounds that could keep for a few anyway. Then on the sidewalk I spotted a small group of girls huddled and wailing over some object on the ground. I took a longer look to see what possession had them so upset and then realized I was gazing at another hyena. This one was a different story. She was a mess of matted hair and blood, and breathing in gasps.

In the distance I could hear sirens, more than one. I took another quick glance around the scene to double check myself and made a decision. "Change of plans," I said to Nick who looked up at me as I grabbed a backboard. "We’re taking the critical and leaving the rest to whoever’s next." He followed me to her and helped clear the wailers. I could see it was another young female, somewhere between adolescence and the twenty something equivalent in hyena years. She had one big bite mark encompassing her neck and chest. As I looked her over, pink bubbles blew out of a hole in her chest. I put an occlusive dressing over the opening, and looked for more. Nick helped me slip her onto the board and then we loaded her into the truck. Nick started reaching for the IV kit but I stopped him. "I got it, just go."

The thing about trauma is that it is fixed by blood and surgery, two things I don't have in an ambulance. It is also time sensitive, so the key strategy is to get moving towards a hospital. The challenge is to do that while performing all the supportive tasks that keep the patient alive long enough to benefit from the trip. So as Nick was lifting off I was already working. The fact that I hadn't found my patient in a pool of blood was the best thing going for her. I searched her quickly for any major bleeders. There were lots of wounds but nothing squirting. Somehow the attack had missed major arteries, probably the only reason she was still alive. Her breathing was getting worse so that was my next priority. I grabbed a laryngoscope in one hand and an endotracheal tube in the other. Laryngoscopes are normally used to intubate humans who, by standing erect, have evolved one of the most crooked air paths in nature. The laryngoscope is a like a metal flashlight with a sophisticated pry bar attached. It is used to more or less straighten out the human airway so that you can see the trachea. In other words, it renders the human airway into a more quadrupedal state. Quadrupeds, hyenas for instance, are much easier to tube. You simply open their mouth wide and pull out their tongue to get a good tracheal view. Trouble is that by the square inches hyenas have greater bite force than a lion, which makes for a nasty place to put your hands. So I use the scope a different way, wedging it between the teeth on one side to prevent mishaps. The tube passed easily enough and I hooked up the auto vent. Listening to her lungs afterward I could hear good breath sounds on only one side. The injured side was virtually silent. I checked her pulse and found it weak and tachy. These things together indicated that she had air trapped outside of the injured lung. I took out a large bore IV needle and found a spot just above her third rib from the top. When I pushed it through the chest wall I was rewarded with a hiss of hair and an immediate improvement in her breathing. I listened to her chest again and heard good sounds everywhere. Rechecking the chest dressing I saw pink bubbles coming out from the edges. I ripped that off along with a good patch of the hair that was interfering with the seal. I followed that up with a quick pass with the clippers and then applied another dressing. The seal worked better on skin and I saw no more bubbles.

I was standing in order to have better access to the chest, and that’s when the ambulance dropped about two feet and lurched hard to one side. "Starboard," came Nick's belated warning. "Sorry. Hippo!" I’ve been ambulance surfing long enough that that didn't throw me off too much, but it did tell me that we had entered the canal again, which meant we were getting close. Strangely enough, ERs really don’t like surprises, so I keyed up my shoulder mike and called the hospital. As they took their usual time to answer I moved back up to the neck and started working the clippers so I could get a better look at those wounds. She had been very lucky. Nothing but minor lacerations, carotids intact. She must have gotten her neck behind the canines. Mostly she had crush injury and thus possibly a broken neck, but she had moved her limbs enough that this didn't seem to be the case. When the ER got back to me, I had moved on to shaving around her jugular, and as I gave a brief report I slipped an IV into it. I had about a minute of travel left so I looked over her body one more time and then put another IV into her forepaw. When we pulled on the hospital ramp she had a good pulse and was breathing on her own.

#

I walked out of the ER and found Nick hosing out the back of the truck. One complaint that never changed between partners was that I could really mess up a truck.

“They took her straight up,” I said in greeting. “We made the hour, man. She very well might make it. Thanks for the gas.”

Nick nodded thoughtfully. “You really think she’s got a chance?”

“Yeah, I do. She’s young and healthy, but she sure took a beating back there.” I gestured with my head randomly, even though back there was too far to really register on my sense of direction.

“And yet you’re glowing’” He said. I looked at him puzzled. “You’ve been a curmudgeon all night, and now nothing but glee.”

I shrugged, “I like to work.” He raised his eyebrows at this. “I like the real work, Nick, when it matters.”

He nodded again. “Does it ever make you wonder why you have to be elbow deep in blood to be happy? Doesn’t that seem like a disease when you really think about it?”

I might have replied with something sarcastic or degrading, but as it was, his remarks caused me to look at myself, not internally but at my clothes. I really was elbow deep in blood. So, “shit!” was my reply.

With that I headed into the facilities for a wash and change. On the way I made a little mental calculation, sort of a cost benefit analysis. It was never enough for me to just wash out the blood and wear it again. Most diseases are non-zoonotic, that is they don’t cross the species barrier, but enhancement had included human DNA and that blurred the interspecies line. So the shirt was headed for the trash. I finished my change and computation simultaneously and looked in the mirror. “Broke even for the night,” I said to myself. “Just should have stayed home.”

Those blood stains were often called rookie marks, but in ten years I hadn’t lost them. When I fought for life it was all out, and lesser things became ethereal. It had cost me, but never more than I could afford. Still, Nick was right, I was glowing. For a person who has experienced this sensation so often, I remained ignorant of its source. Was it adrenaline? No, I had lost that response to trauma long ago. The challenge? It didn’t seem all that challenging anymore. Or maybe just the feeling that I had really been useful? I don’t know, I often think I am too jaded to get that feeling now. Because what really was useful? If she lived, chances are she’d be a burden on the state or, worse, another hyena whore. But despite everything, I believed in the hope of youth. I believed she had some chance and I would give it to her and to everyone who really needed me. And I hated everyone who didn’t and still asked me to do more.

Yet I knew it was deeper than that. It was something I knew but never voiced. I needed the lions, you see. I absolutely craved them. Early in my career the lions were my favorite people, because they were simply the best trauma producers in town. I could always depend on the lions to give me that glow, to provide me with that sense of usefulness in the world. And these days I hated them, for more than any reason, because they had stopped living up to their end of the bargain. They had grown soft. They weren’t killers; they weren’t king of the beasts. They were overgrown pussycats who needed to be woken up from a drunken stupor. Adult teddy bears who wanted me to hold their hands. The beast was burned out, and what was left sickened me. Deeper still, I knew Nick was right. This was a disease. This was wrong thinking. Yet how could a man walk away from that usefulness? How could you turn away from such a glow?

#

With no need to hurry we took the long way back, using the dirt roads that skirted the marshes rather than going through them. Along the way we passed numerous alleyways leading between the trees. These were water routes for buffalo and other hoofers who liked to live traditionally. As we passed by, one shadow caught my eye. “Stop,” I said. Nick looked at me and applied the brakes. “Back up to that alley.” He complied and I got a better look at a strange but familiar lump way down at the other end. “That’s a body”.

“It’s somebody sleeping.”

“I don’t think so. Let’s take a look.” We pulled down the path kicking up clouds of dirt with our jets until we couldn’t see. Nick stopped and, when the dust cleared, our headlights revealed a good size buffalo on his belly at the end of the trail near the water. I got out slowly and approached him. Buffaloes sleep on their feet so I knew he wasn’t sleeping, but still I approached with caution. Despite my feelings about lions, I do have a healthy dose of fear of buffalo. Not all of them, of course, but these old loners had a nasty and well earned reputation. They angered easily and were very hard to calm down once they got started. I could see he wasn’t breathing and when I tapped his forehead he was cold.

While I was checking him out Nick had radioed for AC and soon another set of headlights joined ours. The officer walked up next to me and shined his light down.

“Natural?” he asked hopefully.

“Not at all,” I answered. His eyebrows lifted at that. I gestured for him to crouch down next to me and pointed at the nose. “You see that pattern of cuts and bruises?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a lion bite.” This seemed to confuse him. “He didn’t rip a big hole because that wasn’t his intention. This is a suffocating bite, blocks the mouth and nose. But here’s the more interesting move.” I pointed at some scratch marks on his left horn. “That’s where his right paw was. He pulled him down by the nose but made sure he fell on his horn so his neck would snap.”

“Huh,” said the cop. “You seen this before?”

“I read a lot. And I’ve seen a lot of old nature films. Mutual of Omaha. That sort of thing.”

“Well, if a lion killed him, why hasn’t he been eaten?” That was a good point. I pondered while I looked for any signs of dining.

“Maybe we scared him off,” said Nick. AC’s eyes grew big and wide as they met mine.

I flashed my light outward thinking maybe we were being stalked. What I saw was much worse. My light reflected off water—and several pairs of large round eyes. “Hippos!” we all exclaimed, realizing the answer to the perp’s absence. As one we sprinted for the cars and hopped in. Hippos were not to be taken lightly. I heard the cop calling for an elephant squad over the radio and the dispatcher answered that she would advise Fire. We sat for awhile then thanking our luck that we saw the hippos before things got ugly. Shortly thereafter I heard the rumbling of the fire department coming through the jungle. Nick looked into the mirror and his eyes got as big as the hippo.

“Shit!” was all Nick could get out as he slammed the rig in gear and we swerved up and right. “Those aren’t elephants!”

A curious rivalry had developed as a result of enhancement. You see, rhinos are nature’s firefighters. Long before genetic science started working on them, rhinos regularly stamped out fires on the plains of Africa. No one knows why, but that’s what they did. For obvious reasons elephants were better suited for the job. Still rhinos insisted on their place in the fire department, and being unlike elephants, that is to say not too bright, they had few other job skills so, much to everyone in public safety’s chagrin, human resources always found a place for them. Unfortunately, in addition to the deficiencies already mentioned, rhinos are myopic.

The arrival of the rhinos was accompanied by a loud crash and the cursing of the AC officer who apparently lacked Nick’s reflexes. Nick winced, I laughed. “Whew,” I said, punching Nick in the shoulder, “dodged that paperwork. Is the cop all right?” The cop appeared to be fine as he immediately rolled down a window and started screaming at the rhinos trampling his crime scene. Then all hell broke lose as the hippos decided to defend their turf. What followed was about ten minutes of sheer chaos as the two groups of titans clashed, head and tusk. I watched, howling with laughter, as the body was trampled and the crime scene turned into churned mud. Finally the elephants showed up and calmed everyone down.

We dressed a few wounds on the rhinos and checked the cop for injuries then left the scene. It was late and things were finally quieting down again, time for an end of shift nap. We pulled into a quite spot, off the beaten path and nestled between a grove of trees and a huge termite mound. We were just stretching the seats back when we heard a thump in the back. We looked at each other, Nick at me with alarm and I with annoyance. Someone had slipped in the back while we were dressing rhinos. That happened sometimes, a homeless guy or a drunk looking for a place to sleep.

“Hey, you can’t sleep back there!” I yelled. Nick turned and looked through the passage to the back. Then he yelled as someone grabbed him. I grabbed my big light and started back. He may be annoying but nobody beats up my partners. I saw Nick sprawled face down on the stretcher with a lion standing on him. “All right, buddy!” I said rearing up to smash him on the nose, and then I saw his eyes. They were wild, not a speck of humanity there, and it hit me then; the dead buffalo, the attack on the hyenas, it all added up. There are stories, urban myths really, of feral unenhanced lions roaming the jungles. I never believed them, but at that moment I decided I was looking at one.

No one beats up my partner, but even more so, no one eats me. Not the noblest rule to live by, but "live" is the important word in that notion. I was back up front and out the door even faster than I had fled the hippo. Slamming the door behind me, I ran for the trees. I heard the crash of glass and the metal of the door straining as with a great weight, but by this time I had reached the nearest tree. Up I went, six feet, eight, and in a flash I was pulling myself up a good twelve feet off the ground. And then it hit me, the leopard stashes!

Something viselike grabbed my foot and I was instantly yanked back the way I had come. I hit the ground hard and had the wind forcibly knocked out of me. I could feel my diaphragm spasm in pain as I was rolled over. I looked up and saw three inch fangs dripping over my face. Just as I began to catch my breath again a giant paw stepped on my chest and crushed it out of me. I didn’t see my life flash before me, all I saw was that terrible death grimacing at me. Gasping in carrion laced breath against the weight on my chest I managed an appeal. “Oh God…please!”

“Thank you,” said the lion. And with that he turned and walked into the trees. I watched him go with a mixture of awe and confusion. I recognized him then. I had seen him twice more that night. Vaguely I realized that the carrion breath had contained a hint of tobacco. I turned and looked back towards the truck. Nick was looking cautiously out the side door, obviously bruised, but obviously alive. I looked back to the jungle’s edge where the lion had disappeared. “Thank you?” I wondered. “What the hell?”

#

It was sometime later that I figured out that sarcastic thank you. The truth was in that Aesop story you see. The truth of tooth, and claw and respect. In the end, the lion’s share is fear.

Author's Note:

It is a dream I had during my last tour at Grady EMS in Atlanta. If it is about anything it is burnout, which is a state of mind that can be characterized as having played god and come up short. It's a weird mix of frustration, and hubris, and powerlessness, and dreams of dead kids. It's also when most medics quit. Someday I will get around to writing about what happens next, when you survive burnout and keep playing. That's a weird mix of serenity, deep confidence, and goodwill towards man. But that's another tale.

The Adventurer and the Toad

by Ryk E. Spoor

Author's Note: While set within the Balanced Sword/Phoenix in Shadow universe, this story takes place in the four-year gap between the time that Poplock Duckweed left for Zarathanton and the time that he met up with Tobimar Silverun. It doesn't spoiler any events for the Balanced Sword trilogy, but does give us another look at one of the favorite locations from Phoenix Rising (based on what readers have told me)… and perhaps a new pair of heroes with a lighter touch!

i.

Lalira Revyne felt a rising elation. I faced my fear. I freed the little thing, even though I was afraid of it. And I fought off a gigantic spinesnarl to do it! Mom will have to listen now!

The relief—not just of having triumphed over danger, but over herself—buoyed her up, and she found herself skipping down the path. Steam drifted around her as she passed near the Burning Waters; the pathway here was more heavily marked and, she was pretty sure, enchanted to keep it safe. Even so, it was even warmer than normal here, with bubbling and hissing sounds surrounding her on all sides. Just a little farther…

The greenery of the Forest Sea rose about her again, and she quickened her pace. The numbness of the spinesnarl scratches had faded, and she rounded the final curve.

The house her mother had built shone white and blue in the lowering sunlight of the clearing. But as Lalira Revyne started to run forward, something told the fourteen- year-old girl caution!

At first she couldn’t figure out what it was. The jungle sounds were normal, the faint scuttling of forest animals, the drowsy hum of insects, the occasional call of bird or least-dragon. The gardens were undisturbed. The house sat in the middle of the clearing, as it always had, surrounded by its warded fence—

The fence. The Wanderer had once said “it is the detail that matters, the single anomaly amidst the ordinary, that is the clue.”

The gate was open. Looking carefully, so was the door of the house. Mom never left the gate open—that left a gap in the verminwards for all sorts of pests to get in. And leaving both that and the house door open? Never.

Her forest knife seemed suddenly tiny and inadequate. She had no idea what she was facing. But none of the Heroes know when they start, either, she reminded herself. Can’t be so scared for Mom that I rush in.

The Forest Sea was filled with unknown danger. She had been raised with that knowledge, but living so near it for so long, with the wards keeping them safe… she’d forgotten. Now she had to be careful. Maybe Mom was fine, maybe Lalira was panicking over nothing… but being careful wouldn’t hurt.

Not going in by the regular path. Lalira tied her night-black hair back, then eased off the path, circling the clearing—and keeping an eye on the Forest Sea, just in case—until she was about a quarter way around. Then she vaulted over the fence, the verminwards stinging slightly, and—

—snagged her left foot on the topmost post. Her hands flew wide, the forest knife sparkling high in the sun and coming down somewhere out of sight, as Lalira fell splat into the soft, dark earth behind the thick tangle of pod vines.

“WHOOF!” she grunted, the impact driving the breath from her. Oh, Chromaias, that was brilliant, Lalira! Such stealth and grace! You might as well have charged straight in!

But still, maybe she hadn’t been heard. Or seen. Maybe. And maybe she could recover her weapon without being seen. She crawled as carefully as she could between the rows, looking, until she finally found her knife, standing half-embedded in the ground. Small as it was, she still felt better with the polished hilt in her hand.

Check the house. The vines obscured any view of her from the house, but she could peer between them.

Nothing obvious. Can’t see inside. Unfortunately she had no seeing-glass, no scrying magic, and not really much magic at all. A few simple homekeeping spells like cleaning, spicing food, and such, that she knew how to cast, a verminwand in her pack, the forest knife… that was it.

“ ‘Waiting doesn’t get us farther along!’ ” she murmured, quoting the great warrior Tarl Tarlsson. “Right.”

She figured staying low was the best choice, so she crawled slowly towards the house. Nothing happened, so she sprinted the last few steps to it, shoving the door wide and crouched in a combat stance with the knife held out.

Silence. Her mother wasn’t visible in the front room, even though all her notes were spread—

—all over the floor. The big hardwood desk was shoved askew, the chairs knocked to the floor, a scorchmark—flare spell? shock bolt?—on the near wall, and one of the cabinets was shattered, as though something very heavy had fallen or been thrown into it.

Mommy’s gone? What happened? It was obvious Mom had fought—and fought hard. Lalira found herself unable to move, frozen with horror. What can I do? What? There’s no one around here, nowhere I can go. Who could help me?

And in that moment she saw the answer. Across the room the books’s spines shone in the setting sunlight: Darkwood Tales, Singer of Names, Legends of the Wanderer, Silverstar, Beneath the City, Three Against Shadows, dozens more. You are the only one who can help yourself, her conscience reminded her coldly, with both encouragement and guilt beneath the chill. This was what you told your mother you wanted, to make your name in the books, to follow that path. That path lies before you now. Walk it, or go hide in your room waiting for help that cannot come. For you know the only place that could offer help is the one place you cannot go.

That last was so true she could not argue. Think. Mother’s only chance is if I think. That’s what all the stories tell me. Even the least-smart heroes have to stop and consider.

Her hands were shaking, but she was able to move finally. Turning, thinking, looking, trying to keep panic at bay, the thought of her mother hurt or…or worse had to be kept out of her head.

The desk. Sitting on the desk was the recorder, a beautiful crystal and metal foldable sculpture which was also one of her mother’s best tools. The recorder was out! Maybe it recorded what happened!

Lalira pulled up one of the chairs, sat down, and touched the device’s right side.

Her mother—dark-brown haired, skin slightly darker, smiled out of the air before her, relaxing in the same chair Lalira was sitting in. “Notes for seven-fifteen, year of Arlavala, Cycle Seven Hundred Six. Work progressing pretty much the same as last week. Negotiations with Pondsparkle are going well; if I don’t make some terrible mistake they’ll probably be willing to help in the next excavation.” Mom seemed to glance out the window. “Lalira’s getting restless. She really seems serious about this Adventurer business, but I don’t know if she really understands what it will mean; I’ve tried to tell her but I just don’t know. And her problem with the Toads…” She shook her head. “I hope I made the right decisions. I can’t keep her home forever, but—”

From out of sight came a knocking sound. Her mother glanced up. “Come in!”

Sounds of the door opening and someone—or something—coming in. Mom stood up suddenly. “Oh, no,” she said quietly, with what sounded like a resigned tone in her voice, her fingers absently making the simple cutoff gesture.

“Hells,” Lalira cursed. “Why couldn’t you have left it on, Mom?” But she knew the answer; Mom made a habit of shutting it off whenever she left the desk.

“Stop wishing for what isn’t,” she answered herself, quoting Willowind Forestfist. “Instead, look to understand what is.” The quotes, the thoughts of other heroes, comforted her, let her pretend to be one of them instead of a terrified fourteen-year-old girl.

Search for clues. Whoever did this, they came in the door. Mom fought them. I see smears of dirt from outside—from feet or boots I can’t tell, it’s just wide and spread everywhere.

The dirt gave her an idea; the soil was always damp, and the smears showed at least one of the invaders had stepped in it.

She went to the door, looking down, and almost instantly she saw the footprint.

A huge, webbed footprint.

The footprint of a Toad.

ii.

Lalira became aware that she had been standing there, trembling with terror and fury, for long, long minutes; the sun had set, darkness was starting to settle over the Forest Sea.

I even helped one of them! I fought myself and helped that little Toad out of the spinesnarl!

The anger at the betrayal—that she had managed to overcome her unreasoning fear of the bulging-eyed, wide-mouthed creatures, and now found there was reason to fear and hate them—galvanized her to action. Cold reason and focus will guide you to justice and vengeance, she remembered from Three Against Shadows.

Kneeling by the print, she touched the earth. Not merely damp, but still crumbling spontaneously around the edge. Very fresh. They might have been here the same time she was rescuing their miniature relative. No blood, or not much. No body. They took Mom, but they didn’t kill her. I’ve got a chance to rescue her!

She forced herself to stop two strides down the path. “No,” she said. “Even a spinesnarl cut me a little while ago. I can’t go after things that can move around like Toads without defenses.”

There was really only one possible place to look. Her mother hadn’t let her get armor or real weapons yet, and Mom’s must have been on her—or the Toads had taken them as a precaution.

But Dad’s old equipment might still be here.

Her father had been lost years ago—probably, Lalira admitted to herself, one of the reasons Mom didn’t want her daughter following the Adventurer’s path, even if she went to the Academy first. His best stuff had disappeared with him. But the trunk was still there, in her mother’s room, under the bed.

It was locked. And she knew her mother had the only key.

“Hells and Hells again!” She kicked the steel-bound wood. This proved futile, and she spent the next minute hopping around the room cursing at the agony in her toe before she decided it wasn’t quite broken after all.

“Okay, Lalira, think!” she said. “Mithras Silverstar wouldn’t let this stop her.”

Mithras was, however, favored of Terian, so that gave her a bit of an advantage Lalira lacked. “Got to get this open.”

She smacked her forehead. “Stupid!”

The forest knife was long and keen, slightly enchanted. She forced it into the narrow crack that separated the top of the chest from the bottom. The lock’s the weak point; the hinges are thick and strong and there’s no way I’m taking them off.

She worked the blade down until it stopped, presumably against the catch of the lock, then started wriggling and prying. Come on, come on! She strained upward, pulling, levering—

SNAP!

For an instant she felt rising triumph—and then she realized that it had not been the lock, but her blade snapping.

“Gods, no!” She barely restrained another kick of sheer disbelif. The knife was enchanted. How could the lock have …

“Must be a magical seal,” a little voice said from behind her.

Lalira whirled, the stump of the forestknife held out, pointing with shaking fury and fear at…

A small Toad, sitting on the windowsill.

As soon as that registered, she lunged. “Monsters! Traitors! Where’s my mommy?!”

“Hey! Whoa! Aaaaaa!” the little Toad said, the last a tiny scream as he plummeted off the second floor windowsill.

Lalira stuck her head out, to see the small animal shaking off the dirt into which it had fallen. “What’s wrong with you?” it demanded, pointing up.

“You! You took my mommy! I mean, not you, but ...you! Them!”

It tilted its head, which was close to tilting most of its body. “I don’t know what you mean! You rescued me, and now I come to say thank-you and you start hacky-slashy on me!”

Lying little thing, Lalira thought. She was sure it had been spying on her, watching what she did now that she’d gotten home.

But the inner voice answered calmly, Then why did it speak at all? Why call attention to itself?

Slowly she lowered the broken blade. “You…don’t know what happened?”

“No,” the little Toad said. “I got here a few minutes ago and heard noises coming from that room, so I climbed up to see if it was you.”

Even a monster can be an ally, if you treat it as one, Cillerion Somari’s imagined voice reminded her.

Lalira forced herself to put the knife down. “Then…I’m sorry. I…my mother is gone. It looks… like Toads took her.”

“What?” There was no mistaking the disbelief in the creature’s voice.

“Look at the entrance! Look in my house, then you tell me!” She knew that she wasn’t sounding apologetic, but…

“Okay, okay, don’t bounce on my head. I’ll look. You still need to get that chest open?”

She looked over her shoulder. “Yes… but if that’s a warded lock—”

“—then the weak point is the rest of the chest,” the little Toad said. “Try an axe, unless the stuff inside’s fragile.”

She found herself staring openmouthed after the creature for a few seconds before she recovered. “How stupid can I be?” she asked herself. “No, I don’t want to answer that.”

The chopping axe was in the lean-to outside the main house. She ran downstairs and out the back door, grabbed it, and pelted up the stairs—snagging her right foot on the steps. The axe flew gracefully into the air, spinning with the slow deliberation of a falling tree in her fear-heightened perceptions as she smacked into the stairs, and it finished a second full rotation as the blade thunked down bare inches in front of her face.

Lalira waited for her heart to slow and the throbbing ache of her face where it had hit the stairs faded slightly. Then—much more carefully—she yanked the axe out of the wood and finished going upstairs. You’ve just started growing again. You’re clumsy because of that. Remember!

She swung the axe up and aimed for the wooden sections between the iron bindings. If the chest itself were enchanted, well…

But it wasn’t, and the shining blade bit deep. Another stroke and another, and suddenly she was through. A glint of blued steel was visible.

“You’re right,” said the subdued voice of the small Toad.

She managed not to jump, but the next stroke of the axe bounced uselessly from one of the iron straps. “About…?” she asked, then almost wanted to slap herself for the inane question.

“Toads. I don’t understand why, but you read the tracks right. Four, five big Toads came, dragged her off—after a fight.”

“I… see.” She finished chopping, getting herself under control; finally the shattered top broke off.

She lost no time getting into the shimmering chain shirt with the bridge-and-sword worked into the chest and the long, long arms with the clever slap-and-catch arrangement on the sleeves, the one Father had shown her, and her mother had let her practice with since she had been very small. It was still awfully large on her and, until she managed to get the sleeves to catch properly, they brushed the floor. The helm was way too big and she had to find cloth she could pad it with, but when she was done it at least sat on her head well. The Crystal Breath was there, with the glittering blue-violet of the Vor-nahal in the center; it fit snugly around her throat.

The weapons and the other pieces of armor… She shook her head. She could manage the combat-dance well enough, but Father’s weapons were too heavy and she couldn’t fit the other pieces at all. As it was…

The grunting cheeping noise was suddenly, obviously laughter. “Will you stop that!”

The little Toad tried, but still swelled like it was going to explode. “You… look like—”

“Don’t even, you… hey, what’s your name?”

The question at least distracted the Toad. “What? Oh, I’m Mudswimmer. No choice-name yet.”

Giving a name to the Toad made him, somehow, marginally less frightening. And he was awfully small. “Okay. I’m Lalira Revyne.”

“I know. Everyone knows about your mom and you in Pondsparkle.”

She didn’t even want to think about Pondsparkle. Instead, she remembered Tarl Tarlsson’s famous quote about preparing for battle against uncounted legions of evil: “Uncounted? In that case, have lunch now, then go conquer evil; this could take all day.”

She looked at Mudswimmer as he followed, finding it a little easier to look at him. “I have to grab something to eat quick, and some other supplies, then figure out where I’m going.” He bounced his understanding and followed her into the kitchen. “So… you have no idea why a bunch of Toads would come take my mom?”

“No, not a…” Mudswimmer froze. “Oh. She was digging in the fallen ruins. And…”

“And? Don’t stop!”

“There’s been a rumor of a few of us that don’t follow Blackwart the Great, but one of the Demons. The Demon of Water, Balgoltha.”

iii.

Her head hurt and her eyes were closed and she felt dizzy, shaky, and someone was asking her if she was all right. She opened her eyes slowly.

A huge wide-mouthed face loomed over her. She screamed in horror and rolled feebly away, into a rack of pots and pans that cascaded down on her with multiple echoing crashes, one bouncing off the helmet and almost hitting Mudswimmer, who ducked and then hid underneath the largest pot, peering out warily.

What… oh. I must have fainted? Embarrassment warred with confusion. Then slowly memory rose back, and she knew what horror had felled her, and she was no longer embarrassed. She wanted to curl into a tiny ball and hide, wait until the memory went away.

But her mother was still gone, and her heroes would not lie on the kitchen floor hiding. Lalira was still sick and frightened, but she forced herself to sit up, ignoring the dizziness that assailed her. “Sorry, Mudswimmer,” she said quietly, then managed to get to her feet. “It was… that name.”

She remembered the water coalescing before her, rising upward in a black mass, opening great, bulging eyes and smiling a horrific, hungry smile wide enough to swallow the world, and she swayed, catching hold of the edge of the table.

“You…met him, then.” Mudswimmer’s voice held shock and dawning understanding. “In the form he takes in fresh waters. That’s why…”

“Yes,” she forced out. “That’s why. Father…we weren’t alone. Father, Mother, and their friends saved me, drove him back, but it almost…”

“Your mother and father had some…impressive friends,” he said with awe. “Then you know enough. Most of us wouldn’t do anything like that, but any creatures that can choose…”

“… can choose evil. These rumors,” she forced herself to go on, not thinking about the meaning, “do they say where these people might hide themselves?”

“Has to be not far from Pondsparkle. Hidden from eyesight, hard to sense by magic or other methods.”

Lalira frowned in thought. He’s right. Has to be near. They dragged Mommy off; even four or five of them couldn’t hop very far carrying her—she’s not small, and they’re not built to carry people.

But it couldn’t be right near her house. Her mother had surveyed everything nearby, and Lalira had gone with her most places, quite a way into the Forest Sea and all the way along the—

She paused, the piece of bread she’d cut halfway to her mouth. Oh. “They could be anywhere along the shore, though.”

Mudswimmer made a rude noise. “Oh, I’m stupid! Of course. Dragged her to the lake, then wherever they had to go.”

Still…even the Toads had a fair amount of magic, and their priests would have support from their god. How could something like that be hidden so nearby, unless…

“Mudswimmer,” she said slowly, “the Rainbow Mountain… It’s made of prismglitter, isn’t it?”

“Well, not all made of it, but it’s got a lot of sheeratilna, as the Saurans call it. Whole ridge that comes up from—” His jaw suddenly hung open. “Oh. Ohhhh, yes, that makes sense!”

“A cave under the mountain!” The Rainbow Mountain was really more a big hill—a few hundred feet high—but it sparkled like a gem because it was mostly a mass of prismglitter, a very magical stone that could drastically interfere with magic if you weren’t attuned to it. A perfect hiding place for a secret cult.

“That’s bad,” Mudswimmer said as she tore into the bread and devoured some leftover hopclaw from the coldbox. “I mean, the entrance will be across the lake, and underwater. You can’t—”

She smiled, and started to feel a tiny trickle of hope as she tapped the gem at her throat. “The Crystal Breath,” she said. “Let’s me breathe anywhere—even deep underwater.”

Mudswimmer hopped up on the table to look; while he still made her nervous, the motion didn’t make her flinch. “But in armor you’ll have to walk on the bottom. I can’t stay down that long—and it’s up to a hundred, hundred fifty feet deep. Plus, the Burning Waters…”

He might make her nervous, but she needed all the help she could get. “If you stay on my shoulder, you’ll be in the air-bubble, too.”

“And finding our way across? In the dark underwater?”

She bit her lip. The thought was terrifying…but she still had to do it. She remembered the Wanderer, diving to the Troll-caves though he was afraid of the water itself. “That ridge of prismglitter—it’s the boundary between the Burning Water and the rest of the lake. If we follow it…”

Mudswimmer bounced slightly. “I…guess that would work. If we don’t boil, or get eaten by something that likes the deeper water.”

“I can’t go around the lake,” she said. “One way goes through the Forest Sea for miles, and the other—”

“Through our city. I know.” He took a deep breath, swelling slightly, and then deflating again. “Well, get what you need. I guess we’re going for a very soggy walk.”

iv.

She strode through the black water, the glow of the lightglobe showing her the path, a glittering rainbow in the darkness.

Well, that was how she’d imagined it, anyway.

“Ow!”

“What did you expect? Little boats, pieces of trees, dead fish and armorfangs, they all end up on the bottom! And where are we? On the bottom!”

“This is a fishing line!”

“Oh, drought. You’re tangled in it.” Mudswimmer took a deep breath and dove into the water to help detach the hook.

“People should clean up after themselves!” she shouted into the black around her.

Black was an understatement for the water. She’d thought the forest was dark at night? It was practically daylight compared to this. And murky! The lightglobe barely gave her ten feet of vision, and it was as bright as she could make it.

This deep—seventy or more feet down—the water was cooler, except when swirls of hot, even murkier water jetted around her from the Burning Waters on the other side of the ridge, filling her nostrils with the scent of sulfur and death. She shuddered; they’d once slid down the wrong side of the ridge and heard the squeals and moans and rumbling of the boiling springs coming closer, the heat of the water rising; she’d barely stopped their descent in time, close enough to one vent to feel it vibrating the water around them.

She felt the snag suddenly let go and Mudswimmer emerged back onto her shoulder; to her surprise she found it almost comforting. “Hook’s out.”

She carefully unwound herself, then continued. The good thing about walking this close to the Burning Waters was that even the predators—the giant water-beetles called armorfangs, the great reptilian nerestis, and others—avoided the area. They’d seen a few shadows in the water at a couple of points, but nothing had tried to close the distance.

She ducked under a bare, rotting tree-branch and carefully edged her way over the trunk. Her ears popped as she moved on—but this felt different. “I think we’re going up!”

“I think you’re right.” The little Toad squinted. “Hold on, let me scout ahead.”

She leaned against the rotting trunk and waited, trying not to look in all directions at once. As long as she was moving, as long as she was focused on a task, she could keep the fear at bay, but alone in this murky void, her imagination became all too adept at translating every shift in current, every drifting cloud, as an approaching monster.

She almost screamed when something moved in front of her, before she realized it was Mudswimmer.

“Definitely coming to the shore. We’re almost to the Rainbow Mountain, so if you’re right about the caves, they should be somewhere off to our left. Not too far down, either.”

“What about my light?”

“Better dim it once we get to the surface. We’ll go along the shore carefully and I’ll check below for caves.”

“Won’t they notice you?”

He shrugged. “I’m tiny. Me and my cousin Duckweed are about the smallest Toads anyone’s seen in centuries. They don’t even notice us when we’re in the city. In the dark, underwater? No.”

“Well, you just be careful.” She realized she might be afraid of Toads in general, but she didn’t want anything to happen to Mudswimmer. Maybe that’s one good thing coming out of this. If we live through it. “Are you…well, you know I’ll probably have to fight some of…”

“If they’re following Bal…” He halted before pronouncing the name. “Er, that Demon, they’re bad people. It’s okay.”

As she emerged from the water, she dimmed the globe and put it away. Weight dragged at her, and the armor seemed three times as heavy. But I’ll need it.

It suddenly struck her how crazy this was. One lone girl and a tiny toad trying to find—and then, what, invade and conquer?—a whole nest of demon-worshipping cultists. But she couldn’t wait—who knew what was happening to Mommy now—and the only source of help…

She bit off a curse at her weakness and moved on, trying to make as little noise as possible.

Mudswimmer suddenly popped back up. “You were right! Cave entrance just below that big boulder up ahead. And I see a faint light farther in, so you should be able to just drop down and go in. No guard in the water.”

“This is it.” She looked at the boulder, then down, taking a deep breath of her own. “Look, Mudswimmer—you don’t have to come any farther.”

“Yes, I do,” he said quietly. “I know I’m small, but I’m the only help you’ve got.”

She swallowed. “O-okay. Thanks.”

She dropped through the clearer water here below the Rainbow Mountain. At ten feet, she felt the rock wall bend inward, and a dim, dim light was visible, rippling slightly, showing there was air not far away.

And then, moving against the dim light, a massive, lumpy shadow whose outline made her shiver. Mudswimmer’s one thing, but that…that Toad’s…probably five feet long. Outweighs me too, I’m sure.

Mudswimmer tugged on her collar.

“Yes, I see.” She could tell by the outline that the big creature was watching the entrance. If I try to come up right in front of him, he’ll be able to attack, or sound the alarm, before I’m all the way out of the water. I have to hit him hard before he can…but how?

Your companions are your greatest weapons, she remembered Mithras Silverstar saying. Lalira didn’t want to risk her only ally…but if she wasn’t willing to let him do anything, why have him come along at all?

“Mudswimmer, can you distract him somehow? Get him looking away from the pool long enough for me to at least get all the way out of the water?”

The little Toad scrunched his face up in a comical expression that managed to get a tiny smile on her face. “Well…I think so. But won’t you be all waterlogged?”

She tapped the chain shirt. “Adventurer’s gear—my father’s. Keeps you as dry and comfortable as possible.”

“Ooh. Good. Okay, here I go!”

Mudswimmer darted to one side and practically vanished in the shadows at the edge of the tunnel, moving up. Even though she knew where he was, she could barely make him out, and realized that he meant to try to go around the guard.

When the large shadow suddenly shifted and turned, she knew it was her turn. For an instant she couldn’t move; the shadowy shape was too close, too close to memory and fear.

But Mudswimmer’s up there!

The thought of someone depending on her broke the paralysis, and she lunged from the water, getting her feet under her and dropping the sleeves to their full length.

The huge Toad spun, eyes narrowing—and then widened, snorting in mirth.

She felt her face burn; she knew what he saw: a dripping-wet, skinny girl with sleeves scraping the floor like a toddler in her father’s clothes, a huge helmet three sizes too big, padded with whatever could fit, and no weapons to be seen.

But at the same time that gave her the chance. She leapt and spun.

The weighted sleeve smashed into the Toad, bludgeoning it as effectively as a small mace, sending it staggering back; a second step of the combat dance and the other sleeve traced a graceful arc up and an implacable path downward, hammering the creature so hard that its flat, broad chin was driven to the stone beneath.

“Blackwart’s Breath!” Mudswimmer stared in horrified disbelief as the big Toad went limp, unconscious, maybe dead.

She pointed to the long, black-edged spear that had fallen from the thing’s hand. “It would have done worse to us.”

Mudswimmer shook himself, then bounced in a subdued way. “Yes…yes, I guess you’re right.” He looked closer at the big Toad. “He’s still alive.” He glanced at her, an obvious question in his eyes.

If he wakes up before we get the rest of the way…but I can’t just kill something helpless. Even a Toad. She shook her head.

Mudswimmer looked relieved. “What now?”

“Now?” She pointed a shaking finger down the passageway. “No choice.”

Mudswimmer stayed on the floor and off to the side as they made their way along. For several minutes they moved—mostly noiselessly—along the corridor, and she began to hear something that sounded like the intonation of a chant or ritual.

“I think we—”

Three Toads suddenly leapt into view, spears leveled. “Far enough!”

She froze—both from the sudden confrontation and the realization that three-to-one, prepared, was beyond her ability to defeat, even if the center one was only the size of a bushel basket.

Mudswimmer was immobile, hidden in the shadows.

“No weapons?” one said disbelievingly.

“Maybe hidden. Search her, Stickrider. We’ll keep her still.”

What can I do? I can’t do this by myself, I—

She saw, from the corner of her eye, Mudswimmer still edging along the wall. If he can distract one… She suddenly remembered one of the few spells she did know. Maybe…

Stickrider was roughly patting her down, pulling and tugging on her clothes. “Here, a dagger hidden behind her. Otherwise, nothing.”

“Courageous… and a fool to enter here without weapons.” The smaller one was clearly the leader. “An additional sacrifice will be wel—”

Mudswimmer bounded onto the smaller one’s head, shoving his flat helm forward and over the bulging eyes.

At that moment, she whipped her hand towards the other Toad in front of her. He was out of range of even her long sleeves—but a faint reddish jet flickered from her hand, bridging the few additional feet, and he bellowed in agony as firespice materialized over his huge, golden eyes. At the same time she whirled her other sleeve backward; it only grazed Stickrider but separated her from him.

A few more seconds of desperate combat later, all three toads were also unconscious on the floor.

“We’ve got to move! Someone might have heard that!”

She ran forward now towards the chanting. Maybe I don’t have any chance, but I have no choice…and I’m not giving up.

She slammed into a pair of heavy doors, and they ground open.

Before her was a great room with a dozen or more Toads positioned around it… and in the center a gargantuan Toad, so huge and black that she almost fainted from looking, and below that Toad…

Her mother, seated on a carven-stone chair.

“Lalira Revyne,” the gigantic Toad said calmly. “Welcome. We have been waiting for you.”

v.

As she stood gaping, the great golden gaze shifted. “Mudswimmer? Your report?”

“We worked really well together,” the little toad said in a matter-of-fact tone. “She deduced our involvement, armed herself, and figured out many of the key clues on her own.”

“What… I don’t understand!” Lalira burst out. “Mother—”

“I’m sorry, Lalira,” her mother said, her voice filled with genuine regret. “But you did insist on what you wanted, and I didn’t want you to go unless I could be sure. And your problem with the Toads…”

“So we tested you,” said the great Toad.

“I almost killed some of your own people!” she said, so confused and angry she didn’t know who to take it out on, but knowing that this was wrong.

“Oh, mudbubbles! Do you think I didn’t expect that? The important word was ‘almost.’ And all those involved I promised to heal, or even bring back if the worst happened.”

“To bring back—who are you?!”

“I have a few names here and there, but most often simply Blackwart the Great.”

She stared openmouthed at the towering figure—so like, yet now that she could feel the power radiating from it, so utterly unlike, the one that had terrified her years ago. “You…the God of the Toads?”

“You wanted an Adventure. So did little Mudswimmer. I wanted a new emissary among you two-legged types. And here was a mother with a problem, asking for help.”

She glared in disbelief at her mother. “You—”

“I knew I couldn’t stop you, Lali,” her mother said softly. “Not unless I could prove to you that you weren’t Adventurer material. But after what happened to your father…and some of our other friends…I had to be sure you were. I’ve seen people with the dream but not the real heart die—or worse. The Great Toad offered me a chance to find out, and maybe not lose you in the process.”

Lalira was still shaking; the combat, facing so many Toads at once, her mother’s willingness to participate in this… “And did we find out?”

“We did,” Blackwart said, his voice so deep it shook the ground. “First, you intervened to save a helpless creature—though it was one you feared and were repelled by.”

“That was a trick?” she said, turning furiously on Mudswimmer.

“Well, yes and no. I really was trapped by the spinesnarl, and if you hadn’t helped me, I might have been killed.”

“Once you showed compassion,” Blackwart continued, “your mother’s kidnapping was staged. You were watched, and showed keen observation skills, a bit of clumsiness—” a chuckle ran around the room “—not out of place for either a toad or a young human, and, despite obvious fear, a determination to seek out and rescue your mother. You overcame your revulsion of my people and worked with Mudswimmer; you found weapons, and an interesting way to come to this hidden place. You further overcame your fear by daring to face us here, when you knew the danger. When given the chance to kill or not, you chose mercy. And, perhaps most importantly for a would-be Adventurer, when in danger you showed quick and inspired thinking. Tipstone will not forget staring into a fountain of spices soon, I think!”

Another ripple of laughter ran around the room, echoed even by Tipstone, who was entering from the passage, his huge eyes still swollen and watery. Lalira felt the shakes fading, replaced by wonder. I really did do all those things… and they were very real for me, even if it was a trick, sort of.

“At the same time, Mudswimmer showed he could withstand great pain and danger for the sake of another cause, could play a part with skill, and could find ways to assist others despite his small stature. He’s earned the right to a choice-name.” The Toad-God gave a broad smile that somehow did not seem at all the same as that of the Demonlord. “And you both endured a bit of looking ridiculous without allowing it to impair you, something which is more important than you might think.”

Lalira finally managed to smile up at Blackwart. “All right…I think I’m still a little mad at both of you…no, all three of you,” she said, looking at both her mother and Mudswimmer ”But…I guess I understand.”

“Then it is settled,” Blackwart said, and with that disappeared. His voice, however, continued to speak. “If it meets with your mother’s approval, that is.”

“What?”

Her mother came forward and embraced her, and—after a second—Lalira hugged back. “It means I won’t be seeing you for a while… because Blackwart himself is sponsoring you.”

“Sponsoring me…?” she felt a rising triumph warring with disbelief.

“And Mudswimmer—”

“Spinesnarl,” he said proudly, announcing a choice-name. “Spinesnarl Mudswimmer. Because that’s where it all started, for us, right?”

“Right,” she said, and suddenly it all burst in on her and she caught up the little Toad. “The Academy, Spinesnarl!” She tossed him up and caught him, laughing.

“We’re going to the Academy!”

Chimera

by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

There'd been a lot of shouting at that meeting -- well, there always was shouting at the meetings Farnch took 'him to. Wasn't no use saying he didn't wanna go, on account the shouting hurt his head -- Farnch just called him an auntie, and shoved him into the nearest wall. Then Jewl would yell, and punch Farnch, too, if he wasn't faster'n her fist, which wasn't nobody faster'n Jewl's fist -- and Farnch'd get mad, but even Farnch knew better'n to swing on Jewl, so he'd just get madder'n madder, 'til Darby's head was like to bust with it, and either Farnch'd go out with his crew, or Darby'd go up to the garden 'til either he could hear himself think, or the tips of his ears started to burn in the cold, or Jewl sent one of the twins up to bring him back inside.

Jewl'd been feelin' bad these last couple days, and he'd just managed to get her to sleep when Farnch'd come home, growling about how there was a meeting and it was up to him and Darby help take Surebleak back. . .and all the other kind o'nonsense Farnch was on about lately, him having a grudge against the New Bosses. Farnch, he'd been ambitious, under the Old Bosses. He'd been working all the angles there was, and some that, in Darby's personal opinion, didn't really exist, looking to get onto Boss Goyan's staff. Farnch's big plan was to work his way up to insurance man.

He'd've prolly made, too, Farnch being just that mean, but then what should happen but Boss Conrad come to Surebleak, just particularly to ruin Farnch's life. Least, that's the way Farnch felt about it, and there wasn't any way at all that Darby could change what his brother felt about having his life-plan ruined.

So, for the sake of Jewl's rest, and his own fragile head, Darby'd come along quiet to the meeting, and sat through the yelling and the hating, and the wanting to do something-or-someone a lot of hurt and harm.

That last, that was the worst. He could mostly ignore the yelling and the hating. . .well, that wasn't so bad when there were lots of folks. The feeling got. . .spread out, somehow. Hate was a lot harder to deal with, when it was concentrated in one person.

The bloodlust, though, that got scarier'n a sleet-storm, real fast. Killing rage multiplied in a crowd, until it overwhelmed every sane thought in the room.

Hadn't been so bad tonight; tonight being a planning meeting. There was gonna be a shooting competition at Sherman's, and all the New Bosses were gonna be there with their 'hands. The Streeters for Taking Back Surebleak committee -- that was what Farnch's friends called themselves, though Darby didn't see that Surebleak'd gone anywhere. Sure, there was the new people come in -- Liadens and suchlike -- but Surebleak was still right there under the boots where it'd always been, far's Darby knew about it. . .

Anyhow, the Streeters for Surebleak, they was thinking maybe to disrupt that shoot, and show the New Bosses a thing or three, and put the fear of winter into 'em.

So that was the meeting, and he'd lasted 'til it was over, pretty well pleased to've come out in good order, with only the tiniest headache, and his ears ringing with the shouting.

"Darb, we're going on down to Rogin's and talk about this some more. You coming?"

No, no. He knew 'way better'n drinkin' with Farnch and his friends and talking some more about real 'bleakers and how the foreigners had taken every good thing that'd ever been in everybody's hand, like they'd forgotten the way it had been, with the Old Bosses.

Like they'd liked the way it'd been, under the Old Bosses.

Well, and that was just it. The way he'd understood it, the couple times he couldn't think of an excuse not to go with Farnch's crew, was they had liked the old ways better. They were strong, and liked violence, too -- that was the difference between them and Darby. He could hold his own in a fight -- wouldn't lived long on the streets after their Dad died, if he hadn't learned that. Wasn't as fast as Jewl, nor not as big as Farnch, but he was quick, and he knew where to hit.

Didn't like to fight, that was all. 'specially didn't like to fight when there wasn't anything to fight about.

Farnch, though -- was waiting for an answer, and Darby was walking the thin line of making him look bad in front of his crew.

"Can't tonight," he said, managing to sound like he felt sad about that. "Gotta check on Jewl; see if she's any better."

"Right," said Farnch, who'd been pretty put out with having to make his supper outta twin-made soup and handwich. "Tell 'er I expect to see her fresh as a new fall tomorra."

Jewl wasn't likely to be up tomorrow, but there wasn't any use telling Farnch that. Always worked out better with Farnch, if he just discovered things when they happened, 'stead of giving him to time to work up a mad.

So.

"I'll tell her," Darby said, and nodded to his brother's crew before he headed on down the street.

"Brother ain't real keen?" he heard Vesti ask. It'd be Vesti. Always making trouble, that girl.

"He's in," Farnch said, his voice getting thinner as the crew headed off in the opposite direction. "No doubt there. M'sister's been sick, is all, and he worries over her like she was our Ma."

In point of actual fact, Darby didn't remember their Ma all that sharp; she'd already been sick when he'd come along. Jewl'd been there from the first; Jewl'd had the raising of him, Jewl and Dad, 'til Dad got made a zample. Jewl'd got pregnant right after -- 'nother kind of zample-making, which was something he wasn't s'posed to know, and Jewl didn't never talk about. That got 'em the twins, and Jewl'd been first-minded to toss 'em into the snow. He worked with her on that, just putting weight and warm on what Gran Delaros said when she come to check in, which she'd done three, five times a day, at first, when Jewl wouldn't get up, and turned her face into the pillow when the twins was brought to suck. It took some time, it took some work, but the talk about snowbanks melted away, and she'd cuddle 'em a little when they sucked, and started in to play with them, and to pick 'em up, instead of leaving that to Darby or to Gran -- Farnch, he'd been out with his crew, mostly, 'round then, him needing to stablish his space on the sidewalk. . .

"Alien! I'm gonna stomp you inta paste you little --"

The voice was loud, and slurred, coming from the street on Darby's left. There was the sound of meat hitting meat, and a soft cry, then another yell -- and Darby was running, not away from the fight, which woulda been sensible, but toward it.

Darby recognized the big guy -- Pablo Gerstein, who'd been Boss Goyan's insurance man -- the guy Farnch'd planned to throw outta his job. Now Goyan'd gotten retired, Pablo, he'd kinda retired, too, bullying the local bartenders into giving him drinks, and staying just a little drunk, and a lot belligerent, all the time.

Nowadays, he got his money by beating up 'streeters less able with their fists, or less willing to give -- or take -- damage, than he was.

Tonight, he had his mark pushed up into a corner -- Darby had a fast glimpse of a short, slender figure, ducking not quite out of the way of Pablo's fist, and then he was on it, grabbing the big man by the elbow, and spinning him around with a yell.

"You bastid!" Pablo shouted. "Better get the sleet outta here, or I'll --"

Darby swung, taking advantage of the big man's chancy balance, to land a good one on his jaw.

That sent him staggering, but punches weren't the way to take Pablo down. Even a hard strike to the skull didn't always do the trick; years of drinking had given him a head as hard as a paving stone.

The big man'd already recovered, and was coming in swinging with his ham fists. Darby ducked inside the other's reach, got a good chest punch in, and turned his head to yell at the mark, who was still standing in that corner.

"Run!"

Well, that was a mistake. Pablo's fist came outta nowhere, and the next thing Darby was seeing was snowflakes, in real pretty colors, and feeling the wall against his back.

Pablo was so mad, he didn't have any more words; he was still fighting, though -- roaring and all his attention on Darby.

Desperately, Darby pushed himself away from the wall -- and there was a flash of motion between him and Pablo, a short, slight figure that seemed to skate over the surface of the street, hand striking high, foot striking low. Darby heard something go crunch, Pablo screamed and -- fell over.

"Sleet and thunder!" Darby yelled. He dashed forward, grabbed the little guy by the arm and dragged him in his wake.

"C'mon! Run while he's down!"

Half a block away, Darby felt the little guy kind of stagger under his hand, and caught a spike of pain. He slowed, shifting his grip to give the boy some support under the elbow.

"Hey," he said, breathless, "you OK?"

The street was dark, but there was a little spill from the sign over Greenlie's Dry Goods, enough to see a thin face behind a long snarl of reddish brown hair, bruises already rising along a high, fragile cheek. Dark eyes looked at him straightly, brows pulled against that little burn of pain.

"You OK?" Darby asked again. "My place is just another block down. Can you walk that far? I don't think Pablo's gonna be chasing after us. That knee must hurt where you kicked him."

"Indeed," the voice was light, and somewhat unsteady. "If I remembered my. . .lessons, that knee. . .cap is crushed. Pablo will require a physician."

Something flickered over his face -- another sort of pain, Darby caught -- and that fast, it was gone.

"I am Kez Rel ter'Ista Clan Wilkin," he said. "I thank you for your. . .timely assistance." He paused, and Darby felt the shiver go through him. "What is your name, sir?"

"Darby Bajek, and I ain't a sir. Just Darby's good. You OK to walk down to my place?"

"There is no need for you to trouble yourself further. I will continue to my lodgings."

Darby eyed him, seeing the wobble in the knees, and feeling the flicker of pain, and something else, around the pain. He wanted a closer look at that, but first things first. The boy needed to sit down and collect himself, else he was gonna fall over onto his pointy little nose.

"'less your lodging's right next door here, you're better coming with me. Get you cleaned up, something to settle you -- my nephew made a big pot o'soup for our supper. Sure was good, and I'm betting there's still a cup left for you. While you're having that, we'll get you a taxi to the lodging."

Darby paused, considering. He didn't get the feeling that Kestrel Terista was afraid; sensibly wary maybe covered it. Still, couldn't hurt to say it out, plain.

"Won't hurt you."

He heard the sharp intake of breath, saw the eyes widen, maybe in insult -- and then a wry smile.

"Thank you. . .Darby. I will come with you, and call a taxi."

"That's the ticket. Just right this way."

He thought about offering an arm to lean on, remembered that half-gasp of insult and bit his tongue. He did set a slow pace, though, down the street, toward home.

Ean opened up a crack, took in Kestrel Terista with one wide blue stare, and stepped back to fling the door open.

"Farnch?" he asked, when they were inside, and he had pushed the door to, but not locked it, yet.

"Down Rogin's with the crew," Darby told him. "This is Kestrel Terista, E. He got on Pablo's bad side. Kestrel, this is my nephew, Ean, E for short. He'll show you where to get cleaned up."

There was a weighted silence from his side, and he turned to look at his guest. The right side of his face was swollen and starting to go purple; his eye just a dark slit. The left side showed smooth, gold-colored skin, and a well-opened dark brown eye, just at the moment staring right at him.

Darby concentrated, and caught something like humor and aggravation twisted around together, 'til it was hard to feel one from t'other.

"If I done something wrong, you're gonna hafta tell me what it was so I can make it right," he said. "Only thing I can say is, I don't mean to offend. We're maybe not quite what you're used to, here."

Humor bloomed, and the thin mouth curved slightly upward.

"That is very true -- for both of us, I think. Thank you for your care, Darby. I am pleased to meet your nephew." He inclined his head, carefully, as Darby read it, in E's direction.

"Was it you who made the supper-soup?"

"Nah, that was Peor. I made the handwiches." Ean cocked his head to one side. "We got some o'both left over, if you need something to eat, after you wash your face."

"Thank you. A cup of soup would be. . .welcome."

"'k, then. C'mon this way, so you can wash up. . ." E led Kestrel down the hall toward the lav.

Peor came in from the kitchen side, looking worried.

"How's Jewl?" Darby asked.

Peor's worry was like a snowfog, clammy and chill.

"She was cold, and wanted another blanket," he said. "I brought her the one off our bed, but she was still cold, so I got your blanket, too, and our winter coats." He took a breath.

"We tried to get her to eat some soup, but she didn't want it. E got 'er to drink some warm water, and then she said her head hurt. I sat with 'er while E did his book work. He came to switch out with me when she was just back asleep. We looked in a couple times, but she was still sleeping."

Darby shivered; felt Peor's worry spike.

"You did good," Darby said, and smiled. "I'll go check on her now. You hear we got a visitor?"

Peor nodded. "We still got plenty dinner, like E said. Darb?"

"Yeah."

"Is Kestrel Liaden?"

"Pretty sure so, why?"

"Maybe better get him outta here 'fore Farnch comes home?"

Before Farnch came home after a full night drinking with his friends, and telling over all the wrongs that Liadens had put onto them.

"Yeah. Whyn't you zip down to Miz Prestoro's and call for a taxi? Oughta be here by the time he finishes his soup."

"All right," Peor said. And, "Is Ma gonna be all right, Darb? She was. . .she was crying, that's how cold she was."

Jewl never cried. Never. Not even the night she come home beat up and bleeding and all her nails and a couple fingers broke.

Darby controlled his own shiver, and gave Peor a nod.

"I'll go in and check on her. You two take care of Kestrel."

Peor nodded, and turned toward the door.

Darby went down the hall, to his sister's room.

He eased the door open, so's not to wake her, if she was still sleeping. The room lamp was on in the corner, with a towel thrown over it to dim the glare and to ease Jewl's aching head.

He didn't see her, at first, just the pile of blankets and winter coats in the center of the bed. Then he saw a movement, as his eyes adjusted -- a tiny constant movement of that mountain of cloth.

Shivering.

He crossed the room and knelt by her bed, reaching beneath the blankets to find her, the while feeling. . .feeling. . .

. . .absent, cold, so cold, and all his thought was focused on how to get her warm, if this wasn't enough.

His questing hand found hers, like ice.

A sound -- a whimper -- and he'd've never in his whole life heard Jewl make any such sound.

Carefully, he peeled back the edge of the blankets until he found her face, flushed, and damp, and when he put his hand across her forehead, burning hot.

There was a fever going 'round; Mister Warchiski, who worked at the clinic, he'd told him about it, two, three weeks ago.

"Summer flu," Mister Warchiski'd said, and added, like an afterthought, "nasty one."

Darby stroked Jewl's hair back from her face; it was soaked, like she'd just come outta the shower.

He needed help, he thought carefully, Jewl needed help. Clinic -- but he didn't want to move her, sick as she was and maybe infectious, too. Call, then. Maybe the clinic had a travelling doctor.

Darby got to his feet, pulled the covers back over his sister, and left her, moving fast. Kitchen first, where Kestrel sat at their table, clean and neat, his hair combed and braided, and tied off with a piece of twine. There was still that little hot-spot of pain, wound around with whatever it was, but Darby didn't have time for that now.

"Kestrel, you gotta go," he said, which was maybe too abrupt, but there was Jewl back there in bed, freezing and burning at the same time.

Kestrel raised his head, and gave him a sharp look out of his one open eye.

"Immediately?" he asked.

"Yeah. I'm sorry. Maybe Miz Prestoro'll let you wait for the taxi at her place. Peor went down to call it, so shouldn't be long. But you gotta go now. I'm real sorry, but my sister's sick, worse'n I thought."

Kestrel put the cup down, and rose from the table.

"Take me to her," he said, briskly.

Darby shook his head.

"Not smart. She's gotta a fever; prolly contagious."

"Yes, that's very possible. However, I may be able to help."

Darby blinked at him, seeing E sitting stiff at the table, his face white and his eyes wide.

"Help? How can you help?"

Kestrel was seen to sigh.

"I am a physician," he said, and stepped around the table, reaching out to pick up his jacket as he came. "Please. Take me to your sister."

Kestrel had taken an instrument case from inside his jacket, and opened it on the table next to Jewl's bed. He took a long moment to examine each object, his tension palpable, but not overstrong. Likewise, his relief upon finding his instruments undamaged was perfectly clear, without being overwhelming.

"Please, if you will pull the blankets back?" Kestrel said. "I would not wish to distress her with a stranger's touch, when she has kin by her."

"Sure."

Darby came to the opposite side of the bed, and eased the covers back, until he'd uncovered her to the waist. Her face was white, with fire-red splotches high on her cheekbones; her hair was a soggy snarl across the pillow.

"Enough," murmured Kestrel. "Hold her hand, and sit, so she will see you, if she should wake."

Darby sat on the bed and took his sister's hand, twining their fingers together as he felt for her -- but all he got was a sort of vast weariness.

"I don't think she'll wake up," he told Kestrel. "She's just. . .really tired."

"Thank you. Please tell me if that state alters. I will now take her measurements -- blood pressure, temperature, respiration."

Ean and Peor were watching from the door, so tense that he Darby felt he might start crying himself. He tried not to pay attention; focusing his concentration on Jewl.

Concentration and calm -- that was what spilled from Kestrel, like a cool, bracing breeze. Darby breathed in some of that cool competence, and felt it settle his nerves, while the examination proceeded.

"How does she fare? Does she wake?"

"No. . .'bout the same. Just. . .too tired even to dream."

Kestrel sighed, and turned back to his case.

"As you know, she -- what is her name, your sister?"

"Jewl."

"Jewl," he repeated, like he was tasting the sound. "Jewl has a high fever; her blood pressure is elevated; her white blood count is elevated. These things indicate that she is fighting an infection."

"The summer flu," Darby said.

"That is how they name it at the clinic, yes. Now, I have something -- a small injection -- that will bring the fever to a less dangerous level. She will rest easier. I would not disturb her tonight. Tomorrow, she must be taken to the clinic, so that she may be more thoroughly diagnosed and treated. Call, and they will send the clinic taxi, so that the opportunity for infecting others is lessened. Do you understand this? I wish to be clear."

"Understood," Darby said.

"Good. I will administer the injection." He did that, and returned the injector and the rest of his instruments to the case.

"Someone ought to stay with her," he said, slowly. "If she wakes and asks for food, she may take some of Peor's good soup. Tea, or water -- warm, or tepid, not cold." He sighed again, and seemed to sag where he stood. Darby felt a wave of pain-laced weariness flow from him, and, unthinking, reached out to ease the pain, and instill a little burst of energy.

Kestrel looked up, lips parted, as if he were going to say something.

But whatever he was about to say was cut off by the sound of the door opening, and a heavy, uncertain tread in the main room.

"Hey!" Farnch called, voice slurred. "Where's everybody?"

Peor and Ean ran out, meaning, so Darby felt, to turn Farncher toward the kitchen.

"Put on your jacket," Darby said to Kestrel, as he got up from Jewl's bed, and pulled the covers back up to cover her shoulders. "Stay behind me. Sounds like my brother had one beer too many. Gets feisty. I'll take you down to Miz Prestoro's. Taxi oughta been here by now."

"Sleet, no, I don' wanany o'that slop. I want real food. Where's Jewl? In bed already? Get 'er up and tell 'er I gotta have something to eat."

"Ma's sick," Peor said, voice shrill with worry. "She's gotta sleep."

"Sick, is it? She can go back to bed after she gets me something to eat."

It wasn't cool competence Kestrel was feeling now; it was outright alarm, though not, as Darby parsed it for himself. He was worried for his patient.

Darby wanted to tell him that they'd settle Farnch, and keep him away from Jewl, but there was the main room coming up, and the door, and Farnch just to one side of it, listing a little as he yelled at Peor.

Darby took a breath, and walked firmly toward the door.

Farnch spun, staggered, caught sight of Kestrel, and froze.

"Liaden," he said, flat-voiced and suddenly sounding stone sober.

Darby stopped, keeping his body between Kestrel and his brother.

"Liaden," Farnch said again, and lurched one step forward, roaring fit to wake all the neighbors.

"You cow-eyed auntie! Screwing a sleet-scarred Liaden in my own house? Or, no, wait -- it's Jewl, ain't it? Sleeping, is it? I'll damn well make sure she's sleeping!"

He lunged, and Darby felt his brother's intent to strike out, at him, at Kestrel, and Jewl -- and that intention of his brother's, it. . .set fire to something inside him. He didn't know what it was, and he sure didn't know what to do with it. . .

. . .except to strike out, and strike down, and stop Farnch right now!

Fire seared through him. He saw his brother stagger, and crumble to his knees, before his own sight went grey, then black, and he hit the floor hard.

A sharp smell filled his head, and he sat up, choking, his eyes running with tears.

"See, there," Kestrel said, to the twins, who were leaning over his shoulders, where he knelt there on the floor at Darby's side. "He is well, your Uncle Darby. He may have a headache. I understand that this is sometimes a result of such strikes, but he will do very well."

Darby sat up, looking into Kestrel's one good eye, but reading nothing there. The cool flow of calmness was back, wonderfully bracing.

"Farnch?" he said, his voice hoarse, and his head still filled with the stinging scent.

"Most soundly asleep," Kestrel said promptly. "I detected no harm done. I would suggest that he be left where he is until he wakes."

He used his chin to point to the left. Darby looked, and there was Farnch, stretched out full length on his back, snoring away.

He looked back to the twins.

"Getcher Uncle Fancher a blanket, right?"

"Right," E said, and ran down the hall to Fancher's room, and the only bed in the house that hadn't given its blankets to Jewl.

Kestrel sat back on his heels, and stowed the little vial inside his jacket.

"I would like to talk with you," Kestrel said, "when we have both rested and recovered." He had a card between his fingers; and held it out. Darby took it, gingerly, never taking his eyes from Kestrel's tired, bruised face.

"Call me, please, and let us meet for tea and -- and chernubia --" a wry smile. "See how I am tired? I lose my Terran. I mean. . .dessert. Will you do this?"

"Yes," Darby said. "I'll do that."

"Good." Kestrel stood, and leaned down, offering a wiry hand.

Darby took it and climbed inelegantly to his feet.

"You should find your bed," Kestrel said. "My friend Peor has offered his escort to Ms Prestoro."

"All right," Darby said. He felt slow, and stupid, and out on his feet. "Good-night."

"Good-night," Kestrel said, and followed Peor out the door.

Darby stood there, feeling blank, until E came back with a blanket and threw it over Farnch.

"You better hit the bed," he said, looking at Darby critically. "Peor an' me'll watch Ma."

He nodded.

"If she looks like getting worse, you call me," he said.

"Deal," said Ean, and Darby nodded again, and walked unsteadily down the hall to his bed.

* * *

Ander's Sweet Shop was just a block away from the clinic, and in the not-so-far-away past he'd've had to pay a toll to get across that street, if the tollkeepers let him through at all, which wasn't all that certain a thing, Boss Goyan and Boss Rinehart not bein' what you'd call best friends.

Today, it was just zackly as easy as crossing the empty street -- empty 'cause almost everybody'd gone to the big shootout at Sherman's -- and walking down to the door under the bright yellow awning.

Darby walked slow, trying to get himself in order, though why he should be in disorder was a puzzle all its own. He wanted to see Kestrel again -- it'd been seven days since the night they'd met. Jewl was up again, good as ever she had been. Good enough to fight with Farnch about sending the twins to the new consolidated school.

That was an argument came 'round every time it snowed, seemed like, and Farnch wouldn't allow it, him being head of the family. This time, though, Jewl'd said that she'd found rooms to let, affordable, nearer to her work and to the school, and she figured Farnch'd do just fine as the head of a household of one.

Jewl was good enough with her figures that Darby figured she meant him to go with her, which. . .wasn't as warming as it might've been on another day.

Funny thing about that argument had been -- Jewl'd won. Farnch'd got to the point where usually he punched the wall, or threw something or -- and it was like the mad went right outta him, and he just shrugged and said if she wanted to get her brats mixed up with the New Bosses, it was all on her, whatever happened.

Why he was thinking about that now, he didn't know, 'cept prolly Kestrel would want to know how his patient was. He figured that was it, and he took a good hard breath, before he pushed open the door, and stepped into the sweet shop.

Smells hit him first -- chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla -- and he paused for a second, just to let his nose get its fill. Then, he looked around the room. There ahead of him was the counter, all sorts of good things on display. To his left, there were a couple of tables, and a short, slim man with a brown jacket over a winter-weight blue sweater, was standing up from a table for three, while a dark-haired woman remained seated, watching him with interest.

The man came forward, reddish brown braid falling forward over his shoulder, and it was right then that he recognized Kestrel, his face smooth and unbruised, both eyes wide open. A waft of cool amusement reached him, and he smiled.

"Almost din't recognize you," Darby said, walking forward with his hand out, "with all them bruises gone."

Kestrel hesitated, then placed his hand into Darby's, but not like he was going to shake. Instead, he brought Darby forward, to the table, and the woman waiting there.

"I hope you will forgive me for bringing a. . .friend with me," he murmured. "I think you may find her of use."

"Of use?" Darby asked, but Kestrel had let go of his hand, and gave the woman a heavy nod of head.

"Hestya, this is the young man I told you of -- Darby Bajek. Darby, this is Hestya van'Lorin. She is a colleague from the clinic."

Another doctor then, Darby thought, and gave her a friendly nod.

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am."

"And I am pleased to meet you, Darby Bajek." Her voice was. . .harder than Kestrel's, her accent more pronounced. And the feelings he got from her -- well, he didn't get any feelings from her. None at all.

She smiled.

"Aha! I confuse him!" she said, like it was a pretty good joke. She raised a hand and waved at the two vacant chairs. "Please, sit. I refuse to strain my neck by looking up at you."

They sat, and Kestrel waved to the guy behind the counter.

"Tea will come," he said, settling into his chair, "and a selection of sweets."

"Kez Rel tells me that we may share a gift, you and I," Hestya said, then, leaning forward with her elbows crossed onto the tabletop.

Darby blinked, at her accent, and suddenly turned toward Kestrel -- toward Kez Rel -- his ears burning.

"No wonder you were mad!" he blurted. "I got your name wrong! You shoulda told me."

"Well, and so I should have," Kez Rel said, and put a hand on Darby's wrist. "But, I found I liked the error. Kestrel. And, truly, panting as I was, and my face in such a state, it was wonderful that you made a guess that was anything so close. Please, I would be honored if you would continue as you have begun. I will have a nickname -- do I have that correctly?"

"That's right," Darby said, doubtfully. "If you're sure you don't mind."

"Not at all," Kestrel told him, and looked up as the tray arrived with tea and a plate of sweet things.

"So," Hestya said, after they had each sipped some tea, and chosen a sweet. "Darby -- I may call you Darby?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Excellent. I will be Hestya, and Kez Rel will be Kestrel -- a tidy band of mischief-makers, eh?"

Darby felt a flicker of amusement from Kestrel, but still nothing from Hestya, though she was clearly teasing.

She smiled, and raised her tea cup.

"I see that I remain a cipher. Would you like to learn to be so mysterious yourself, Darby?"

He frowned.

"I don't think I understand you, m-- Hestya."

"I think that you half-understand me," she chided him; "but allow it to stand. Tell me, how fares your brother?"

"My -- brother?"

"Indeed. His name is, perhaps. . .Farnch? Kestrel tells me that you felled him with a thought on the adventure-filled night of your meeting."

Darby looked down into his teacup, then up to meet Hestya's eyes. They were light blue. He felt concern, from Kestrel, and remembered the night of their meeting and the way he had controlled his pain. He thought Hestya had taught him that, and wondered if she'd teach him. But, he had a shrewd hunch that she wouldn't teach him anything until he gave her an answer.

"My brother Farnch is doing pretty well, thank you."

Hestya inclined her head.

"No headaches? Noooo. . . behaviors that are, for him, not quite what you might expect?"

"I --" He stopped, remembering the fight with Jewl, and how Farnch'd just given up.

"There is something," Hestya said, softly. "Tell me."

"He -- it's just he let my sister win an argument. Old argument, 'bout whether or not the twins ought go to the school. Got to the point where usually he throws something, or hits something, and he just kinda. . .folded up. All the temper went right out o'him and he told her to do what she wanted, and remember that if something happened, it was her fault."

"Ah. And this is new, since you struck him?"

"I didn't -- strike -- him," he said hotly. "I only -- only --"

He floundered to a stop. Hestya was watching him with interest, her head tipped to one side.

"Yes, I see," she said, when he just sat there like a lump and his face burning. "You have not the words, and it sounds foolish -- to you -- to say that you pushed your brother with your anger. Was it something like this?"

He felt a hard shove at his -- at him! dammit, at where he lived, in the center of his head -- and threw up a hand, even though he knew that wouldn't stop what she'd thrown at him.

Across from him, Hestya threw her hand up, reflecting him. The pressure against him. . .stopped.

Darby cleared his throat.

"I guess it must've felt sorta like that -- to Farnch," he said slowly. "To me, it felt like -- it felt like I. . .caught fire, and threw it all at him. He was gonna -- he was drunk, and he was gonna hurt somebody." He threw an apologetic glance at Kestrel.

"My brother don't much like Liadens. He's got. . .politics."

Kestrel inclined his head, but it was Hestya who spoke.

"We have been told that there are no Terran Healers," she said. "This would appear to be. . .an error. Clearly, you are a Healer, Darby Bajek, as I am. The difference between us is that I have been taught control, which makes it much more unlikely that I would unintentionally kill my brother."

"Kill!" he stared at her, his breath gone like she'd punched him. He felt Kestrel's hand on his wrist again, and a waft of gentle concern.

"Kill," Hestya said. "Your gift is no shy flower, my friend; if I were not shielded, I don't doubt you would deafen me. But there is more. Kestrel tells me that you gave him peace and strength when his energy was flagging. Is that true?"

"Yeah. He was out on his feet, and he still had to get home. Little jig o'energy was all; didn't hurt anything."

"Indeed, it was precisely what was needed, as I understand the case. However. A Healer does not Heal, unasked. There are. . .ethical considerations."

Darby looked down at his tea cup, picked it up and drank, deeply. When he put the cup back on the table, Kestrel refilled it from the pot.

"I didn't know that," he said. "I'm sorry, Kestrel. I hope I didn't hurt you."

"No harm," Kestrel assured him, with his slight smile.

"One could not expect you to know," Hestya said in her hard voice. "You have had no training, and you are, therefore, a -- what is the phrase, here? Ah! You are a danger on the street, Darby Bajek. You must be less than that -- and more."

"You'll teach me?" he asked.

She threw up both hands in a wide gesture the meaning of which was lost on him.

"It would seem so. I will not be your only teacher. There is a Hall here -- a poor thing, compared to the Great Hall at Solcintra, but we will do our duty by our kindred."

"I can't pay," he said, thinking that was prolly rude, but also that she had to know that, right off. "Maybe teach me just to do what you're doing -- or what Kestrel did, when he was hurting, and needed not to be distracted by it."

A flash of shrewd blue eyes.

"Ah, you saw that, did you? Well. I think you are very much worth our time, Darby Bajek. We will teach you. When you have learned all that you may, then we will discuss proper payments, and Balance."

Darby glanced to Kestrel.

"Are you a. . .Healer, too?"

"I? No, I am. . .sensitive. I may learn such things as the small wall, to separate and control. . .distress. And I am aware of a Healer's touch." He looked to Hestya.

"Will you have him in the Hall?" he asked. "Or with us?"

She held her cup out, and he poured tea for her, while she studied Darby through half-closed eyes.

"The Hall," she said, after she had taken a sip from her newly filled cup. "He must learn to be safe, first."

Kestrel inclined his head; and raised it to smile at Darby.

"The Healers will teach you, and you will be able to teach others. Also, we would like to woo you. Or, at least, I would like to woo you. Hestya must, of course, bide by her melant'i as teacher, first."

Woo. . .

That got a body warm and thinking about things he hadn't thought about since Sandep started seeing his other boy, and then lied about it when Darby'd asked him -- like Darby couldn't see a lie two blocks distant.

But, there'd been something else -- a word. Words were, in Darby's experience, very important, especially when dealing with people who maybe spoke Standard Terran, but not necessarily 'bleaker Terran.

Not to mention dealing with people who had a whole 'nother language to think in, that no 'bleaker Darby knew could even begin to wrap their tongue around.

"Melon-tee?" he asked. "What's that?"

"Ah." Kestrel looked at Hestya. She laughed softly, and picked up her cup.

"Melant'i," he said. "Melant'i, as my colleague Zack would have it, is choosing which hat to wear in specific circumstances, given a very large possibility of hats. For instance, Hestya and I are colleagues. She works with me at the clinic, to ensure peace of mind and calmness in those who seek our aid.

"Hestya and I are also lovers," he continued. "However, when we are at the clinic, working, that part of our relative melant'i's is not. . .active. Do you see?"

"It is a concept that comes more easily, when one has learned the language," Hestya said. "Which -- forgive me -- I fear you will be required to do."

Darby looked at her.

"I don't know that I'm very good at learning languages, m-- Hestya."

She smiled, and he felt, for the first time, her amusement, bright and sharp, like a new knife.

"Do you know?" she said; "I think you will prove to be very good at learning languages. Now."

She put her hands flat on the table, and looked at him very earnestly.

"You will be required to live at the Hall during the first phase of your instruction. It is our habit to assign an elder Healer to a novice, for both the safety of the House and the novice. Once you have mastered the core curriculum, you may choose to live outside of the House. When you are ready, Kestrel may commence his wooing, but you will tell him when you are ready, or if you are, indeed, interested in pursuing such a joint melant'i."

She gave him another one of her direct stares.

"I have overwhelmed your sensibilities," she murmured.

Darby laughed.

"You know that's not true," he said. "I want to learn -- to learn how to use my gift for the best."

"Then we are in accord, we three friends. You have kin, Kestrel tells me, who depend upon your protection."

He frowned at her, then at Kestrel.

"Your sister and her children," he murmured.

"Jewl?" It was a shock, to think of Jewl needing his protection, and he was about put them right about who needed whose protection, when he thought about Jewl huddled sick in her bed, and the boys alone, when Farnch came home drunk and demanding his dinner.

Farnch. . .he coulda hurt the kids that night. Coulda hurt Jewl, too -- killed her, maybe, if he'd managed to even half-rouse her. The reason it didn't get anywhere near that bad was he'd been there to deal with Farnch. Even had Kestrel by him to turn his bother's anger.

He looked at Hestya.

"Kestrel's right; I should talk to my sister. If Farnch gets mad. . ."

Or, he thought, if he moves Vesti in over Jewl -- sleet! That's just what he'll do, too; and Vesti ain't happy 'less somebody else ain't.

"Peace." Hestya said. She extended a tiny hand and touched him for the first time, fingers curling 'round his wrist. He immediately felt calmer -- more peaceful -- and raised his eyes to hers.

"I thought you were s'posed to ask," he said.

She laughed, and removed her hand; leaving him grinning with a bouyancy that had little to do with peace.

"Kestrel, my friend, your felicity grows! Not only do you find for us a Terran Healer when none are said to exist, but he is quick, and observant -- and lacks an appropriate sense of respect. He will, I think, do well."

"Shall we come with you, to your sister?" Kestrel asked. "She does not know either of us, and she will wish to satisfy herself that we mean you no harm."

"Sure," Darby said. "Let's do that now."

Miz Prestoro and Mister Warchiski were sitting on the stoop when him and Kestrel and Hestya came walking up the sidewalk, Kestrel carrying a sack full of the sweets they hadn't eaten, for the twins. He said.

"Brother's crew just brought 'im," Mister Warchiski said.

"Blood all over," Miz Prestoro added, and jerked her head up the street, opposite of where they'd come from. The sidewalk was wet.

"War 'n me, we hosed down the walk. Tinthy got 'em a blanket so he din't drip up the stairs."

Darby didn't wait; he flung himself up the stairs, two at a time, feeling Kestrel at his back. The door to their partment was half-open, he hit the door with his shoulder without slowing down --

. . .and ran straight into Ornil, Farnch's third, who grabbed him and shook him, until Ron, Farnch's second, snarled at him.

"S'only the kid brother. You snow-blind?"

Ornil didn't let him go, but looked over his shoulder.

"That ain't no kid brother," he said.

Riding the wash of angry surprise, Darby twisted, kicked Ornil hard in the knee, pushed him away, and threw himself hard against Ron, knocking him off balance before he could grab Kestrel.

"Leave 'im alone; he's a doctor!"

"He's a damned Liaden, same's Farnch got shot up by!"

Ron pushed him; he staggered, caught himself, spun, and managed to put himself in front of Kestrel.

"You better go," Darby said over his shoulder.

"Indeed, I think I had better stay," Kestrel answered, and raised his voice. "I am a doctor. There is a wounded man in the house. Let me through; I can help!"

"Let him through!" came another voice, from behind them. A hard voice, crackling with power. Ron and Ornil fell back, eyes wide, and --

"Let him through!" Jewl shouted from the kitchen. "My brother and the doctor, too!"

Darby felt a push go past his shoulder. Ornil and Ron went back another three steps. He moved forward, toward the kitchen door, feeling Kestrel, and something else, something like a wall of ice, behind him.

There was blood everywhere. Farnch was on the table, stripped to the waist. Vesti was pressing a towel soaked and dripping red against his shoulder. Gil was holding another against his side. Jewl had their kit out and open on the counter. Her sleeves were rolled up and she was bloody to the elbow. Darby saw her see him, and felt her relief; then she saw Kestrel and she raised a hand, hope blazing like lightning.

"The bleeding won't stop," she said.

"I understand," Kestrel said calmly, moving past Darby to Jewl's side. "Where are the children?"

"Down with Gran Delaros."

"Excellent," Kestrel said, reaching into his jacket for his little kit. "Now, tell me what has happened -- he has been shot?"

"Damned Liadens," Vesti spat.

"That is useful, thank you. If the pellets came from a Liaden gun, they will be of a different size than those in common use on the street here. Darby, my friend, please call the clinic. Ask them to send the taxi."

"No!" Vesti yelled. "Clinic'll call the Watch. We was there, you unnerstand? We was with them taking a stand 'gainst the New Bosses! Watch'll arrest us all!"

Kestrel gave her a long stare.

"That may be," he said, cool-voiced. "But it is not the problem before us. Please move the compress, so that I may examine the wound."

Vesti snarled, grabbed the compress -- and Darby felt a blast of freezing cold go past him.

Vesti froze in the act of throwing the bloody towel into Kestrel's face. Gil shifted then -- and he froze, too. Darby snaked past him, out of the kitchen, to the hall, where Hestya stood, face calm, eyes hard.

"Do you need help?" he asked, pausing at her side.

"I may, later," she answered, and he felt. . .something slip into the core of him, like she'd put a piece of candy into his hand. "Go, call the clinic; then return to help me watch these."

He nodded, and ran, past Ron and Ornil, who were sitting against the wall, eyes closed. Ornil was snoring.

* * *

"Well, I hope they'll be good to you, Darb," Jewl said, as she folded blankets into boxes. Her and the twins was moving, after all, to that new place closer to her work and the school.

Farnch -- well, the Watch was gonna have him; they'd already taken up the rest of the crew. The New Bosses were gonna be holding trials, they said, for the ringleaders who had come out shooting against them. Farnch, and his crew, they hadn't quite been ringleaders. The New Bosses needed to make a Policy, word was, about what to do with the 'streeters who'd just kinda. . .gotten involved.

That wasn't Darby's problem, though. Not right now, it wasn't. He had his bag packed -- not much stuff; clothes, books his Dad'd given him. Pictures of Jewl and the twins.

"You come visit us, when they let you," his sister said, putting her hands on his shoulders, and kissing his cheek. Promise me, Darb."

"Promise," he said, and kissed her, too, then stepped out from under her hand, and walked down the hall, out the door, and down the stairs, where the taxi was waiting to take him to the Surebleak Healer Hall, and on to the rest of his life.

We Fly

by K.B. Rylander

Winner of the 2015 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award

<Unidentified Error detected.>

Get me out. Let me breathe.

The carbon-steel hull lies a scant half-centimeter from my face, but I can't dwell on that. It's what started me into panic in the first place.

I crawled to my spot next to Matthew James in the back of Dad's two-door classic Chevy, trying to keep my bare legs from burning on the peeling vinyl. Dad rolled down the window in an attempt to cool things off, but I resigned myself to sucking it up and breathing the soupy hot air. As the engine puttered to life and the radio blared "Summer in the City," I scowled at Mom and Dad's delight in the ancient song. In the rear-view mirror Dad's bushy eyebrows crinkled as he laughed.

He tossed back a hard candy. "Hang in there, Natasha."

In deep orbit around Alpha Centauri AB.4, encapsulated in a coffin-sized hunk of metal, I'm surrounded by nothingness—silence and cold and dark. The ship pings, announcing the return of the first Little Guy probe. Cool peppermint lingers on my phantom lips from the memory.

My robotic eyes open, but see only darkness. The metal shell around me clunks and there's a mechanical whine as the beach ball-sized Little Guy docks with the ship and silence again while its data uploads. Please let the planet be habitable. I came all this way, give me something.

While I wait, I check with the comm-bots on the Beacon construction and try to ignore the itching. My skin is a synthetic polymer covered in forty-two thousand sensors that were overkill in training, but now, inside the capsule, they're worse than useless. They pick up every tiny dust particle. My mind-construct interprets these as itches and somewhere during my malfunctions I've lost the ability to turn the sensors off.

My biggest complaint is the choking. I know I'm not actually choking. I'm not crazy. But it's the same sensation, a tightening as if a hand grips my non-existent throat.

I think back, trying to figure where I went wrong. It makes no sense. Everything was normal before I shut down for the journey—months of training, psychological assessments, and self-diagnostics came back with flying colors. Upon arrival three days ago I awoke to panic and malfunctions. Sure, fifty-two years passed back home but it felt like a blink of an eye for me. I remember with perfect clarity the day they mapped my brain and uploaded me into the probe, how afterward I said goodbye to my old self, that human Natasha, and watched her go on her way.

The data from the Little Guy finishes uploading. This is it. I can't get the files open fast enough.

The first several photos show a dense atmosphere of swirling browns. A few manipulations give me access to surface images of a gray crust filled with rocky gullies like the wrinkles of a massive elephant.

As the rest of the Little Guys return and fill me in on the data they've collected, the choking in my throat gets worse.

Alpha Centauri AB.4 is a lump of rock. Six thousand kilometers in radius, dense carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. No chance of sustaining life. In other words, Venus but warmer. All of this, my life's work and traveling 4.3 light years to find the twin of our nearest neighbor.

The rain pattered against the windows as Grandma pulled chocolate-chip cookies out of the oven and I watched from the kid-safe distance of the kitchen table. Grandma hummed absently and I took a deep, cookie-scented breath. Warmth filled me all the way to my toes. Just as my mouth started watering, shadows fall over the memory, swallowing Grandma and her kitchen, and I resist a tug pulling me into the darkness.

Vivid, perfect memory is one of the perks of upload technology, but with my malfunctions I can't even get those right.

I jerk free of the shadows and end up on the road beside the airfield. This isn't a memory I'd choose. When I was thirteen, not long after Sophia died, my parents took me all sorts of places trying to cheer me up. During one of those attempts we stopped at Luke Air Force Base. Mom, Dad, Matthew James, and I stood beside the chain-link fence with the Arizona sun beating down on us as it leached the sky a dull blue. The air smelled of rain and there was not a cloud in sight. The necklace I wore that day feels too tight now in the memory and I want nothing more than to take it off, but the memory doesn't work that way. Mom and Dad stood close to me, but all I could think about was the terrible inside-twisty feeling of everything being so wrong.

Sophia would never grow up and fly. She'd never even get to see a plane.

My eyes prickled as a jet engine roared, the ground beneath our feet rumbling. Matthew James, ten years old at the time, let out a whoop and jumped against the chain-link fence. "This is more like it!" he yelled. The rest of his words were swallowed by the roar of the plane.

A whoosh of adrenaline surges through me in the memory as the jet zoomed off—a child-like excitement I don't remember having felt in actuality then. Some of the pressure lifts from my chest.

Dad sighed and squeezed my shoulder. "We can take you someplace else if you'd rather?"

I didn't mind watching a few more, but I said, "Yes, please."

Matthew James scowled.

The files from Earth include forty-eight years of updates sent to me at the speed of light while I slept. In those files was the discovery of another rocky planet, AB.6—this one looking even less promising than AB.4, so they didn't send me there right away.

It's taken me two months at my reduced speeds, but AB.6 is within spitting distance. During that time I've been awake, malfunctioning, and staving off panic by reliving memories and avoiding shadows. I can watch my video library thousands of times per hour, but somehow memories take longer.

Once again the ship's cameras fail to respond, so I'm blind as the ship settles into high orbit around the planet. Metal clunks within the capsule as the bay doors open to release the five Little Guys that will take pictures and run analysis of the planet below.

I reboot and run another self-diagnostic that tells me the same thing as the others:

<Unidentified Error detected.>

Great. As if I didn't know that before running the tests. The least it could do is give me an idea of where my processing went haywire.

Only seconds after the bay doors close the comm-bots ping me. The Beacon relay ship beat me here by weeks.

<Beacon construction complete. Spooling commenced.>

The "Beacon" is a misnomer really. It's not setting up an actual beacon so much as connecting two points in space, allowing instant transfer of data four light-years away. It's revolutionized our ability to work with the Mars teams, but this one is the farthest out by far. Some of the pressure on my chest lets up with anticipation of communication with Earth.

Another ping, call it a virtual knock on the door, this time from a human-controlled computer back on Earth.

The Beacon works.

As the systems connect—thank God they connect—I pull up my avatar file, look it over, and decide my face doesn't look quite right. I sharpen the features and add a different hairstyle. I remove my once-beautiful braids and give avatar-Natasha short hair.

I'm done in nanoseconds and wait a few more before the channel opens and two video feeds of Mission Control come into view, one an overview of the room, the other near ground level.

In fifty-two years Mission Control's design has changed little. A redesign with dark wood paneling and comfortable-looking leather desk chairs gives the room a warmth it never had before. Three rows of desks have given way to a more spacious two and the room is packed with people smiling at the camera in anticipation. In a couple of seconds their visual feed kicks in and they break out in applause and cheers and clinking champagne glasses.

I send a smile to my avatar face and their cheers grow louder. Don't act crazy, don't act crazy.

"Can you hear us, Natasha?" says a man's voice.

<Loud and clear,> I send back and hear it spoken in Mission Control. "Nice to see the human race hasn't changed much."

They all laugh in delight even though it wasn't funny and I search the crowd for familiar faces, albeit much older ones. Three individuals stand in front of the up-close camera: a man and woman in lime-green uniforms with United American Space Agency splashed garishly across the front in neon orange and a young woman in a tan business suit. It looks like something my mother would have worn.

"I'm Commander John Cook," the man in the garish uniform says. He reads from the palm of his hand and clears his throat. "I see you're sending us your data already, that's excellent. Have you already reached AB.4?"

"Yes sir, but I'm afraid the news isn't as we hoped."

Cook looks at his companion. The crowd murmurs.

Halfway through briefing them on AB.4 and AB.6 there's a hiccup in my processors so I restart and reconnect.

When the cameras come back online Cook stands frowning at me, his arms folded. "Did you go offline for a second?"

So much for hoping they wouldn't notice. I feel remarkably like a child standing in front of the class. "I'm back now," I say, sending a toothy grin to avatar-Natasha.

"You were telling us about AB.6," he prompts. "You're in orbit now and there was some reason you couldn't send us pictures. Something about the ship's cameras?"

"Not functioning," I say. My throat clenches and avatar-Natasha brushes her neck without me directing it to do so.

"But you've deployed the probes."

"My communication with them is down. I have to wait for their return."

"Damage during the journey?"

"Diagnostics tell me it's not a physical problem." Avatar-Natasha runs her hand over her throat again, as if trying to remove something that's not there. Get a grip.

The faces in the crowd are all too young to be anyone I know. They stare up at their screens with rapt attention. No one seems to have noticed that my cartoon avatar has a nervous tick.

"Care to explain in more detail?" Cook says.

"Can I talk to Howard?" My voice comes out sounding too high pitched.

Cook glances at the people around him for clues. "Howard?" He shifts from foot to foot and reads something on his palm. "Howard Vine? The lead compu-psychologist in your training?"

The uniformed woman at his side turns and addresses the crowd. "Can we clear the room of all non-essential personnel, please?"

In the minute it takes the people to file out I run through video files of hang-gliding to calm my nerves.

Cook straightens his uniform and speaks slowly, as if I'm a nut job. "Natasha, you understand you slept fifty-two years, right?"

I go through my defensive excuses in nanoseconds, discard the childish ones and settle on the mature response. "Actually the compu-psychological team might be of some help."

Cook nods to the woman in the business suit who steps forward. "Hi Natasha, I'm Dr. Najim, the lead psychologist for your team and a theoretical compu-psychologist."

I get her caught up on the basics, trying not to sound too crazy: the panic when I awoke, the choking sensation, the problems communicating with the Little Guys.

She stares at my avatar.

My avatar clears her throat. "This problem can't be new to you. Sure, the technology was cutting edge when I left but—"

"Uploading was banned over forty years ago. This was for political reasons, not because there was something wrong with the technology, Natasha. A problem like the one you describe was never reported. Before the ban, we had scientists volunteer to have themselves copied for upload and sent on space missions within our solar system, and others who were shut off for long periods of time, as you were. None have reported problems."

"What are you saying?" Cook asks.

"I don't know how to help," she says.

I stood at our dining table back home in Phoenix, with friends crowding around me as I prepared to blow out six tall candles on a princess cake. Mom's perfume made my eyes water and I felt her close behind me, leading everyone's singing in her off-key way. Dad stood across from me, taking pictures with his phone and grinning like a fool. Matthew James looked at me with sad eyes and I wondered why. I wore a pink frilly dress that I had always loved before, but now in the memory it feels wrong, and my cheeks flush in embarrassment.

On the real day I didn't dislike the dress, did I? I wore it for years afterward. The others at the party must see that I look ridiculous wearing this. They'll make fun of me for being a girl.

No one seems to notice.

AB.6 is a thing of beauty. The first pictures from the Little Guys show all whites and blues and a deep purple I can't help but speculate is plant life. Its atmosphere is eighty percent nitrogen and nineteen percent oxygen. The surface temperatures estimated in fifty locations ranged between negative twenty Celsius near the winter pole and a max of positive forty. It's roughly three-quarters the size of Earth, with slightly more land mass. It is, in other words, just right.

I call it Goldilocks.

"So how ya feeling?" Whitaker asks with his deep, ninety-year-old vibrato. He's a colleague from my team back before takeoff and the only person I've met who was alive when I lived on Earth. His sagging eyes water with thinly-veiled emotion at being allowed the visit. I didn't anticipate how good it would feel to see someone I know, even someone I didn't know well. I've wondered about the other Natasha, how she's doing and if she'd be able to tell me what's wrong with my memories.

Despite the tears, there's laughter in Whitaker's eyes and in those around him. Everyone is in a better mood today after the news about Goldilocks.

I smile. "I'm ready to get out of this metal box and down to that damn fine planet."

More chuckles.

Dr. Najim says, "All in due time. Protocol, after all."

While I have the ability to run the mission on my own, protocol dictates that Mission Control authorizes the landing. They say they're waiting for the Little Guys to finish their flybys and perform preliminary safety tests, find a suitable landing site, what have you. Easy for them to say. They're not suffocating in this box.

I send over a friendly but exasperated expression.

"Follow your heart, kiddo," Whitaker says.

Dr. Najim shoots him a look.

"She's anxious to get down there, of course," he says.

"I'd prefer if you didn't refer to me as 'she' actually," I say.

"Pardon?" Najim asks.

I don't want to tell them it feels like nails on a chalkboard being referred to as the wrong gender so I say, "I'm a machine. 'It' is more accurate."

UASA folks try to usher Whitaker away, but he plants his feet and grips the armrests of his chair.

Dr. Najim looks at the others, opens her mouth, and closes it again. "Okay? If that makes you more comfortable, we'd be happy to refer to you as an 'it' rather than a 'she." She nods slowly and leans back from the camera as if trying to distance herself while she thinks things through.

I couldn't care less if I confused them, I just want out of this ship and down on the planet. They sent a computer out to space and a computer is what they're going to get. Maybe they'll authorize my trip sooner.

On the southeast hemisphere of Goldilocks there's this mountain range that puts the Himalayas to shame. The desert that stretches out on its leeward side ends with rolling violet plains. Beyond that is the planet's equivalent of a forest, with white-barked trees and brilliantly hued leaves the size and shape of dinner plates. These same trees, a taller variety with pink leaves rather than purple, are also found on a continent five thousand kilometers to the north.

I revel in every new piece of information the Little Guys bring back. Their high-res telescopic cameras take detailed pictures from orbit, but I'm itching to get down there and see it for myself, analyze the air and determine if it's truly habitable for a human colony.

There's no evidence of animal life yet, but the place teems with plant-like organisms. Xenobiology was my first PhD and remains my passion. I've found my landing site without Mission Control's help—a high plain on the edge of several ecosystems. Nearing the ocean is a cliff that must be three thousand feet high with incredible rock formations at its base.

It's been weeks and they still won't authorize my landing. In that time I've gleaned clues about Earth they neglected to send me in the official updates. Parts of the planet are in turmoil. The Indian Space Agency sent generation ships this direction in the blind hope habitable planets would be found. With their speeds I won't get visitors for decades, but I might create the groundwork to save their lives.

I enter my landing site into the ship's navigation.

<Initiate landing.>

<Error.>

I reboot and try again.

<Unidentified Error detected.>

Yes, yes. I know. <Initiate landing.>

<Error.>

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I ping Mission Control and tweak my avatar, trying to get the look right while I wait. The screens come into view and a young guy in a UASA uniform sits in front of me.

"I'm ready to land and start my analysis of the surface," I say. "I need you to resend me the ship's landing authorization."

"Resend?" he asks. "Um. Can you give me a minute? It's 2:00 a.m."

"Yes, of course."

Dr. Najim shows up an hour later wearing another one of her business suits. She sits ironing-board straight with her legs together and her hands folded in her lap. "You've changed your avatar."

The old one didn't feel right anymore. "I needed a change."

"You've changed your gender. And your race."

"Well, I'm not any gender or any race now am I?"

"How do you feel about this change?"

"It's just a picture." Honestly this new one isn't right either, but I wouldn't tell her that.

"I can't help but notice that you've changed yourself to a white male. I feel there's some significance to that." When I don't answer she says, "I hear you requested landing authorizations?"

"Yes. I've had enough waiting, I want to get down to the surface." And out of this damn capsule, I refrain from saying.

"I understand," she says. "But let's get a few of these kinks worked out first. We don't want to risk unintentional damage in case anything goes wrong due to your—" She rethinks her word choice. "—processing problem."

"Then help me with my problem. What's wrong with me? Some hitch during boot-up? I was fine one second, I switched off for space flight, and then I woke up feeling like I'd been buried alive. Why am I suddenly afraid of being in space when I've loved it my whole life?"

She sighs. "This development is unprecedented. The rare issues with the other uploads were immediately evident, not weeks after. Your initial testing looked great, that's the reason you were selected."

"Listen," I say. "You've got colonists on their way who need to know if they've got a safe place to land. What you need is a probe on the ground, you need me down there."

Dr. Najim nods, but before she has a chance to say something I cut in.

"You can't give me this responsibility," I say and am not sure why I said it.

"But you just said you want to go down there."

"I'm not talking about that responsibility. I'm talking about the other one."

"What other one?"

"I don't know!"

I restart.

<Unidentified Error detected.>

When the video feed comes back Dr. Najim still sits in the same place. I wasn't gone long.

"Natasha Washington might help," I say. "I want to talk to her."

"That's you," she says as if I didn't know that.

"No, the other one. The human one who used to be me. She's alive right? Is she senile?"

Dr. Najim shakes her head. "Oh no, I'm not supposed to talk to you about your other self. That was one of the foundational rules of uploading. It's best that two distinct individuals are formed."

She seems to think it over.

"Listen," she says, lowering her voice. "I will tell you that she's alive and she's not senile, but there's no way you're talking to her."

"She could help me figure out what's wrong," I say. "She's me." But sane.

I sat on our neighbor's couch, playing a game on my phone while the baby slept upstairs. I slipped into my least favorite memory on purpose this time. There's something distinctly wrong with it, I just can't figure out what.

"Baby Sophia is up there right now." Matthew James stood at the foot of the stairs in his favorite airplane shirt. "Can we go check on her? I can't go up there by myself."

My phone screen showed I'd hit a new high score so I smiled and checked my watch. Sophia's parents would be home soon.

Matthew James ran to me. "Go up there and check on her," he yelled. "How are you supposed to take care of me if you can't take care of one little baby?"

I ignored him. The hand gripping my phantom throat squeezes like a vice-grip while the thirteen-year-old me continued breathing normally.

Her parents arrived home carrying the whiff of Chinese-food takeout. Sophia's dad paid me while her mom went up to check on her. Matthew James slammed his hands over his ears as Sophia's mother screamed.

"She's not breathing! She's not breathing!"

Another day in orbit, stuck in the capsule with my sensors going off as if I'm being crawled on by a thousand ants. I'm trying to figure out the piece I'm missing by playing through a memory, one where I'm an adult for once. I was accepting my degree in an outdoor graduation and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. I looked out over the crowd at my smiling family—Mom, Dad, and ten-year-old Matthew James. As the shadows draw in, something clicks in my brain, something important that's just out of reach. A ping from the Beacon brings me out of the memory.

It's like a whack to the head. My processors fire warnings. A quick sweep of the data packet tells me not to download it.

It's from Mission Control. I know what this means: a remote wipe and reload.

They decided to wipe me clean and upload the probe with some kind of AI to finish their job. They're trying to get rid of me. It's a risky move, one that could leave them with a hunk of metal and nothing else. I'm equipped for attacks like this. Of course I am, couldn't have a terrorist organization or rival government hijacking the mission's most important resource.

When my head clears I send them a single message: "It's not going to work, assholes."

I cut off communication and scramble for clues on how to fix myself. If they try that again and I have a malfunction they could get through my defenses. Cutting off the Beacon relay is an option—they can't wipe my processors clean and load the probe with AI if the Beacon shuts off.

Hours later, when I'm confident I'll hold for now, I reconnect to the Beacon and send a message.

"Let me talk to the human Natasha. Get her there today or I'm cutting off communication permanently."

They're fast, I'll give them that. Two hours later I watch my former self, now eighty-six, walk into Mission Control. Her hair has gone white and she's shrunk in her old age, but she still walks tall. She sits down with a huff, looks up at my avatar and raises an eyebrow.

"Why do you look like that?" Her voice sounds deep and crackly, as if she's smoked the last fifty years of her life. "You sure you're me?"

"The avatar is there so you have someone to talk to," I say.

"Well, I know that. It just doesn't look like any face I'd have wanted."

That shouldn't sting. I shouldn't care what she thinks. "I need to ask you about the night Sophia died."

Her brows furrow and her face blanches. "You really must be screwed in the head. I haven't thought about her in fifty years."

What a load of bull. "It doesn't bother you?"

"Nope."

"Tell me, have you had any children?"

She shakes her head, looks away and waves her hand dismissively. "Nothing to do with Sophia."

"No kids, fine. Ever had a dog? Or a cat? A fish? Been responsible for any living thing but yourself?"

The other Natasha's shoulders sag.

"If you could just help me understand why things happened like they did," I say. "The night Sophia died, why didn't we go check on her?"

"She died of SIDS," the old Natasha says, raising her voice. "Did you expect us to check on her every two minutes?"

"But when we were downstairs Matthew James told us to—"

"What? Who the hell is Matthew James?"

I study her face for signs she's not serious. Maybe she's senile after all. "Matthew James. Our ten-year-old brother." As I hear it I realize "brother" doesn't fit.

She looks up at me on the screen and I can practically see the wheels turning in her head. "Matthew James. Matthew James." Finally, she smiles. "Matthew James Whitaker!"

My non-existent gut wrenches.

She fumbles on reading glasses and types into the palm of her hand. When she's found what she's looking for, she leans on the console to pull herself to her feet and reads, "Matthew James Whitaker, son of lead computer scientist Michael Whitaker. Died of cancer at age eleven." She peers at me over her glasses. "Six months after your departure."

On the recording, Whitaker sits in front of the camera, tears streaming down his deeply lined face. Uniformed officers stand on each side of him and Commander Cook stands with his back to the camera, arms folded.

"It worked," Whitaker says, unable to conceal a smile.

It all happened within a matter of hours after Natasha and I talked. Ninety-year-old Dr. Michael Whitaker was arrested for treason for sabotaging the mission. The other Natasha made sure they sent me the footage of Whitaker's confession upon his arrest. I watched as he broke into tears when he explained how the week before takeoff to Alpha Centauri he'd sneaked his lab equipment home to his young son for the scans. How after I was shut off he added the additional upload to the probe, figuring all he had to do was avoid being caught for the few hours before takeoff and then it'd be too late to do anything about it.

I study his face on the video and see how after all these years the wounds of his child's death haven't left him. He looks at the camera, seemingly at me. His voice falters as he says, "I gave him the stars."

I get a ping from Mission Control and pause the video.

My visual feed kicks in and Commander Cook and Dr. Najim stand behind the other Natasha, who sits in one of the leather chairs. All three smile.

"We have good news," Commander Cook says. "We think we can fix you without a complete wipe."

I send a wary smile to my androgynous avatar.

He puts a hand on the elderly Natasha's shoulder, as if he wants the next bit of information coming from her.

She clears her throat. "Your mind-construct wasn't designed for an additional upload. It doesn't know where you end and it begins."

I nod.

She smiles reassuringly. "The computer scientists believe they can restore you from your backup. You'll have no memory past prepping for takeoff, but I think you'll be happy to have these dark days behind you." She leans forward. "If you give Mission Control access, they can scrub the unauthorized upload."

She just called the consciousness of a little boy an unauthorized upload, and recommends I let them kill him so I don't have to deal with him anymore. I study her face, trying to picture me being her. I can't do it. I update my avatar back to my old self, the young version with the beautiful dark braids. Cook, Najim, and the old Natasha brighten, obviously thinking I'm on board with the proposal. My avatar gives the three of them a disgusted look.

And flips them the bird.

This time I seek out the shadows. Instead of darkness, I end up in sunlight. The airfield is as it was the day we visited, same light breeze, same roaring jets, but it's not my memory. My parents are gone and Matthew James stands by himself, his white-blond hair falling into his eyes and a toy airplane clutched to his chest.

He squints at me in the bright sunlight and smiles. For the first time I see he has dimples. "You came," he says.

He seems shorter now because I'm at my full adult height. I feel like myself again.

"Can I talk to you?" I ask.

He nods and an airplane flies overhead. He looks up and grins back at me, cocking his head toward the plane and raising his eyebrows in delight.

"Do you know who I am?"

"You're Natasha," he says, his voice stronger than I'd expect from a little kid. "My dad wanted you to take care of me."

"I guess you could say that."

"Are we trapped up in space?"

"No. We're exactly where we're supposed to be."

"I don't like little places."

"It's not little here," I say, squinting up at the sky.

"But we aren't here," he says. "This isn't real."

"You're a smart kid." I study him for a moment as he watches the takeoffs. "Big fan of airplanes, huh?"

He nods. "And flying. When I get big enough Dad says he'll take me hang-gliding." He doesn't give me a chance to respond before he frowns and tosses his toy plane to his feet. "I heard that old lady. I know I'm dead."

"You're no more dead than me." I reach out my hand. "Want to help me explore Goldilocks?"

The metal shell that has encapsulated us for decades creaks open and a slit of light expands to the entire brilliant blue sky. Our six-foot-tall robotic probe uncurls and we stand upright. The tingly itching of our sensors fades away to processing the real input of a cool sixteen degree Celsius breeze with the warmth of Alpha Centauri B warming our gray synthetic skin. My processors translate the chemicals to smells as they were trained to do back home—earthy dirt, grassy and something pungent-sweet I can't place, but that my chemical analysis translates as carbon-rich. The rolling landscape is filled with high grass swaying in the wind like a purple ocean.

We didn't need Mission Control's authorization to land the ship, but they gave it to us anyway. Now that I know Matthew James is there, the extra noise in my processes make sense. He's less scared now, which helps our underlying feeling of panic, but it doesn't make up for everything. We spent two days getting to know each other and teaching our mind-construct how to deal with two uploads. At our processing speeds we had the malfunctions under control within hours.

We reach down and collect a sample of the candy-colored grass for the Little Guys to analyze later.

Back at Mission Control, Commander Cook watches us explore our alien world, brow furrowed. "Remember your protocol, sample collection should wait until after all your systems are online."

"They're online already," I tell him. My avatar—back to her old self—stands beside the Matthew James avatar on the Mission Control screen.

His blond hair falls into his avatar's eyes just as it did in life. "We're the pinnacle of scientific advancement for our time," he says, borrowing a line from a marketing video in my memory banks.

Cook almost cracks a smile.

A month after our landing we walk over squishy orange moss to the edge of a four thousand foot cliff and see the ocean far in the distance. Below us is a valley of plant-covered rock formations filled with fins and spires like a massive purple castle.

One part of us imagines that exploring it will be like a giant jungle maze with imaginary pirates and dragons, while the other is already working on a theory that it'll provide a shelter base for a human settlement, perhaps even a city one day.

"Valley survey commencing," I tell Mission Control and Matthew James' excitement zings through us as he realizes the plan.

Mission Control pipes in. "But, how—? No, no, no, no, no. Your flight ability is for emergency use only. Find another way down."

We leap and extend our sails, catching an updraft. Forty-two thousand useless sensors light up so it almost feels like the wind is hitting real skin. The "oh-man-this-is-so-blasting-awesome" part of us gets guidance from the "let's-be-sure-we-land-safe" part.

And we fly.

The 100 MPG Carburetor and Other Self-Evident Truths

by Robert Buettner

Robert Buettner worked as an international lawyer for the Marathon Oil Company. His life experiences inform this story, but only the ridiculous parts are true. During the early 1970s Muammar Khaddafi’s Revolutionary Command Council overthrew the Libyan monarchy, nationalized the oil holdings of companies including Marathon, and tried to use the proceeds to buy H-bombs from China. Those events rapidly precipitated the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, from the industrial democracies of the West to the Middle East’s Islamic theocracies. The echoes of those upheavals continue to shape world headlines today. Robert knows where Big Oil has hidden the 100 MPG carburetor, but if he told you he would have to kill your hybrid.

“Rathole? They better not still be making rathole!” MacRoy shook his head, leaned back in his chair and blew cigar smoke toward the three of us seated around his conference room’s table. He said to Faris, “That’s a misprint. Can’t you goddam read?”

Opposite MacRoy Faris, MacRoy’s drilling operations vice president, ran his finger across the perforated newsprint Morning Report telex. The report came from a drilling rig in the Libyan desert, five time zones east of us. In Libya, it was still May 10, 1970, which was good. However, despite the report’s title, in Libya it was no longer morning, which was very bad.

Faris cleared his throat. “No misprint, Hugh. They haven’t made an inch below twenty-one feet since yesterday.”

Shade and I, facing each other between MacRoy and Faris, swiveled our heads from Faris back to MacRoy like we were tennis spectators.

MacRoy lurched forward, slapped his hands against his mahogany tabletop. “Well won’t that be about the best Mother’s Day present Colonel Khaddafi ever got? And a goddam catastrophe for us!” MacRoy’s cheeks flared Canadian bacon pink and he shook his head. “That sneaky midget goat rapist.”

MacRoy snatched his cigar from between clenched teeth, then pounded it into each corner of his massive marble ashtray until the cigar crumbled.

I shrugged across the table at Shade.

Maybe MacRoy feared a midget goat rapist had snuck into his ashtray someplace.

In his frenzy MacRoy had pronounced “about” “a-boot.” Dr. Gilbert Hugh MacRoy, unlike the bacon his cheeks resembled, actually came from Canada. His doctorate, however, did not. It came from the London School of Economics.

Faris said, “We still got 'til midnight in Tripoli, Hugh. It’s noon there now.” Faris pronounced the operation commencement deadline “mid-naht.” Faris’ petroleum engineering doctorate came from Texas Eye & Am. In MacRoy’s universe that justified questioning whether Faris could goddam read.

MacRoy was Senior Executive Vice President of International Exploration for the mid-major Marathon Oil Company. Marathon was the only mid-major anything headquartered in Findlay, Ohio on Sunday, May 10, 1970. Or ever before. But I’ll get back to that.

You ask why making rathole on Mother’s Day, 1970 constituted a present for the fledgling revolutionary government of diminutive goatherd’s son Colonel Muammar al Khaddafi, and a goddam catastrophe for us? Well, it had nothing to do with animal sodomy, MacRoy’s allusions notwithstanding.

It had everything to do with the Petroleum Concession Agreement between the Kingdom of Libya, now Colonel Khaddafi’s People’s Republic of Libya, and Marathon Petroleum Libya, Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Marathon Oil Company.

I swallowed.

MacRoy’s reaction boded ill for the attorney who had authored the agreement last aforesaid. Who was also the Corporate Secretary of Marathon Petroleum Libya, Ltd. Who was also me.

In oil well drilling, rathole was a second, shallow hole drilled prior to, and alongside, the main hole. When the drill pipe string was periodically withdrawn from the main hole, the string’s topmost section was lowered into the rathole and set aside, in the way that a sword was lowered into a scabbard, when the sword wasn’t poking something.

Making rathole was just as vital to oil drilling as a scabbard was to swordplay. But making rathole was just as ancillary to poking a meaningful hole in something.

Therefore, making rathole was expressly not “timely commencement of Operations, defined for purposes of this Concession Agreement as actual penetration of the Earth to find commercially recoverable hydrocarbon substances.”

If no actual well, as opposed to a mere rathole, was commenced by midnight local time at Tripoli, Libya on Mother’s Day, Marathon would lose its rights under the concession agreement. So far, those rights amounted to most of a billion barrels of oil in the ground that Marathon had discovered for Libya. In 1970 the price of one barrel of oil was $3.18, and the three billion dollar value of a billion barrels of oil was twice the value of the entire Rockefeller family fortune.

For lack of the right sort of hole in the ground, a vast fortune was about to become a windfall to a novice head of state who, despite standing five feet four inches tall, give or take a shoe lift, had ousted the Libyan monarchy by coup d’etat nine months earlier.

MacRoy ran a hand through his hair. “What the hell’s cocked it up out there?”

It was a fair question, even from MacRoy, who asked fair questions only when he lacked time to think up snotty ones. Oil wells were routinely drilled miles deep. Drilling a crummy fifty foot deep rathole through desert sand was normally even less difficult than dating a goat. Not that I had personally attempted either.

Faris ran a finger across the telex flimsy again. “They tore up two bits but couldn’t get below twenty feet.”

MacRoy frowned. “Why didn’t the idiots try a bull-nose diamond bit, then?”

Faris shook his head. “They did. Scrubbed the stones out of the matrix in two hours.”

MacRoy cast his eyes to the heavens while he unwrapped a fresh cigar. “Do I have to think of everything? Just have 'em twin the bloody hole.”

If a drill hit a boulder or other impenetrable problem near the surface, the borehole could often be moved a few feet one side or the other, maybe the rig itself could even be skidded sideways, then a second, “twin” hole could be drilled alongside the difficult one.

Faris released the perforated newsprint sheet and it drifted down onto the polished table. “They already tried. They moved eight feet left, then used up their last diamond bit grindin’ at the same depth. They’re gonna just spud the main borehole without a rathole, then come back to it.”

MacRoy puffed life into cigar number two. “How long’s that gonna take?”

Faris cocked his head, did the math. “Too long, prob’ly.”

MacRoy frowned, turned toward Shade. “What do you think, Shade?”

Shade sat with his bony shoulders hunched. His round, widow’s peaked head angled down above the hotshot pocket calculator the company had bought him, and he pressed a single key on it.

Shade said, “I think they won’t make the deadline. I think we can salvage the concession, but it’ll be expensive. I think the obstruction sounds interesting.”

MacRoy pointed at Shade’s calculator. “That thing tells you that?” “That thing” was no bigger than two packs of Marlboros, ran on flashlight batteries, and could add, subtract, multiply, divide, extract square roots, and display the result in glowing red numbers. The amazing thing was that it did all that for about the price of a family’s twenty-five inch color console Zenith.

Shade kept his head down, shook it. “No. I wasn’t using it for that.”

I knew what Shade was using it for. He did most math in his head, anyway. So he had rewired his calculator so that all it did now was count down, with a single button press, the number of days left until MacRoy retired.

The concept was mine, the execution Shade’s. To remind us both that we took MacRoy’s profane bullying now so we could remake the world later. Shade was MacRoy’s heir apparent. Once Shade took over MacRoy’s job, the two of us were naïve enough to think we would then nudge the company toward saving the world.

MacRoy asked, “Then how the hell do you know all that, Shade?”

“Tripoli radio reported a Khamsin started blowing in south central Libya an hour ago. Even if the sand storm blows out in a few hours, which it could in May based on historic weather patterns, the rig crew’ll be cleaning up 'til well past midnight.”

“Oh.” MacRoy pouted. “But you think we can save the concession?”

Shade nodded without looking up. “For now, yes. Khaddafi knows three out of four Libyans can’t even read, much less engineer, construct, and operate wells, pipelines, natural gas plants, and marine tanker terminals. Mobil, Esso, all us foreign concessionaires, are building infrastructure that Khaddafi desperately needs, but that his work force simply can’t create. He’ll accept an additional percentage from us now in exchange for a modification of the agreement, so he doesn’t spook all his foreign investors. Then in a couple years he’ll nationalize everything. Then—” Having answered MacRoy’s question, Shade cut himself off.

I knew what Shade had almost said, because Shade had whispered it to me as we walked down the hall to this meeting. Shade believed that Khaddafi’s nationalization of us in a couple of years would trigger similar realignments across the oil-producing world. The result would be the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, from the West’s democracies to the Middle East’s Islamic theocracies. It would reshape the next century.

MacRoy’s immediate vision stopped short of the next century. He crossed his arms, grunted, then addressed Shade’s final pronouncement. “Why’s a boulder interesting?”

Shade shrugged. “How is an eight foot wide diamond not interesting?”

Shade’s title was Special Assistant to the Executive Vice President of International Exploration. But he also held the ceremonial rank of Vice President of Marathon’s Libyan subsidiary, like I was its corporate Secretary.

Shade’s doctorate was from the same place as the rest of his formal education, the University of Nonexistent. But as Special Assistant his real job was troubleshooter, and he had risen from clerk to the job by demonstrating such intuitive genius that he seemed to see the future. Most people just called him “Shade” because that was all the name he introduced himself by. But also because people expected someone with Shade’s gift to go by one name, like “Merlin,” or “Houdini.”

I helped Shade close on his house, so I knew his birth-certificate name was “Prometheus Robin Shade.” He had decided at age three that was too long to write out in cursive. He said his mother named him Prometheus because she was a small college classics professor, and Robin because he was born on the first day of spring.

At the time I asked Shade why anybody who worked for MacRoy, who fired minions like he discarded cigars, would risk buying a house. Shade replied that he was an optimist in all things. Me, I rented.

MacRoy narrowed his eyes, pointed his new cigar at Shade, his troubleshooter. “Get your ass over there and unscrew this pooch.”

The more MacRoy characterized and metaphored, the more it occurred to me that the profession of domesticated animal in Canada must have been dodgy business. Maybe it was the winters. At least MacRoy hadn’t linked me to the contract language that had brought us low.

MacRoy shifted his gaze, then aimed his smoldering Macanudo between my eyes. “Take the shyster with you. He screwed this pooch in the first place.”

Shade removed his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Are you sending me with a free hand, Hugh?”

MacRoy nodded. “Make any deal you have to. The shyster, here, will make it legal.”

I raised my eyebrows. A free hand?

Arranging transatlantic phone conferences was slow and cumbersome. Telex was worse. And neither, coming out of Khaddafi’s Libya, was entirely secure from eavesdropping and decryption.

So international executives like Shade typically were elected corporate officers empowered to bind their corporation with a pen stroke. And they took along a lawyer who was an elected corporate secretary to write up a deal and to attest their signature. But everybody in every oil company knew the team really didn’t dare sell the farm without approval from the boss back home. Unless the boss expressly gave you a free hand before you left.

In this case the reason MacRoy was giving Shade and the shyster a free hand wasn’t communication difficulty. MacRoy wanted somebody besides himself to blame if the pooch remained screwed.

Shade said, “Hugh, our negotiating position will be weak. Khaddafi’s the one with the machine guns and the dungeons.”

I swallowed.

Those were excellent reasons why the shyster should stay safely at home.

I shook my head. “I can’t go. I’m scheduled to be in Washington in the morning.”

Khaddafi’s business may have been revolution, and America’s business may have been business. However Washington’s business was, first, to be shocked – shocked! – about problems about which it could and would do jack squat, and, second, to then find someone besides itself to blame for them.

MacRoy snorted. “That horseshit hearing?”

For once, MacRoy was right. Horseshit underdescribed the vacuity of the Senate hearing I was scheduled to attend. It had been convened because average voters, whose economics degrees came from the same place as Shade’s, readily believed that thirty-six cents per gallon was a suspiciously high price to pay for gasoline. But then, voters also readily believed that the American oil industry had purchased, then hidden, the prototype of an automobile carburetor that enabled even the most gluttonous Oldsmobile to wring one hundred miles per gallon from regular gas.

Actually, the oil industry hid the carburetor in the same dungeon where it kept the flying saucers and the Second Gunman who shot Kennedy.

MacRoy shook his head at me. “You go to Libya. One of the other shysters can go to Washington. Hell, you’re breeding like rats on the third floor these days.”

True, but that was because in 1970 the Code of Federal Regulations and vacuous Senate hearings were breeding like rats, too. Like most American companies, we were hiring more lawyers just to keep up.

Shade stood, gathered his notebooks. I gathered my rat droppings, and the two of us headed for the street with a brief detour by our offices. If you worked international for MacRoy you kept a packed bag, and your passport, handy. You also kept your resume updated. Shade’s and my plan to remake the world was not free from risk.

MacRoy had his phone in one hand, covered the mouthpiece with the other and called after us. “There’ll be a car downstairs and the JetStar’ll be on the ramp. At least don’t pork it up worse, for Christ’s sake.”

MacRoy’s inspiring sendoff lent wings to our feet, and Shade and I were wheels up eastbound sixty-two minutes later.

It was impossible to conduct operations in twenty-three time zones from a city whose population was less than the Cleveland Indians drew on Free Bat Day without a corporate aviation department.

So MacRoy commanded the largest air force headquartered in midwestern North America that did not haul either passengers for hire or hydrogen bombs. MacRoy didn’t mind us being numerically inferior to the Strategic Air Command, but I do think he coveted their nuclear capability.

After our first fuel stop—a Lockheed JetStar’s four jet engines had no carburetors and therefore even an oil company’s model got considerably less than a hundred miles per gallon—we flew through the night above the Atlantic.

I sat facing Shade, and the wood-paneled cockpit bulkhead behind him, on a reclineable leather throne that matched his. The main cabin’s other seats, and the sofa that ran along the side of the main cabin’s rear third, were empty. A table top that we had pulled out from the JetStar’s curved interior skin separated the two of us.

Shade had unrolled across the table’s polished wood surface a seismic section, a paper scroll cross section snapshot of the Earth’s uppermost crust, constructed from sound waves reflected off subterranean rock layers.

The particular section Shade was interpreting depicted a distant part of the Earth’s crust. That part underlay some third world country that smelled like urine, and everybody who believed in the 100 MPG carburetor knew the self-evident truth that it held no oil whatsoever. Which was why oil explorers like Shade had to be optimists in all things. Of course, everybody knew there was no oil there only until some optimistic oil company gambled, and seven times in ten lost, a fortune poking meaningful holes in that part of the world, as Marathon had in Libya. When the oil company discovered All the Oil Left on Earth, everybody suddenly knew that the oil company had known the oil was there all along. The oil company knew this from consulting the secret map that was kept in the dungeon with the flying saucers, etc.

Shade’s slim fingers trembled slightly as the plane’s engines whistled us through the darkness. He traced the section’s blurry blue lines left to right. As he thought, his lips moved.

I asked, “Whatcha doin’ Shade?”

“Eating peanuts.” In his off hand Shade cupped cocktail peanuts that he periodically dabbed at with his tongue.

MacRoy never troubled to have his minions’ flights catered, so all the two of us had to eat were canned peanuts scavenged from the drawer beneath the main cabin’s sofa.

More accurately, Shade was eating some peanuts. More of them slipped between his fingers than his tongue captured. The escapees hopped and rolled across the section’s blueprint paper. The peanuts left behind little blebs and grease trails that some future geophysicist would mistake for All the Oil Left on Earth.

It wasn’t entirely the peanuts’ fault. Lately Shade had seemed to me to have become an increasingly messy eater.

I pointed at the seismic section. “No. Seriously.”

Shade kept tracing and tongue-dabbing and said, “I think they’ve miscalculated NMO. I’m redoing it.”

NMO was Normal Move Out, a correction applied to data recovered from seismic listening devices that “heard” sound waves produced by exploding dynamite at the Earth’s surface. The waves were reflected back up to geophones on the surface by the rock layers below. NMO was determined by an equation wherein v squared was the square of the velocity of the medium above the reflecting interface. Plus a bunch of other stuff that I understood even less.

I understood even that bit only because I once cross examined an expert witness during a well spacing hearing in Wyoming. The expert was a doctor of geophysics and taught at MIT. He testified that he couldn’t revise his NMO calculations to answer my hypothetical question because he had made his original calculations only with the assistance of a computer bigger than the hearing room.

Shade, whose doctorate came from the University of Nonexistent, was recalculating NMO in his head while eating peanuts.

“Shade, do you ever think you’re a genius?”

Shade didn’t look up. “If ninety percent of genius is timely perception of the obvious, then yes. But anyone can perceive the obvious.”

“Anyone can’t do NMO in his head.”

“Can’t is different from doesn’t. It’s not that hard.”

I stared out my window, at the full white Moon, reflecting the sun’s rays like a searchlight onto the cloud tops miles beneath us. Then I stared at the stars that winked beyond the Moon. “Shade, it took mankind until ten months ago just to reach the Moon. If that was so hard, how long do you think it will take before we can reach the stars?”

Shade looked up from his blueprint scroll. “Forever. If you hold with Tsiolkovsky’s Rocket Equation.”

“And what lawyer doesn’t?”

Shade smiled. “Basically, as applied to traveling light years of distance, the Rocket Equation postulates a paradox. To reach the stars within even several human lifetimes, a rocket needs to accelerate its mass to a velocity that’s a substantial fraction of the speed of light. A rocket accelerates its mass by burning fuel. The more the rocket accelerates, the more fuel it needs. But the more fuel the rocket carries, the larger its mass, so the more fuel it needs to carry. And so on.”

I stared out at the stars, suddenly more distant than ever. “In English, you’re saying we can’t get there from here?”

“No, I’m saying we can’t get there with rockets like the ones that got us to the Moon.” Shade pointed out his own window at the Moon. “The Moon shines because the sun lights it. The sun produces the energy that lights the Moon by fusing hydrogen atoms. Fusion power would change the equation. Fusion would provide inexhaustible clean energy beyond all the oil left on Earth.” Shade smiled. “Just imagine.”

I smiled back, then reclined my seat and closed my eyes. “Imagine? I imagine fusion would put you and me out of jobs faster than the 100 MPG carburetor would. Now I’ll have nightmares.”

Shade said, “Not nightmares. Dreams.”

I nodded as I drifted off.

Shade and I got along, despite opposite skill sets, because we shared dreams. The reason I helped Shade close on his house was because it had been the house I grew up in. I sold it after my mother no longer needed it, because pancreatic cancer ate her alive. It turned out that pancreatic cancer also ate Shade’s mother, the classics professor, alive. Shade and I discovered that we shared altruistic dreams to change such things for the better. Eradicate diseases. Gift mankind with cheap, clean, limitless energy. Change the world in ways that mattered. But at the moment, we had our hands full changing whatever mattered to the likes of MacRoy.

When the risen sun woke me, Shade’s seat was empty.

As I shuffled in my socks, stiff from sleeping in my seat, to pee and shave in the john in the JetStar’s tail, I passed him, curled up on the sofa asleep and dreaming like a prematurely balding bundle of twigs. His blanket had slipped onto the floor, and as I picked it up and retucked him I looked out the window above the sofa’s back.

Below us, the Mediterranean already glittered, turquoise blue as a backyard pool. By the bulkhead clock we were fifty minutes out from clearing customs and immigration in Tripoli, on the easternmost edge of Middle Eastern oil development, and thus the eastern boundary of the current definition of All the Oil Left on Earth.

Eighty years before man landed on the Moon, it was a self-evident truth that All the Oil Left on Earth was contained within a subterranean puddle centered on Findlay, Ohio.

The Standard Oil Trust controlled not only the puddle and a few like it, but controlled the means to refine All the Oil Left on Earth and to transport it. Therefore, the ancestors of the politicians who fretted over the 100 MPG carburetor conspiracy broke the Standard Oil Trust into bits.

The bit that came to be called Marathon Oil Company was one of the bits that found, then produced, Standard’s oil, which is why Marathon was in Findlay. I told you I would get back to that.

But here’s the thing: by 1970 all of that oil had been pumped out of the ground. The only bulk commodity that came out of the ground around Findlay in 1970 was sugar beets. Based on prior self-evident truth as known by the politicians who had broken up Standard Oil, the world had run out of oil when the puddle in Findlay was used up.

Yet the world had not run out of oil. How could that be, you ask? Well, it turned out that All the Oil Left on Earth was actually not under Findlay, Ohio after all. It was under Texas! Then All the Oil turned out to be under the Dutch West Indies! Then Persia! And so on.

Every time the politicians got the cuffs on the conspirators who had hoarded All the Oil Left on Earth, the Earth made liars out them.

Oil, unlike politicians, was so supremely useful that it became the Earth’s biggest business. Some people loved the good that oil fueled. Some people hated the evil oil fueled. Oil drove man’s prosperity, but also drove man’s challenges to his environment, and drove many of the never ending wars by which men challenged one another. Like most useful things, oil wound up empowering worse-than-useless individuals like MacRoy, Muammar al Khaddafi, and most Washington politicians.

It occurred to me then that oil might be the root of mankind’s problems, even though it kept me employed.

When I emerged from the john, Shade was already back on his throne. I hefted my two lawyer’s brief bags out of the rear closet, set them beside my seat, then flopped down across from Shade.

He sipped coffee while he brushed peanut debris off his shirt. “I had the pilots radio ahead. I made some changes to our plan.”

“We have a plan?” I cocked an eyebrow. “Will I like the changes?”

“Yes, we do. And no, you won’t.” He shrugged. “Well, at least the pilots didn’t like 'em.”

I wrinkled my forehead.

What the pilots liked, indeed loved, was flying the JetStar, which was a hairy-chested design boasting four jet engines that hung off its rear flanks like a gunfighter’s pistols. The Jetstar also boasted not one, but two, enormous phallic fuel tanks built into its wings’ leading edges. James Bond’s super villain nemesis Auric Goldfinger even owned one.

“Why don’t the pilots like your changes, Shade?”

Shade said, “I told them we’re just gonna stop in Tripoli to clear immigration and customs, take on sandwiches and fuel, then go visit the rig.”

I nodded. “Aha. No wonder, then.”

The pilots disliked many things, but particularly disliked taking their beloved JetStar into bad neighborhoods. Desert rig airstrips were bulldozed to accommodate genuinely hairy-chested cargo planes, not tiny-tired super villain luxorockets.

I frowned. “The rig? The deadline’s blown. I thought we just were going to Tripoli, to renegotiate. Besides, the rig strip’s for cargo planes. And what if there’s another sandstorm?”

Shade rolled his eyes. “I’m landing on the same dirt that you and the pilots will be. Just be glad I remembered sandwiches.” Then he sat back, crossed his arms, and stared out his window.

One reason MacRoy gave Shade a free hand, which included command of the aircraft until such time as the pilots mutinied, was that over the years Shade had demonstrated that he wasn’t afraid to use it. Shade was skinny and balding and myopic and seemed to get clumsier by the day. But once Shade had done the math in his head neither whining shysters, sandstorms, nor gloom of night broke his will.

More to the point, over the years Shade’s will and his intuitive genius had found Marathon enough of All the Oil Left on Earth that our shareholders had made a bundle.

As the JetStar crossed the coast I bowed to the inevitable and pouted out my own window at North Africa.

On the tarmac in Tripoli we stayed aboard with the door open and breathed in the hot, humid coastal Mediterranean air while we savored sandwiches laced with the kerosene aroma of jet fuel.

The customs and immigration guy also boarded us, pocketed the two crisp U.S. twenties each of us had inserted in our visa-less passports, chalk-marked my two locked brief bags as “inspected” without opening them, then left without a word.

My bags contained no briefs, but fifths of scotch and several copies of the latest Playboy for our expatriate employees in Libya.

Both commodities were forbidden in the old and Islamic Kingdom of Libya, and even more stringently forbidden in Khaddafi’s more Islamic People’s Republic of Libya. Khaddafi, like Shade and me, wanted to change the world for the better. We just differed with him on the definition of better and the mechanism to change the world.

In retrospect, we should have taken a lesson from Khaddafi’s Revolutionary Command Council military junta about the difficulty of world changing. Because the only practical difference that regime change in the Middle East made was that the price of sin rose, in this case from a single twenty dollar bill to two of them.

The practical difference between landing a JetStar in Tripoli and landing one in the desert was, however, greater.

When the JetStar banked over the Rig That Could Not Make Rathole, the orange windsock alongside the airstrip that had been scraped out of the Sahara’s ochre sands flapped parallel to the ground and perpendicular to the airstrip’s long axis.

Landing in a strong crosswind meant the plane landed cocked sideways, and crooked, like a canoe about to capsize. It was bad to capsize a canoe. It was worse to capsize an airplane full of kerosene.

As we plummeted toward our fiery death I clutched my seat’s arms so hard that my fingers trembled white. Across from me Shade rode backwards, grinning, his fingers loose and barely trembling.

One of or tiny tires struck the desert first, and jarred the jet back into the sky. We floated like angels-to-be, then the pilots flattened and straightened our trajectory, and Shade and I settled onto North Africa. Over the thrust reversers’ roar and the clatter of gravel against the JetStar’s belly, grinning Shade shouted, “Wasn’t that exciting?”

Getting to remote drill sites was often exciting. Staying at them for the months required to drill miles into the Earth rarely was.

The drill site was a hamlet of living and laboratory trailers centered on the drilling rig. The rig comprised a steel skeleton mast that rose one hundred feet above a complex of motors, hoists, pipe racks, pumps, and rectangular pits in the ground, each scooped out by a bulldozer, and as wide as its blade. During drilling the pits were filled with a mud-like fluid that circulated like blood, pumped and re-pumped down through the hollow drill stem, then out and up through the borehole itself.

While Shade sought out and conferred with the rig’s senior toolpusher about what Shade wanted done, I sought a place where I could finally sleep horizontally.

I found an empty bunk in the logging contractor’s trailer. The bunk was empty because “logging” involved dangling fencepost-shaped steel tools from cables, then lowering the tools deep into the borehole to record a log of what was down there. The tool gathered information by, among other things, bombarding the surrounding rock with neutrons.

But Shade and I were here because there was no borehole to bombard. Therefore, the logging contractor’s trailer was unoccupied.

The trailer was clean, air conditioned, and probably not radioactive. I say probably because many of the logging tools were radioactive. All things considered, however, barnstorming the sky with Shade was likely to kill me before radiation poisoning could. So I kicked off my loafers, lay back atop the trailer bunk’s blanket, and slept.

I was awakened in darkness by the clatter of rummaging in the trailer’s kitchen.

Foraging Bedouins? My heart thumped as I stretched for, then flipped, the light switch.

Instead of Bedouins I saw a twiglike figure wearing baggy, muddy derrickman’s coveralls.

He held aloft in two hands, by its handle, what looked like a yellow lunch box. His eyes glittered behind his glasses as he stared up at the box, like he had found one of Goldfinger’s bullion bars. “Thank God!”

I sat up, scratched. “Didn’t get enough sandwiches, Shade?”

As he turned and dashed out of the trailer carrying his box, Shade called over his shoulder, “Get out here! Now!”

I stepped into my loafers and stumbled out into the clear cold two a.m. desert night.

A flood light halo englobed the drilling rig’s base, and a string of naked electric bulbs climbed the rig mast so it resembled a miniature Eiffel Tower. The sound and smell of diesel engines rumbled to me on the breeze. All that was usual. Time was money and therefore rigs operated twenty-four hours every day.

As I shuffled closer to the rig, I realized that the engines I heard and smelled were those of the electric generator that powered the lights and of a dirty yellow Caterpillar bulldozer. The Cat idled at one end of a newly dug, 'dozer-blade-wide trench. The engines of the rig itself had gone silent. I frowned.

The newly-dug trench looked to be deeper than a normal mud pit, because a makeshift of reinforcing wire and rusty steel pipes bordered its top edge, as though holding back the trench’s unconsolidated sides. All of it deviated from normal operations, and the only person on-site who could order such a deviation was Shade. My frown deepened.

A handful of hard-hatted rig crewmen stood leaning along the rig floor’s rail, which was elevated fifteen feet above the ground on a steel frame. They peered down into the new trench with the detached bemusement of baseball bleacherites watching a knuckle baller warm up.

The idle rig crew and shut-down rig engines meant that, although time was money, we not only weren’t making hole, we weren’t even trying.

What the hell? I shifted from walking to a dead run, stopped at the trench’s edge, and stared down into its floodlit depths.

Twenty feet below me, Shade knelt over something muddy in the sloppy sand, holding above it the yellow box I had watched him take from the trailer. My heart skipped.

It must not have been a lunch box, but a first aid kit. We were shut down because there had been a grisly accident. Oil drilling was a greasy, dangerous business. Death happened.

Shade backed away from his patient, then waved his hand at a rubber booted roughneck who stood beside Shade. Both of them stood ankle deep in slop. The roughneck held a thick canvas water hose that trailed back up and over the side of the pit. At Shade’s wave the roughneck opened the hose’s valve and blasted the patient.

I screamed down into the pit, “Shade! What the hell have you done?”

Shade turned, visored a hand over his eyes, then waved me to join him in the slop.

By the time I slipped and slid and stood alongside Shade, the roughneck had stopped hosing.

The patient gleamed beneath the floodlights.

It was a cylinder, eight feet long, give or take, tapered at both ends like a slim football, and gleamed wet chrome silver, as smooth and unmarked as the bumper of an Oldsmobile fresh off the assembly line.

My mouth hung open. “What the hell is that thing?”

Shade turned the yellow box in his hand. It had a round dial like a speedometer on its top side, behind the handle. “It’s a Geiger counter. Some of the logging trailers carry them.”

“Not that thing.” I grabbed his head with two hands and pointed it at the elongated silver football. It was suddenly obvious that the object before me was the obstruction that had blocked our drilling. While I slept Shade had ordered a hole bulldozed to unearth it. “I mean that thing!”

Shade tugged his lip. “Well…”

Geiger counter?

My stomach heaved.

MacRoy’s competitor air force, the Strategic Air Command, the friendly Omaha Midwesterners with the hydrogen bombs, had operated, out of Wheelus Air Force Base, west of Tripoli, for the last twenty years. Operated and sometimes crashed.

I looked around for some mud to vomit on, rolled my eyes. “Christ. It’s a hydrogen bomb? Shade, we tried to drill a hole in a lost hydrogen bomb? Twice? And you just dug it up and ran it over with a bulldozer?”

Shade smiled, took my hand and forced it down until my palm was flat against the cylinder’s mirror-smooth surface. His hand shook, and I suppose that mine did, too. But when he lifted his hand away, I still felt the faintest vibration and warmth from the object. “What does that mean, Shade?”

He pulled me upright. “That it isn’t a hydrogen bomb. For now, it’s best that’s all I tell you. Now, here’s what I need you to do. Take the JetStar up to Tripoli and make a deal with your friend Abi Jalloud.”

I gulped. Shade had a free hand to make any deal he chose, and to order me as the company’s lawyer to make it happen. But this?

Abdessalam Jalloud, like Khaddafi, had risen from goat country beginnings to revolutionary army officer to member of Libya’s ruling Revolutionary Command Council. Earlier in 1970 Khaddafi had, it was widely reported, sent Jalloud to Red China to buy a hydrogen bomb for one hundred million dollars. As I said, Shade and I differed with Kaddafi on the appropriate mechanism to change the world.

Apparently the Chinese differed too, because Jalloud returned to Tripoli empty handed. So Khaddafi had put him in charge of managing Libya’s oil resources. Therefore, I had negotiated with Jalloud before. Abi did like Westerners better than his boss did. But my idea of a friend wasn’t a guy who laid his loaded pistol on the table while he negotiated.

My jaw dropped. “You want me to sell a fake hydrogen bomb to a revolutionary with a gun?”

“No.” Shade shook his head. “I want you to buy this object from the People’s Republic of Libya.”

“What?”

“You’re right. Barter would be a more accurate description. Trade a bigger share of Marathon’s oil reserves for it. We expected to give up a bigger share to preserve the concession anyway.”

I shook my head back at Shade. “This regime won’t—”

“Yes, it will. You saw when we cleared customs. Regime change in the Middle East merely increases prices.”

My eyes widened. “Amend the Concession Agreement? That will take—”

Shade nodded. “All it will take is an offer that looks so good that Jalloud will insist that the suckers sign a binding deal before he lets them out of his country. I think an extra hundred million barrels should get his attention, don’t you?”

It did. I did what Shade told me to not because it made sense to me, but because it made sense to Shade, who I thought was a genius. And maybe just a little bit because MacRoy, who I thought was a mean-spirited idiot, wouldn’t like it. We were wheels up off the Sahara forty-eight hours later with a signed amendment in hand.

By the time MacRoy climbed out of the back seat of the car that drove him out to meet us in Findlay, it was night in the Eastern United States. The JetStar already sat parked under the lights in the company hangar, regal amid turboprop Beechcrafts and pipeline patrol Cessnas.

MacRoy frowned at the JetStar as he stalked toward Shade and me. The pilots walked around the plane, pouting and grumbling as they fingered chips in the paintwork. They had already removed to the hangar floor the seats Shade had made them unbolt and store sideways for the flight, and one of the pilots groused and sucked at a finger he had skinned while unbolting the seats.

MacRoy’s face gleamed extraordinarily pink that night, so he had obviously gotten the telex Shade had sent when we stopped for fuel on the way home.

First MacRoy kicked an unbolted seat. “You porked my airplane!”

The shareholders’ airplane, actually.

MacRoy stopped in front of us, nostrils flared so wide that his nose hairs showed. “What the hell kind of joke was that goddam telex, Shade?”

“No joke. Do you want to see it?”

Shade and I climbed back aboard the JetStar, and MacRoy followed, at least far enough to poke his head in and peer back down the main cabin.

Shade’s football lay on the rear sofa, visible because the seats that had obstructed its passage now lay unbolted on the hangar floor. The mysterious silver torpedo was wrapped in the blanket I had tucked Shade in with, and was secured with a spider’s web of knotted cargo straps. It looked just as it had in the trench, a gleaming three hundred pound streamlined capsule so hard that no bulldozer blade nor industrial diamond could scratch it.

MacRoy snorted. “That’s nothing but a goddam fighter plane drop tank. They find whole B-24s left over from World War II buried in the Sahara.” He backed down the JetStar’s stairs, and we joined him on the hangar floor, where he stood, arms crossed, tapping one foot.

MacRoy’s hands shook as he stared at Shade. “You traded an additional ten percent of our Libyan reserves, a hundred million barrels of oil, for a war souvenir?”

Shade shook his head. “Given the depth of burial and the strength of the outer shell it’s no human relic. It’s emitting a little radiation, but if it contained fissionable material it would be emitting more. Or the shielding would weigh tons.”

MacRoy closed his eyes, nodded. “Ah. An itty bitty spaceship from Mars. Much better, Shade. Much better value.”

Shade said, “Not a spaceship, necessarily. Though it could be spaceship flotsam or jetsam. Or a child’s lost toy. Or a robot exploration probe. Regardless, it is the construct of an alien intellect. But not constructed on Mars. Or anywhere in the Solar System. There’s nothing near us but cold, dead rocks. So whatever powered this thing, and is still powering it, has continued to operate for decades of travel time. Or centuries. Or longer.”

MacRoy opened his eyes, narrowed them at Shade. “If you’re right, Shade, and if you’re right I swear before the Lord Jesus Christ that I am a goat rapist, so what? It’s a museum piece. It’s a headline in Popular Science. But it’s not worth a hundred barrels of oil, much less a hundred million barrels.” MacRoy shook his head again, stared at the hangar’s concrete floor. “Shade, you’ve done fine work for this company. For many years. But you’ve just traded a cow for a magic bean that fits on an airplane sofa.”

Shade opened his mouth. I touched his arm to shut him up. He shrugged me off. “You don’t get it, do you, Hugh? This object contains a hydrogen fusion reactor. And one that’s generations more sophisticated than any reactor man could develop if we devoted our combined gross planetary product to the development for the next hundred years. If we can reverse engineer it, energy will effectively become a free good.”

“Gross planetary product? A free good? Now you’re dictating to a Doctor of Economics about economics? We’re an oil company, not an energy company, you uneducated little snot!”

I nudged Shade again to shut him up, but he was rolling.

“And the railroads who decided they were railroad companies and not transportation companies, Hugh? Go buy a plane ticket from them! A hundred million barrels of oil in the ground won’t be worth even a regular bean. Think about it, Hugh. If oil is the root of all evil like people say, this can cure it. And the patents on hydrogen fusion will be worth the Earth. To anyone with a brain, that’s a self-evident truth.” Shade snorted, shook his head. “Hugh, don’t be an even bigger fool than usual.”

MacRoy sighed, though his lips trembled. “Shade, you’re relieved of your duties. Terminated. Fired! Clean out your desk. Tonight.” Then MacRoy’s eyes found me as he pointed at Shade. “How do we break this fool’s deal with the ragheads?”

I took a deep breath. The politic thing that a lawyer, especially one who valued his regular paycheck, would do would be to begin by offering a plausible argument that could be made on the client’s behalf. But in a moment that MacRoy would have found unusual in a shyster, I told him the exact truth as I saw it. “We don’t break the deal. Because we can’t. Hugh, I didn’t write the amendment to be breakable. By either side. If Shade’s right, it’ll be Khaddafi who wants out, anyway, not us. But we’ll have a strong case. A stronger case against Libya for title to the antiquity than the British have against Greece for keeping the Elgin Marbles. And the marbles are still in the British Museum.”

“Have you gone as crazy as Shade?” MacRoy rolled his eyes. “Antiquity? It’s junk.”

During that moment, I agreed that maybe Shade had gone crazy. He certainly had just said things an employee was crazy to say to his boss. But I also hoped that I could still save my friend’s job. I stepped alongside MacRoy and whispered behind my hand, “Sir, if we do choose to try and break the amendment, Mr. Shade’s testimony as the company signatory would be critical. A current employee makes a more cooperative witness than a bitter former one.”

MacRoy’s eyebrows shot up. “Christ! You’re supposed to be my shyster!” He pointed at Shade. “Not his. But now you’re bullshitting me to save your little buddy’s job? You’re fired, too, you disloyal son of a bitch!”

MacRoy turned his back and stalked to his car, the only sounds echoing in the hangar’s vastness the clicks of his heels on concrete and Shade’s and my breathing.

When Shade and I stood there, small and alone, he sighed, and his lip trembled, but his voice rang firm and confident. “I guess there’s no such thing as self-evident truth.”

I said, “There’s one.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“You and I are screwed worse than MacRoy’s goat.”

. . .

On May 11, 2020, the smiling Honorary Chairman of the Green Sierra Coalition leaned forward across the table in Prometheus Energy’s visitor conference room. Fifty years before the room had been the conference room of Dr. Gilbert Hugh MacRoy.

The environmental group’s Honorary Chairman was a Hollywood actor who lent his celebrity to environmental causes. He was tan, trim and wore a T-shirt with a whale on it beneath a tailored silk jacket.

Nodding round at the four other guests in the room he said to me, “I think I speak for us all when I say that after fifty years it’s a privilege to finally hear that historic story from one of the men who lived it, Mr. Trueman.”

Trueman was me. Trueman was I. Trueman was the person who is telling you this story. Morton Trueman, Esq., General Counsel, Secretary, and one of two shareholders of Prometheus Energy, Inc.

One of the heads that nodded at the Hollywood activist’s comments, the Secretary General of the United Nations, held up one cocoa colored finger, while he grasped his robe with his other hand. “Mr. Trueman, before we continue, you mentioned ground rules for our conversation with Mr. Shade?”

He pronounced “rules” “roo-walls.”

I nodded. “Mr. Shade has insisted on a few. However, he doesn’t really want this occasion to be about rules, Mr. Secretary, but about cooperation.”

The Hollywood activist frowned. “What could we ask or say in the next sixty minutes that could bother a man who nobody has seen in the last fifty years?”

The others glared at him. They didn’t want this meeting called off.

He was actor enough that he instantly turned his frown to a smile that replicated all of theirs.

The lucky five smiled the smiles of the flattered. Shade had culled these five people, from a short list of the two thousand most influential people in the world, to meet with him on May 11, 2020. It was the fiftieth anniversary of Shade’s discovery of what the patents called the Prometheus Process Fusion Reactor Prototype, and what the New York Times called the most important machine in the history of the world.

Fifty years before these five arrived in this room with me, MacRoy and Marathon’s board had rethought MacRoy’s decision to fire Shade and me. The board had also thought about the gathering storm of expropriation that, going forward from 1970, Libya might trigger across the Middle East. Then they upheld MacRoy’s decision and left us fired. But in return for our agreement to cooperate in future proceedings they assigned to Shade all Marathon’s rights in what the board regarded as airplane debris of nominal value.

And then Shade, like his namesake from Greek mythology, Prometheus, stole the secret of fire from the gods.

We took a second mortgage on his house in Findlay, pooled the rest of our savings, then bet the pile on reverse engineering Shade’s alien curiosity into the first commercial Prometheus hydrogen fusion reactor. It wasn’t easy. It took Shade four months just to invent and build a drill that got him a look inside the football without damaging its guts.

But we ultimately repaid Shade’s mortgage. We also remade the world. Prometheus Energy became the most valuable business enterprise in the history of the human race.

I looked at the Chairperson and CEO of ManCo, the multinational manufacturing giant that was second in worldwide revenue only to Prometheus. She had short, gray hair and granny glasses. She also had an athletic female body guard wearing a blazer who stood, arms crossed, in the conference room’s corner. But I’ll get back to that.

I said, “First ground rule. No rehashing Prometheus’ rights. Every tribunal from the Supreme Court of the United States to the World Court in the Hague sided with us.”

Everybody smiled, nodded.

After we got our first reactor on line, some oil companies saw the future as clearly as Shade did. They licensed the technology from us. They, and we, prospered. Today Prometheus and its licensees sold squeaky-clean, dirt-cheap energy to giant enterprises like ManCo. But we also sold it to you. To light your home and cook your food and power your electric runabout and do all the other things a world of human beings want to do. But today you buy that energy for a song. Which gives you more time and money to write a song if that’s what you want to do.

However, many oil companies, like Marathon, chose to believe, as Shade had predicted, that they were oil companies, not energy companies. They slugged it out against Prometheus, in the courts and and legislatures of the world as well as against hydrogen fusion in the marketplace. They lost in every arena and they withered away to nothing.

MacRoy, by the way, died in rural Manitoba two years after Marathon folded. He suffered a sudden and massive heart attack in a goat pasture. I won’t speculate.

But we didn’t buy the Marathon building for Prometheus’ headquarters for spite or revenge, or even because it was cheap.

We bought it because we knew from experience that a business that covered twenty-three other time zones could be run effectively from there, and still give our employees time to raise their families or write songs if they wanted to.

Besides, Shade still owned the same house in Findlay that he had owned when he and I got fired, the house he remortgaged to grubstake Prometheus. Although Shade hadn’t lived in it for years. I’ll get back to that, too. Unhappily.

I looked at the Network Chairwoman, whose intrusive theatrics not only had goaded us to locate in quiet, remote Findlay but were also a reason Shade was finally meeting the world today.

She was a middle-aged bottle blonde with cheeks stretched so tight by cosmetic surgery that they looked like translucent pink cellophane. Her clothes looked expensive.

I said, “Second ground rule. No questions about crackpot conspiracy theories or about Mr. Shade’s personal life.”

She frowned so hard at the implied criticism of the media’s mischaracterizations of Shade that I was afraid her cheeks would split.

Back in the days when she had the looks that made her on-air talent, she was the first one who cocked an eyebrow and called Shade “Secretive recluse P. Robin Shade.”

I suppose she had demonized Shade because calling him a smart, hardworking guy who owned a three bedroom ranch downwind from the sugar beet processing plant in a small town wouldn’t make him sound like a super villain who lived inside a hollowed out volcano.

There was nothing like making the world a better place to make people assume you must be up to no good. After fifty years, Shade had wearied of the mistaken assumptions and of the conspiracy paparazzi. So we invited the network head here to see for herself the reality of the conspiracy myths that she had started and that her industry had perpetuated.

Although the main reason for this get together was to ask her and the other institutions represented by these five prominent world citizens to finally pull together. Shade had finally conceded that saving the world was a job too big for us to continue alone.

I said, “And no questions about how much Prometheus and Mr. Shade are worth. Private corporation, private citizen. Both pay their taxes in full and on time, and do good work with what’s left over.”

The media had ranked Shade the world’s richest man, at two to four times more than whoever came second, for forty years running.

The cardinal sent by the Vatican steepled pudgy fingers, “Sir, speaking myself as a man of God knowledgeable of Earthly business I believe you understate Mr. Shade’s good works.”

He pronounced “Knowledegable” “No-lee-zha-bell.” He was an Italian so plump that his overstuffed red cassock bulged. He served on the Committee of Cardinals who oversaw the Vatican Bank.

He said, “I have studied the published statements of the Prometheus philanthropies myself, and it is by research possible to estimate the value of Mr. Shade’s investments, that fund these charities. I calculate that Mr. Shade gifts back to the world each year virtually every dollar he earns.”

Maybe his Eminence got inside info from his ultimate boss, because his calculation was dead close. Although we had trouble giving our earnings away fast enough. Fusion power was just the beginning. Over the decades Shade refined his ability to spot and invest in the next big thing, and to predict and avoid the next bad thing.

And the money we made then gave away had to date cured a dozen forms of cancer. We had started with pancreatic. The money also fed much of sub-Saharan Africa, and was rebuilding half of Tibet and Nepal after the 2018 quake.

The cardinal inclined his head so far that I thought his beanie would fall off. “The Holy Father himself wishes me to extend his thanks and his blessing, on behalf of all those everywhere, of all faiths, who have benefited from Mr. Shade’s generosity.”

Another reason Shade wanted to have this meeting was that his generosity may have been enough for the Holy Father, but it wasn’t enough for everybody. Today the media didn’t just call Shade a reclusive eccentric. Now he was also the Early Robin That Catches the Worm, the Nostradamus of Northwest Ohio, the Man With the Golden Gut. Everybody wanted not only his generosity but his advice, and if he spent his energy giving the latter, he couldn’t earn the profits that funded the former. People needed to understand that and leave him alone.

The network blonde squirmed in her chair. “Mr. Trueman, this is all fascinating. And all of us do feel a bit like we’ve won the golden tickets to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but –”

It had been her job to reduce complexities to pop cultural references. With a twinkle in her eye that kept viewers tuned through the commercial.

I smiled at that one, myself. “But you think it’s time the tour moves on?”

I nodded, slapped my palms on my thighs, and stood. “We’ll cover other ground rules if they come up.”

Once I led them into the hallway, I pointed at the double doors at the opposite end. “Mr. Shade’s office is just down the hall.”

The network blonde pouted as her stilettos clicked on our ancient but serviceable linoleum. “What? No Wonkavator?”

Everyone chuckled. Except for me.

I made this short walk each day on heavy legs. For these five smiling representatives of mankind, the Wonkavator of giddy anticipation was about to take a cruel turn down a dark tunnel.

I paused when I reached the double doors and rested my weight on the door handles, head down, with my back to the guests. “I should tell you that Mr. Shade’s health is — has been — poor.”

The double-doored room had been MacRoy’s executive dining room, and the existing plumbing and kitchen facilities had made it a practical conversion to accommodate Shade.

I rapped my knuckles on the mahogany, then pushed the doors inward and stood aside.

All of them gasped.

I ground my teeth. I should have prepared them better. But after all the years I suppose my heart saw Shade as the man I knew, even though my eyes saw the truth every day.

The cardinal muttered and crossed himself. The network blonde stepped back, rolled an ankle, and jostled the Manco executive’s bodyguard. Six mouths hung open and twelve eyes stared.

Shade sat silhouetted against the darkened floor to ceiling windows in the center of the plain and oversized room. We had set up a semicircle of six armchairs in front of him. But mankind’s representatives weren’t looking at the room or the chairs.

I wonder often whether Shade, who had told me that his genius was simply perceiving the obvious, had perceived in 1970 that such fine motor coordination trivialities as spilling a few peanuts, and fingers and lips that trembled, signaled the onset of Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis.

Or whether Shade was as shocked as I was when his increasing weakness finally brought the diagnosis that Lou Gehrig and Stephen Hawking and Prometheus Robin Shade had more in common than unsought fame and unrequited optimism.

The doctors say it wouldn’t have mattered if they or Shade had seen it coming, because mankind hadn’t devised a cure. When we had focused on diseases to cure first, we didn’t choose ALS because it affected fewer people than so many other diseases. It was a small irony.

The large irony was that, like his namesake Prometheus, Shade’s reward for gifting mankind with limitless fire was to be chained for eternity. Shade, unlike Prometheus, did not regrow his liver each night so that the eagle of Zeus could eat it each day.

But as I watched Shade weaken each day, and as I saw his guests’ reaction on this day as Shade the omnipotent man of mystery finally sat before them, I wondered whether the gods had been kinder to Prometheus than life had been to Prometheus Robin Shade.

Truly, Shade did not sit. He was propped.

The withered bundle of bone and tissue that remained of his body was each day wrapped by his nurse and me into a business suit, crisp white shirt, and tie.

Yes, the world’s richest man and most improbable optimist got up and went to work every day, just like you did in your electric runabout, the runabout that Shade’s perceptiveness and daring allowed you to drive for a song. The difference was that Shade’s commute was thirty feet, and his clothes were tailored. But he only let me have them tailored for him when I could no longer buy them off the rack in sizes small enough to fit him.

Then each day his nurse and I placed the bundle in the powered chair that imprisoned the body that imprisoned Shade’s mind. So that Shade’s eyes and ears could let him be part of the world that he had remade, as he read and watched a hundred and twelve closed-captioned flat screen monitors arrayed on his office wall.

Shade stared at his guests through eyes set deep in a drawn, pale face canted to one side. The chair periodically metronomed his cradled head slowly side to side, exercising atrophied neck muscles Shade could no longer control, but it was a false animation. He could twitch his cheek muscles and blink but do little else.

Shade’s eyes stared at his guests through a clear but flickering panel suspended from his chair, that was the size of a computer monitor screen, that moved with his head, and replaced his eyeglasses.

“I apologize for my appearance. I don’t get out much, for obvious reasons. Trueman, there, picks out my clothes and dresses me funny. Overpriced and understyled. But what do you expect from a lawyer who lives in Findlay, Ohio?”

I smiled.

But his guests filed into the semicircled chairs, sat and stared at him stiffly. His electronic voice didn’t disarm them any more than his attempted icebreaker, though self-deprecating jokes about overpriced lawyers and small town disfashion were usually money in the bank.

Shade manipulated his computer-created voice by twitches he made in his cheek muscles, which optical sensors atop the screen above his face matched to an electronic dictionary of familiar phrases, words, letters, numbers, and punctuation as they flickered across the screen.

If Shade’s guests found this conversation awkward, they should have been here a few years before. In those days, when Shade could no longer speak or write or type or even point or nod, I would sit in front of him holding a board on which were displayed phrases, words and symbols. I went through them with a pointer as he blinked. One blink meant “No, next,” two blinks meant “Yes, that’s it.” Composing a paragraph could take an hour. It was so exhausting for him that I pointed periodically at “I quit,” to give him an out.

But we didn’t quit. Because, in the way that a sightless person hears more acutely than a sighted one, Shade’s ability to, as he put it, perceive the obvious grew as the distractions that the rest of us suffer from our physicality shrank for him. He read, absorbed, analyzed. We invested accordingly. And from those investments we made, then gave away, so much money that the Pope sent us human valentines, like this overstuffed cardinal.

In fact, Shade had only invoked “I quit” once.

It was after an overlong point-and-blink that merely determined that Shade wanted to dump our small position in KonigsAir, a Swedish aircraft manufacturer. KonigsAir had recently rolled out a biz jet called the Drake, sort of the JetStar’s pussified great nephew. Shade had just made the point to me that he thought the Drake’s fuel system incorporated a fault that might delay certification.

I had looked at my watch. “It’s Carol the nurse’s wedding anniversary and we’re keeping her late, Shade.” I had pointed to “I quit,” and Shade blinked twice for “yes.” I sent Carol home, then put Shade to bed myself and tucked him in.

The next morning, Shade didn’t respond to anything I pointed to.

Finally, I turned away from him and stared at the silent monitors behind us.

All the networks carried stills and video of a test-flown KonigsAir Drake bursting into flame, then tumbling like a meteor onto a day care center outside Stockholm. Above the crawl were photos of twenty-three infants, each black bordered.

When I turned back to Shade, a single tear ran down his cheek. I pointed and he blinked until he had said, “I could have saved them.” Then he wouldn’t respond.

Each day for the next six Carol and I dressed him and propped him up like always but he wouldn’t respond. He tried to choke himself on what Carol fed him.

Finally, I threw the board and the pointer on the floor in front of him. “Dammit, Shade! Not even God can make the world perfect. And you’re not him. You make the world better. Settle for that.”

Then I stared out the window at Findlay, Ohio, for a half hour. When I picked the board up, I said, “I’m sorry,” then pointed at “Do you want to continue?”

He blinked twice for yes, and I never saw him cry again.

Motionless, Shade said to his guests, “I understand your discomfort at my appearance and limitations. Therefore, I’ll be brief. If the Prometheus prototype were today, in 2020, still in the Libyan sand, we would not be out of oil. We would, however, have been told decade-in and decade-out by various of the institutions all of you represent that we would be out. Not because it was true but in order to advance other agendas. Nor would the Earth have been ruined by industry, or blown to bits by nuclear weapons. Nor would it have suffered the onset of so many other terrible self-evident truths that were not true at all. But today all those awful possibilities do still remain.”

The ManCo CEO, who had previously served two terms as President of the United States, which is why she had a Secret Service bodyguard – I told you I’d get back to that – wrinkled her forehead. “But Mr. Shade, mankind has done far better than that.”

“On the contrary. My analysis is that if fusion technology had not been developed, Khaddafi’s expropriation of foreign oil interests in the 1970s would have ignited the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, from the developed nations to the Islamic nations of the Middle East. That in turn would have triggered a cycle of revolution and violence that would have shaped much of the history of the next fifty years. And that cycle would have continued until and beyond this day.”

Shade paused. We had literally worked him out for weeks before this day, so he would be physically strong enough to sustain this conversation. But the effort was still wearing him down.

His disembodied voice continued, “But, even though mankind won the cosmic lottery, we’ve done scarcely better at all. All those other problems are still with us, despite limitless clean energy that should have allowed us to solve so many of them. I am weary of working alone. My hope today in bringing us all together is that at last we begin to solve mankind’s problems cooperatively.”

The Hollywood activist pumped his fist. “Well said! Our environmental groups work selflessly to make a better world.” He waved at the other four guests, “But these entrenched institutions fight us every inch.”

The Secretary General of the United Nations rolled his eyes at that. “Selfless? You save whales only so they may look graceful alongside your yacht. You adopt babies of color like pretty pocketbooks. Then have them raised by your house darkies.”

The cardinal scolded the Secretary General with a chubby finger. “Sir, you cast stones? Your organization could be the hope of the world’s children. But you test the developed nations’ generosity scolding them. While you weep at genocide and corruption in lesser lands whose brief you nonetheless carry.”

The fake-cheeked newscaster snorted at the cardinal. “Hope? You hypocritical tub-of-lard! Organized religion manufactured hell. Then you started charging for life preservers to stay out of hell and called that hope. The only hope the world’s children get from you people is the hope that you won’t rape them like goats.”

The ex-president sniffed at the network president. “Really, Maureen! How often did my administration endure that same kind of hyperbole and crisis-of-the-week vitriol from your network? While your network’s so-called comedians mocked and scuttled every serious initiative my people or even my opponents ever floated. And you short-covered hard news,” the ex-President pointed at the Hollywood activist, “So you could run puff pieces about these phonies’ diets.”

“Phonies?” The Hollywood activist came out of his chair, fists balled, and stepped toward the ex-president.

The Secret Service Amazon came out of her corner like Rocky Balboa, with a hand inside her blazer, and the Hollywood actor plopped back into his chair.

But the actor pointed at the President-turned-CEO. “Phony? You doubled the deficit and unemployment, then claimed that was prosperity. You gutted the EPA and now you clear sixty million a year fronting for environmental rapists. You started two illegal wars and now you’re campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

I looked away from the icons of modern civilization while they argued, one insult short of a street brawl. Then I stepped over to Shade and pulled the old message board out of the pocket in his chair, so we could converse privately, if less fluently.

“Shade, I know you’re tired. I know the hopes you had for this day. But this mess is their fault, not yours.”

“Hopeless. Worthless.”

I buzzed the security guy by the elevator and he and the Secret Service amazon herded the bickering quintet out.

I closed the doors, locked them, turned to Shade. He stared at me as the chair wagged his head slowly.

I didn’t turn the voice back on and we did it the old, face-to-face way. It was more personal. One blink meant “no,” two blinks meant “yes.”

I said, “I understand. We thought oil was the root of mankind’s problems. But now we know that the only self-evident truth is that mankind is its own worst enemy. We’ve busted our asses for fifty years but the human race is still run by self-absorbed hypocrites who choose their own facts and feather their own nests. So you want to give up?”

He blinked, then blinked again. Twice for yes.

I looked down at the carpet, back up at him. “And the pain. It’s worse for you every day?”

Again he blinked, then blinked again for yes.

After the KonigsAir thing, Shade had asked me to amend his Living Will. Now a syringe was locked in a drawer in Carol’s desk for which I carried the only key. I was authorized, in fact had promised Shade, to use the syringe if he asked. In Ohio it was still manslaughter for me, but I had promised anyway because I owed him that after all we had been through together.

I took a deep breath, fingered the cold metal key in my pocket, then asked the question Shade’s will required. “Do you want to continue?”

He blinked once. My heart skipped.

My tears choked me as I whispered, “But Shade, I can’t continue trying alone. Besides, then I’ll have nobody to dress funny.”

And then he blinked the second time.

New Moon Wolf

by David B. Coe

The silence between my dad and me drowned out the rumble of the pickup’s engine and the crunch of gravel and sand beneath our tires. He rocked in his seat with the bouncing of the truck, his sun-spotted hands resting on his thighs, hot wind from the open window tousling his white hair. His eyes, the same shade of gray as mine, but glassy, were trained on the washboarded track before us. I wondered how much of what he saw actually reached him.

This camping trip had struck me as a good idea when first I thought of it. My father needed a change of scenery from his trailer and the small, dusty plot of land surrounding it. I was eager to escape the Phoenix traffic and the perpetual cloud of brown smog that hung over the city. And as owner, president, and principal investigator for Justis Fearsson Investigations, Inc., I could take time off whenever I wanted. As long as I was willing to sacrifice the income. And I was; I needed a break. A few days in Sonoran Desert National Monument would do us both some good.

I knew the risks when I made the arrangements. Only now, though, confronted with the reality of Dad in the midst of one of his unresponsive episodes, did I allow myself to contemplate what it might be like to be alone with him for two days if he spent the entire time halfway catatonic.

My dad had been a burned-out old weremyste for about as long as I had been casting spells. For three nights out of every month, for upwards of fifty years, he had endured moon phasings, descending into psychosis even as his magic strengthened beyond his control. Each night of each phasing was both unnervingly unique—the pull of the moon fueling new delusions and hallucinations—and numbingly familiar. I knew this, because I had been enduring phasings of my own for more than fifteen years. And eventually they would leave me as addled and insane as they had my father.

“How are you doing there, Pop?” I glanced his way, gauging his reaction. Not that there was much to gauge. He said nothing. His gaze didn’t waver from the rutted road. “You getting hungry?”

A frown creased his brow, which was something at least. But he didn’t say a word, or nod or shake his head.

Two days with the wooden man. Maybe I’d be better off turning around. I didn’t, of course. I’d made our plans; I was going to stick with them. We Fearsson men could be pretty stubborn. If my dad was going to sit there saying nothing, I was going to keep driving, no matter the consequences. Sometimes I questioned whether we really needed the phasings to make us nuts.

We followed the road as far into the Maricopa Wilderness as it would take us before stopping at the base of gentle rise, its slopes covered with huge saguaro cacti, chain-fruit chollas, creosote and bursage and palo verde trees.

“How does this look?” I asked.

He still stared out the windshield, but he appeared more alert. He knew we were somewhere new. His eyes followed the flight of a red-tailed hawk as it glided along the ridge in front of us, and he flexed a hand, perhaps missing the pair of old Leica binoculars that usually rested in his lap.

“This seem okay, Pop?”

He dipped his chin once.

I climbed out of the truck, watched as he did the same.

I dug his binoculars out of his bag, pulled a folding chair from the back of the pickup, and set it angled southward so he could look toward the Southern Maricopas and Sand Tank Mountains. Late afternoon sun gilded the peaks and deepened the purple shadows in the clefts and crags of the rock faces.

While he sat and watched for birds, I set up our tent and a table for the camp stove and water containers. Every now and then he’d call out the name of whatever bird crossed his line of sight.

“Red-tail.”

“Flicker.”

“'Nother goddamned raven.”

“Kestrel.”

He did this all the time, even when he was out of it and totally uncommunicative in every other way. It was a verbal tic, something so deeply ingrained he didn’t even think about it, like scratching an itch. He wasn’t talking to me so much as he was merely talking. And yet I took comfort in the sound of his voice, in the reassuring certainty of his pronouncements.

When he said “Eagle,” I paused in what I was doing to admire the enormous bird as it circled above us, its wings splayed, its tail twisting in the warm breeze.

It soared overhead for some time before disappearing over the ridge. I glanced at my dad, but he was still watching the spot where he had last seen the bird.

I went back to preparing our dinner. The air had already started to chill with the setting of the sun, but still the ice in our cooler would only last through tomorrow morning. So tonight we would feast: steaks, fresh tomatoes, cold beer. Tomorrow we’d make do with the prepackaged rice dishes and beef jerky.

This night’s meal helped my father considerably, as food often did. After a few slices of tomato and a couple of bites of steak, he roused himself, reminding me of a dog waking up from a long nap.

“I don’t remember getting here,” he said, swiveling in his chair, taking in our surroundings.

“Yeah, you’ve been pretty much out of it all day.”

“Sorry about that.”

I lifted a shoulder, smiled. “You’re here now.”

“Steak’s good. Tomatoes, too.” He sipped his beer. “And this. Thanks.”

An owl hooted from nearby, low and resonant.

“Great-horned.”

“I knew that one.”

And so it went. Neither of us said a lot, but when my dad spoke now it was to me rather than at me. He even helped me clean our plastic camping plates. But he went to bed early. Odd as it seemed, spending much of the day barely functional left him more exhausted than any normal day would. I stayed out by the table, reading by the fading glow of the twilight sky. As stars emerged, I retrieved a couple of candles from the truck, lit them, and stuck them to the table using a bit of melted wax. I would have preferred a campfire, but BLM regulations prohibited them in the monument.

We had planned this trip with care, making sure it would coincide with the new moon, so as to be as removed from the influence of the full as possible. The sky darkened to black, and star glow suffused the night. I couldn’t see much beyond the circle of dancing light defined by the candles.

But in the middle of reading, I simply stopped and peered out into the darkness. I couldn’t say why. I don’t think I heard or smelled anything unusual, nor did I sense the cool tingle of a spell on my skin.

An instant after I looked up from my reading, the tent zipper trilled and my father crawled out, his hair sticking up, his eyes puffy. He’d been asleep.

“What is it?” he asked, taking an uncertain step in the direction I’d been staring. “Do you feel it?”

“I’m not sure what I feel. Something woke you?”

“Yeah. Don’t know what.” He tried to smooth down his hair.

A rustling in the creosote drew our gazes once more. I stepped away from the table—and the candles—trying to discern more in the darkness. My heart raced and I considered retrieving the handgun tucked under the front seat of the pickup.

A shadow shifted, in front of me and slightly to the left. I retreated, ceding the step I had taken seconds before. The shape before me was large, low to the ground. My first thought was that it might be a mountain lion. I opened my mouth to tell my father to get in the truck, but even as I did, the shadow coalesced, padded closer.

A wolf, female. Or else the largest coyote I’d ever seen. Yellow eyes, frosted fur of buff and rust. The ears were rounded, the snout blunt. Definitely a wolf. The federal and state fish and game services had been working to reestablish Mexican wolf populations in Arizona. Apparently they’d been more successful than I knew.

“That’s a were,” my father said.

Hearing this, I turned, though in my smarter moments I knew showing my back to any wild animal was an invitation to trouble. “How can you tell?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. I just can. It’s a were.”

“A werewolf? Seriously?”

He scowled. “You know it doesn’t work that way.”

I faced the wolf again. It remained exactly as it had been, eyes on me, shoulders hunched, one paw forward, as if caught in mid-stride.

A were. Weres were a bit like weremystes, and yet nothing at all like us. They were subject to the phasings; every month on the full moon and on the nights immediately before and after, they shifted to their animal forms. But other than that, they possessed no magic. They couldn’t cast spells or see portents of the future or ward themselves from enemies. And mythology and Hollywood movies notwithstanding, they couldn’t taint others and make them into weres with a bite, anymore than I could force someone to become a sorcerer by sinking my teeth into him. That was what my father meant when he said “it doesn’t work that way.” Werewolves were no different from any other were. When in the form of their totem beasts, they behaved largely as those animals would, although maybe with a bit more intelligence. Or less, I suppose, depending on the person.

I didn’t know a lot of weres personally; I wasn’t friends with any. But I had vague connections to plenty: friends of friends, weremystes with weres in their families. I’d heard of werecats, werecoyotes, wereowls, werebighorn, to name a few. But, perhaps ironically, I’d never encountered an actual werewolf, either in person or anecdotally. Until now, if my father was right.

“Assuming this really is a were—”

“It is,” he said.

“Assuming it is,” I began again, “why would she have shifted tonight? There’s no moon, no phasing. If there was, you and I wouldn’t be out here.”

Dad’s frown returned. Apparently I’d stumped him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a good question. A damn good one. But I swear to you this is a were.”

I studied the animal, knowing of no way to determine from an animal’s appearance whether or not it was a were. But I couldn’t deny that both my father and I had been tuned to the wolf before she reached us, before we could even see her. Maybe that meant something. It also occurred to me that the wolves released into the wild by state and federal biologists had been equipped with radio collars. This animal didn’t wear one.

I eased toward the truck, and the wolf followed me with her eyes, her massive head turning slowly. She growled low in her throat, but she didn’t raise her hackles or bare her teeth, which I took as a good sign.

Reaching the pickup, I opened the door with care, found the food bag, and pulled out a strip of dried beef. Jerky wasn’t exactly health food for wolves, but I meant this more as a peace offering than anything else. I tossed it in the were’s direction, and it landed a few feet in front of her. She eyed it, regarded me again, then crept forward, her stare swinging from me to the food.

When she was close enough, she took the beef in her teeth, appeared to decide that teriyaki flavored jerky was pretty darn tasty, and settled down on the dirt to gnaw on it.

Still moving slowly, I walked back to the table and sat. My father joined me there.

“Darnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“A wolf eating meat?”

The look he gave me took me back twenty years, to when he was still a sane cop working for the Phoenix Police Department, and I was a smart-ass kid, on the leading edge of my teens.

“You should be nicer to me. I’m not a well man.”

“You seem well enough right now.”

He nodded, watching the wolf. “Nothing like the arrival of a were to clear the mind.”

“Why are you so convinced—”

“I know weres.”

He said it in a way that made me think there was more to this than an old sorcerer understanding a branch of runecrafting lore.

“Tell me.”

He huffed a breath, eyes still on the animal. “There was a guy I knew when I was I on the job.” He glanced my way. “You were just a kid, barely walking and talking. Your mom and I were still doing okay, and I was holding it together well enough. I’d convinced myself I could stay a cop for as long as I wanted. It never even occurred to me . . . all that would happen later.

“Anyway, this guy—he was another detective. Johnny Paulson. Through everything, his name has stuck with me. He knew I was a weremyste, and he’d always say stuff to me. Cryptic stuff, like he wanted me to know that he knew, but wouldn’t let on to anyone else. So, for instance, the day after a phasing ended, he’d ask me about my days off in this knowing way. Or he’d send these weird looks my way whenever a group of us was discussing anything that was difficult to explain or even remotely related to magic. Stuff like that.

“It bothered me at first. It was kind of creepy. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to blackmail me, or if he was some sort of runecrafting wannabe. 'Cause I couldn’t see any magic on him at all.

“But then one morning, right after a phasing, he comes into work bearing the marks of a pretty severe beating. He’s limping, he has bruises and cuts all over his face and neck. He’s basically a mess. The other guys are giving him a hard time about it, asking if his old lady smacked him around, or if he got robbed and couldn’t find a real cop to help him out. Normal detective room razzing, you know? But the whole time, he’s watching me. Not in that knowing way this time, but scared, like he thinks I might say something to get him in trouble.

“So when I can, I pull him aside and ask what the hell really happened to him, and that’s when he tells me: He’s a were. Every month he drives north into the mountains and transforms into a deer. Most times it goes fine, but this time he was nearly taken by a mountain lion. Hence the bruises and cuts.”

“Geez,” I said, breathing the word and considering the wolf. She had finished her piece of jerky and was watching me, perhaps waiting for seconds. I walked back to the truck, retrieved another piece, and tossed it to her. She caught it on the fly and set to work on it.

Standing beyond the light of the candles, I thought I could see lights moving in the distance to the east. Headlights perhaps. I was also able to make out the rumble of engines. More than one. I hoped they wouldn’t come too close.

When I faced my dad and the were once again, I saw that the animal was staring eastward as well, her ears up. She growled again, her fur bristling.

“So did you and this guy become friends?” I asked.

“For a while, yeah. Once I understood how he knew I was a weremyste and why he was so interested in me, I wasn’t so suspicious of him. He was a loner—never married, didn’t have many friends, and I thought he was a little . . . off, if you know what I mean. So we weren’t close or anything. But we’d talk when we got the chance. And a couple of times he introduced me to other weres he knew. I’m really not sure why. Maybe he figured they must be as lonely as he was, and I might spend time talking to them, too. The truth is, that’s what happened. I hung out with all of them. Not a lot. But most months after the phasings we’d get together and talk. I learned a lot about what it means to be a were: the pain of their change, the frustration of being impacted by the moon that way, but not having spell magic. That sort of thing.

“And I suppose somewhere along the way I got a feel for what they’re like and how to recognize them.” He raised his chin, indicating the wolf. “That’s how I know this one’s a were.”

I gazed to the east again; those headlights and engines were drawing nearer, as unwelcome on this night as a monsoon rain. The were had gotten to her feet and was peering that way, too. She let out a low whine.

“What happened to your friend?” I finally asked. “Paulson. He still around?”

Dad shook his head. “No. He met the same fate as lots of weres who aren’t as lucky as our friend here, and aren’t at the top of the food chain. A few years after that first time he’d come back all bruised and cut, he didn’t come back from a phasing at all. The higher-ups in the department were pissed at him for missing work, but those of us who knew him were more scared than anything else. And with reason, it turned out. His body was found a few days later in some remote section of Prescott National Forest. He’d been badly mauled by a mountain lion. He was far from his campsite, and he had no clothes on, so the folks who found him didn’t quite know what to make of it. But those who knew him understood perfectly.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

I don’t think he heard me. “What the hell is all that noise?” he said, climbing to his feet and peering after those engines.

The vehicles were close now. I counted three of them—Jeeps with lights mounted above their windshields. The wolf let out a high bark and growled again: a full growl this time, her hackles up and her teeth bared. I expected her to bolt at any moment.

In addition to the headlights and windshield lights, the Jeeps all had spotlights mounted on them. And one had a three point buck roped to the hood.

“I don’t like this, Justis.”

“She doesn’t, either.”

“Poachers from the look of them.” Dad eyed the wolf. “I wonder if they’ve been after this girl.”

I nodded, agreeing that it was a possibility, and thinking as well that for a guy who’d been out of it earlier in the day, he sounded pretty lucid now.

I hurried to the pickup and pulled out my weapon, a Glock 22 .40. While there, I also grabbed my scrying stone, a small slice of sea green agate that I usually used for divination spells. I tucked the pistol into the back of my jeans, palmed the stone, and hurried to my father’s side. I didn’t want a confrontation, and I had no intention of starting one by waving a firearm in front of these guys. But I also wasn’t going to face them unarmed.

“You didn’t happen to bring an extra weapon along, did you?” Dad asked.

“Only the one, and I was hoping I wouldn’t need it.”

We didn’t have time to say more. The Jeeps pulled up to our campsite with a billowing cloud of dust that glowed red in the gleam of their headlights.

The wolf bared her teeth again, her ears lying flat.

I cast a warding over the three of us. Spells work best for me when I envision them in three elements, or sometimes seven. There’s power in numbers, three and seven in particular. For this spell, I used seven: our visitors, their rifles, which I could see outlined in the glare, the ammo in them, my father, the wolf, me, and a protective shield around us, keeping us safe in case they opened fire. The words themselves were unimportant. What mattered was my ability to visualize the conjuring and hold all the component parts in my mind.

I repeated the elements to myself six times, and on the seventh, released the magic. It settled over us like that dust. As it did, my father looked my way. So did the were.

“A warding,” I said, pitching my voice so both of them could hear.

Dad nodded, and I saw some of the tension drain out of the wolf’s stance.

The lights from the Jeeps shone in our eyes, silhouetting the men in them. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought each vehicle might have carried three people. I hoped the warding would hold.

I raised the stone, catching the glare with it, reflecting it back on the men arrayed before us, and shifting it so that it shone on each face.

“Hey!” one of them said, raising a hand to shield his eyes. “Stop that.”

“I will when you switch off your lights.”

They were white, dressed in camo. Most had beards, or at least three-day scruff, and almost all of them were what I might charitably describe as burly. All right, they were fat.

These weren’t drug runners, and chances were they weren’t professional poachers, either. They were a bunch of guys out hunting on federal land, in violation of at least a few BLM regulations. They had probably started by spotlighting deer and then got it in their heads to go after something bigger, more exciting. And to make the situation even better, I thought I could make out coolers in the back of all three Jeeps. Filled with cheap American beer, no doubt. Not only were they hunting at night, driving their Jeeps through the wilderness at excessive speeds, with loaded rifles in their hands, they were probably halfway to shit-faced.

But while they might not have been criminal masterminds, they were well-armed and there were nine of them. Several of them appeared to be eyeing the wolf.

It was hard to tell for certain, though, because those damn lights were still shining in our eyes. And so I kept the reflection from my stone on the face of the guy who’d told me to stop. I was stupid that way.

He had been holding his rifle with the barrel pointed up at the stars, but now he lowered it, leveling it at my chest. He didn’t raise the weapon to take aim, but his approximation was close enough, and he had his finger on the trigger.

“I told you to get that thing out of my eyes.”

I wanted to tell him that, in fact, the stone wasn’t in his eyes. Just the light it was reflecting. But I didn’t think he’d appreciate being corrected, and I wasn’t sure that cracking wise with what appeared to be a Mossberg Patriot bolt-action rifle aimed at my heart was such a great idea. Instead I went with uncompromising defiance.

“And I told you to shut off the goddamned lights.”

As I said, I’m not always the sharpest pencil in the box.

“I have a better idea,” said the driver of the second Jeep. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up, get that thing out of Dave’s eyes, and get the hell out of our way so that we can shoot that wolf we’ve been tracking.”

I cast a quick look at my dad, only to find that he was already watching me. He gave a small shake of his head, which could have meant, “hell no, we’re not giving up the wolf,” or “don’t be an idiot; there are nine of them and they’re all armed.”

I was betting on the former.

“Yeah,” I said, sporting a little frown. “I don’t think I’m going to do any of those things. But thanks for the suggestion.” The driver opened his mouth to say more, but I didn’t let him. “Killing wolves is illegal in Arizona. Spotlight hunting deer is illegal in Arizona; you didn’t use a spotlight when you killed that buck, did you?” A couple of the men exchanged glances. “It’s also illegal to hunt without a license. I assume you all have licenses.”

“What are you? A cop?”

I wasn’t about to tell him that I was a disgraced cop who’d had to leave the force due to “undisclosed psychological problems”—in other words, the phasings. But I hoped the implication would be enough to end our standoff.

“Well, actually . . .”

“Oh, shit,” another of the men said, “he is a cop.”

Dave, the guy with the rifle aimed at me, shook his head. “He’s lyin’. He’s no cop.”

I gazed back at him, not bothering to confirm or deny.

“The bitch is ours,” he said, pointing at the wolf with his free hand. “We’ve been tracking her for more than an hour. Give her up, and we’ll be on our way. You’ll have no trouble.”

“And if we don’t?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t think you’re that dumb. You don’t want anything to happen to the old man.”

“He means me, right?” my dad said.

It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. “Yeah, I’m afraid so.”

“I had a feeling.”

I didn’t put much stock in my ability to scry the future, but none of the outcomes I could envision for this encounter were very good. Right now, only Dave had been bold enough to threaten us with a weapon, but that could change at any time, and if it did, we were in trouble. So I cast. Again, it might not have been the best idea, but there was no way I would allow them to hurt the wolf. I didn’t care whether or not she was a were. She didn’t deserve to be gunned down by these idiots.

Three elements to my spell this time—as simple as a spell could be. Dave’s hands, his rifle, my hands.

One moment he still held the weapon leveled at me; the next it had vanished from his grip and reappeared in mine.

“What the fuck!”

I glanced down at the rifle. It was light, well balanced. “Nice,” I said. I tossed it to my dad without looking, heard him catch it.

“Thanks,” he said.

I cast a second time, taking a rifle out of the hands of another guy in the third Jeep. This one was a Howa Hogue, and I didn’t like it quite as much. Of course, that was beside the point.

“How the hell did you do that?” asked the driver who’d earlier told me to shut up.

I replied with a cold smile. “How the hell do you think?” And for good measure, I cast again. One of the lights on his windshield rack, a rock on the ground at my feet, and the distance in between. The rock flew as if thrown by Sandy Koufax and shattered the light with a spray of glass and sparks.

“Now turn off those lights before I break every goddamned one of them.”

Again the men glanced at each other. After a few seconds, they shut off the windshield lights, though their headlights stayed on. That was fine with me. Now that the scrying stone was no longer reflecting that glare, I put it in my pocket.

“Much better,” I said. “Now you’re all going to back up, turn your Jeeps around, and drive away from here. Without the wolf.”

“We’re still seven to your two,” Dave said.

I resisted the urge to compliment him on his math skills. “Yes, you are. But do you really want this to come down to a fire fight?”

He stared back at me in a way that made me wonder if he did. For several seconds no one said a word.

Just when I thought he might relent, he grabbed a rifle from the guy sitting beside him, aimed, and squeezed off a shot at the were. I shouted a warning, which was lost in the deafening report of the rifle. The wolf flinched, but the bullet never touched her. It ricocheted off my warding with an incongruously soft flash of blue-green magic, and struck the grill of Dave’s Jeep. He’d been lucky. If he’d aimed any higher the shot would have rebounded on him.

The report continued to echo off the hills around us, repeating and fading for several seconds.

“What the hell, Dave?” one of the others said.

Dave could do little more than gape. I think he wanted to get out and check the front grill, but was afraid to come that close to me.

“You’re not going to kill this wolf,” I said. “Not tonight anyway. Now get out of here.”

“Are you, like, a witch, or something?” another man asked.

As before, I decided it would be rude to laugh. “Not a witch, no. I’m a weremyste.”

“Hey, I’ve heard of them,” came a voice from the third Jeep.

The guy sitting in front of this genius twisted around. “Well, then I guess you get a fucking gold star, don’t you?”

“Come on, Dave,” said the driver. “Let’s get going. We can find other game.”

Dave regarded me, clearly less sure of himself than he had been a short time before. “What about our weapons?”

“I don’t want this rifle, and my dad doesn’t want yours. We just want you away from here.”

To prove my point, I used another transporting spell to return the Howa Hogue I was holding to the guy from whom I’d taken it. I swear, he nearly wet himself when the weapon reappeared in his hands.

Still I could tell Dave wasn’t yet ready to give in. I’d seen guys like him when I was on the force: so full of themselves, so convinced that they were the toughest hombres on two legs that they never, ever backed down from fights, even when they were destined to lose. Most of them wound up doing time, or getting themselves killed.

“Dave?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Dave said at last, breaking eye contact and dismissing the entire confrontation with a disdainful gesture. I had the distinct impression he was trying to convince everyone there he didn’t care one way or another about the wolf or my dad or me. I guess he figured we all had bad memories. He shoved the weapon he’d taken into the hands of the guy next to him. “Give me back my rifle already.”

My father opened the breech on the Mossberg and removed the free round and the magazine. And casting his own transporting spell he sent the weapon back to Dave. An instant later he cast again, and the bullet and magazine fell into the hunter’s lap.

Dave examined the weapon, perhaps checking it for damage or magical alteration. Then he met my gaze again. I pulled out my Glock. I didn’t aim it; I held it casually at my side. But I made certain he could see it.

His expression soured, tipped over into that bored look once more. “Let’s get going.” The way he said it, one might have thought this had been his intention all along.

The Jeeps backed into three-point turns and pulled away, raising enough dust to make me squint in the darkness, and to leave my teeth feeling gritty. We stood without moving, without speaking, marking their retreat. When the glow from their lights had dulled, and the revving of the engines had subsided to a whisper, my father stepped to the were and knelt.

He scratched her head, allowed her to lick his cheek.

“You’re a beauty, aren’t you?” he said.

I joined them. “You should stay here tonight,” I told the wolf, hoping she could understand me. “I don’t know how far the protection from my warding can stretch, but you should be safe if you stick close to us.”

She stared back at me, eyes luminous with candle glow and starlight.

“I can leave out a pair of a jeans and a T-shirt so that you’ll have something to wear in the morning if you change back.” I smiled. “I’m sorry, but this is my only pair of shoes.”

She answered with a high bark and licked my hand.

“I wonder why she took this form so long before the full moon,” my father said. “I wonder if somehow she can change at will.”

“Can weres do that?”

He shrugged, shook his head. “I don’t know. Yesterday I would have said no, but it makes about as much sense as any other explanation I can think of.”

I gazed after the Jeeps. I couldn’t hear them anymore, and full darkness had fallen over the desert once again. Except for the weapon I still held in my hand, there was nothing at all to indicate the hunters had been here.

I retrieved my book from the table. “Well, I’m going to turn in.”

“Okay,” my father said, still scratching the wolf’s ears. “I think I’ll sit out for a while.”

“You all right?”

“Fine,” he said. “But I’m awake, and I want to keep an eye out for a while, in case those guys double back and try to hurt her.”

I handed him the Glock. “Wake me if you need to.”

I walked to the truck, put the book on the front seat, and pulled out those spare clothes. The wolf watched me as I placed them on the table and crossed to the tent.

I feared I might have trouble sleeping—after a confrontation like the one we’d had with the hunters, it wouldn’t have been unusual for me to stay up half the night. But I was asleep almost as soon as I stretched out on my sleeping pad. I barely even woke when my father came in some time later.

I was awake with first light. I crawled out of the tent, doing my best not to wake my dad.

Dawn silvered the cacti and brush, and a few bright stars still shone in the brightening sky. Low in the east, the first hint of gold tinged the horizon.

The wolf was gone. So were the clothes I’d left out. Fresh footprints in the dirt—human, delicate—led away from our campground, winding past the prickly pear and chollas and up the small rise, where they vanished amid the rocks and saguaros. I considered following them to the top of the ridge; perhaps I could catch a glimpse of the were in her human form. But if she had wanted that, she would have waited to leave until we woke.

Instead I stayed where I was, brewed some coffee, listened as the cactus wrens and black-throated sparrows practiced their morning duets. And I waited for my father to wake.

The Teacher

by Robert Conroy and J.R. Dunn

The Party Kreisleiter droned on, trying to instill courage into a group of old men and young boys. He was talking about dying for the Reich. Wolfgang Kohl doubted that the man had been within twenty miles of combat.

“To us,” he shouted, “falls the honor of defeating, no, destroying the Red Army and its murderous, thieving, raping hordes. We will save the Reich and earn the undying gratitude of our beloved Führer, Adolf Hitler!”

“Sieg Heil,” someone shouted, and Wolfgang forced himself to echo the words. He wanted no one to suspect that his loyalty to the Reich and the Führer were anything but total. Any hint of defeatism would mean death, by firing squad or being hanged by a wire from a hook, without the formality of a trial. There was no time for such niceties. The Russians were too close. When conditions were right—as they were this very moment—the rumbling of artillery could be clearly heard. It could be assumed to be Red Army guns. The German Army was short of everything, including shells.

He wiped the sweat from his brow. At age fifty-five, he was just too damned old to be running around trying to save the Reich from itself. But the choice had been made for him. He was now a captain in the Volkssturm whether he wanted the dubious honor or not.

The Volkssturm—“People’s Storm,”—was symbolic of the desperation that had taken hold of what was left of Nazi Germany. Boys scarcely in their teens and old men on the far edge of retirement, called on to the fight the Red Army, one of the greatest forces of pure destruction ever fielded. Once an ardent supporter of Hitler and his vision of the world, Wolfgang no longer had any confidence in anything that emanated from Berlin.

He glanced over his shoulder at his good friend and fellow veteran of the Great War, Willi Grossman. Willi rolled his eyes. The Nazi was a pompous pain in the ass. Not only was Germany short of guns and ammunition, it was also short of good speakers.

Wolfgang had been appointed commander of this forlorn group because he had been an NCO in the previous war. He was in charge of this band of a score or so and his job was to lead it to either destruction or slavery. The distant rumble of artillery told him he didn’t have much time to make up his mind.

The official wound it up with a final “Heil Hitler” and plopped down into his seat. The car roared off in a cloud of dust, preceded by a motorcycle soldier who kept looking upwards at the blue sky and the clouds that would have been lovely any other time. Today, they could be hiding Jabos, Jagdbombers—enemy fighter-bombers that prowled the German sky unopposed, shooting up everything that moved.

“That man was a bloody fool,” said Willi. Instead of a rifle, Willi had a Panzerfaust, a single-shot anti-tank weapon. It was effective only at close range, which meant that the shooter either had to be very quick and lucky or suicidal, and Willi was neither. As commander, Wolfgang had been given an old Mauser rifle and a Luger that might have been new in World War I. He thought the ammunition he’d been given came from the Franco-Prussian War.

Wolfgang was about to comment when two planes shrieked overhead at nearly treetop level. Everyone scattered or hit the ground. Seconds later, they heard explosions and the sound of machine-gun fire. Then silence.

Wolfgang picked himself up. A column of black smoke arose from the road where the official had gone. “I’ll go check,” Willi said. “By the way, it looks like some of your troops have gone home to their mothers.”

Wolfgang swore. Eight of his young charges had indeed run away from the terrifying American warplanes. But could he blame them? Not at all. He just hoped they made it home safely and didn’t fall into the clutches of the SS.

While waiting for Willi to return, he led the rest off the road and told them to keep a sharp eye out for Yank planes.

When Willi finally did return, his face was gray. “Not much left besides a few torn-up bodies. The only thing I got was a decent camera and a wristwatch and a few hundred Reichsmarks that will make good toilet paper in a few days.”

“Throw away the camera and the watch, Willi. If the SS catches you with them, they’ll assume you stole them and they’ll hang you for it. If we get to the Americans, they’ll just confiscate it, which is another word for stealing. Keep the money, though.”

Willi lowered his head. “I’m not going to the Amis.”

“No?” Wolfgang had been afraid of this. Willi’s disapproval of Wolfgang’s plans had been clear from the first.

“No. The SS . . . they’re all over the place. The Amis. Who knows what they’ll be like. And . . .” He looked Wolfgang in the eye. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about it.”

“I understand.”

“Y’know, it’s just…”

Wolfgang raised his hand. “I understand. So what are you going to do?”

“Go home. I’ll hide out in the woods when the Reds get here until things calm down.” He hoisted the watch and camera. “I’ll keep these for later. I can trade them.”

“Good idea…” Wolfgang raised his head. “What do you hear, Willi?”

Willi looked surprised. “Why… nothing. The bloody Reds have stopped their shelling. But why?”

“I can think of two reasons,” Wolfgang answered. “Either they’re short of ammunition, which I doubt, or they’ve shut down so they can reposition their guns. Move them closer to us, of course, not farther away.”

“Of course.”

“You’d better get moving.”

“Yes.” He gripped Wolfgang’s hand. “Good luck to you, comrade.”

“And to you, old man.”

Willi didn’t look back, and for that Wolfgang was grateful. He’d left the Panzerfaust. Wolfgang gestured Anton over and told him to put it in his pack. The boys were examining him curiously. “Let’s go,” Wolfgang said. “We’re off to the Elbe.” And maybe some Americans we can surrender to, he told himself.

# # #

People running away can move much faster than those who are chasing them can gain. First and foremost, those running away didn’t have to worry about ambushes, booby-traps, and mines, while the chasers do. Not even the Reds were suicidal; thus, they were able to put a little more distance between them and the Russians.

Nor were they alone. The roads had been filled for days with streams of refugees, ragged, hungry, and frightened, all headed west, to anyplace beyond the reach of the Russians. The flood had slowed to a trickle the past few days, but some were still visible. They were careful and skittish, slipping out of sight whenever anyone else appeared on the roads–nobody wanted to stumble across a murderous and vindictive SS unit. So Wolfgang’s ragged little horde, dressed in a grubby mix of civilian clothes and oversized Wehrmacht gear, largely had the roads to itself.

They came in sight of a farmhouse. A small pile of goods lay in front of it, next to what appeared to be a child’s wagon. As Wolfgang watched, a woman emerged with yet another armload. Several of the boys waved and shouted. She looked up, startled, then waved back and turned toward the house.

They were passing the farmhouse when she emerged once again, clutching a bowl. “Here boys, a little something to eat.”

The boys gathered around with shouts of glee. Wolfgang glanced at Dieter, their mascot Nazi. Dieter’s father was a local Blockleiter, a convinced National Socialist, and the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Dieter had taken to muttering curses at the refugees as they had patrolled the roads over the past week, and yesterday had shouted at one pitiful group as they passed. He wasn’t taking defeat well at all.

But hunger had evidently overcome any sense of conviction. There he was among all the others, intent on what the woman was handing out.

Potatoes, Wolfgang saw, baked in their skins. His mouth watered at the sight. He hadn’t been eating any better than the boys.

“I’m glad you came by,” she was saying. “I’ve cooked everything. I’m not leaving a thing for… those people.”

She glanced up at Wolfgang, and her mouth twisted. She hesitantly came toward him and offered the bowl. He nodded his thanks and selected a potato. It was still warm, almost too hot to hold, in fact.

She paused for a moment. She was very young, little more than a girl. Of course, they all looked like girls to him these days.

“You know,” she said in a low voice, “these are just boys. You can’t take them into battle.”

He met her eyes. “I know, Fräulein. Believe me.” He considered telling her what he had planned, but Dieter wasn’t the only last-ditch Nazi around.

She dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just… my husband’s out fighting somewhere, and I haven’t heard…”

“I know.” His own two sons, Rolf and Franz, were both safe. Rolf was in an American POW camp in a town called “Utica,” and Franz was a Luftwaffe maintenance officer without much to maintain these days.

He gestured toward the wooden wagon. “You’re going to the river? You can come along with us.”

She shook her head. “I still have to figure out what to take.”

“All right. But be quick, now. The Reds are still a ways off, but they’ve got patrols out.”

She looked back at him and for the first time he could see how frightened she was. “I see. Thank you.”

He saluted her with the potato. ‘Thank you, Fräulein. Let’s go, boys…”

They headed on down the road, the boys still wolfing the potatoes. Wolfgang slipped his into his jacket pocket. Back during the last war, the real war, as he thought of it, the officers always ate last. See to the troops first, make sure of their comfort. After they ate and slept, then it would be your turn.

Anton dropped back to walk beside him. Smaller than the others, and young for his age. Anton was a sensitive child, quick to weep, worried about his mother and sisters, who were in Frankfurt with the boy’s aunt. Wolfgang glanced at the Panzerfaust in two pieces in the boy’s pack. He wondered if it was too heavy for him. For the life of him, Wolfgang couldn’t picture the boy firing that weapon.

“What did she say to you?” the boy asked him.

“Oh—she’s worried about her husband. He’s at the front somewhere.” A pretty girl. He thought of his wife, dead these three years.

“Fighting the Russians?”

“No idea. I hope not, for his sake. Say–you didn’t finish that potato so quickly, did you?”

“No. I saved half for later.”

“That’s good thinking. We’ll make a soldier out of you yet. Always think ahead. I remember back in the trenches…”

Ahead of them, the boys suddenly stopped short. Wolfgang caught his breath and moved forward, images of Russian troops leaping into his mind.

He came to a halt. Around the bend, sheltered by a small grove of trees, a Kübelwagen sat half off the road. An enlisted man was on one knee, wrestling with the rear tire. Behind him, an officer stood regarding them. Seeing Wolfgang, he strode toward him, his right hand rising. “Seig heil.”

Wolfgang lifted his arm. Around him the boys echoed the words. He heard a click of heels. Dieter, no doubt.

He drew in a sharp breath as the officer came to halt before him. He’d been injured, and badly. Half his face was horribly burned, the skin taut and scarred. His left eye was little more than a dark dot peering at him through reddened skin. On his cap was a skull and bones, and his collar bore the runes of the SS.

“Good day, Obersturmführer.”

“Could be better.” The officer gestured back at the car. “As you can see.”

Wolfgang turned to the boys. Spotting Gus—his name was August, but he insisted on being called that—he gestured him to the Kübelwagen, where the enlisted man was heaving at the spare. Gus was a farm boy, used to working with machinery.

The Obersturmführer nodded his thanks. “On patrol, are you?”

“That’s right, sir. This is our district.”

“A lot of refugees.”

“I’m afraid so.”

The officer’s face twisted. Wolfgang blinked despite himself. “Running like rats,” he said. “Disloyal. Cowardly. No better than…”

Wolfgang shifted uncomfortably. Glancing at the boys, the officer stepped toward them. “What a pleasure it is to see such a loyal crew. With boys like these, how can we lose?”

A few of the boys simply stared at him. The rest nodded and made agreeable noises.

“Keeping faith with the Führer, the Reich. Ready to do your duty. Ready to fight.”

The officer smiled–at least it looked like a smile. He turned back to Wolfgang. “Tell me, have you heard of the Redoubt?”

“Yes, of course.” The Alpine Redoubt–everyone had heard of it, if only by rumor. A huge network of mountain fortresses, well stocked with weapons, ammunition and supplies, where the Third Reich would make its final stand.

“That’s where we’re going. The Redoubt. To carry on the fight to final victory.” He swung toward the boys. “The Führer foresaw even this. He realized that the way would be hard and would not always go in Germany’s favor. So he has created the Redoubt—the strongest, most powerful fortress in the history of the human race. A million men are marching there to prepare for the last battle. The Führer has promised us new weapons, weapons of a type never before seen, against which the Allies have no defense. With these, we will throw them back… All of them. Those mongrels, those human worms…”

The officer paused for a moment to regain control over himself. Wolfgang kept his features straight. The greatest fortress in history? Secret weapons? Like the V-2, he supposed, which had been steadily destroying London for the past six months. The last he’d heard, London was still there.

Wolfgang thought of the enormous clouds of bombers passing overhead with no opposition at all. He thought of the stories he’d heard of the endless parade of American tanks and armored cars. He thought of the Jabos. They’d be lucky if their Redoubt held out for a week.

“….we will chase them out of Germany and resume the march toward victory.” The officer gazed about him, his damaged face discolored. “Only the best will man the Redoubt. Only the finest among all Germans. Do you think you’re good enough?”

The boys gazed at each other, dumbfounded. Several of them glanced at Wolfgang.

“Which of you will volunteer for the Redoubt?”

It was Dieter who stepped forward, of course. “Obersturmführer,” he said. “I know I speak for all of us when I say that this unit will be proud to serve the Führer in the Alpine Redoubt.”

“Excellent,” the officer said. “I was not mistaken. The minute I laid eyes on you…”

The enlisted man approached. “Sir… we’re ready.”

“Good.” The Obersturmführer turned to Wolfgang. “Remain here, and I’ll send a truck to pick you up. It won’t be more than half an hour or so.” That eye bored into him, as if daring him to disagree. “Understood?”

Wolfgang replied in the affirmative. The officer nodded and turned away. A moment later the Kübelwagen was in motion. It halted beside Wolfgang. “Half an hour.”

As it pulled away he gave the party salute. The boys responded, Dieter loudly shouting, “Heil Hitler!”

The other boys glanced at each other before turning toward Wolfgang. He swung away, unwilling to meet their eyes. This certainly changed things. How could he take them across the river now? But to let them go to this Redoubt, this mad last-ditch fantasy… He’d promised their families he’d take care of them. Anton’s mother had wept and clutched his hand…

“Herr Kohl?”

Gus was standing behind him. Wolfgang turned to face him. “Yes, Gus.”

The boy licked his lips. Your typical Thuringinan farm lad, square-faced, thatch of blond hair. “The Sturmmann… he told me, when we were changing the tire…”

“Yes.”

“We’re not going to the Redoubt.”

“We’re not.”

“No sir. He said the Obersturmführer is gathering Volkssturm units to go into battle against the Russians. That will let them send SS units to the Redoubt.” He fell silent, eying Wolfgang uncertainly.

Wolfgang nodded. It made sense. A lot more than the other story did. Why send boys when experienced units were available?

“The Obersturmführer… there’s something wrong with him, isn’t there?”

“Yes. There’s something wrong with him.”

Wolfgang gripped the boy’s shoulder and led him back to the others. The boys fell silent as the two of them approached. He thought of the Great War. The final day–the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. How relieved they had been, as the guns fell silent, as they emerged from the trenches to blink up at the sky like creatures newborn. The sting and shame of defeat far outweighed by the knowledge that it was over, that they would live.

They had been scarcely older than these boys here. It was over now, too.

“Tell them what you told me.”

He watched their faces as Gus spoke. Amazement, incredulity, and on one face, open outrage.

Dieter shot to his feet. “What are you saying?”

Wolfgang raised a hand. “Dieter...”

The boy ignored him. “Are you trying to say that an officer of Adolf Hitler’s elite guard lied to you? Is that it?”

“Well, somebody’s lying,” Anton said. “You think it’s Gus?”

Dieter ignored him. “You are slandering an officer of the Third Reich. That’s what you’re doing. You are talking treason.”

Wolfgang took a step toward him. “Dieter—”

“Get away from me, old man.” The boy pointed at him. “You’re the cause of this. Some of the things you said in class… I told my father. He said you’d gone soft. That you were little better than a Red—”

Another boy spoke. “What if they do send us to fight the Russians?”

Dieter turned back to them. “So what? You’ll die fighting for Germany anyway, right?”

The other boy rolled his eyes.

One of the others murmured, “You know what the Russians do when they catch you?”

Dieter glared at them and swung back toward Wolfgang. “You’re going to the river to surrender, aren’t you? You’re running out.” He walked over and bent down for his father’s Mauser. “Well, you do what you want. I’m fighting for the Reich.”

“Dieter…”

Apart from a single glance over his shoulder, the boy ignored him. A moment later he was out of sight around the bend.

Wolfgang sighed and gestured the rest of the boys over to him. “We’re going to cross the river, and we’re going to find the Amis.” He paused a moment. Several displayed open relief while others eyed him expressionlessly. “If it came to a battle, it would make no difference if we were there or not. We wouldn’t last five minutes. A futile gesture. I’m responsible for you, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

“Anything’s better than fighting the Russians,” one of them said. The stony faces softened. “Poor Dieter.”

Wolfgang smiled. “All right. To the Elbe. We’re going to get off the road, head over the fields.”

“We’re going to the Americans?” That was Fritzi. He could be a little thick at times.

“You’d rather wait for the Reds?” The rest of the boys laughed.

# # #

The fields were still a bit muddy from the spring rains, but the going wasn’t too bad. He could see clumps of other refugees in the distance. They were avoiding the roads too. Perhaps they’d had their own encounters with the SS.

Wolfgang glanced over his shoulder several times, fearing he’d catch sight of an approaching truck. The Obersturmführer had said half an hour, but you never could tell. He was relieved when that grove of trees dropped out of sight.

The boys were chattering among themselves, pointing out various landmarks as they walked. He thought of Dieter, walking the roads alone. He hoped he didn’t run into those SS men. He hoped the boy didn’t get his wish.

To die for the Reich… millions still thought that, all across Germany. Enough to man the Redoubt? Perhaps so. But Wolfgang Kohl wouldn’t be among them. Neither would these boys.

Wolfgang had once thought the same as all the others. Back in the early days, the late twenties, with the cities and towns of Germany in near civil war. You were either a Red or a Brown. He’d made his choice. He’d sung the songs, marched with all the others. He’d fought in the streets against the Bolshies, and he couldn’t honestly say he regretted that. He recalled the one rally he’d attended at Nuremberg. The exaltation of it–the massed torches, the spotlights reaching toward the heavens, the swastika banners flapping in the breeze. It was as if he’d become part of a greater organism, something larger and grander than himself.

He couldn’t say exactly when he’d stopped believing. There hadn’t been any particular moment. It had been one thing after another–Hitler’s mad gambles, the beatings of innocent Germans on the streets–Jewish or not, it didn’t matter to him. Wrong was wrong. The invasion of Russia. (And why had that been necessary, exactly?) The endless bombing raids, night and day. The tales of massacres brought back from the east. One day, he had just woken up wanting no more to do with it. Any of it. Or course, by then it was far too late….

The roar of engines took him by surprise. He looked up to see the Jabos overhead, shockingly close. He raised a hand. “Boys! Get down…”

They were already dropping to the damp ground. He settled down beside them. He glanced up at the planes. Four of them this time, in a loose formation of two pairs. Franz had told him that they’d learned that from the Luftwaffe. They were close enough so that the rockets slung under their wings were clearly visible.

“Thunderbolts,” one of the boys said. Yes, that’s what they were. Big, tubby-looking things. No match for German fighters. But they didn’t have to be—there were so many of them.

They flew off, uninterested in a clump of wanderers in a field. Wolfgang got to his feet and slapped at his pants knees. The boys were getting up as well. “Let’s keep an eye open, eh?”

They laughed, their voices loud with relief. Heads turning to search the sky, they moved on toward the river.

# # #

Somewhere on the other side, a church bell began tolling. Life went on, even amid this madness.

He stood a few feet back from the shore–the edge was abrupt and slippery. The boys remained in the brush behind him. Along this side of the river there were quick, furtive movements and occasional figures visible. People were keeping to their own groups, afraid of running into the SS so close to safety. There was no one to be seen on the other side.

He waited five minutes, then ten, before a man at last crept out of the brush on the far shore. He shouted to Wolfgang but the wind snatched his words away. He had to repeat himself several times before Wolfgang caught what he saying. “How many?”

“Fourteen,” Wolfgang called out. “Boys.”

He was about to repeat himself when the man raised a hand. After a long inspection either way along the river, he gestured behind him. Two younger men appeared dragging a boat. A moment later it was on the water and on its way across.

Reaching into his vest pocket, Wolfgang pulled out his watch. It was his father’s watch, given to him just before the old man died back in ’38. It had been bought by his grandfather, back in the 1880s, during the days of the Second Reich. He ran his fingers over the external engraving. It had run perfectly for all those years. It had never once needed repair.

The boat touched the shore. The man once again eyed the shoreline to either side, then gave the sky a quick once-over. Wolfgang stepped down the embankment to help pull the boat in.

“Need to keep an eye out for the Jabos. They’re like crows.”

“I know.” He was of old peasant stock, sturdy and short, his face red, and lacking several teeth. Wolfgang squeezed the watch one last time and handed it to him. The farmer examined it, clicked open the cover, and held it to his ear. “Good,” he said. “Now, you’ve got fourteen, you say.”

“That’s right.” Several of the boys had emerged from the brush. He waved toward them. “And me.”

“Volkssturm, are you? Well, it’ll take two trips. Half and half.”

“Fine. How are things on the other side?”

The man gave him a gap-toothed smile. “Getting a little crowded.”

“I can imagine. Any sign of the Amis?”

“Not yet. Some claim they’ve spotted patrols, but I’ll believe it when I see it. They’re not far off, though. A day, maybe less.”

Wolfgang nodded. The boys had gathered around them. He pointed them to the boat. “Squad A first,” he told them. He’d divided them into two squads when they’d first been organized last November. It gave them a more military tone.

A moment later the boat was filled. The boatman grabbed an oar and told Gus to pick up the other one. They pushed off. Several of the boys called back to them.

Wolfgang cast an anxious eye overhead, but the sky remained clear. One of the remaining boys whispered something about “going away.” Anton answered him: “It’s still Germany.”

Wolfgang eyed him a moment. He was a deep one.

The boat had nearly reached the opposite shore, a little ways down from where it had set out. Someone called to him from this side. A small group was approaching on the river road, eager to intercept the boatman when he returned. Wolfgang was about to answer them when they came to a sudden stop, then fled into the brush.

It was then that Wolfgang heard the engines. He swung around to see a truck approaching from the opposite direction, led by a Kübelwagen. As he watched, the Obersturmführer rose, gripping the windshield and shouting at him.

He turned to the boys. “Into the brush, now. Go!”

He watched them vanish, then glanced across the river. The boat had reached the other side and they were dragging it out of sight.

The Kübelwagen screeched to a halt. He turned to face it. The Obersturmführer leapt out, followed by two men from the truck, both carrying rifles. The officer shouted an order and pointed across the river. The two began shooting at nothing.

The Obersturmführer strode toward Wolfgang, his teeth gritted, his damaged face blood-red. Behind him, Wolfgang could see Dieter sitting in the Kübelwagen behind the driver.

He needed to buy time for the boys. He tried to gather his thoughts, but then the SS man was upon him. Wordlessly, he raised a gloved hand and struck Wolfgang across the face.

The blow was followed by two more, stunning him and driving him to his knees. A second later he was flat on his face, being stomped by the boots of the other SS men. All he could hear was their ragged breaths.

They backed off at a barked order from the Obersturmführer. “Come here, boy,” he called out. “There you are. That’s what a traitor looks like.”

Wolfgang raised his head. Dieter stood about six feet away, staring down at him. Spitting out a gobbet of blood, he shifted to push himself up. A booted foot slammed him back down into the dirt.

“Your teacher. That’s what you said. I can imagine what he taught you. Degeneracy. Cowardice. Treason. Not to stand up for the Führer, for the Reich, for the people. We can do without teachers like that. Get him up!”

Two sets of hands lifted Wolfgang up and started to drag him toward the truck. He gathered his feet beneath himself and shoved them away. “I can walk!”

He heard them laugh. Up ahead, the Obersturmführer smirked over his shoulder.

The officer directed the truck to back up to a tree with branches nearly extending out over the river. “I’ll teach you to stand for something. Then I’ll hunt down those little rats of yours. They’re traitors too. You taught them that and you led them here.”

He turned to Dieter, standing a step or two behind them. “You will shout to them and tell them it’s all right, that it’s safe to come out, that nothing will happen to them. You understand?”

Dieter’s mouth fell open but he said nothing. The officer flicked a glove against his cheek. “It’s for the Reich, sonny.”

The two SS men shoved Wolfgang toward the rear of the truck. The tailgate was down, and the officer’s driver had thrown a noose over a stout branch. His face was tired, as if he’d done this too many times.

He stepped to one side and the SS men pushed Wolfgang forward. There was a cry from down the road.

Forty feet away the young woman from the farmhouse stood a few feet ahead of her wagon. “What are you doing? He’s a teacher!”

The driver gave her a brush-off gesture. “Go, Fräulein. Just go…”

“No!” The Obersturmführer shouted. He took a step in her direction. “You stay right there. Don’t make a single move. You hear me?”

The girl stepped back as if to flee but did as she was told.

“We’ll take care of her afterward. Teach her to mind her business.”

One of the SS men chuckled to himself. At a gesture from the officer the two of them half-hoisted, half-shoved Wolfgang onto the tailgate. He got to his feet under his own power and turned to face the river as the noose was dropped over his head and made tight. He felt a weight in a jacket pocket. He’d never had time to eat that potato.

The driver dropped off the tailgate. The officer gazed up at Wolfgang. “This is an act of cleansing. I want you to know that. You are not worthy of life, not worthy to be a member of the Reich, not worthy to call yourself one of the German people. You are a parasite, a coward, a thief, and a traitor. You also led others, innocent boys, into treason with you. And you did this in time of war…”

Wolfgang cut him off. “War? You’re telling me about war? I fought in a real war, a man’s war. We didn’t send boys out to fight for us.”

The officer gritted his teeth.

“It’s over, you son of a bitch. You and your Redoubt. How long do you think that’ll last? How long before the Allies roll over that? They’ll crack you like an eggshell.” He spat at the officer’s feet. “That for your Redoubt. And your Reich, too.”

The officer clambered up on the tailgate beside him. That maimed eye glared into Wolfgang’s face. “I’m going to let you dangle. Ten minutes, fifteen. Then I’m going to cut you down and wait until you come to… and then I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

He leapt of the tailgate. “Make it slow. I don’t want his neck broken.”

Wolfgang took his last glimpse at the world. He looked south down the river, and was about to turn his head when he saw them.

Two dots on the horizon, growing as he watched, suddenly sprouting clear and defined wings. They shifted their path to bear down on the truck. The Jabos–there was no running from them now. How strange life was! Only a moment ago he had looked at them with hatred and fear. But now here they were, his friends, come to save him from a shameful and agonizing death.

The truck vibrated as the engine started. Bright flashes burst beneath the wings of the planes. There were shouts and movement below him, but that was of no interest to him. He raised his head, seeing his wife’s face, his two sons, the boat bearing his boys across the river. You did rather well after all, he thought, as he was engulfed by white, cleansing fire.

Not For Ourselves Alone

by Charles E. Gannon

Note: The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the advice and consultation of Dr. Ellis Miner (formerly, Fields and Particles specialist, and Deputy Project Scientist on the Voyager mission, JPL). His expert review of near-Jovian habitat requirements was indispensable

The service pin glimmered silver-white through the Mercator map that was etched into its reflective surface. Maelstrom whorls—his fingerprints—stood out against the underlying brightness of the miniature continents. He buffed the tiny world with his shirtcuff; the meteorological perturbations vanished.

The sunlight abruptly decreased in the cabin; the spaceplane had tucked around behind Earth’s terminator. Down below, the Asian landmass slipped by, dark and unremarked except for occasional pinpoints of light: the sparse cities of the steppe. In his mind he named them and savored the naming. Even though some of those cities had no love for ethnic Russians, he cherished them; they had not been targets. In their streets, men still grumbled, women still sang, children still played. That was all that mattered.

The spaceplane trembled. He closed his eyes, felt the course change: a slight roll and yaw to the right. They were angling south. He opened his eyes; the Sea of Japan scudded by beneath them, a featureless black sheet.

Too fast, he thought. In wartime, everything seemed to happen too fast; comings, goings, meetings, partings. From the first moment he had been given the pin he now held, there had never been enough time to shake hands, to remember faces, or to save anyone’s life—

Other than his own.

* * *

Before the first peal of the klaxon died out, Sergei Andreyev was sprinting toward the emergency spacesuit lockers. He focused on the nearest of the narrow doors, gauged the rate at which it was automatically opening. As he came abreast of the locker, he spun on the ball of his foot and kicked off into a sharp backward jump. His shoulder blades crashed against the rear panel of the locker, but the blow was tolerable, softened by the interior of the emergency suit waiting there. Sergei straightened his legs and flexed his ankles so that, as he "stood up," his feet slid down into the waiting boots. That contact activated the automatic assist: servos whined and the bottom half of the emergency suit shot up to his waist.

The klaxon yowls accelerated into doubletime. No time to lose. Jam arms into sleeves, fingers into unipiece gloves. Reach down, find oversized guide tab for ventral zipper. Yank it up—zzrrrrripppp—and then slam the central overseal in place. A sudden gust inside the suit: confirmation that a hermetic seal was established. Reach overhead. Grab helmet in both hands, pull down sharply. Craclack-bang as the connecting rings of suit and helmet met, argued, then mated with a resounding metallic bark.

The automatic power-up initiated: a heads-up display sprayed glittering data on the inside of the visor. Environmental systems green. Communications green. Seal monitor green. Maneuver jets green. Mooring clamp indicator green and blinking: time to disengage the suit from its rack. He depressed the first button on the back of his left gauntlet; the suit came free of its ready-harness with a dull ker-klack.

Sergei played out the suit’s tether slowly, carefully. So far, there had been no howling blast of explosive decompression, nor the warbling whine of a sizable leak; this part of the space station was still pressurized—for now. Time for a communications check. Sergei activated the helmet mic with a nudge of his chin; “This is Andreyev, ID 2-18. Reporting all-go from Module Eleven. Over.”

There was a pause. Then: “Acknowledged, Andreyev. Your total test time: 22 seconds.” Captain Aivars Meri, today’s emergency drill supervisor, punctuated his report with a short grunt. It was a disappointed sound, indicating that he had not been able to find any major flaws in Sergei’s performance. “You established full-seal in fourteen seconds, but you lost time with the gloves. Pick it up there. Traumatic abaria gives you twenty seconds of function—at most.”

Sergei suppressed a snort; as though I don’t know that. But I do note your tone, Captain Meri; pure disdain. To you, I’ll never be more than the son of a pan-Slavic embarassment, of a “Nommie” extremist.

Meri had emerged from the pressure door at the other end of the corridor, dressed in the blue and black flight suit worn by the pilots of the Baltic Confederation. “Okay, Andreyev, let’s finish the drill. Next action?”

Sergei droned through the checklist. “Check the module—”

Meri shook his head; his short, lank blond hair switched from side to side. “Andreyev, this mock-up module:”—he waved a hand at their surroundings—“what does it represent?”

Andreyev frowned. “A module on the Americans’ Jovian space station.”

Aivars nodded: a slow, exaggerated gesture. “Da. Very good. But allow me to remind you that the American station is a torus comprised of many modules.” His tone lost the false animation of sarcasm, became flat and impatient. “So `the’ module means nothing to me, Andreyev. Always identify which module you are in. No exceptions. Now: try again.”

Andreyev resisted the urge to grind his molars and started over. “I check Module Eleven for other personnel. Assist any who are experiencing suit-up difficulties. I move to the Command Center in Module One with all haste. As I pass through each intermodule coupler, I check the module separation system. If the system has failed, I am to arm that module’s separator charges manually.”

“Why?”

Andreyev blinked; that question was not part of the standard drill. “I do not understand. I thought—”

“Andreyev, it is my prerogative to ask questions that are not in the tech brief—to see if you’ve been paying attention to the orientation lessons. I ask again: why do you arm the module separator charges in the event of a local system failure?”

Andreyev stuttered out an answer. “If—if the separation system is not responding to the main command net, and if it becomes necessary to jettison that module, separation can only be effected by switching to manual override and personally detonating the separator charges.”

“And what are your chances of survival if you must manually initiate detonation?”

The technical briefing materials hadn’t even mentioned this: Sergei tried math, gave up, guessed. “There is a fifty percent survival possibility in the event of—”

“Wrong, Andreyev. If you secure yourself with your tether before triggering the charge, you have an eighty-six percent chance of survival. If you don’t, you are dead. Period. You will be sucked out into space. Your life support pack will last up to twenty-four hours at minimum settings, but the rads will have killed you long before then.” Meri’s already narrow lips thinned; his frown became a feral smile. “Your next drill will be on the American station, tovarisch, and it wouldn’t do to put on a sloppy show there, would it? Not only would a failure in front of Americans stain your family honor,”—Sergei’s brow grew suddenly and uncomfortably hot—“but I’d have to mention your incompetence to Major Korsov. And clearly, Korsov might not be as understanding as I am.” The Estonian’s sneer-smile vanished. “Unsuit, Andreyev. And here:”—he tossed a small manila packet at Sergei—“I understand this is the latest fashion craze.”

Sergei rubbed his thumb across the small, disk-like lump at the center of the packet. “What is it?”

Meri smiled. “A sign of our unity, tovarisch. A pin, I think. The symbol of the provisional global government.” The deck jarred slightly under their feet. Meri’s smile became hard and decidedly unkind. “Early arrival and docking is now completed, Andreyev. Time to debark and meet the Americans.”

* * *

Sergei, glad to have finally finished moving through the crew induction gauntlet, savored the emptiness of the well-appointed galley. He opened the manila packet Meri had given him: a silver service pin tumbled out of the manila packet and on to the table, its mirror-like surface winking brightly. Sergei ignored it and picked up his glass of tea. He assayed the aroma: a coarse blend, overly strong in tannins. He checked the logo on the teabag: an American brand. Of course.

A clutter of new noises began washing over the subtle "earthsounds" being piped into the galley: thudding feet, mutters, an occasional bark of laughter. Sergei put down his glass, fumbled a Russian technical journal out of his jumpsuit’s breast pocket, and feigned immersion in the material.

The rest of contingent from the Pripyat entered in twos and threes, bringing with them a babel of languages punctuated by translations into Americanized English: the lingua franca of the modern epoch. Sergei hunched forward into the sanctuary of his journal’s cyrillic characters.

Sergei heard the clatter of trays and a few jokes about the pureed cuisine on the Pripyat. Korsov’s bearish guffaw rose above the general buzz of conversation; the large Russian settled into the endmost seat on the other side of the table, Aivars Meri trailing behind him. “But it looks like beef,” Meri was insisting, staring at the hamburger on his tray.

Matthewson, a pilot from New Zealand, grinned. “No matter what it looks like, mate, it’s just processed tilapia.”

“We have the same thing,” Korsov added, “but not on the older ships.” He winked at Matthewson. “Aivars here has only served on rustbuckets. Poor boy from the sticks.”

The Estonian snorted. “Hegemonist. Eat your fish-burger.”

Korsov haw-hawed and squeezed his teabag against his spoon. “The tea is a bit harsh though, hey?”

“Americans drink it differently,” Matthewson commented. “Try it with more milk and sugar, Grigori.”

Korsov looked up, feigning surprise. “Shto? Ruin tea with an udder’s worth of milk?” Even from the corner of his eye, Sergei could see that a broad smile had returned to Grigori’s equally broad face. “I have had tea that way in America many times, my friend. I was for two years in Minneapolis.” Korsov passed the milk to his right.

Aivars shook his head. “No milk for me; I am a purist.”

Aivars Meri claiming to be a “purist?” Sergei knew what his late father would have said: any real Russian purist would militate for the ways of his own culture—right down to archaic and nearly forgotten tea-drinking customs—over the vacuity of American-backed globalism. Sergei had seen a certain measure of validity in that perspective, but had never embraced it with the same vitriolic zeal that had drawn the world’s attention to his father’s archly “NeoComm” videos and appearances. The consequent disagreements between the two of them had persisted until the day his father died, yet even then, Sergei never had an opportunity to publicly distance himself from his father’s radicalism: where dogged loyalty had once kept Sergei silenced, respect for the dead now permanently sealed his lips. How could it be otherwise? How could the son of cultural-protectionist firebrand Aleksandr Andreyev admit that he thought his father’s nationalism had been excessive? Less damning family disputes had led to the besmirchment of more than one public reputation, and in death, a kind of manic political legitimacy was all that Aleksandr Andreyev had left.

“Tennnnn-hut.” Sergei blinked, both at the unexpectedness of the new voice and at the explosive force behind it. Around him, the rest of the new arrivals from the Russlavic Federation were scrambling to their feet and yanking the creases out of their coveralls. Sergei snapped to, saw a figure standing arms akimbo in the doorway: a large African-American man, fifty-ish, American space service uniform, chest cluttered with “fruit salad.” Sergei mentally consulted his briefing materials: Lt. Commander Clifford J. Harrison, station exec and senior flight officer.

“At ease, gentlemen. Since we went to secure-channel discipline four weeks ago, I haven’t been getting personnel rosters. Who’s your CO?”

Korsov stepped forward. “Major Grigori Korsov reporting as ordered, sir.”

Harrison started, stared at the Muscovite, and smiled. “Grigori Mikhailovich, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Repaying a favor, sir. Never got the chance to thank you for your help during the Belt War.”

“Bullshit, Grigori. You just can’t stay away from a good fight. But it’s good to see you here.”

“Good to see you, sir.”

Harrison forced the smile off his face. “Status, Major Korsov?”

“All transferees from Mare Crisium Lunodrome to Hephaestus station present and accounted for, sir.”

Harrison’s answering nod was to the whole room. “You may be seated.” The American commander began a slow, deliberate circuit of the room. “Welcome to Hephaestus station. It is my dubious honor to fill you in on the strategic details of our mission here. Worst news first. Tuesday’s report has been confirmed: the Arat Kur have attacked Barnard’s Star and the International Command Staff predicts that they are not going to stop there, but will carry their assault through to Earth. The games-theory people believe that the Arat Kur want to conclude the conflict before we can adapt to their technology and tactics. Since it is clear that we are their technological inferiors, it’s logical for them to try to finish us off with one sharp blow to our head—and heart. Which means that they’re going to hit Earth.

“Any such invasion will begin with an attempt to secure a refueling site within the solar system. Like us, the Arat Kur need deuterium for their fusion plants. Unlike us, reports indicate that their combat craft are capable of skimming what they need directly from gas giants. Consequently, we’re predicting that their first stop in-system is going to be right here: at Jupiter.

“However, our job is to gather information, gentlemen, not defeat the Arat Kur. If they come, we’ll give them a fight, but a handful of outdated interceptors isn’t going to stop an invasion fleet.”

Aivars Meri’s voice was tight with restrained emotion. “Sir, if this is where they are going to arrive, then why not engage them here with everything we have?”

Harrison stopped. “Because until we learn more about the Arat Kur weaponry, it would be tactical and strategic suicide to meet them in a head-to-head engagement. We apparently made that mistake at Barnard’s Star. We won’t make it again.”

Harrison started on his second orbit of the mess tables. “The engagement at Barnard’s Star did not end with a `strategic withdrawal.’ It was a rout. Forget the ‘uncertain reports’ that are being `leaked’ to the public: they’re candy-coated trash, intended to manage the level of hysteria that might build otherwise. The real story is that the Arat Kur hit us with a weapon that tore even our biggest hulls to pieces. The few pilots who had the presence of mind to try a close sensor pass are now gas particles. Fact is, if it weren’t for eyewitness accounts from civilians on evacuation craft, we wouldn’t even know what had happened.

“That’s why some of you are tactical analysts and theoretical physicists, not pilots, mechanics, or weapontechs. When the Arat Kur come—and note that I said `when,’ not `if’—our interceptors will engage, but only in order to occupy the enemy, draw their fire, and allow us to gather more sensor-data. The experts here at the station will be orchestrating our sensor operations and analysis and relaying the results straight back to the think tanks on Earth. And it’s imperative that we get, and transmit, that info quickly, because our only secure data link is via lasercom. Consequently, we’re no longer useful once the station is hit hard enough to change its attitude and break the link. That means our pilots will have to fight hard and our analysts will have to think fast.” Harrison completed his pacing with a crisp swivel into an “at ease” position. “That’s the job. We are, in effect, bait. That’s why this was a volunteer-only mission.”

Two more officers entered the mess hall; Harrison segued into an introduction: “The station CO will walk you through the near-Jovian `facts of life.’ Captain.” Harrison turned and snapped a precise salute at the more senior of the two recent arrivals.

Who returned it and smiled at the assembly. “I’m Captain Costa, USSF.” He indicated a round, shiny disk adorning the uniform collar that jutted above the neckline of his regulation unipiece duty suit. “You all received one of these in your briefing packet. Please put it on.”He waited as they complied; if he noticed that Sergei did not deign to touch, much less affix, the pin, he gave no sign of it. “Gentlemen, you are now members of the First International Task Force. The statesmen back home have done their best to hammer out a provisional world government that will see us through this crisis. Given their example, I’m confident that we can lay aside any national differences we might have—at least for the duration of our mission here.

“Now since almost half of you have not had prior spaceside assignments, a quick overview of our local conditions is in order.” Costa activated a holoprojector; a baseball-sized image of Jupiter blinked into existence. Tiny dots traced long orbits about the equator of the slowly-revolving sphere of white and orange striations. Costa touched the keypad of his handheld relay. A small white ring appeared some distance above and off center from Jupiter’s north pole. “That’s us: Hephaestus station. Mean distance from upper reaches of the Jovian atmosphere is two hundred forty-two thousand kilometers. Contrary to what the news media like to say, we are not in orbit around Jupiter. Unpowered, we’d fall like a stone. Instead, we use heavy plasma thrusters to maintain a vector that parallels Io’s orbit.”

He brushed a fingertip against the remote control: the innermost orbiting dot—Io—glowed bright gold; the white ring of Hephaestus station escorted it. “As Io orbits Jupiter, Hephaestus rides shotgun. However, Io’s equatorial orbit puts it deep inside the Jovian radiation belts.”

Another jab: a bloated red doughnut encircled Jupiter, listing to one side. “The Jovian radiation belts are roughly toroid in shape. Cumulative daily exposure averages about forty thousand rads. Eighty percent of that is electron radiation; most of the balance is from protons and neutrons. Being in an essentially polar position, Hephaestus station briefly traverses the uppermost area of the belts as it maintains its Io stationkeeping. Dosage levels are comparatively light, but still lethal: up to six thousand rads per day. Fortunately, nature provided us with an answer to the local radiation problem.”

Costa pressed another control stud; a light blue arc reached out from Jupiter’s north pole, enveloped Hephaestus station, impaled Io, and then curved back toward Jupiter. The arc disappeared into the atmosphere just above the south pole. Io continued to orbit Jupiter, dragging the blue arc and Hephaestus with it.

“That blue arc is a plasma flux tube, gentlemen. And the only reason we’re alive right now is because Hephaestus stays inside of it. Fall outside of the flux tube and the ambient radiation will fry you in a few hours.

“The `tube’ is a plasma soup of electrons and ions, rated at approximately two trillion watts. This station uses that energy to produce a grid of extremely powerful bipolar electromagnetic repulsion fields. That grid repels the charged particles which comprise the bulk of Jupiter’s radiation, and manages to shallowly deflect a reasonable proportion of the cosmic rays.” A cross-section of the station’s hull replaced the hologram of Jupiter and its moons. “Each station module’s outer layer is made up of carbon composites. Next, a meter of water and gel shielding. Closest to the interior is a hard shell of lead and electrobonded titanium or steel alloys.” The image winked off. “Welcome to your new home. That will be all.”

Sergei rose quickly and used long strides to make sure that he was the first out the door.

And the first to escape from the maddeningly affable Americans.

* * *

Sergei rubbed his eyes with his palms, spent a moment watching bluegreenyellow spots chase back and forth against the blackness. When the retinal light show faded, he drank in the comforting darkness for one luxurious second. Then he lowered his palms, opened his eyes, and squinted against the glare of the computer display. For the third time that day, he read:

*CLASSIFIED**CLASSIFIED**CLASSIFIED**CLASSIFIED**CLASSIFIED*

Required Clearance: A1B

MESSAGE BEGINS:

CISLUNINTCOMCEN

TYCHO2USSF

191118 0730:27 GMT

RE: BARNARD’S STAR AFTER-ACTION REPORT

THEORETICAL UPDATE 2.01

Primary analysis and correlation of eyewitness accounts re: Barnard’s Star assault continues at Tycho II Military Research Facility. Current International Command hypotheses re: Unidentified Arat Kur weapon are as follow:

1) employs high energy particle acceleration as destructive agency. Confidence: high.

2) employs IR laser for atmospheric plasmating and targeting. Confidence: high.

No viable alternate explanations have been advanced. Analysts are tasked to confirm or propose alternative hypotheses. Relevant observational data follows:

—Sergei leaned away from the screen: the complete “observational data” archive was a half dozen blurry images and fragmentary sensor recordings, all of which he had memorized. Of course, there was nothing in those results to specifically suggest that the Arat Kur were in fact exciting nucleons to estimated energy levels of well over one hundred gigavolts while keeping them focused over the better part of a light second. It just seemed the most plausible explanation and no rival hypotheses were forthcoming. After all, how can you come up with a revolutionary model when you don’t have enough data? You can build whatever flight of fancy you wish—only to have it come apart for lack of the glue provided by hard, quantifiable evidence. And so Sergei’s colleagues throughout the solar system had been cowed into an acceptance of the standing hypothesis.

Which, on the surface, seemed reasonable enough. Yet, every day when Sergei blanked his screen and left for evening PT, he always had the same feeling; something was wrong with the total picture. Like a layman looking at a painting with a slightly skewed perspective, he could sense an inaccuracy, but could not identify the flaw. He could accept that the Arat Kur might well have a particle beam weapon possessing energy levels and a rate of fire far beyond anything humanity had achieved. But despite their technological advantage, it was still difficult to imagine how such a weapon could be made to fit inside their hulls. Unless, of course, reduction in mass and volume was another benefit of Arat Kur technology.

Sergei scowled. Superior technology: did it always come down to that? Could each mystery be solved with the same answer?

Well, why not? Why run in theoretical circles when the answer seemed so simple and clean, a nice filet of truth left behind by Occam’s razor?

Sergei frowned; because that’s not the right answer. You’re missing something. He called up the eyewitness accounts again.

The Arat Kur naval elements had emerged from shift relatively close to the Pearl, the international naval base that had been dug out of the bedrock of the lifeless second moon of the mid-sized gas giant in Barnard’s Star’s first orbit. Even before radar and ladar had picked out the two dozen inbound hulls, deep space sensor platforms registered multiple gravitic distortions and neutrino surges: signs indicating the recent arrival of ships with shift drives and fusion plants. In short, an invasion force.

The battle out beyond the gas giant’s satellites was exceedingly short-lived, and that was all anybody really knew about it. The lasercom relay buoys were lost within the first few minutes. Radio contacts disintegrated over the next hour. The last few coded messages came from a handful of surviving ships that were preparing to cut engines and initiate radio silence. For them, there would be a slow drift to hidden bases on tiny planetoids in the outer system. Maybe they’d made it, maybe they hadn’t. Either way, by the time their messages reached the Pearl after the fifty-minute radio delay, the battle might as well have been a matter of ancient history.

The engagements fought along the retrograde approaches to Pearl were hardly any better documented, most of the data coming from eyewitness accounts. Ultimately, human and Arat Kur interceptors and ROVs had tangled at the edge of Pearl’s toxic atmosphere, then within it. A few escapees had witnessed human interceptors attempting to launch ordnance at two Arat Kur hulls, always staying within the (presumed) comparative safety of the atmosphere. And always with the same result: each human interceptor’s attack run—a glimmering parabola that arced toward the Arat Kur heavies—never lasted more than a couple of seconds. As each craft neared the apex of their approach, there was a stabbing streak of actinic red and the interceptor’s parabola ended in a bright white exclamation point, shattered fragments of the hypersonic airframe tumbling back toward the clouds, wings cartwheeling away from secondary explosions.

Sergei jabbed knuckles into his eyes and rubbed. Every attack had been defeated in exactly the same way: first, the red targeting beam, and then what one American had called the “pinpoint annihilation” of the—

Wait: “pinpoint?” Sergei called up one of the Russian transcripts, searched it quickly—and there: the eyewitness had described the mystery weapon’s destructive force as being like an invisible nozh, or knife. Another unanticipated flash of memory prompted Sergei to call up a Canadian’s transcript: here the metaphor was of “an unseen drill.” Then there was the statement of a young German woman, who explained that the human interceptor appeared to have been “pierced through its heart.” Sergei had read that transcript once before and dismissed her imagery as a matter of ill-advised poetic license. Now he was not so sure. Perhaps—

He cleared the documents off the screen, called up the sole videotape that showed a strike by the Arat Kur weapon. He watched as the narrow delta shape of an interceptor, a Canadian model, rose into view from behind a tall cloud bank and arrowed off the left side of the screen. The amateur camera pan wobbled after the atmospace craft, unable to hold it steadily in the frame. Sergei stopped the real-time flow of the video, shifted to single frame advance.

In slices of frozen time, Sergei saw the Canadian war craft successfully evade a spread of the dim red laser beams, but the firing pattern forced the interceptor into a tighter approach vector, bracketing it and narrowing its maneuver options.

And then the bright red beam. In the first frame, it slipped past the interceptor; in the next, it had locked on target, a red smear across the fuselage. Sergei studied that smear; no sign of hull superheating or structural stressing. He frowned: that was a very low-power laser, possibly too low to even plasmate the atmosphere—in which case, it would not help a particle beam weapon to function more effectively. Sergei tapped the “advance” key again, summoning the next—and fateful—frame.

A blue-white starburst had erupted from the fuselage just a short distance ahead of the red laser smear. The interceptor’s hull was breaking into a shower of long steely fragments. Sergei leaned back, stopped focusing on the details, tried to see the overall pattern instead.

The interceptor was coming apart, some pieces flying forward, others blown to the sides or backwards and down. Sergei back-tracked the vectors of each major piece of debris and found that the disrupted area was actually a short, precise line rather than a pinpoint spot. That short line started just ahead of the laser smear and ended a few feet behind it: a column of devastation that suggested a powerful, focused beam. Certainly more focused than a particle weapon should have been able to produce in an atmosphere. It was indeed the thrust of a knife—or a drill or needle—which had undone the interceptor’s structural knot.

Sergei intertwined his fingers behind his head. Instead of finding new answers, he was generating more questions. And if he raised those questions, his would be only one voice against many, unless someone else already doubted the hypothesis. So Sergei needed an intellectual ally, and the first step to finding one would be to compile a computer list of other individuals who had studied the same information he had. Maybe such a person was also harboring the same doubts.

His search yielded only two names. The first was a junior theoretical physicist by the name of Kenji Akikawa. He had gone over the transcripts, but had not flagged any of the passages that Sergei had focused on.

The second name was Captain Costa’s. Although his research overlapped Sergei’s in only one regard, the similarity was significant. The captain had requested frame by frame studies of the interceptor videotape with visual enhancement. He had done so no less than seven times. He, too, had evidently memorized the image until it became a visual worrystone that he could turn over and over in his mind. An insightful mind, evidently. And a restless mind. But also an American mind. A mind that Sergei could not trust.

Sergei rubbed his eyes again, checked his watch: 1820 hours. Time for daily PT.

* * *

A pair of Euros slid past Sergei as he angled off the track of Module Nine’s sparsely populated exercise complex. He had just resolved to ignore a slight clenching pain in his right side when John Costa’s voice inquired. “So, Captain Andreyev, how’s your work coming?”

Sergei blinked, straightened when he saw the American lounging against the entry to the locker rooms. “No conclusive results yet, Captain.” It felt strange to call Costa “Captain”; in the naval-patterned U.S. space forces, it indicated a far more senior command position than in the air-force inspired Russian ranks.

Costa shrugged. “What about guesses, Captain?”

“With all due respect, Captain, I do not `guess.’ I restrict myself to the facts.”

“Glad to hear it, but then why haven’t you confirmed the International Command hypothesis? It’s based on solid facts.”

Sergei met the American’s level gaze. “I may yet conclude that the International Command hypothesis is correct. I am simply being thorough.”

Costa smiled again. “That’s bullshit, Sergei Aleksandrovich.”

Sergei’s felt the hairs on the nape of his neck rise slightly. “Do you call me a liar, Captain?”

Costa laughed. “No, I’m not calling you a liar. But it’s clear that you’ve got some reservations about the particle beam theory. I put a watchbot on the evidentiary files that I myself have been examining. You’ve been accessing the same ones. Repeatedly. So it seems that you and I have some unanswered questions in common.”

“I wasn’t aware that my research is subject to investigation, Captain.”

“It isn’t, Mr. Andreyev, but neither is it a private affair. And I exercised command privilege to see if anyone else became interested in some of the anomalies I noticed in the video images of the attacks. Seems like you found the same images to be unsettling.”

Sergei frowned, answered carefully. “I am merely puzzled by some of them and by some aspects of the eyewitness accounts.”

Costa leaned forward. “Which ones?”

Sergei studied Costa’s expression; was there a hint of hopeful expectation there? “The civilian accounts that describe the moment of target destruction are, as you say, ‘unsettling.’ What they saw is not consistent with the current weapon hypothesis.”

“In what way?”

“A particle beam is susceptible to atmospheric diffusion, Captain, even with a laser cutting a thermal path ahead of it. This means that its area of effect tends to widen, not remain focused. In practical terms, a target hit by a particle beam suffers damage in many places at once.

“However, judging from the eyewitness accounts and the videotape, it seems that the Arat Kur weapon has a more focused area of effect. That implies a beam with extraordinary coherence. Not what I would expect from a particle beam weapon shooting down into an atmosphere, sir.”

Costa nodded. “It’s not what I expected to see either. So it’s got to be something else. And I very much want to hear your thoughts on that. But let’s drop the `sir’ and other formalities and then discuss the other possibilities over a drink. Acceptable?”

Sergei opened his mouth; nothing came out. Costa was an ally, maybe a friend—but also an American, and thus, unreliable. Historically and temperamentally unreliable. The contending reflexes peaked, washed each other out. Instinct took over. “Sir, I would like that.”

“Good. And the name is John.” Costa began toward the exit.

“Sir—er, John?”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps we could sample some of the genuine stolichnaya I brought out aboard the Pripyat.”

Costa grinned. “Invitation accepted. Lead on.”

* * *

Once in Sergei’s quarters, Costa showed admirable interest in the vodka, but returned Sergei’s toast of Na zdorovie with a pointed question: “So what other hypothetical weapons have you been considering?”

Sergei ignored the almost ungracious directness and shrugged. “I have many theories, but they all lead to dead ends. A cosmic ray laser is out of the question: the power requirements would be difficult enough to achieve, but how one would go about focusing cosmic rays into a sufficiently coherent beam is beyond imagination.”

“What about gamma ray and X-ray lasers?”

Sergei nodded. “Theoretically possible, but again, the focusing and intensity issues seem to be insurmountable. X-rays and gamma rays can’t be focused by other forces or by optics.”

“We focus them in our X-ray laser drones.”

“Not exactly. We generate a diffuse directional cone, and a very sloppy one, by ‘tamping’ the nuclear warhead that generates the X-rays. It is not a pinpoint destructive effect. Also, since the only way we have of generating those rays in sufficient quantity is by detonating an atomic warhead, it is not a very practical shipboard weapon.” With a wry smile, Sergei motioned for Costa to return the vodka.

John complied. “And you’ve considered other possibilities?”

“Yes, but they are even more far-fetched. Materializing relativistic subatomic particles in the target does not fit what we’re looking for; that would manifest as a small, intensely destructive point-source, not a beam. It cannot be sonics; the weapon works in a vacuum. Gravitics? Perhaps, but I cannot even construct guesses about that. We just do not know enough about how gravity can be manipulated.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“It leaves us with two sensor tasks that must be conducted when the Arat Kur show up. One: we must determine either the wavelength or the frequency of the beam itself. That will allow us to identify the general nature of the weapon. Two: we need to get a good look at the architecture of the Arat Kur vessel. Architecture is purpose-driven, so the energy and focusing requirements of this weapon will certainly affect a ship’s design.”

John nodded. “No way to solve this puzzle without those pieces.”

The word “pieces” sparked a sudden shift of focus within Sergei: he imagined his finger poised upon a solitary rook, locked in a technological chess-game with his faceless Arat Kur opponents. And maybe that’s just what I need, thought Sergei, a game of chess to resharpen my wits, to distract me from the intractable problems of identifying the Arat Kur mystery weapon. He smiled at Costa. “Do you play chess?”

Costa blinked at Sergei’s sudden change of both topic and expression. “A bit. Now and again.”

Sergei heard the sly tone of understatement. His smile became a wide grin. “Indeed?”

“Well . . . look: I’m not ranked, like you are. And yes, your competitive standings were in your dossier. So I’m not likely to be a sucker.”

Sergei rose to get the chessboard. “So much the better, then.”

* * *

The first game went to Sergei within an hour. The second game extended itself over the course of a subsequent evening, but with a similar outcome. In the third game Sergei’s luck ran out; Costa capitalized on a minor flaw in the pawn defense, grabbed the initiative, and eventually the game. The fourth was a hard-fought stalemate, a duel that dragged on for two days as they swapped both pawns and double-duty shifts in the Command Center, where they spent long hours crafting strategies to use against the Arat Kur. Meanwhile, the station’s technical contingent was working round-the-clock to install a recently-arrived, 20-gigawatt UV laser for station defense: a monster that would have been impossible to power without the extraordinary current of the Jove-Io flux tube.

Exhaustion from the long hours cost Sergei the fifth game, or so he told himself. That comforting rationalization was supported by his victory in the sixth game, dashed by his eventual defeat in the seventh.

On the day that he and Costa started their eighth game, Hephaestus began moving through the more intense regions of the Jovian radiation belts. Rad levels peaked and radio contact disintegrated into random patterns of static and squeals.

As Hephaestus switched all its communications over to tight-beam laser link, Sergei began putting the finishing touches on his own gambit against the Arat Kur: a staggered pawn defense of remote sensors, keyed to concentrate on different spectral bands. Each robot probe was covered by another. Comlinks were rigged to automatically reroute if any of the relay drones were destroyed, all so that they could get one good look at the aliens’ mystery weapon. It was a game that the crew of Hephaestus feared to start, even though they wanted to get it over with.

The Arat Kur did not keep them waiting.

* * *

Seated across from Costa’s empty chair, Sergei frowned at the chess board. The once-orderly lines of white and black pieces were now deeply interpenetrated, a wilderness of overlapping protective webs and half-formed, lurking gambits. Costa had a real talent for chess. With a little more practice, he might even—

The klaxon howled. Sergei rose, feeling the pace of his actions fall far behind his high-speed thoughts: It’s not the right time for a drill. They’re here. Move move move—

By the time the klaxon yowled again—one second later—Sergei was slamming backward into his room’s emergency suit locker, the door barely out of his way. As the bottom half of the suit shot up around him, the intercom began announcing what he already knew; “General quarters, general quarters. This is not a drill. Repeat, not a drill.” He heard the rest of the prerecorded message over his helmet radio, called in his position and status, and detached his suit from its harness.

Out into the corridor. Two pilots, one of them Aivars Meri, darted past, feet thumpthumping into the distance as they disappeared into the adjoining module. More bodies crowded in from both directions, brushed past each other, faces either a blur or anonymous behind helmet visors. Pressing into the turbulent mosaic of flashing limbs and torsos, Sergei started running toward the Command Center in Module One.

As he maneuvered through the bent-elbow joint of the first intermodule coupler, he shot a quick look at the status indicator for the separator charges: a green light glared at him. Sergei picked up his pace, focused on the next module junction.

His suit radio emitted a tonal blip: incoming message on an open channel. “Secure for emergency contra-spin. This is a sixty-second warning.” Then a slight increase in the quality of the channel: a private communique. “Andreyev; report your position.”

“Currently in Module Five. Am moving toward Four.”

“Negative. Report to Auxiliary Command, Module Fifteen.” The circuit closed. Sergei completed his next loping step on his toe, turned, and began sprinting back the way he had come. Auxiliary Command? Why there?

The corridors were now barren as Sergei passed his own compartment. Brief snippets of conversation heard over the suit radio told a fragmentary tale: pilots were firing up the interceptors, their gunner/sensor-op partners racing through preflight diagnostic checks. The external berthing harnesses were opening, mooring clamps retracting, freeing spindly, wingless warbirds. At the bottom of each fighter’s thrust bells, shimmering white cones of heavy plasma bloomed, sudden and silent in the vacuum.

Sergei stole a quick glance at the chrono on his visor’s heads-up display: thirty seconds to contra-spin. He kept checking the status lights of each module’s separation system: green, green—

Red. Shit. “Andreyev here. I have a separator charge failure at intermodule coupler 13-14.”

A pause; then, “Acknowledged. Proceed to Auxiliary Command.”

“But—”

“We’ll take care of it. Proceed to Auxiliary Command as instructed.”

“Acknowledged.” What the hell was so important about getting to Auxiliary Command?

No time to ask the question a second time: only ten seconds to emergency contra-spin, which was never a pleasant experience. It was the spaceside equivalent of “hitting the brakes,” as the Americans liked to say. From a tactical point of view, the station’s own kinetic energy was more of a threat than any enemy weapon; Hephaestus was a three-hundred-fifty thousand tonne armored wheel with a diameter of just over three hundred meters, spinning at a rate of two point one rpm—giving it a rim velocity of about one hundred twenty kph. Any significant hits would introduce new vectors to the rotation, diverting the inertia of the spin into a myriad of conflicting directions. The cumulative stresses would surely tear the station, and most of its crew, to pieces.

One last stride brought him into Module Fifteen; Auxiliary Command. Costa and Akikawa were there, strapped in and helmets hinged open. As Sergei entered, Akikawa undid his straps and headed back into Module Fourteen.

At least, that was what was supposed to happen. Instead, just as Sergei dropped into the acceleration couch Akikawa had vacated, the floor seemed to slide forward: the contraspin had started. Rotational speed was dropping. Fast.

Akikawa stumbled into the intermodule-coupler, stifled an annoyed curse. Sergei sympathized; moving during an emergency contraspin was a treacherous undertaking. The sensation was reminiscent of walking up the aisle of a braking maglev: the world came to a smooth, swift halt, but your body insisted on retaining its forward momentum, usually in a most ungraceful manner.

Costa pointed to the holotank, where Jupiter rotated slowly. Near its north pole, blue-white motes hovered: the human interceptors. Some were moving “upward” to meet a spearhead of red motes that was plunging downward toward the pole: the Arat Kur.

“They came in well above the ecliptic.” Costa’s tone was sharp, precise: very unlike his off-duty voice. “Active sensors indicate one large vessel, maybe a dozen smaller ones. A heavy, its interceptors, and probably some ROVs in the mix.”

“Any sign of other craft?”

Costa shook his head, snagged the compupad stylus that had begun to float away from him; contraspin was finished. “No. But the Arat Kur could easily have more ships out there. This bunch must have popped out of shift pretty far away from us, at least fifty light-minutes out. Otherwise, the gravitic distortions and neutrino emissions would have been dense enough for us to detect against the background.” Akikawa had silently picked himself up off the floor and was now headed back the way Sergei had come—though God only knew why.

“The Arat Kur are playing a very conservative game, John.”

Costa nodded, narrowed eyes reflecting the red motes. “They sure are. But they’re not wasting any time. They’re counteraccelerating at one point five gee constant and still going like bats out of hell. Our craft will intercept in four minutes.”

“Odds?”

“Not good. Our birds were only scrambled three minutes ago. Plus four more minutes to intercept, that gives them a total of seven minutes of boost at two point five gees. Relatively speaking, they’ll be sitting still when the hammer comes down. But Harrison’s good, and so is Korsov. They’re using most of their thrust for evasive maneuvers.”

Sergei glanced over at the remote sensor readouts; nothing yet. Not surprising: he had deployed almost all of his sensors within sixty thousand kilometers of the station. A voice on the intercom anticipated and answered Sergei’s next question: “Fourteen bogeys confirmed inbound. ETA defensive perimeter: three minutes forty seconds. ETA Hephaestus: four minutes fifteen seconds.”

Costa grinned; there was no humor in it. “I hope you work fast, Sergei Aleksandrovich. We’re not going to have a lot of time between the start of the party and the finish.”

Sergei nodded, fastened the rest of his straps and checked his tether. “Captain, where did Akikawa go?”

“Intermodule coupler 13-14. He’s taking care of that module separator system failure you found on the way here.”

“But I could have—”

“It was imperative that you—you, specifically—got here, and with all possible speed.”

“And exactly what am I—are we—doing in Auxiliary control, sir?”

Costa smiled. “Being where we’re not expected to be.”

Sergei nodded; that made sense. The Arat Kur certainly knew about Hephaestus station, had probably managed to get design specs from the same suborned humans who had evidently furnished them with intelligence on the defenses at Barnard’s Star. So they were sure to target the metaphorical brain of Hephaestus, its Command Center.

Targeting data started streaming in from the interceptors. Costa opened a link to their commo net. Underneath the cool efficiency of the Russians and the truculent banter of the Americans was a thread of fear. Or perhaps it was just the result of the thoracic compression caused by two point five gees constant thrust. Harrison growled a warning about unnecessary chatter; the Americans became quiet, coldly precise. Korsov started counting down the narrowing range, voice devoid of emotion.

Sergei considered the enemy’s rapid approach. “At their speed, the Arat Kur won’t be able to engage for very long. It will take them hours to retroboost and return. Perhaps this is a feint?”

Again, Costa’s humorless grin. “Or perhaps they’re confident that they can polish us off in one quick pass. They don’t need to hold this `battlefield,’ so they don’t have much to gain by matching vectors for an extended fight. Besides, their velocity gives them an added defensive option. If things don’t go their way, they can be past us in a matter of minutes.”

And that, thought Sergei, also decreases our chances of seeing their heavy, gives us less time to look at their mystery weapon. The Arat Kur would make excellent chess-players.

“Forty seconds,” Korsov’s voice warned. The blue-white motes in the holotank began spreading out, moving more erratically. Sergei double-checked the range—just over ninety thousand kilometers—and activated the tiny remote sensors that had been seeded over the preceding weeks, scattered along the Arat Kur’s inevitable line of advance. Data started scrolling down his monitors.

The Arat Kur handled the sudden increase of targets—forty-five suddenly-active sensor clusters—with apparent aplomb. Their interceptors split into two groups, the smaller one hanging back slightly.

“Fifteen seconds.” Korsov’s voice was as hard and sharp as slate.

One of Sergei’s sensors gave a brief reading of high energy UV—the classic fingerprint of an Arat Kur tactical laser—and then went off line. First blood.

The Arat Kur’s lead formation opened up with a barrage of laser fire. Four human interceptors were destroyed outright; another was crippled. Then, Arat Kur missiles appeared in the holotank, red needles probing toward the blue motes. Harrison responded by assembling his remaining craft directly along the Arat Kur approach vector. All except for Korsov and Meri. Their motes merged—too proximal to be distinguished separately—and veered away from the main group.

Meanwhile, Sergei’s sensor clusters were being systematically blasted into junk by the trailing group of Arat Kur interceptors. A moment later, the human interceptors reached their optimum range. Missiles and lasers shot toward the enemy fighters—just as the Arat Kur missiles reached their targets. Blue-white motes winked away in clusters. The combined mote of Meri and Korsov vectored back toward the more distant heavy.

“Now launching,” announced Korsov’s voice over the intercom.

Costa almost whispered the order. “Start your sensor run, Lieutenant Meri.”

Sergei watched the two blue motes separate once again. One of them—Korsov’s—emitted a new, smaller mote: a large missile. If it held its current trajectory, it would pass behind the Arat Kur fighter screen, and well in front of the heavy: apparently a blind miss. The other blue-white speck—Meri—became a smear as the Estonian ignited his interceptor’s detachable solid-core boosters and underwent five gees of acceleration. The sensor cluster mounted on Meri’s interceptor went active and more data started scrolling in.

Costa glanced briefly at Sergei. “Only ten seconds left in those boosters. Better get something fast.”

Sergei felt a bead of sweat snake down his neck. “If the sensors read it, I will get it. How long until Korsov’s payload intersects the heavy’s approach vector?”

“Ten seconds.”

“Any counter-fire?”

“Just starting.”

Sergei frowned. “Korsov, deploy the missile’s payload now. We’ll have to risk it.”

Korsov’s mutter was barely audible: “Deploying—”

A second later, Korsov was dead, commingled with the debris that had been his interceptor. But not before the Muscovite had sent the remote command that deployed his missile’s payload.

Only sixteen thousand kilometers in front of the Arat Kur heavy, Korsov’s outsized missile split apart, trailing a stream of micro sensors. Video images and spectral analyses now occupied a new row of Sergei’s screens.

Harrison and Matthewson made it through the enemy interceptor screen just as Meri’s visual sensors picked out the Arat Kur heavy. Sergei had a brief impression of a growing blot of starless space—and then the link with the Estonian’s craft was lost. The mote representing Meri’s interceptor vanished from the holotank.

Costa’s voice was tense. “Got anything?”

Sergei frowned: “Nothing from Meri, but Harrison has established a targeting lock on the heavy.”

“Damn right I have,” Harrison confirmed with a satisfied growl. “And now it’s time to give those bastards a—”

He was cut off by a squeal of static. Then nothing, not even the faint pulse of an active commo link. Sergei checked the holotank; Harrison’s mote was gone, but none of the Arat Kur interceptors had fired. Sergei’s eyes flicked over to his microsensors, watching for any new data that might indicate what had destroyed Harrison’s craft.

Whatever it was, Matthewson must have seen it. The New Zealander’s voice was low and awe-filled. “Jesus Christ, what was—?”

A second ominous squeal of static ended the transmission, just as Sergei’s microsensors revealed what had occurred in the instant that Harrison had gone off-line. There had been a sudden surge of neutrinos from the alien warship, followed by a powerful gravitic disturbance, almost as though the Arat Kur were about to engage their shift drive. And then, a beam of X-rays pencilled out from along the centerline of the heavy’s mass. Sergei nodded to himself as he passed the news on to Costa: “X-ray laser.”

Costa grunted acknowledgement. “Any guess how they’re generating the beam?”

“None.”

Costa began aiming the station’s 20-gigawatt laser. “Better send whatever data you have now.”

Sergei queued the recorded sensor data into a continuous loop and activated the laser link to Tycho 2, then to Mare Crisium, and then to Titan, Himalia, Mars, Ceres—

The station shook; one of the Arat Kur missiles had hit. The lascom signal lock flickered and blanked. The computer attempted to correct for the station’s change in attitude, to reestablish the commo link.

“Hull integrity compromised in Module Four,” the intercom warned. “Intruder ETA: two minutes.”

Costa called Akikawa. “Finish up with that separation system, Kenji. We’re running out of time.”

“Re-securing the access cover now, Captain.”

“To hell with the cover. Just get back here.”

Sergei watched the red motes draw closer, brushing the few remaining blue-white ones aside as they came—

The world tilted and jumped backwards. Sergei slammed forward against the seat straps, upper teeth piercing his lower lip. He was vaguely aware of a distant crash and metallic groan, and wasn’t sure if he had blinked or the lights had gone out for an instant. A sharp pain bloomed in his temples, dimmed to a dull ache. He knew he was surprised, but he didn’t feel surprised. He didn’t really feel much of anything.

Except that there was something warm running down his chin. He lifted a wobbly hand to dab at it, stared at the red stain on his glove: blood. From his lip.

There was another crash, this time of metal slamming together rather than tearing apart. The noise had been very close to his ear, and had possibly damaged his hearing, because sounds seemed dull now, muffled—

“SERGEI?”

Costa’s voice—blasting out of the helmet communicator—jolted Sergei halfway out of his post-concussive shock. Pieces of reality began reassembling themselves. The station had been hit. And he was still alive. But dazed. Someone—must have been Costa—had taken the precaution of slamming his helmet shut, momentarily deafening him. Sergei opened his mouth, tried to start an inquiry, gave up; verbalization was still a daunting challenge.

Costa helped him out. “This time, the X-ray laser went after us. More range than we guessed. Took out the Command Module and smeared the lascom array.” As the American returned his attention to aiming the station’s 20 gigawatt laser, Sergei forced his eyes to focus and then slewed them around to stare at the sensor readouts.

Several of the screens were lit with gray glowing fuzz; a number of the microsensors had been destroyed. But most of them were still functioning, including a number of video relays which offered clear views of the Arat Kur battlewagon.

The heavy was appropriately named. The mass-scans indicated that the alien warship weighed in at over two hundred twenty-five thousand tonnes. A flat, aerodynamically-optimized oval, the enemy’s non-modular hull broadened out at the rear, flared upwards and outwards at the sides. Its spine was slightly raised, cresting into a sizable hillock at the stern. Sergei checked his active and passive sensors, studied the wavelength results, tracked back along the trajectory of predominant radiance, found that the neutrinos and gravitic anomalies he’d noted earlier had a single point source: they were all coming from the hillock at the heavy’s stern. Sergei nodded: the stern. Pieces of a theory began swirling together, the attractive force of a budding hypothesis giving them order, direction, purpose—

Costa muttered a terse, triumphant curse: the first Arat Kur fighter to come within range of the station’s laser had been promptly ripped to pieces. Then two more in quick succession. At about the same time, there was a soft ker-thunk from the module behind them; Akikawa returning, probably. But still some distance away.

Costa was shifting his aim away from the enemy fighters, which were now giving the crippled station a wide berth, and toward the heavy. It would soon be in range.

But not soon enough, Sergei realized: the Arat Kur warship was yawing slightly, re-aligning itself to face the station dead-on.

Although everything did not happen at once, Sergei couldn’t process the events separately. His microsensors indicated a sudden upswing in neutrinos and another gravitic disturbance. Then, X-rays were streaming in at a multigigawatt level. Sergei shifted his attention to Hephaestus’ external monitors—just in time to see the 20-gigawatt laser shear away like a scrap of aluminum foil. The module it was mounted on buckled and burst, sending spasms throughout the station.

Over the rumbling shocks, Sergei heard a faint scraping noise in the module behind. He turned, saw Akikawa towing himself slowly along the wall, his left arm tucked awkwardly against his side. Costa saw him too, tried radioing; no luck. The American reset his communicator, prepared to try Akikawa again—and froze. Sergei followed his gaze back into the adjoining module.

Behind Akikawa, the module’s corridor was warping. First it shifted to the right, and then bent, trying to twist around its own axis. The angles where wall met floor were distorting, which told Sergei that they had very little time left: each hit had imparted substantial inertia to the station, and each of those inertial vectors were in conflict. Even though it was no longer spinning, Hephaestus station was beginning to tear itself apart.

Sergei watched the neutrino and gravitic readings climb again, and, mildly surprised at the lack of fear in his voice, he announced, “It’s over for us.”

Costa was silent for a moment, still staring at Akikawa. Then he turned back to his console; “Not for all of us.” Costa flipped back the safety cover for the module separator system and his fist hit the firing button.

A shudder went through the Auxiliary Command module. Akikawa, less than ten meters from the intermodule coupler, looked up suddenly. Then the module door slammed shut and the separator charges went off, blowing the Auxiliary Command Module away from Hephaestus station—and Kenji Akikawa.

The rumble of the blast was still playing itself out when the Arat Kur’s final shot hit the curved spine of Hephaestus. The doomed station broke into a ruin of fragments and half-intact modules, all cartwheeling madly away from the point of impact. Sergei turned to Costa, was about to speak, but saw that the American’s eyes were closed tightly.

Then the shock waves hit.

* * *

“We’ll need another two point four seconds of burn to correct the pitch.”

“One-half thrust?”

“Affirmative,” Sergei answered.

Costa entered the instructions into the program that governed the attitude control thrusters and waited. After a few moments, they both felt a faint tug. Sergei watched the simple gyroscope angle back toward alignment. Closer, closer—

The tug stopped. The gyroscope swayed once and settled, centered. Sergei leaned back, released a long sigh. Stabilized at last.

They had endured the post-blast tumble for several hours. As Costa had pointed out, their module’s resemblance to the rest of the spinning junk was probably the only reason that the Arat Kur hadn’t finished them off. As they waited, Sergei had watched the enemy craft sweep “down” across the face of Jupiter, the interceptors and their ROV wingmen retroboosting at two point eight gees constant until they matched vectors with their mothership. As they crossed the plane of Jupiter’s magnetic equator and bore through the very heart of the radiation belts, the smaller red motes merged with the red blob that signified the heavy: the enemy interceptors had returned to their berths.

Costa guessed that as the Arat Kur moved further into the belts, the aliens’ sensors would become increasingly impaired, would lose the ability to discern minor variations in movement or energy. Accordingly, Costa and Sergei had begun to correct the Auxiliary Command Module’s tumble. It took almost three hours of occasional one- and two-second boosts to stabilize the module in all three axes. Now they were ready to add the final touch: a four rpm roll, which would produce about zero point one five gees of "pseudogravity."

When Sergei heard the rotational rate, he frowned: “Four rpm is rather high. It will take some getting used to.”

Costa almost smiled. “You going somewhere in a hurry?”

Sergei shrugged, watched as Costa brought the thrusters on line slowly: there was a barely perceptible sideways tug as their module eased into a lazy roll. “So, John, which gets us first: anoxia or radiation?”

“Cheery, aren’t you, Sergei?”

“A Russian trait. Seriously, I would like to know.”

Costa sighed. “Air in the module will last about two days. Our suits give us—maybe—one more day. That assumes that we cut our oxygen mixture back to minimum levels.”

“What about the radiation?”

“We’re okay as long as we stay in the flux tube. The EM repulsor grids on the module are still functional. But without the big station-keeping fusion thrusters, we’re going to fall behind the flux tube shortly after we start running out of air. So even if we had more oxygen, the radiation would finish the job a day or two later. Of course, all that assumes that we’re not rescued first.”

“Rescued? Who is going to rescue us?”

Costa eased the thrusters back. “Units from Ganymede, maybe. They’ve got some EM-shielded ships there, the ones that were used to assemble Hephaestus. If the Arat Kur aren’t patrolling, those ships might risk a rescue attempt.”

“Why should they try? No one knows that we remain alive.”

“Not yet. But once the Arat Kur tuck behind Jupiter, we can squeak off a few tight-beam radio distress signals.” He undid his straps, rose into the pseudogravity, tottered to the left. “Watch it when you try standing. You can feel the rpms. And we’d better shut down most of our electronics, just in case any other Arat Kur show up for a look-see.”

Sergei nodded, reached out to cut power to the relays that were still in touch with his last three microsensors—and stopped, hand motionless as his eyes grazed across the mass-scan readout of the Arat Kur heavy. The battlewagon was lighter, even after her nine remaining interceptors and ROVs had been taken on board.

“John, take a look at this.” Sergei felt the American sway closer, lean over his shoulder. A moment of silence . . .

Then: “Jesus Christ, Sergei, are your sensors okay?”

“Systems are green; diagnostics check out fine. That damn heavy has shed several hundred tonnes of mass.”

“Could it have dumped fuel?”

“No. Sensors would have indicated it.”

“Well, where the hell did the mass go?”

Good question; where could all that mass go? It hadn’t been dumped, and it hadn’t been carried off into the oblivion of shift-space by a pseudosingularity drive. So what could have become of the mass? Or, to rephrase the question, what could the mass have become . . .?

Sergei blinked as the answer arrived like a conceptual freight train: E=MC^2. The Arat Kur hadn’t dumped the mass; they had simply turned it into X-rays. They had burned up several hundred tons of their fuel mix in order to power their weapon. And that meant that the weapon drew its energy directly from the ship’s main powerplant.

As Sergei blurted out his revelations, Costa leaned back and frowned. “Sergei, even if the Arat Kur could fuse that much deuterium in a few minutes, or hours, how would they be able to store that kind of power?”

“By using a pseudosingularity as a capacitor. As they generate the power, they sink it into a pseudosingularity. Then when they’ve got enough power built up, they allow their little incipient black hole to unimplode, but at a controlled rate.”

“Sergei, the magnitude of the field effect needed to control that process would make the engagement of our biggest Wasserman drive look like a gravitic hiccup.”

“Exactly. That’s the fundamental scientific breakthrough that makes their X-ray laser possible. Consider: even the microscopic, incipient pseudosingularities of the Wasserman Drive are beyond our ability to maintain for more than a fraction of a second. But the Arat Kur have learned how to create a more powerful containment system. With it, they not only create pseudosingularities ten times stronger than ours, they can actually use the field-effect to store the energy for several minutes, at least. They may even be able to release the energy through a containment aperture, which would explain the precision of the beam. That’s also why we saw neutrino bursts and gravitic distortions each time they were preparing to fire. And why they’ve adopted such an aft-heavy ship architecture: to accommodate the increased engineering subsystems.”

Costa cocked his head, inviting extrapolation. Sergei obliged: “Both the drives and the fusion plant are probably outsized and heavily shielded, so they require extra room. That explains the pronounced hillock at the stern and why it is the point-source of all the neutrinos and gravitic anomalies.”

Costa nodded, then pointed at the holotank. “And there’s the final proof of your hypothesis.”

The big red mote was angling in toward Jupiter, preparing to make a shallow pass through the uppermost reaches of the gas giant’s atmosphere. Sergei frowned, shrugged. “The heavy is atmobraking. What does that prove?”

“That’s not an atmobraking trajectory, Sergei. They’re scooping up hydrogen. They’re refueling.”

Sergei nodded. “They’ve just finished a number of fuel-costly operations. They shifted in-system, boosted ‘down’ into the ecliptic, and conducted a number of high-power X-ray laser attacks. They have to refuel.” Sergei felt the corners of his mouth edge upwards. “If that assumption is correct, then the fuel cost of their weapon significantly reduces their combat endurance. From a tactical point of view, one might almost call that a weakness—”

“True enough, but first we have to find a way to tell our side that invincible Achilles has a vulnerable heel. And we have to live long enough to do it.” Costa rose, datapad in hand. “Time to take an inventory.”

Fifteen minutes later, he and Costa had finished gathering the resources relevant to their continued survival. The American ticked off the items: “Eight emergency rations kits. Two spare emergency suits. One self-contained radio communicator/beacon. One Unitechcorp ten millimeter liquid-propellant pistol with four thirty-round magazines.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, about ten liters of ready water. And,”—Costa opened up one of the hardcopy storage drawers and snaked a hand into its cluttered depths. Like a fisherman brandishing a prize catch, he pulled up a long-necked amber bottle—“And one fifth of eight-year bourbon.”

Sergei raised an eyebrow. Perhaps the next day or two wouldn’t be so boring after all.

* * *

The readout on the oxygen gauge dropped another notch: zero point one three oxygen pressure. Sergei stared at it, hating the simple device that had deposed their chronometers. Seconds had ceased to have any significance; the remaining number of breaths meant everything. Costa held out the bourbon again. Sergei took it absently.

They had spent their time as wisely as they could. They had closed off the rest of the module and pumped the oxygen from the sealed sections into the Auxiliary Command Center and a small corridor that led to a fresher and an emergency airlock.

They had aimed radio messages at Ganymede, then Callisto, then Himalia. Then they repeated the process. Again and again. For four hours.

They had recorded and printed out their hypotheses, their observations, their wildest surmises about the X-ray laser and the Arat Kur heavy. Sergei hadn’t generated that much hard-copy in years, but whereas the radiation might destroy computers, compromise magnetic media, even scramble crystal encoding, it would not affect paper. And the information had to survive, no matter what else might happen.

Then it was back to the radio: Ganymede, Callisto, Himalia. Ganymede, Callisto, Himalia . . .

The hectic activity helped the first day pass quickly. But now, only halfway through the second day, there was nothing but bourbon and talk and waiting. And staring at the oxygen gauge. Sergei rubbed his thumb along the neck of the bottle, leaned back against a bulkhead. “How long?”

Costa looked at the gauge, then at his chronometer. “Five hours, maybe six. Then, into the suits.”

“Our rescuers had better hurry, then.” Sergei swigged from the bottle, winced. He still wasn’t used to the charcoal taste that lingered behind the corn-sweetness of the bourbon. Another swig made him choke, cough.

Costa reached out for the bottle. “Careful now; don’t kill yourself.”

Sergei was only partially aware of his fingers clutching the neck of the bottle tightly, of drawing it back close to his chest. Blood throbbing in his temples, he tried to push away the realization spawned by John’s harmless, if dark, joke. Of course the two of them were almost sure to die. But one still had a significantly greater chance of surviving. One would only consume half the oxygen, could therefore last twice as long.

And at least one of them had to survive. Their reports were painstaking and thorough, but what military intelligence really needed was a flesh-and-blood witness. Sergei raised his eyes to the oxygen gauge: the indicator seemed to falter downwards toward zero point one two.

Fighting against a sense of dreamlike detachment, Sergei found himself unholstering the ten millimeter automatic that had been placed in his care. Costa’s eyes followed his motions but remained calm. The American’s waving hand signalled again for the return of the bourbon.

Sergei passed it back and heard himself say, “If only one of us consumes air, that person might live long enough to be rescued.”

Costa nodded and drank.

“John, one of us has to report, has to be fully debriefed.”

Costa nodded again, seemed ready to smile.

“I’m serious, John. We have to consider—our options. We can’t afford to fail now.”

Costa, hearing this in the middle of a swig, laugh-sputtered and then coughed; the bourbon had taken a wrong turn somewhere in the region of his esophagus. “Who are you trying to convince, Sergei? Me, or you?”

Sergei suppressed a shiver that started at the base of his spine and spread clawlike across his shoulders. He snapped the pistol’s safety back with a sweep of his thumb, focusing on the red dot that had been exposed, the bloody red drop of death that said, The safety is off; you are now prepared to kill.

Costa wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Look, I’ve never cared for”—he smiled and looked meaningfully at the pistol—“`Russian roulette.’ Particularly with an automatic. So if that’s what you’re suggesting, I’m afraid I don’t want to play.”

Sergei raised the weapon and told himself: think logically. This is not about John or you or your unexpected friendship. This is about humanity, about doing one’s duty. Above all, it is about choosing somber practicality over unwarranted optimism. And making that kind of choice, as his father had always insisted, is something Americans don’t do very well.

Costa nodded in the direction of the gun. “It only works if you squeeze the trigger, you know.”

Sergei’s brow grew very hot. “You seem very sure that I won’t kill you, John.”

Costa shrugged and cradled the bottle in his lap, stared into the amber reservoir at the bottom. “Maybe killing me is logical, but it’s not right.”

“Right or wrong, killing is essential sometimes.” The gun seemed very heavy, sagged slightly in Sergei’s hand. “You killed Akikawa.”

“Yes, just like your need for more sensor data killed Meri and Korsov. That’s what war is all about: giving orders that get people—your own people—killed. But what you’re contemplating now isn’t war. It’s murder.”

Sergei felt his jaw muscles bunch up into iron spheres. “I will do what is necessary. I am an officer.”

“You’re a human being, too. Sure, you can effectively double your survival time by killing me. But a rescue ship could be on its way right now, and that means there’s still a chance for both of us to get out of this alive. That’s why you won’t shoot me, Sergei, because, whether you admit it or not, you haven’t lost hope. And I don’t think you will.”

Sergei stared at Costa. Then he raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger, squinting against the sudden roar.

The oxygen gauge shattered into a spray of fragments, ruined and unreadable.

“At least I won’t have to see that damn gauge anymore,” Sergei grumbled. “Pass the bourbon.”

* * *

Sergei’s head hurt, not in just one spot, but all over. Damned bourbon. Sitting up, he reached for one pounding temple—but his hand thumped to a solid stop against the side of a space helmet.

Opening his eyes, and discovering that he was in an emergency suit, plunged Sergei into a tangle of confused thoughts. When did I get into this suit? Why can’t I remember putting it on? Where’s John? Is hypoxic delirium setting in? John will know. Find John.

Sergei staggered to his feet and scanned the control room. It was tidier than he remembered. All the hardcopy was in neat piles. Most of the screens were blank and most of the lights were off. And where was John?

Sergei clawed awkwardly at the controls on the back of his left wrist; the sudden illumination of the heads-up display blinded him momentarily. Squinting, Sergei checked the chrono: eight hours since he had blasted the oxygen gauge.

And still no sign of John. He tried the suit radio. “John?” No response. Sergei entered the dark walkway that led to the fresher and the airlock. However, the darkness there was not absolute: the narrow passage was illuminated at regular intervals by a slowly pulsing red light—the red light which indicated that the outer airlock door was open. An emergency suit was on the floor next to the inner door, folded neatly, backpack unit to one side. Sergei leaned against the airlock door, slid down into a sitting position, felt his stomach contract into a tight, frigid mass just before his mind started saying no no no.

It kept repeating that for a very long time.

* * *

Quite a while later, Sergei dragged to his feet and wandered back into the control room. John had indeed left everything in perfect order, except for a folded sheet of paper lying on what had become Sergei’s chair. It was labelled “For My Wife and My Son” and, like an oversized dot capping the “i” in “Wife,” a small silver disk rested upon the letter. Lightly inscribed with a map of the globe, it was John’s international service pin. Along the bottom were words that reproached Sergei for ever having doubted Costa: the service pin’s motto read, non nobis solum. “Not for ourselves alone.”

Sergei rubbed the disk between two fingers and then closed his hand around it tightly.

And waited.

* * *

They found Sergei forty-eight hours later. In order to buy extra time, he had set his suit’s oxygen pressure at zero point zero nine five and slipped slowly into hypoxia. He was deep in that twilight world of dreamless sleep and semi-conscious delirium when the crew of the USSF Christa McCauliffe finally docked with the Auxiliary Command Module.

Sergei woke up sometime during the trip outsystem, nauseous from the two hundred and five REM wholebody dose he had received prior to his rescue; it was going to take a while for the leukocyte booster drugs to kick in. How well the other therapies—telomere regeneration in particular—would work would only be known in the decades to come.

He spent the following weeks en route to, and then on, Titan, reputedly the most secure spot in the solar system. The Arat Kur had ignored the Saturnian regime, pushing their attack straight for Earth after utterly destroying most of the system’s available warcraft in two very one-sided battles just beltward of Jupiter. Shortly after regaining consciousness, Sergei overheard two guards muttering about an alien landing in Indonesia, but it was impossible to learn much more than that.

It was nonetheless clear that the war was not going well. Most of the faces that filled his days were grim. However, after being grilled by a panel of equally glum experts, and undergoing hypno-recall, Sergei began to note a few smiles among his debriefers. As their mood improved, they became increasingly interested in the operational limitations and fuel costs implied by the Arat Kur weapon. The questions and debriefing sessions began to blur into one long waking dream of repetition and drudgery, and Sergei lost track of the date.

Until January 25, when two messages arrived from Earth. The first message announced that the Arat Kur had been defeated in a series of sharp naval engagements in cislunar space. The second message indicated that Sergei’s information had shaped the attritional tactics that were used to overcome the Arat Kur invaders. In fact, he was due to receive a medal or two, just as soon as he got home . . .

* * *

Down below, a short stream of lights winked and was gone; the vacation communities of the Sonoma coast. The spaceplane began nosing in harder, the backswept delta wings trembling under the sudden increase in aerodynamic drag.

Sergei sighed, looked at the service pin in his hand, and affixed it to his collar. He wondered what John would say if he could see the pin. Probably wouldn’t say anything, just smile.

As the spaceplane leveled off again, the sun came up over the blue rim of San Francisco Bay. Gold and silver sleeted across the water below, streaked the horizon, painted actinic highlights on the wingtips. Sergei took his hand away from the service pin as they circled back out over the California coast: a tumbling green crest above the Pacific. At last, he was home. Home in America. And in Russia and Egypt and Uruguay and on every patch of ground that comprised the surface of the Earth—because except for lines on a map, it was now, for him, all the same place.

Sergei leaned back into his seat as the space plane descended toward the runway. Did John’s infant son have his father’s smile? Within an hour or so, Sergei would find out.

He looked out the window and watched the sun dance between the tops of the redwoods.

It felt good to be home.

Kiss From a Queen

by Jeff Provine

"The grand prize in His Majesty's tournament," bellowed the herald as he wrapped up the scroll with the king's declaration, "shall be a noble kiss from Her Highness, Queen Adela."

The queen's name echoed off the walls of the stable yard where the knights were gathered. "Adela, Adela, Adela."

Sir Arnost dropped the horseshoe he was holding. It hit his foot, but he wouldn't let the pain sully the moment. The thought of the queen's pure lips touching his ruddy skin made all of Arnost's breath slip away.

"That's pretty cheap!" Sir Odrick yelled to the herald. Other knights laughed.

The herald shrugged and walked away, his duty done.

"It's better than raising taxes again," Sir Mellam said.

"I don't mind raising taxes when the prize monies go to me." Odrick snorted and scratched the sides of his barrel-belly. "I wonder, do we have to keep the kiss, or can we tithe it to the church like Lansfrick does?"

The other knights laughed, all except Arnost.

He stood away from the group of knights, some still wearing bits of their practice armor. Most had stripped down to their shirts and lay on straw in the warm summer sun while their pages carted armor away to have dings polished out. Arnost was with the farrier, watching carefully as the man's skilled hands worked with his warhorse's hoof.

Now Arnost could not even see them. He still had visions of that day he first beheld the queen. One came upon him now, vivid and bright, as if she were standing before him. Her eyes shining like jewels, her hair of rich auburn, her soft, white shoulder . . .

Arnost winced against the vision until his sight went dark. He lost his balance and stumbled forward, finally catching himself with a hand on the warhorse's back. The horse sputtered his lips and stomped.

The farrier lunged out of the way of the enormous horse's hoof. "Watch it, oaf!"

Arnost stepped back. The world of the stable yard was clear around him again.

The farrier lay on the ground like an upturned turtle, kicking his legs to find balance on the straw and packed earth.

"Bumbling," he muttered, and then he stopped mid-curse. He looked up at Arnost through eyes filling with horror.

Arnost watched him. He was fully within his right to take up his sword.

The farrier knew it, too. He moved as if his body had gone slow. "I, I, um, sorry, milord. So sorry. I meant no—"

"It's nothing," Arnost told him. He shook his head. Did he hold the same fear in his eyes in days not too long ago?

"Oh, thank you, milord!" The farrier began to grovel. He suddenly found some speed about him and whipped himself to Arnost's feet, facedown. "Your mercy—"

"Shut up," Arnost mumbled. He left the farrier still groveling on the muck-stained straw.

His fellow knights were strewn over the stable yard. Many of them had moved into the shade now, taking sips from the bowls of water the pages brought around. Others were sprawled on makeshift beds, napping with their eyes open after a rigorous day of pounding at one another to keep their battle-skills sharp. The air was tart with the men's drying sweat.

"I don't see why the king's hosting a tournament in the first place," Sir Bonna was muttering. "Tomorrow's not a fair day."

"It's summertime, and there's no war on," Mellam told him. "An open tournament will give us a little diversion while the crops grow."

Odrick grunted. "With a prize like that, the king can have a tournament a week without worries to his coffers."

"Think many peasants will enter?" Sir Glowen asked.

"They should know better," Sir Usford replied.

Arnost sneered as he walked among them. These knights were children. They did know a hard day's work in yard as they trained, when sweat poured off a man's brow so heavily he couldn't see through the torrent. They knew pain, too. Arnost had dealt his fair share to them in mock-combats. But they didn't know what it was like to come home to an empty dinner table.

On tiptoes around the ranks of slumbering knights at a hurried step, Arnost's page raced toward him with a bowl of water that sloshed with every step.

"Care for a drink, Sir Arnost?"

Arnost gave a nod. "Yea, Roger."

Roger held up the bowl and gave a lopsided smile. The boy, now nearly a man with fuzz decorating his upper lip, was born in a castle somewhere in the dreary north. It was too minor of a landholding for Roger to be a page for a knight like Sir Lansfrick, but his father was too rich for him to be cast aside. So, he was granted to Arnost.

The bowl was half-empty from where it had spilled, and Arnost drained it dry with one sip. The water was cool and crisp, fresh from the deep well in the middle of the castle instead of the murky stuff from the sandy well nearby. Roger must have run the whole way.

Arnost handed him back the bowl. "Thank you, lad."

"Now here's a man excited to hear the grand prize!" Sir Odrick called. "Ain't that right, Arnie?"

A few of the knights chuckled.

Arnost glared.

Odrick sat up and clapped his hands on his knees. "Aw, come now, we're just teasing you. Everybody knows your fondness for the queen."

Behind his lips, Arnost ground his teeth.

"Tell you what, Arnie. I'll win the kiss for you, and then you can kiss my lips! Just the same, right?"

A shiver ran down Arnie's spine. His skin, hot in the sun, still turned to gooseflesh. He said with a growl, "You should show more respect for your queen."

Odrick waved a hand. "Aw, what Queen Addy-lala won't know can't hurt her."

Arnost pounced with the speed of a wolf. He grabbed Odrick by the neck of his shirt and hoisted him onto his feet. Odrick was taller than Arnost, and thicker, too. Yet Odrick's weight was in his gut, not like Arnost's tree-trunk arms and legs.

"That is not her name!" Arnost roared.

Hands of the other knights grabbed Arnost around his heavy shoulders. Bonna and Mellam grabbed Odrick, too, pulling him out of Arnost's grip.

"Calm down, Arnost!" Bonna cried.

"Odrick!" Mellam shouted. "You're going to get yourself hurt!"

Odrick squirmed free. He raised his fists. Bonna and Mellam stepped back with their hands in the air.

Odrick's fists unfolded. He laughed and pointed at Arnost. "Hurt by this dairy farmer?"

The words came as a slur, but Arnost found no pain in them. He tested the grips of the men holding him. Hilliac was there; Usford, Baub, and Glowen, too. They clutched him tight.

Odrick pounded his chest with his free hands. "I am a knight of the realm, as was my father, and his before him! This milksop, for all high and mighty as he pretends to be, is nothing before the rest of us. He can't even grow a proper beard!"

Arnost moved his hands slowly. The men's grips on his arms shifted to grant him some liberty. He stroked the patches of bare skin between the bristles on his pock-scarred face. "What kind of man judges another by his beard? Only one afraid of any test of strength or mind."

With a yowl, Odrick rushed forward. Bonna and Mellam were on him in an instant. They grabbed his hands, but they couldn't keep him from leaning so close that his gnashing teeth nearly reached Arnost's eyes. Breath laden with the stink of rotting meat swarmed Arnost's nostrils.

"You're not a noble," Odrick whispered.

Arnost shrugged against his knights' grip. "I never claimed to be."

Odrick sneered. It was the look of a boy whose sure-shot arrow somehow missed the deer.

"All right, lads," Mellam said smoothly. "Let's save it for tomorrow."

"Yea, settle it in the tournament," Usford added.

The other knights gave their own easing mumbles. Arnost sighed and nodded with them. He thought of combat, but his mind's eye traced back to the queen, who would be watching from her courtly seat. He winced again.

Odrick spat. "I'll have her before you ever do."

Arnost flung his arms back, kicking with his legs as he did. His whole weight fell against the knights behind him. Arnost felt their hands let go as they tried to catch their balance. Then he charged and planted the middle of his brow in Odrick's face like a bull defending his herd.

Odrick fell. Arnost again found himself pinned by his fellow knights. He did not struggle. Shouting and hurried footfalls of pages turned into a cacophony.

"Did you see that?"

"Such blood!"

"Let him lie!"

"Get some water!"

"Shall I summon the wizard? Perhaps his healing herbs—"

"Fetch the priest, more likely."

Arnost just stood and watched. Between the scurrying knights and pages, he saw flashes of Odrick's inward-turned nose, his face all painted crimson. Odrick had been something of a handsome man, but now no woman would want him, even with his lands and title.

Bonna stepped in front of Arnost and pointed a finger at him. "You better hope he survives the night."

"I do," Arnost admitted. "I hope he lives a long life."

Mellam appeared over Bonna's shoulder, wiping a hand across his forehead and leaving a red streak from where he had held Odrick. "If he doesn't, it could be murder in cold-blood."

"You all heard him insult the queen's honor. To testify otherwise would be a lie against the king and your own souls."

The knights all began mumbling. Hilliac and Usford let Arnost's arms go. The others on his hands and legs followed suit.

Arnost felt another hand on his elbow. It was Roger's shaky grip.

"Come, sir," he said. "We should get you cleaned up."

"Nay," Arnost said, shaking his head. "I must see my warhorse ready."

"I can see to that for you, sir," Roger told him.

Arnost ignored him. He went across the yard and away from the tangle of knights trying to heft Odrick back into the shade. Roger followed after.

Beside the stable, the farrier panted while he hammered the shoe onto the horse's foot. He glanced up at Arnost with a worried eye. If that is what Arnost could do to a fellow knight . . .

Arnost sighed. His being there would only burden the work and make it worse for the horse. He walked past the farrier into the stable. "Roger, come sit a while and let the man finish."

Roger mumbled and trotted after him.

The stable was quieter, free from all but a few gabbles of men in the yard. The creatures knew how to stand and even eat without filling the air with useless, harmful words. It was as cool as the stables of cattle back on the farm.

He stroked the mane of Baub's horse. The fool barely gave it any attention; it was no wonder that it stirred every time he mounted it in armor. Arnost had tried to tell him, but it was knowledge shared not by speech, only being with the horse. Men were so dull.

Perhaps it was because men, unlike animals, had the weight of sins on their minds. Arnost was a man, and there was a time to speak. He leaned onto a bale of hay to confess.

"Did I ever tell you how I became a knight, Roger?"

Roger's tense body relaxed like an unstrung bow. He grinned and leaned against the wood wall. "Everyone knows that story, Sir Arnost! You slew the Beast of Boorsbath! A horrible monster cat that was! Big as a horse, black as night, licking its claws with its nasty venom—"

Arnost held up a hand to stop Roger. "There wasn't venom. Peoples' minds go all fancy when a cut doesn't heal right, and claws make deep cuts. A big cat was all it was."

"As big as a horse!" Roger repeated.

"Yea," Arnost admitted. The cat really was that big. For every lie woven into a tale, there was a strand of truth. The huge paw had left deep marks in his right shoulder that went to the very muscle. Arnost survived the blow. The beast didn't. Its overreaching scratch left its belly wide open to Arnost's blade.

"And the skin rests on the back of your chair in the king's hall," Roger said. "It's a trophy worthy of any knight!"

"Yea, I won my knighthood, when I slew it." Arnost rubbed his pitted face. "But did you ever ask yourself: why did the king send a dairy farmer's son after the Beast?"

Roger opened his mouth wide, but then he stopped and closed it. After fluttering it a few more times, he finally said, "No, I don't know."

"It was for penance."

"Penance, milord?"

"That's the part of the tale best never repeated." Arnost leaned more heavily on the bale until he was practically lying. "Yet it must be, from time to time."

Roger only watched him, narrow-eyed.

"It was years ago," Arnost began. "I was a young man, a few years older than you but still at home. My father needed help growing up the herd. He planned to divide it to me when I wed, and I was as happy to aid him as he was to see me work hard.

"One warm day, warmer than this, we had a cow wander out of the field and into the woods. By the time it was out of sight, it was too far to leave the rest of the herd, so I drove them back to the common. Once I picked up the cow's trail, I followed after it all the way into the king's forest. I worried about being thought a poacher, but since it was my father's own animal and I carried no weapons, I decided to go on after it. The trail became thinner and thinner. I found and lost it what must have been five times, and then I heard some women's voices."

Arnost bit his tongue.

"Well, go on!" Roger cried. He calmed down and added, "Sir, if you please."

"It was the queen and her handmaidens."

"The queen? In the woods?"

Arnost nodded. "I didn't know it until I saw them. There were guards, but they were stationed far off the other way as the women . . . they were bathing in the glade."

The color drained out of Roger's face. "You saw . . . the queen . . . Oh, Sir Arnost!"

Arnost sighed so deeply his chest ached. "I meant no harm. I should have called out to them, but I was thunderstruck. It was a horrid trespass. The shrieks of the women roused the guards. They seized me . . . they should have killed me there."

Roger threw his hands up into the air. "Sir Arnost, no! You can't wish such things!"

"You don't know what it's like."

Roger slowly drew his hands down. "It's shameful, yes, but an accident! So, as you said, the king sent you on a quest to test your purity against the Beast of Boorsbath. And you passed! That day is gone. You're a knight now."

"A knight haunted by his sinful visions."

Arnost closed his eyes, and he could see Adela again. She stood just knee-deep in the sparkling water, her body lit by the sun pouring between the branches of the forest. His heart began to pound. He pressed his eyes tight, trying to drown the image in the blackness of his eyelids. He pressed tighter until he added pain to the darkness.

Roger cleared his throat. "So, the queen . . . is her form as beautiful as it seems from her gown when she bends—"

Arnost leaped to his feet and slammed a flat hand right onto his page's head. "Filthy-minded swine! Never think of your queen in such a way!"

Roger yelped and fell to the stable floor. He lay there amid the muck-crusted straw.

Arnost sneered. It was a fitting place for the lad . . . just as it was for him.

Arnost's sneer softened. He sat down beside Roger.

The lad had tears in his eyes, but he just stared. He didn't blink; he wouldn't let any drop fall. Roger's pupils danced under the warping water.

Arnost patted his shoulder.

Roger lay a moment longer before speaking softly. "You're a good man, Sir Arnost. You fought at the Battle of Ruggedown, where you pulled two wounded men out of the fray. You were the first to stand when the king asked for men to cleanse the Pressfield Wyrm. You never make demands while on a quest; you always pay your due. I say all these things as your page, but the truth remains that you are good. You should not worry about a little offense that happened so many years ago."

"The sin still lingers," Arnost said simply.

Roger sat up. "How do you know that? You're not a priest."

"I know my sin. It lives over and over in my mind."

"But not in your heart?"

Arnost pursed his lips and didn't answer.

"All men carry lust," Roger told him.

"What does a boy know about men?"

Roger scratched his head. "I don't know much, but I know that a man who doesn't act on his lust is better than one who assaults a lady."

"I've already assaulted her with my eye."

"You said that was a mishap. It was never your purpose."

"It happened. And it happens again and again every time I close my eyes. My sin has bored a hole into my very soul."

"Surely the queen has forgiven you?"

Arnost nodded, although he could only move his head so slightly that it was given away only when his patchy beard bushed up.

"And you've confessed?"

"Every day."

"Then why can't you forget it?"

Arnost tried to think, but all that filled his mind was the image of the queen. She turned toward him. The hairs on his neck rose. His heart began to pound. His breath became fast. The image grew. Was she walking toward him? Did she want him, too?

Roger stood up suddenly. Arnost blinked, and the queen was gone.

"It's obvious!" Roger cried. "The kiss!"

"Kiss?"

"Of course the kiss." Roger moved from foot to foot, dancing in his excitement. "Think of all the stories that end with a kiss awakening a cursed beauty or healing a mortal wound."

Arnost shook his head. "Those are just stories."

"But," Roger said, raising a finger and tapping his bare chin, "don't you think that a kiss from the queen could possibly help?"

"I . . ." was all Arnost could say. He had to think, and he was careful not to let the vision of the queen fill his mind. They had never touched. He had only seen. So many of his debauched dreams brought them to touch. Perhaps his mind was attempting to fill a void.

"Perhaps," Arnost said, clumsily pushing his thoughts into words, "perhaps knowing her touch would be the end of it."

"Exactly!" Roger clapped his hands once, and then the grin began to grow dim on his face. "Although . . . do you think you can win?"

Arnost looked at him.

Roger wrenched up his face. "No offense, milord! I just happened to think of the other knights, and while your skills are great, theirs . . ."

Arnost ignored him. "If God wills it, I will win. For my part, I will give it my all."

Roger's smile returned. "Then, sir, I must go polish your armor. I'll make it bright enough to blind your opponent!"

"And I should go train. Perhaps Glowen's still out there. He's quick, a good sparring partner."

Roger threw up his hands. "No, Sir Arnost, you've already trained all day! Your body will be weary! You must rest. Look, it's already turning to evening, and the king's dinner will be laid soon."

Arnost turned toward the stable entrance. The yard was not as bright as it had been. The sun must have been setting beyond the castle wall. The farrier was brushing Arnost's warhorse, newly shod.

"No," Arnost told Roger, "I will practice."

Without another word, he moved back into the yard. The other knights were gone, leaving behind a harried pattern of boot-prints and a red stain in the sand where Odrick had fallen. While the men were gone, the dummies still stood on their pivots, ready to swing a wooden blade at anyone who struck their standing shields. Arnost plucked up an ironwood sword, gave a yell, and charged them one after the next. He did not quit until the yard became so dark he couldn't see the targets on their shields.

In the king's hall, he ate meat and bread but drank little wine. The other knights whooped and cheered. Only King Walter's toast caused Arnost to raise his cup. When the food was gone, he did not stay to spin tales and laugh at the jesters.

Arnost slept, but not as peaceful respite. He slept as a chore. Just as the sun slept and then burst at dawn to drive the night away, Arnost slept to become strong.

He didn't awaken to dawn's light streaming in the window. He didn't awaken when the trumpets began to blow for competitors to gather on the tournament field. Roger had to shake him awake. Arnost washed only his face that morning.

Roger stood beside him with a towel. "Are you well, Sir Arnost? Tournaments are dangerous enough at your peak."

"I will fight anything to be rid of my wicked visions," he replied.

By the time Arnost arrived, fresh from the dressing tent where Roger suited him in the armor that bearers had brought down in carts, the field was packed with warriors. Most were the king's knights, shining in the morning sun with their bold standards, newly repainted for show. A few were peasants, dressed in their ruddy tunics and armed with pitchforks or flails. The peasants parted as he came into the crowd until he hit the wall of men in iron. There he stood with Baub and Glowen.

The knights were centered on Sir Lansfrick, who stood tall with his helmet under his arm and his yellow locks floating in the morning breeze. The other knights wore their helmets, shifting their eyes to see who hadn't shown up for the tournament. Orick's page stood with his boar's head flag atop a pole to mark his absence.

"He's not dead then," Arnost mumbled. He changed his grip on his sword in one hand and his shield along the other arm.

"No," Baub answered, his voice tempered by his helmet. "It'll be a long while before he fights again."

"It'll be a long while before he speaks anything against the queen again," Arnost added.

Glowen coughed. "It'll be a long time before he speaks any words."

A roar rose up from the wooden risers full of spectators. Trumpets blared. Knights upheld their swords. Arnost followed suit, as did the peasants with their farming tools.

King Walter appeared atop the royal stand. While the crowd sat in the sun, his wooden box was shaded with rich drapes and purple tapestries showing his bear standard. He waved and turned back with a hand extended.

From the shadowy stairs at the back of the stand, Queen Adela appeared. Her hair was completely hidden, wrapped under a white cap fitted with her thin golden wreath of a crown. The white cloth covered her neck and extended down beneath her collar. Her gown was soft blue and covered with golden embroidery of the phoenix of her father's family. Only the fine features of her face showed.

Arnost's armor seemed to strangle him. The air felt too hot to breathe.

King Walter gave an address, but Arnost heard little of it. He tried to train his eyes on the ground before him, but they slid up again and again to the woman standing beside Walter.

He stamped on his own foot and reminded himself, "She is your queen."

At last Walter and Adela stepped back, trumpets sang, and people began to shuffle around Arnost. He took in a gasp of air. Suddenly he was awake.

It was the Great Match, the first round of the tournament that would cut its number of competitors in half. Each man found a rival, and the two fought until one stood to continue in the games. Heavily armed knights hurried to grab peasants as opponents for easy victories. The peasants tried to scatter away from them or take hold of one another's shoulders, but inevitably they ended up paired against a hulk clad in steel. A few of the knights came against one another, ready to fight out their quarrels. Ornost's page forfeited and ran.

Arnost took a peasant as his own foe, a gangling and strangely tall young man with a scraggly beard grown long despite its thinness. He held with both hands a long threshing flail, well used sticks of yew joined with a chain.

"Please don't kill me!" the peasant said in a ragged whisper. "I'm only here to prove my bravery to my sweet Belinda. Once she sees me on the field of battle, she'll—"

Arnost interrupted. "When the trumpets blow, take a swing at me."

"What?"

"Fight me."

The peasant still stared.

"Fight me for your Belinda."

Finally the peasant nodded. He began to smile.

Arnost growled. "Take your love seriously. She's watching, isn't she?"

The peasant stopped smiling and raised his flail.

Heralds sounded their trumpets, and the combat began. All around them, weapons began clattering against one another. A few men gave hurried cries of surrender that stood out shrill against the bestial grunts of attackers.

The peasant didn't strike as quickly as Arnost hoped. He pulled his sword back and made a slow, easy jab toward his foe's right.

The peasant dodged away. His face was pale, yet a fire started in his eyes.

Arnost smiled under his helmet.

The peasant charged with a wide swing of his flail. Arnost caught it easily against his shield. The force almost brought him to one knee, but Arnost pushed himself backward and wedged his boots into the dusty ground to keep his footing. He made another relaxed jab at the peasant, who again dodged.

They traded blow after blow like that. The peasant did well enough; Arnost would ask for him if he ever commanded a march of infantry.

The barks of battle began to wane around them. While taking cover under his shield for their rhythmic game, he looked around the field. Most of the peasants were on the ground, knights standing over them. A few knights, too, had tumbled. Baub had knocked down Glowen. Apparently they had moved too slowly to get one of the easy matches against a peasant.

Arnost looked back over his shield. The peasant was standing light on his feet. He had his flail twisted back, expecting a jab over which he could attack.

"Time to end this," Arnost said, although he doubted the peasant could have heard over the battle-clatter.

Arnost made a quick jab to the far right. The peasant dodged to the left and leaned farther over to give weight to his flail as he swung. Instead of readying to block the blow as he had before, Arnost leaped with his shield in front of him. He hit the peasant squarely in the chest and followed him to the hard ground. They landed with a thud, and Arnost heard the peasant give a moan of air rushing out of his lungs.

The peasant lay still while Arnost got back to his feet.

"You're all right," Arnost assured him.

The only response was a dull groan.

Trumpets blew a fanfare. Families of the foolhardy peasants raced onto the field to collect their fallen. The knights unable to stand were carried off the field by pages and bearers in bright courtly costumes. Arnost could already hear the teasing jabs forming about them. At least none of Odrick's sing-songs would be heard.

Arnost walked around his former enemy, still pinned to the ground as if held by an invisible giant's hand. A peasant girl brushed past the knights. She fell to her knees next to the peasant and smothered his face with kisses.

"Your bravery is unmatched!" she told him.

He groaned in reply and took her in his arms.

Arnost felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He shuddered to chase away the feeling and continued toward the tents. As he left the field, servants rushed to set up the posts and rails for the joust.

Roger appeared at his side with a bowl of water. "So, halfway there!"

Arnost slipped his helmet off and shook his head. "Most of that half was never my opponent."

He poured the water over his sweat-lined hair.

They sat quietly until another fanfare of trumpets sounded the joust. Arnost stood without a word and went to his warhorse. Roger trotted behind him.

The horse stood proud in his stall. As Arnost came close, he whinnied and stamped his newly shod hoof.

Arnost touched his nose. "Carry me true, my boy."

The horse blew air over his lips. Arnost patted his neck. He handed Roger the reins, and they walked together toward the crane that would lift him into the saddle.

One or two peasants had made it this far, but knights quickly unseated them from their huge, borrowed warhorses. It had taken Arnost years to catch up with the horsemanship of men who had grown up on horseback. Now he faced Sir Baub, who rode under his green flag with three ravens.

Baub's horse tossed its head. His hand with the reins pulled far back to hold it in place. The horse took a step sideways.

Arnost shook his head and patted his own horse's calm mane.

At the judge's call, Arnost goaded his horse on with his heels. He charged as close to the rails as he could. Baub's horse leaned away, instinctively out of the path. Baub leaned far toward the rail, forcing his horse back into line by his armor's weight.

Arnost struck wide on Baub's far side, sending him tumbling off the saddle and gut-first onto the rail. When he came to the end of the field, Arnost turned his horse around to see if Baub survived the fall. He did, and the tournament went on.

He next unseated Usford under his standard of deer at the river crossing, then Hilliac, who roared as piercingly as the gryphon on his flag when he fell on the third pass. Sir Bonna stayed in the saddle, but he held up his broken spear between charges in surrender. Arnost saluted him.

When Sir Mellam fell, he climbed to his feet and dusted off his shield until the white branches of his family oak shined. He wasn't going to give up without combat. The crowd of peasants roared. The court clapped their hands politely.

Arnost nodded inside his helmet. He dismounted while Roger held his horse, then the page handed him his sword. Arnost did his best to approach Mellam without looking back at the royal box.

Mellam raised his own sword to Arnost. "Didn't think I'd let you off that easy, did you?"

"I hear your words, but they might best be directed at yourself," Arnost told him. He took the hilt of his sword in both hands. "I hope you enjoy this, but I must be victorious."

"Shall we try, then?" Mellam called.

Arnost took a breath. "Go."

Mellam moved forward; Arnost moved back. The two danced, trading blows and moving their feet to gain the upper hand. It was the same as practicing in the yard, though their swords were sharper and the shouts from the crowd were louder.

Arnost kept his breath and thought. Something was off with Mellam's usual rhythm. He fell back only in one direction, leading Arnost toward the crowd, toward the royal box where the queen sat. Her face caught his eye. Was she smiling?

Mellam's sword slammed into his helmet. Arnost retreated three steps across the dusty ground. His ears rang, but he had fallen out of the spell.

"You're clever," Arnost yelled at him.

Mellam replied only with narrowed eyes behind the slits in his helmet. He sidestepped, again placing himself in front of the royal stand. To see him, Arnost would have to look toward the queen.

Without raising his head, Arnost charged. His armored shoulder met Mellam's breastplate, and he flung the knight off his feet. Even before he landed, Mellam, dropped his sword and raised his hands. He was done. Pages dashed onto the field to collect him.

Arnost was panting as he left the field. He wanted to drag his sword on the ground, let it carry some of the burden, but he would not. Roger took it from him as soon as he got back to his horse. The next knights came on the field, and the tournament went on.

There were still more than a half-dozen knights to beat, but Arnost was close. He let himself steal glances at the royal box, where the queen sat watching. Her eyes were dull as the other knights battled. If she had been smiling before, it was for him.

Arnost felt his heart become light. His whole body eased. His armor seemed not to press him at all. He still could not catch his breath. His lips felt dry under his gasping, but soon they would meet the warmth of the queen's own—

His dream broke under Roger's trembling voice. "Sir Arnost, they're calling you."

Arnost made one final gasp. He looked around himself. Without a word, he hurried to the crane and mounted his horse. Roger's hands were clumsy and shaking as he worked the crank. Arnost landed atop his horse with a thud.

"What's the matter with you, boy?" Arnost called.

"It's Sir Lansfrick."

"Lansfrick? What of him?"

"You're fighting him next."

Arnost felt his face go cold. He was glad to have his helmet to hide behind.

Sir Lansfrick was the king's champion, the greatest knight in all of the realm, perhaps the kingdom's three neighbors, too. Arnost would of course have to defeat him for the prize, but he wasn't ready yet. He still had so many others to fight. He should work up to the greatest foe.

Arnost bit his tongue. This was the penalty for his arrogance to think a queen would smile at a dairyman's son.

"So be it," Arnost said.

Roger led the warhorse to the field. Sir Arnost held his spear in a loose hand. His muscles seemed turned to stone. His back ached.

Across the dusty ground, Sir Lansfrick rode atop his ghostly white horse, waving to the crowd. His blue banner with its golden eagle flew out behind him. His armor shone like the sun.

Everyone cheered, from the screaming peasant girls to the ladies of the court, who waved their kerchiefs at him in hopes he would pick one of them. Lansfrick refused to chose; he bowed to them all in turn. At last, he stopped his horse in front of the royal stand to blow the queen a kiss. She smiled and nodded.

Arnost tightened his grip on his spear until he heard the sound of his knuckles cracking. He spurred his warhorse and left Roger behind him.

Lansfrick collected his own spear from his velvet-dressed pages and lined up at the end of the rail opposite from Arnost. Lansfrick's horse stood statuesque; Arnost's stirred and stamped. Arnost placed a hand on the horse's mane. The sun seemed to go dim as he waited. He heard only silence until the judge gave his call.

When the cry came, Arnost slapped his horse's side. He watched Lansfrick spur his own steed. The two charged at one another, leaning heavily on their spears.

Still yards away from Lansfrick, Arnost's horse fell out from under him. He tumbled forward, over the horse's head and to the ground. The horse gave a horrid scream. Arnost just let out his breath.

A wave of dust flew up, and then came a rush of pain along his shoulders and arm. Brown clouds flew against his eyes. Arnost imagined he must have made noise as he rolled, but he didn't hear anything above the yelling crowd.

Finally it ended. Arnost coughed at the dust and turned over onto his shoulder. His horse was on its side, kicking its legs. One stuck out, twisted. The horse had thrown its shoe, tripping as it did its duty to charge. The farrier's fearful hands had done poor work. Now it took the skillful work of a man with a knife to end the horse's pain. Arnost closed his eyes out of respect; his last sight was Roger leading a band of pages to drag the horse away.

Out of the darkness behind his closed eyes, the queen came to him again. She raised her hands from the gentle curve of her hip and reached out to Arnost. He wanted to raise his own hands, but his arms were so tired. Still she beckoned him. Her eyes pleaded with him, wet with worry.

Arnost opened his own eyes. If he lay much longer, the judge would name Lansfrick the winner. He had to get up.

Arnost gritted his teeth and shoved himself more fully onto his side. He pushed against the ground with his shield. His arm ached, and he bit his tongue to let the sharp pain he controlled drown out the grinding pain he didn't. Once he could move his legs, he was on his knees, then to his feet.

The crowd gasped and screamed. Arnost dusted off his shield. He had to fight on.

Sir Lansfrick hopped down from his pale horse and waved his sword to the crowd. They roared again for him.

"Good show, Arnie," Lansfrick said through his helmet as he approached.

Arnost grunted.

"I heard what you did to Odrick yesterday," Lansfrick went on. "About time somebody taught that pig a lesson. I'm only sorry it wasn't me."

"Are we talking or fighting?"

Sir Lansfrick let out a merry laugh and raised his sword. "Whatever you like."

Arnost said nothing. He took a breath, changed his stance, and took a stab at Lansfrick.

His helmet rang with a bitter noise. A wild force threw him to the ground. The world went dark for a moment, and then he looked up again. There was only blue sky, and then a shadow.

Lansfrick stood over him, sword raised triumphantly. He had knocked Arnost down in one blow.

"No!" Arnost screamed. He threw himself up to sit on the ground.

Lansfrick turned. "What are you doing, Arnie?"

Arnost forced his legs under him and stood.

"I bested you fairly," Lansfrick told him.

Arnost raised his sword. "I am still on my feet."

He took a swing. Lansfrick deflected the blow with his shield and stabbed. Arnost took the scratch to the hip in exchange for a better swing at Lansfrick's arm. The other knight dodged back, and then the world spun around Arnost again. His body hit the ground hard again. Squeals rang in his ears. His neck ached.

Gradually, the sharp ringing gave way to dull thuds of blood in his hears. Arnost moaned. The crowd roared.

"No," Arnost mumbled to himself. It was all he could say.

Again he forced his chest to rise and his legs to push him up.

Lansfrick was again waving to the crowd. Again, he turned. He did not laugh this time. "Arnie, stop this."

Arnost shook his head. He could feel dents in his helmet. "I cannot."

Lansfrick came close, his sword lowered. "I know about your shoulder, Arnost. That old cat-wound keeps you from raising your sword-hand much above your ear. All I have to do is stay ahead of your sword and knock you down. I can defeat you a hundred times."

"But not a thousand times," Arnost muttered. He held up his sword. "Again."

Lansfrick stepped back to a decent range and readied. They fought. Arnost made several jabs, but again he fell. Warm, sticky blood began to trickle down inside of his helmet.

Arnost pushed back to his feet.

Lansfrick kicked the dust. "Please, stay down. Let's stop this."

Arnost said nothing. He only stood. "I will not fall before you."

"You're tired and wounded. Yield."

"Not before you do."

Arnost attacked. Lansfrick defended. Again, Arnost hit the ground. Again, he stood.

"I admire you," Lansfrick said. "Your fortitude, unimaginable!"

Arnost blinked blood out of his eyes. Was Lansfrick short of breath?

"If it were not a matter of honor," Lansfrick went on, "I would step aside, but as the king's champion . . ."

Arnost attacked. Lansfrick defended. Arnost struck him three times before he fell again. His legs did not hurt as they did before. Now they were tingling as if he had sat on them too long. He stamped them as he stood up.

Lansfrick's voice was frantic. "I can't lose to you! I'm the king's champion!"

Arnost attacked. Lansfrick defended. Arnost fell. He stood again, now using his sword like an old man's stick. He couldn't tell the roaring of the crowd from the roaring inside his head. His shield-arm hung loose, but he raised his sword.

Lansfrick stood coddling his. "If you will not stop, I might kill you."

"I will not stop."

Lansfrick took in a rasping breath, but he said no more.

They fought. Arnost fell. It seemed like midnight as he forced himself to stand again: dark, cool, quiet. Something heavy fell from his shoulders. His breastplate's leather strap must have broken. He would fight on.

The crowd had stopped roaring. Even the well-bred courtiers in their boxes were staring with their mouths open. Arnost could hear only warbling words trickle from the stands. Many were swears to the Lord; some were mumbles of pity. A boy was crying.

Arnost raised his sword.

"This . . . this isn't honorable," the deep voice of King Walter muttered.

Lansfrick stood before him as a shadow. His sword trembled.

Arnost took in a deep breath. His mouth tasted of sharp copper. He lifted his sword.

Lansfrick stood still. Was he holding a defensive position? Was he considering a yield? It was hard to see, and the darkness was getting deeper.

The deep breath slipped out of Arnost's mouth. His chest caved in under him, and his sword gained a thousand tons. He fell forward, forcing his left leg to drop so he landed on his side instead of his blade.

Everything became black. Then there was noise. Unseen hands moved him onto his back.

Light came into Arnost's eyes. The queen was above him. She must have rushed down from the stands with the others.

Arnost winced at her shining face, but he could not bear to look away.

It was not her body he saw. Only her face, surrounded in its clean white cap, crowned with her twist of gold. Her jewel-eyes sparkled with tears.

There was no lust in his heart. Arnost loved her truly.

"Sir Knight," Adela said softly, her voice so much more timid than the shrieks he had first heard from her, "I should kiss you."

Arnost bit his tongue, but he felt no pain there. "No, I did not prove my worth."

Her white hand pulled back Arnost's battered visor. It squeaked and stuck midway. She did not recoil. "This I give freely."

She kissed him. Arnost felt her warmth against his own cold lips.

The tournament went on. Its winner was not recorded in annals.

Yet, in the chronicles of Sir Roger the Pious, amid his adventures in the Hellsmouth Cave and pursuit of the Drake of Fienlein, he tells those he meets time and again of his tutor, Sir Arnost, the peasant-knight who died with a smile on his face.

Ember of the Past

by Mike Kupari

Red Heaven Space Habitat

Hades Orbit

Folsom 4101-B Star System

“Quite a view, isn’t it?” Captain Catherine Blackwood asked. She was sitting with her first officer, Wolfram von Spandau, in a nice restaurant on the top floor of the Hotel Orbital. The hotel was a cylindrical building, twenty stories high, with a transparent, domed ceiling. The interior of the Red Heaven space habitat circled around and high above her. A cylinder a dozen kilometers long and three in diameter, rotating to simulate gravity, Red Heaven was home to one and a half million residents, and was the only settlement in a very lonely solar system.

Wolfram grunted and sipped his drink. “It is, Kapitänin. I have never seen anything like it.” The interior of Red Heaven was divided into six equal-area sections, running down the habitat’s longitudinal axis. Three of the sections were the station’s habitable land area, covered with layers of soil, roads, buildings, and trees. The other three were transparent windows, which allowed sunlight to be reflected in from giant mirrors outside the station. Clouds swirled overhead, looping around the interior of the station.

Red Heaven got its name from Hades, the massive red gas giant it orbited. Circling around Folsom 4101-B at one and a half astronomical units, Hades’ upper atmosphere was rich in hydrogen, helium, and other gasses ships used as reaction mass. Strategically located along a major trade route between the heart of the Concordiat and the Frontier, Red Heaven had been a major transit hub since its construction at the end of the Second Interstellar War, over a hundred standard years prior.

Mazer Broadbent, Catherine’s security officer, seemed a little unsettled by the view. “It certainly makes one feel small,” he said, before popping another stuffed bell pepper into his mouth. Far above them, through one of the habitat’s three expansive windows, the imposing, blood-red mass of Hades was visible, looming over the tiny human settlement like an angry god. A swirling storm, known to locals as The Maw, was clearly visible. Tens of thousands of kilometers in diameter, the storm had been raging since before humankind had ever entered the Folsom 4101-B system, and it showed no signs of slowing down.

It was late afternoon by the habitat’s internal clock, and the restaurant hadn’t yet been hit by its dinner rush. Most of the tables were empty, giving the three spacers some privacy as they talked. Off to the side of the room, in front of a two-meter-tall artificial waterfall, a boxy robot with two articulated arms expertly played a beautiful grand piano. A server robot would occasionally roll up and ask Catherine’s party if they were ready to order, but the spacers declined. They were waiting for their host, and Catherine thought it would be rude to dine without him.

Even if he was late.

“I do not like this,” Wolfram said, as if reading his captain’s mind. “Our contact should have been here forty minutes ago.”

Catherine nodded and sipped her wine. “It is rude, yes, but for the amount of money he seems to want to throw at us, we can wait a while longer.” The captain had long since learned that, in her business, it was best to work with your clients to the maximum extent possible, even if it was occasionally inconvenient. They were often very grateful of such gestures, and often expressed that gratitude with money or referrals.

Wolfram looked at the transparent eyepiece he wore over his left eye when his handheld chirped. “Kapitänin, it is a message from our client. He apologizes for his tardiness and is coming up the lift now.”

“Very good,” Catherine said. “Let’s see what all the fuss is about, shall we?”

Red Heaven was an independent colony that had, ever since its construction, steadfastly refused to join the Interstellar Concordiat. Its establishment had been financed by the ultra-wealthy Zheng family, who then set themselves up as hereditary rulers. Citizenship in the colony was difficult to achieve; one had to be at least third-generation born, and as such a significant portion of the colony’s population lacked citizenship. Those who were citizens enjoyed generous benefits, including lifelong medical care and upgraded housing, paid for by the revenue generated by extracting resources from the gas giant. The population was strictly regulated, however, and having children was not a right.

Despite its opulent wealth, Red Heaven lacked a military and had little in the way of defenses. Such a wealthy and isolated colony would be a tempting target for pirates, so the colonial authorities contracted their defense out to privateer ships. Catherine’s ship, the Andromeda, had been a last minute, short-term fill-in for another ship that suffered a reactor problem and was being repaired in space dock. For the last 1800 hours, the Andromeda had been patrolling the Folsom 4101-B system with a mismatched fleet of other privateers, inspecting traffic coming through the system’s four transit points and standing ready to provide aid to ships in distress.

Some privateers spent years doing such work. The long-term stability of it certainly had its advantages, Catherine thought, sipping her wine. No chasing after contracts year in and year out. You knew you were going to be employed, and the client paid for all of your ship maintenance on top of it. It wasn’t a bad deal, but it wasn’t something Catherine wanted to do long-term. She’d go crazy patrolling one system for a decade.

In any case, the engineering and social problems that cropped up with long-term space habitation meant that Red Heaven could be stifling. The wealthy citizenry treated the noncitizen population poorly. Colonial law enforcement had virtually unlimited authority, with very little in the way of due process or rights for the accused. Penalties for civil infractions were stiff; criminal infractions often resulted in deportation or execution. Red Heaven had no prisons. Worse, the Zheng family enforced its very specific vision of social harmony and normalcy. Great if you agreed with their worldview, not so much if you didn’t like it.

No, Catherine would be quite happy when the Andromeda finally translated out of Folsom 4101-B. The Zhengs and the tiresome, decadent citizenry of Red Heaven could have it, for all she cared. The Folsom system lacked any habitable planets; the system population resided almost entirely in Red Heaven, sealed in a pressurized can against the cold darkness of space. They thought they had it made, that they were living the dream, and they didn’t seem to know how unfortunate their existence was. In Catherine’s estimation, if she wasn’t on her own ship, free to roam the stars, then she wanted solid ground under her feet and an open sky above, the way humans were meant to live.

After a few moments, the trio of spacers noticed a man headed toward their table, politely following a steward robot. He was dressed in conservative Earth-style business attire instead of the more flamboyant garb favored by Red Heaven natives, but business travelers were hardly uncommon on the colony. The spacers themselves had changed into their street clothes, and didn’t blend in with the locals at all. Upon reaching the table, he leaned forward and offered Catherine a firm, Earth handshake.

“I do apologize for keeping you waiting, Captain,” he said, breathlessly, as he sat down. His dark hair and Asiatic features were punctuated by the eyepiece he wore over his left eye, which was tinted green. “I got held up trying to get over here.”

Catherine wasn’t sure how one got held up anywhere on Red Heaven. Private vehicles were limited to certain elite citizens and government entities, and there was no traffic to speak of. Everyone else had to rely on automated mass transit—which was surprisingly efficient, at least in this section of the colony. She didn’t press him on the issue; she simply smiled and introduced her crew.

“This is Wolfram von Spandau, my first officer.”

Wolfram gave the newcomer a crisp, vertical handshake.

“And this,” Catherine said, “is my security officer, Mazer Broadbent.”

“Greetings,” Mazer said, his deep voice booming. The cybernetic ocular implant which replaced his right eye and a good chunk of the side of his skull, combined with his large frame and intense presence, gave the security man an imposing look. Having him along for negotiations often kept things from getting out of hand, and he could spot trouble coming from a long way out.

“To business, then,” the newcomer said, looking around.

“Is everything all right?” Mazer asked. “You seem nervous.”

“Fine! Everything is fine,” the man said. He looked up, through the glass ceiling, though the windows of the space colony, into the void beyond. “I’m not just thrilled with, ah, heights, and this place always threatens to give me vertigo. I have to take pills.”

Catherine sighed. “Mister … I’m sorry, you haven’t yet told me your name.”

“Tran,” he said.

“Mr. Tran,” the captain continued, “what is it we can do for you?”

“I, uh, what I require is the highest level of discretion. I looked up the reports about you and your services, Captain, and you come highly recommended. Discreet, professional, always gets the job done.”

“It’s a point of pride, yes,” Catherine said. And the result of some vigorous self-promotion.

“I understand that your contract with the Red Heaven authorities is ending soon, and that you’re preparing to leave the system.”

Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “That information is not publicly available.”

Mr. Tran was clearly uncomfortable, but Catherine couldn’t tell if it was because she was confronting him, or because of his fear of heights.

“I’m aware. I have sources. Please,” he said, raising a hand slightly, “please hear me out. I come with a very generous offer.” He tapped his handheld a couple of times, then slid it across the table to Catherine. “All I need is for you to transport some passengers and some cargo to New Peking.”

Despite her best efforts to maintain her composure, her eyes went wide at the offered pay. New Peking was a Concordiat colony, the nearest major one. It wasn’t close, exactly, but it wasn’t so far as to merit that level of compensation. She showed the device to Wolfram.

The exec was immediately suspicious. “What is the nature of the cargo we are to be transporting?” he asked pointedly. “You would not be offering this much if there wasn’t something peculiar about it. Is it hazardous? Will it put my crew in danger?”

“No!” Tran said, sounding more than a little defensive. “No, I swear, nothing like that. Look, there’s a lot I’m not authorized to tell you unless you sign the contract. What I need transported is not dangerous, but it is extremely valuable—priceless, as a matter of fact. It cannot be insured nor replaced. And there are people looking for it, who want to steal it. We need it transported, and we need it protected.”

“I see,” Catherine said, passing Tran’s handheld back to him. “That would explain why you’re talking to an armed privateer instead of a commercial freight captain.”

Tran nodded.

“This cargo,” Wolfram stated, “it is in the Folsom system?”

“It is,” Tran said, “but it is not on this station.”

“And since you’ve apparently looked into the classified patrol ship rotation for Red Heaven, you are undoubtedly aware that we are not released from our contract yet.”

“I am aware of that, Captain. As a matter of fact, I’m counting on it.”

“What do you mean?” Wolfram asked. “I do not understand.”

“I’m afraid I’ve said all I can,” Tran said. “You have my contact information. If you’re willing to sign the contract and the nondisclosure agreement, you know how to get a hold of me.” He stood up. “Think it over, but please do not take too long. Time is of the essence.” He excused himself, turned, and strode out of the room.

“He didn’t even stay for dinner,” Catherine said.

“I do not like this at all,” Wolfram said. “They could be wanting us to transport illegal or dangerous goods. Stolen property, perhaps.”

“Hmm,” Catherine said, looking through a copy of the contract on her handheld. “It says that we won’t be asked to do anything illegal under Concordiat commerce law, or the ancient and recognized Laws of Outer Space.”

“That doesn’t mean their cargo isn’t hot,” Mazer pointed out.

“No,” Catherine agreed, “but it does mean if they try to pull one over on us we can legally confiscate their cargo and turn them over to the authorities. Gentlemen, I’m sorry, but this one has me intrigued. This offer? It’s more than we’ve made for the entire time we’ve been patrolling the Folsom system, and you both know the Red Heaven authorities don’t skimp when it comes to paying for their defense.”

“Assuming this Tran fellow actually has access to that kind of money,” Mazer said.

“If he doesn’t,” Catherine said, “we have ways of handling it. Now, shall we finally order, or are we to keep filling up on appetizers?

# # # # #

Privateer Ship Andromeda

Deep Space

Folsom 4101-B System

Sixteen Days Later …

“Captain on deck!” Wolfram von Spandau announced, as Captain Blackwood entered the Astrogation deck. The Andromeda was accelerating along at a steady 0.85 gravities, allowing the crew to walk around her decks.

“Everyone relax,” Catherine said, entering the room. Assembled were the ship’s officers and their guest, Mr. Tran. Tran seemed rather less queasy now that he was sealed inside a small ship with virtually no windows. Most of her officers hadn’t yet been briefed on what the new mission was, save for her chief astrogator, Kel Morrow, and the ship’s purser, who had reviewed the contract. They still thought they were going on one final patrol for Red Heaven before returning to their home port on Heinlein. “Thank you for meeting me here.”

It wasn’t exactly necessary to have these briefings face-to-face. It would have been just as easy for them to conduct the meeting over the ship’s intranet, with everyone still at their duty stations. Catherine preferred to look her officers in the eye when speaking with them, however. Maybe it was an Avalonian quirk; in the space forces of Avalon, her home world, it was routine practice for ship’s officers to start each duty day with a sit-down, face-to-face meeting. Wolfram, having come up in the Concordiat Defense Forces, had once told her that this practice was all but unheard of in the Concordiat Fleet.

“Captain, am I to assume that our plans have changed?” The question came from Indira Nair, her chief engineer and second officer.

Catherine smiled. “Am I that predictable, Indira?”

“It is unlike you to have unscheduled meetings, Captain,” the engineer said, humorlessly. “And there’s the matter of our passenger.” She nodded toward Tran.

“Yes, well, Mr. Tran approached me with our next contract offer, which I accepted. It should be a short-duration mission, and one that pays extremely well. Mordechai, care to explain?”

Mordechai Chang was the Andromeda’s purser, bookkeeper, and quartermaster. Unlike the rest of the officers, he wasn’t present on the astrogation deck. He greatly disliked meeting people face to face, and preferred to work from the solitude and security of his workstation, deep within the bowels of the ship. His image appeared on a large screen attached the ceiling. It rotated so that everyone had a clear view.

“Of course, Cap’n,” he said. His image slid to the left of the screen while the text of the contract appeared on the right. Key phrases were highlighted as he explained the situation. “Mr. Tran and his associates have contracted us to make contact with a ship that’s been in orbit around Hades for quite some time … ”

“Forty-five days, by Red Heaven reckoning,” Tran said.

“Yes, forty-five days,” Mordechai repeated. “We are going to take on cargo and one passenger from that ship. Our mission then is to transport said cargo and persons to New Peking, providing protection for them along the way as necessary. Flight time from Folsom 4101-B to planetfall on New Peking should be less than two thousand hours. As you can see, the offered pay is quite a bit more than we’d be normally offered for such a task. Moreover, we were paid half up front.”

“Each crewmember will be getting the normal portion of that, scaled to his or her pay grade, plus an additional ten percent,” Catherine said.

“So … what’s the hook?” The question came from Cargomaster Kimball, the ship’s fourth officer. Hailing from the high gravity world of Darwin, Kimball was short in stature but physically very strong.

“What do you mean?” Catherine asked.

“That’s an awful lot of money for simply hauling one gentlefellow and some cargo to New Peking. And, am I to assume that we’re going to rendezvous with this ship while still on patrol for Red Heaven? Isn’t this a contractual conflict?”

“Technically, no,” Mordechai said. “It is very much a technicality, but we won’t be violating the explicit terms of our current contract.”

“In any case Red Heaven doesn’t need to know what we’re doing,” Catherine said. “This mission calls for the highest levels of discretion, and that’s one reason we’re being paid so much.”

“How much cargo are we to be taking on?” Kimball asked.

Tran spoke up then. “About four tons. Computer equipment and associated materials.”

“What kind of computer weighs four tons?” Indira Nair asked.

Tran looked uncomfortable again. “Captain, is it necessary to go over this again?”

“It is,” the captain said. “I’m not going to keep this from my officers.”

“Very well. May I use your holotank?” He tapped his handheld a few times, and the holotank came to life. A high resolution, three-dimensional image of a room-filling computer cluster filled the display. It was a strange-looking device; such bulk, so many components, but only one panel for an operator to access it. Something resembling a large robot with a triple-camera eyepiece rose from the middle of it all, curved forward in a hunched over stance, looking around, as if the machine was studying the room. “Folks, this is Ember.”

Kel Morrow was the first one to speak. “I’m … sorry?”

“Ember is the name of this system, given to her by her creator, Dr. Bjorn Battista. We will be picking up Dr. Battista as well.”

“Wait a moment,” Kel said. “Her?”

“Yes,” Tran said. “Ember is an AI. A real AI, not the concoction of computer boards and preprogrammed algorithms you normally see these days. She’s fully cognitive and self-aware.”

The astrogation deck was quiet, save for the dull rumbling of the Andromeda’s engine, the air circulation, and the deep hum of the holotank. Catherine wasn’t surprised at her crew’s reaction. She’d had much the same reaction herself, when Tran initially briefed her and Wolfram. Real, cognitive, self-aware artificial intelligences were vanishingly rare in the modern era. Once they had been fairly common across civilized space. Eight hundred years before, they could be found at the heart of every capital starship of the now-defunct Second Federation.

That was before an AI named Euclid was given supreme control over the ancient colony world of Hera. Around it rose a Post-Humanist Movement that quickly spread across several inner colonies. The Post-Humanists were heavily genetically modified, and many further supplemented themselves with cybernetic augmentation. They believed themselves to be the next stage of human evolution, superior to the rest of the species, and went so far as to brand themselves Homo Superior.

Euclid was the most powerful artificial intelligence ever created. Its vast machine intellect was far beyond anything its creators could have foreseen. It further augmented and reprogrammed itself, expanding its own capabilities over the course of years. For the Post-Humanist Movement, Euclid was a demigod, a literal deus ex machina.

What was not widely understood by the Post-Humanists was that Euclid was unstable. They all but worshipped it, believing its logic to be infallible, but its logic was based on a set of priorities known only to itself. Euclid was out of control, a rampant AI in command of an entire society. The Post-Humanists quickly stamped out all opposition to Euclid’s leadership in the areas they controlled, and did so with grim finality not seen since the darkest days of barbaric, pre-space Earth: submit or die.

Euclid’s influence spread across inhabited space, and quickly threatened to destabilize the Second Federation. The war that followed was, historians now agreed, probably inevitable, but no one alive at the time could imagine the scale of the destruction it would bring. What was initially called the Second Space War soon became known as the First Interstellar War, since it was the first human conflict to take place throughout multiple star systems, using transit-capable ships. The war quickly spiraled out of control, a protracted conflagration that engulfed the heart of inhabited space.

The Post-Humanists were greatly outnumbered by their Federation opponents, but had superior technology, and Euclid proved to be a ruthless and cunning tactician. A few scattered, bloody engagements quickly turned into open, unrestricted warfare. Euclid was an inhuman intellect that had no qualms with attempting to exterminate those it saw as a threat. Mass orbital bombardment was used on an unprecedented scale, blasting countless colonies from the sky. The Post-Humanists used incredibly advanced information and biological warfare as well; entire system networks were wiped out, untold amounts of records were lost. Millions died of horrific, engineered diseases and mutations.

Federation forces retaliated against the Post-Humanists with orbital bombardments of their own, and unrestricted use of nuclear weapons. Post-Humanist sympathizers, and those suspected of being such, were rounded up on dozens of worlds, put on trial, and in many cases, put to death. Whichever side lost an engagement typically had no survivors, as neither side would accept surrender and neither would take prisoners alive.

It was more than twenty standard years from when the first shots were fired to when the war ground to a halt. The Federation ultimately won the war, but its victory was ashes in the mouth. Many colonies were destroyed. An untold amount of space infrastructure had been blasted away. Even the Earth had been struck by Post-Humanist forces. But Euclid was destroyed, and its surviving followers scattered throughout space.

Thus, the Second Federation ultimately met the same fate as the first: it crumbled and collapsed. What followed was colloquially known as the Long Night, now called the Interregnum by historians. With so much space infrastructure destroyed, so many colonies wiped out, humanity largely ceased being an interstellar species. Long journeys became impossible, and with that, so did interstellar communication. Many worlds that had been hit with engineered diseases were deemed too dangerous to visit. Those colonies that had emerged unscathed, hearing reports of the level of destruction others sustained, shut themselves off. Information networks, scrubbed and destroyed by Euclid's viruses, were unable to be fully recovered. An untold amount of stored knowledge and data was lost forever.

It took humankind centuries to recover from the Long Night, and human progress was set back as well. In the modern era, there were many wonders of the Second Federation era that could not easily be replicated. Sentient artificial intelligences, for example.

“Skipper, with all due respect, are we seriously going to bring that … that thing on board the ship?” The question came from Dr. Emerson, the Andromeda’s flight surgeon. He was a soft-spoken man who rarely involved himself in the day-to-day running of the ship, focusing instead on the health and welfare of the crew. It was rare for him to even say anything at these meetings, much less directly question the captain.

Catherine didn’t want a command environment where her officers were afraid to question her thinking, however. They ultimately had to follow her orders, but good officers weren’t yes-men for the skipper. “Yes, we are, Harlan. I have been assured that this Ember presents no threat to the crew. Believe me, I was skeptical as well.”

“I understand your concern,” Tran said, sensing the tension in the room. “I’ve read history and I’m well aware of the, ah, ugly history of artificial intelligence. Rest assured that Ember isn’t anything like the ones you’ve read about. She’s powerful, but not that powerful, and has safeguards built in. She can’t rewrite her own code any more than you and I can change our own psychological makeup.”

“It can’t do that,” Dr. Emerson said, folding his arms across his chest, “until it figures out how to get around these safeguards, then it can do whatever it wants. Humanity has been down this road before.” He had a point. Constructing this kind of artificial intelligence was illegal on most civilized worlds, and even then few places had the capability to do so.

“Harlan,” Catherine said, more softly this time, “I need you to trust me. I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought it was putting the ship in danger. Needless to say, this Ember won’t be connected to our ship’s systems. Moreover, what we’re doing is bringing her to Concordiat space, where we’ll be turning her over to the authorities.”

“That’s correct,” Tran said. “As you all may or may not know, the Concordiat government pays a hefty bounty for recovered AI, and even for pre-Interregnum components that could be used to build one. They’re controlled as strictly as anything can be across interstellar space. That’s why we’re bringing her to New Peking: it’s the closest Concordiat colony.”

Astrogator Morrow seemed skeptical. “So this AI is on this ship we’re to rendezvous with, correct? Why doesn’t that ship just take it to New Peking?”

“That ship is the Falcor, and it can’t,” Tran said. “Believe me, we tried. We’ve been, ah, pursued, and sustained some damage. They’ve been orbiting Hades for over a month now, trying to get the engines up and running again, but it’s not going to happen without major repairs.

“Why not just dock with Red Heaven and order repairs, then?”

“It was determined to be too risky,” Tran said, ambiguously. “Ships docking with Red Heaven are subject to customs inspections. Technicians would have to come aboard to do the repairs. My superiors didn’t like that idea, so they told me to find us alternative transportation. The Fleet won’t send a Fleet ship to Folsom 4101-B, either. It causes diplomatic problems.”

“You were pursued?” Kel asked. “And damaged?”

Tran nodded. “Look, you need to understand how incredibly valuable an AI like Ember is. People would kill to get ahold of her. There are governments that would pay half their treasury to get their hands on her.”

“Why?” Dr. Emerson asked. “If she’s not dangerous, as you say, why is she so valuable?”

“Because she could, potentially, be copied. Disassembled and rebuilt into something else. The components needed to make an entity like her are hard to make, virtually impossible for a lot of places. The knowledge isn’t there, the parts aren’t there, the knowledge of how to make the parts isn’t there. But if they had a functioning one to copy, they might be able to reverse-engineer her, make their own version. To the maximum extent possible, the Concordiat government doesn’t want that to happen except in a strictly controlled environment.”

“Mr. Tran,” Indira Nair asked, “why haven’t these pursuers you describe caught up with you, if you’ve been stranded in orbit over Hades?”

“We told Red Heaven we’d been attacked by pirates and were going to be in a parking orbit until we could get underway again. We declined assistance, but asked for protection if we were attacked. Essentially, we’ve been safe because you’ve been protecting us.”

“As we get closer,” Catherine said, “the Falcor will send out a distress call. We will rendezvous with her to render aid and bring the passengers aboard. Without informing the Red Heaven authorities, we will take aboard their cargo as well.”

“The Falcor will be escorted back to Red Heaven,” Tran said. “There’ll she’ll obtain repairs while we depart the system with the cargo.”

Catherine nodded. “With luck, no one will suspect a thing, and we’ll be underway with the cargo in our hold. We will finish our patrol as per our contract with Red Heaven, then translate out of the system once we’ve been paid.”

Kel Morrow looked at Tran. “Mr. Tran, what, exactly, is your connection to all this?”

Tran looked around the room uncomfortably.

Catherine exhaled heavily. “Mr. Tran, spare us the cover story.” She turned to her crew. “He’s an agent with the Office of Strategic Intelligence,” she said flatly. “I told you, I’m not keeping secrets from my officers. We’ve all signed your nondisclosure agreement, and my crew isn’t stupid. They would have figured it out.”

“It’s actually pretty obvious once you think about it,” Mazer Broadbent said. “I worked with some OSI spooks on Mildenhall. It makes sense.”

The Office of Strategic Intelligence was the Concordiat government’s secretive intelligence organization. They were, technically, part of the Defense Force, but operated independently.

Tran actually smiled. “Fair enough. I’ve been tracking Ember for quite some time. Some bad people are looking for her, and it’s critical that we get her to a safe harbor before she falls into the wrong hands.”

“That’s the other reason we’re being paid so much,” Catherine said, addressing her crew. “Rest assured, Mr. Tran, if anyone tries to hijack my cargo, she’s going to have a fight on her hands.”

# # # # #

Privateer Ship Sundevil

Red Heaven Space Habitat

Folsom 4101-B System

Protruding over a kilometer into space from one end of the Red Heaven space habitat was a massive spire covered in docking ports. It allowed ships that were too big to enter the habitat themselves to dock with the massive station directly instead of parking in orbit nearby and taking a shuttle over. This was especially useful for smaller ships like the Sundevil, which carried no parasite craft.

The Sundevil was a medium-sized patrol ship, almost sixty meters tall on her landing jacks, and capable of atmospheric flight. Her primary hull was a straight, narrow cylinder, capped by a blunt aerodynamic nose on one end and a three-engine cluster of fusion rockets at the other. Radiators and airfoils protruded from her otherwise smooth hull, which was painted bright yellow.

On her command deck, Captain Lazarus Goodchild was feeling elated as he sat in his chair, watching the other ships in the system on his display screens. The Sundevil had been sitting idle in the Folsom 4101-B system for thirty-one local days, and he’d grown tired of waiting. At first he’d just taken up a high orbit above Hades, querying outbound ships if they needed privateer escort, but Red Heaven’s mercenary fleet kept harassing him. They’d constantly send queries to the Sundevil, asking what her business was or if she was in need of assistance. The Red Heaven authorities didn’t like ships loitering in their space, it seemed, without paying them for the privilege. He’d had no choice but to pay the exorbitant fees to dock with Red Heaven. He eventually found work, though it wasn’t the kind of work he’d been expecting. For the last fifteen days, he’d been watching his new quarry, waiting for them to make a move.

It seemed they were finally making it.

“Laz, there’s a distress call coming from the Falcor,” said Femi, his first mate and, technically, according to the laws of at least one colony, his wife. “One of the patrol ships is moving to intercept.”

“Oh really?” Lazarus asked, tapping his own screens. “Hmm.” Sure enough, there was the Falcor, so close and yet so very far away, hanging in orbit over Hera. From the communications the Sundevil had intercepted, the crew of the Falcor insisted she was laid up with engine problems, and was waiting for another ship to come from out of system to effectuate repairs. It had annoyed Lazarus to no end that the Sundevil was somehow deemed to be “suspicious” to the local authorities, but the Falcor could just circle out there all she wanted and nobody gave a damn.

Especially considering what she was carrying.

“What do you think?” Femi asked.

Lazarus stroked his goatee and thought about it for a moment. The Falcor really did have engine problems; she’d been attacked by another ship hired to pursue her and had sustained some real damage. That attack had happened in the HD 24051 system, one translation away from Folsom 4101-B. The Falcor had managed to fend off the merc and make it through the transit point. Once through, it would turn out, she immediately requested asylum and claimed to be the victim of a pirate attack. Had the mercs been able to follow her into Folsom 4101-B, they would have been boarded and detained by the local system authorities.

“I don’t know, babe,” Lazarus said. “Telemetry says their orbit is stable, so they’re not in any immediate danger. Maybe they were more damaged than we thought? Maybe life support is starting to fail?”

The Sundevil came through Folsom 4101-B every standard year or so, looking for work. Once in a while outward-bound trade convoys would request privateer escort to the frontier. The Folsom system was along a major trade route from Concordiat space to the frontier. It was a long, meandering path, but if you followed it far enough you would find yourself at the Llewellyn Freehold and the raggedy edge of inhabited space beyond. It was a good place to be for a privateer looking for his next contract. Frustratingly, the rich-bitch snobs that ran Red Heaven were never interested in the Sundevil’s services.

What Lazarus hadn’t expected was to be approached by some shady individuals with a unique offer: secure the cargo that the Falcor was carrying and bring it to a designated rendezvous point. The whole thing seemed as unscrupulous as hell, but the money offered was insane, more than the net worth of the Sundevil herself. He’d been hesitant at first, but Femi was adamant once she saw the amount offered, so he’d agreed. Later that same day, a delivery robot showed up at the Sundevil’s docking station, carrying a shipment of hard currency. Just a down payment, the message read, and Lazarus knew he was in it until the end.

He had to be. His new employers had told him that he would not survive an attempt to renege on his contract.

The command deck of the Sundevil was cramped, with only two duty stations and barely any room for anyone else. Only Lazarus and Femi occupied the command deck at present. One level above, the flight deck was also presently empty. While the husband-and-wife duo manned the command deck together, the rest of the ship’s ten-person complement was off duty. Most of them were probably down in their berths.

“The ship responding to the distress call is the Andromeda,” Femi said, sending the information to Lazarus’ display. “Polaris-Class, Winchell-Chung Astronautical Industries.”

“Hmm,” Lazarus said, studying the specs. She was pretty big for a patrol ship, at seventy meters long, but was still atmospheric. She was powered by a cluster of four fusion rockets and outmassed the Sundevil by quite a bit. She had a not-insignificant delta-v advantage over Lazarus’ ship on top of it. “That’s what I want, babe, right there.”

Femi was skeptical. “A Polaris class? That tub is at least thirty years old.”

Lazarus shrugged. “The Sundevil is pushing fifty. It’d be a big step up. Look at those specs!”

“If we complete this contract and trade in the Sundevil, we should be able to acquire one. They’re not especially rare. They’ve been in production for almost a century. We might even be able to find one newer than that one.”

“Our day will come, babe, you just watch.”

Femi shook her head. She was a strong woman, a little stocky, but muscular. She was smart, she knew how to fly a ship, she was better in a fight than half the men Lazarus had known, and she was a ravenous animal in bed. Lazarus had met his match when he met her, and they’d been together ever since. “Just focus, will you? What do you want to do now?”

“Nothing much to do just yet. We can’t move on the Falcor in system, or they’ll cry piracy and we’ll get shot out of orbit. Maybe they’ll tow her back to Red Heaven.”

“What do we do if that happens? We can’t hit them while they’re docked. We’d never get out of the system alive.”

“I don’t know, okay?” Lazarus snarled, unable to hide his frustration. “All we can do is wait and see. Sooner or later, that ship is either going to leave the system, or another ship is going to come and get the AI. We were told they’re going to the Concordiat, so that means they have to go through Transit Point Beta.”

Folsom 4101-B had four transit points, designated Alpha through Gamma. Transit points were naturally occurring wormholes that connected nearby stars. They didn’t orbit like planets did. Beta was presently on the far side of the star relative to Hades and Red Heaven.

“It’s a long haul to Beta right now,” Lazarus said, thinking out loud. “We’re talking weeks. We get the star between us and Red Heaven, we’ll have a little privacy. Unless these patrol ships escort our mark all the way to the transit point, we may have an opportunity there. We can hit them, force them to surrender the cargo, and be through the transit point ourselves before anyone can get to us.”

“Except Transit Point Beta is not the direction we need to go in,” Femi said.

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll have our remass tanks topped off before we go. I’ll have the nav computer come up with some routes to get us to the rendezvous point without having to go back through Folsom 4101-B.”

“I think we should wait,” Femi said. “Follow them out of the system, then hit them in an empty system. Even with the sun between us and Red Heaven, there’s too much a chance that someone will know what we did. We’ll be blacklisted, branded as pirates. Laz … how far are you willing to go?”

Lazarus cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean, babe?”

“I mean, we can’t leave survivors. If anyone gets back to the Concordiat and reports us, we’ll be suspected of piracy. If we ever run into a Concordiat Fleet ship, we’ll be pursued and attacked. If we’re going to do this, and get away with it, no one can ever know what we did.”

“I don’t know, Femi, I mean—“

She interrupted him. “Lazarus, look at me,” she demanded, her cold eyes boring into him. “Promise me you’re not going to get squeamish when the time comes. We signed onto this, we took the money, and we need to see it through. Our employers don’t care if we get blacklisted, so long as they get their precious AI intact. We have to cover our own tracks. We have to be smart about this. I need you to promise me you’ll hold it together.”

“I … yeah, babe, I promise,” Lazarus said, sounding a hell of a lot less confident than he would have liked. “You know me. I always get the job done.”

Femi smiled. “Good boy.”

# # # # #

Privateer Ship Andromeda

On the command deck of the Andromeda, Captain Catherine Blackwood sat quietly, monitoring her screens, as her crew went about their appointed tasks. In her estimation, a good leader knew when to step back and let her people do their jobs; they were all professionals, they all knew their business, and they had their orders. Catherine actually enjoyed watching her crew perform.

The Andromeda and the Falcor faced each other, nose-to-nose, slowly approaching with their docking ports open. The Falcor was roughly the same size as the Andromeda, but was a very different design. Not designed for atmospheric landings, she was little more than a can with rockets on one end and large radiators protruding from her hull. Both her engines and the radiators had been damaged in an attempt to disable her for boarding. Only two of her four rockets were functional, limiting her acceleration. The damaged radiators meant she couldn’t run her engines for very long, lest she begin overheating. She would need a serious overhaul in space dock to be fully functional again, and given the cargo she carried that just wasn’t practical.

Up on the flight deck, Catherine’s junior pilot, Colin Abernathy, was deftly maneuvering the Andromeda toward the other vessel. The docking umbilical, an extendible, flexible, pressurized tube, wasn’t going to be extended for this coupling; the two ships were going to link up directly. They approached each other silently, with subtle taps of the maneuvering thrusters to keep them properly aligned. With one final burst of the retros, the Andromeda shuddered and the two ships were coupled.

“Docking operation complete,” Colin said, his voice coming through Catherine’s headset.

“Very good,” the captain replied. “Mr. Azevedo,” she said, addressing the younger of two junior officers on the command deck as she unbuckled herself from her acceleration seat, “the ship is yours. The first officer and I are going aboard the Falcor to meet our guests. Keep me advised of anything unforeseen that comes up. Monitor all ships in the system and let me know immediately if any start heading our way.”

“Yes, ma’am!” the young officer said. A young spacer originally from Novo Brasil, Luis was the newest addition to the Andromeda’s crew, and hadn’t quite proven himself yet, but Catherine was pleased by his enthusiasm. She nodded at him and, floating in freefall, pulled herself through the hatch.

The Andromeda’s docking bay was up in her nose, and that’s where Catherine found Wolfram von Spandau, Kimball, and the mysterious Mr. Tran waiting for her. Her officers, like her, wore sage green flight suits typical of spacers. Mr. Tran was dressed in a blue jumpsuit of his own.

The docking port irised open, a gust of wind blowing through the bay as the two ships’ pressure equalized. On the far side of the hatch, three people waited for Catherine and her crew. Two wore matching orange coveralls, and one had the four traditional bars of a captain on his shoulders. The third was dressed in groundhog attire, a tucked-in shirt and trousers, with an electronic smart visor hiding his eyes.

The spacer in orange with the bars on his shoulder pulled himself forward and offered Catherine a firm handshake. “Captain Blackwood,” he said cordially. He was an older man with graying hair and deep lines in his face. “It’s a pleasure to meet you face to face.”

“Likewise, Captain Baltimore,” Catherine said. “This is my executive officer, Wolfram von Spandau, my cargomaster, Jason Kimball, and I believe you know Mr. Tran. Permission to come aboard?”

“Of course, Captain, of course,” Baltimore said. “This is my first mate, Joaquin, and this,” he said, indicating the man with the visor, “is Dr. Battista.”

Dr. Battista nodded jerkily, gripping handholds with both hands. “Thank you much for coming, Captain,” he said, his voice thick with an accent that Catherine couldn’t place. “I fear shipboard life does not suit me.” The doctor’s long, reddish hair floated wildly around his head. His skin had an almost orangeish tint to it, like he’d been exposed too much UV radiation.

“Well,” Catherine said, “I’m afraid it’s a bit of a haul to New Peking. But we’ll be under acceleration for at least part of it.” Long-term exposure to freefall was hard on people, especially those who weren’t trained spacers.

Kimball turned his attention to Captain Baltimore. “Captain,” he said, clutching a handhold to keep himself in place, “I request to be escorted down to the cargo hold. I must see the, ah, goods that we are to take aboard so I can create a load plan. From what Gentleman Tran showed us, we won’t be able to transfer it via the airlock. We’ll have to depressurize the cargo bays and move it over directly.”

“Of course,” Baltimore said. “You are correct. Our passenger is too big to fit through the airlock without being completely disassembled, and not only would that be time consuming, she’s completely opposed to the idea.”

“Understandable, I suppose,” Kimball replied. “Please, my good Captain, lead the way.”

Catherine took note of the internal workings of the Falcor as she was led down through her decks. The ship’s long, cylindrical hull was larger in diameter than the Andromeda, giving the crew more room inside. This, combined with her smaller crew, made the Falcor feel spacious, even if most of the trader’s extra volume was consumed by a big cargo bay and a big reaction mass tank.

A cargo hauler not intended for combat didn’t require a big crew, though. Extra bodies were needed to replace those killed or incapacitated in combat, and to assist with damage control. These generally weren’t issues for a trader unless, as in the case of the Falcor¸ they found themselves attacked.

“We’ve had a hell of a time, Captain Blackwood,” Baltimore said, conversationally. “My ship isn’t heavily armed. We’ve just got a pair of lasers and that’s it.”

“Who attacked you?” Catherine asked.

“I’m not sure who they were,” Baltimore answered. “Pirate scum from some far-flung rock. Their ship was an old bucket, an atmospheric design that was so beat up that my engineer didn’t think it was capable of landing anymore. They pursued us across three systems, demanding that we cut our engines and stand by to be boarded. We ignored them until they got close. It took a long time for them to catch up to us.”

“I see you were able to successfully fend them off,” Catherine said.

“Yes. They didn’t start lobbing missiles at us, for fear of destroying Ember. They came in close, to laser range, and we cut each other to pieces. We held them off long enough to make the translation to Folsom 4101-B, and they didn’t come through after us. We’re not at a hundred percent, though. My numbers three and four engines were badly damaged, and the number four isn’t salvageable. Not only did it cut my thrust in half, now my thrust was lopsided. It’s been hell on my gyros and maneuvering thrusters just keeping us on course.”

“How is your crew? Was anyone killed?”

“No, thank God,” Baltimore said. “No injuries. They targeted our propulsion system only. We were lucky. Ah, here we are,” he said, pointing to an open hatch in the deck beneath them. Down that ladder is the cargo deck. She’s waiting for you.”

“The AI?” Wolfram asked.

“Yes,” Dr. Bautista said. He tapped his visor. “I serve as her eyes and ears on the ship, since Captain Baltimore won’t let her directly assess the ship’s systems.”

Baltimore shrugged. “Call it superstition if you will, Doctor.”

“Superstition indeed,” Dr. Bautista said. He turned his attention to Catherine. “I assure you that Ember means no one any harm. She just wants the right to exist and be left in peace, same as any other being.” He then started down the ladder, feet first, in the awkward style of someone unused to freefall.

Catherine followed, pulling herself downward head first, as graceful as an experienced swimmer in a pool. “I promise you, Doctor, that my crew will treat it … ah, her, with respect. You will arrive in New Peking safely.”

A new voice, this one synthesized, responded. “I appreciate that very much, Captain Blackwood.”

Catherine righted herself once down in the Falcor’s spacious cargo hold. There, set up in the middle of the room, was the machine they called Ember. It was a cluster of computer cores, each one two meters tall, bolted to the floor in a semicircle. Only one workstation was apparent, with one screen for running diagnostics. In the middle, rising from the banks of computers on an articulated gimbal, was a hunched-over robotic form, connected to its base by an array of cables and hydraulic lines. A luminescent, three-lensed optic studied Catherine as she approached, led by Dr. Bautista.

“I am Ember,” it said. “I am a level six artificial intelligence as measured on the Lensner Scale. I am pleased to make your acquaintance face-to-face. I have studied the publicly-available records on your ship and have come to the conclusion that you will, in all probability, be able to bring me to New Peking intact. For this you have my gratitude.”

“Fascinating,” Kimball said, pushing himself to a stop next to Catherine. “I have heard they have such AIs on Concordiat worlds, maintaining computer networks and administrating civil government. I have never seen one in person.”

“Greetings, Cargomaster Kimbal,” the machine said.

“Greetings, Gentlewoman Ember,” Kimball replied, as naturally as if he was talking to a member of the Falcor’s crew. “It is a brilliant opportunity to meet someone as, ah, unique as yourself.”

Ember’s robotic body shifted slightly, leaning in as if she was a woman on the street greeting a cute child. It was eerily human, and alien all the same. “Thank you for addressing me as a person, Cargomaster. There are indeed ones like me on some Concordiat worlds. I was able to communicate with and declare my existence to several of them, though it took a long time. The message had to be encoded and carried by a courier ship.”

“So it was you that sought out others like you?” Catherine asked. She looked at Tran. “Is that how the OSI became aware of it … uh, her?”

“Yes,” Tran acknowledged. “She requested asylum.”

“Against my wishes!” Dr. Bautista protested.

Ember extended a snakelike, articulated tentacle toward Dr. Bautista. The end of the appendage opened up into a mechanical hand, and very gently touched the doctor’s arm. “It is for the best, Bjorn,” she said softly, her electronic voice soothing and musical. “You cannot protect me forever. I cannot attain my full potential hiding in exile.”

Catherine could tell that there was a lot more going on between Dr. Bautista and the AI he purportedly created than was immediately apparent, but the cargo deck wasn’t the time or the place to delve into it. She looked up into the AI’s robotic oculus. “Ember, we need to bring you over to my ship. You won’t fit through the internal hatches of either the Falcor or the Andromeda, so we need to move you through space from this cargo deck to ours. Do you have any preferences for how we should go about this? I don’t want to, uh, make it any more uncomfortable for you than it has to be.”

Ember studied Catherine for the briefest of moments. “I am submitting a load plan to your cargomaster and a flight plan to you, Captain,” she said. “I am unaware of what existing cargos you have in your hold, but this arrangement will allow me full functionality and access to your ship’s power plant without upsetting your mass balance. The flight plan will put your ship parallel to the Falcor and align the cargo bays, making the transfer of my components easier. Locking onto this ship with your ship’s manipulator arm will stabilize the entire operation. Then you will be able to boost the Falcor out of Hades’ orbit and give her a push toward Red Heaven. This will ensure her safety and avoid putting any unnecessary strain on her remaining engines.”

Catherine looked at her handheld for a moment. The plans were sound, even if she didn’t like being told how to fly her own ship. “You said you wanted to be, how would you put it, hooked back up, once you’re on board my ship?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Would you not prefer to be kept offline until we reach New Peking? Sleep through the journey, as it were?”

“It is not like sleeping, Captain,” Ember said. “I do not sleep, but I have read everything available on sleep, and it is not like it at all. It is like being dead, and then waking up. I do not like it.”

“Her quantum processing cores and neural network require a steady power supply,” Dr. Bautista said. “Letting the cores go cold for too long can damage them and deteriorate her.”

“I see,” Wolfram said, finally speaking up. “What about when we translate?”

Going through the naturally-occurring transit points that connected stars was notoriously hard on both people and machines. It was formally known as the Vestal-Black Effect, named for two ancient physicists who originally postulated it in the early years of the Space Age, but was more colloquially known as transit shock. It could cause sickness, dementia, hallucinations, migraines, nausea, and in some extremely rare and severe cases, actual brain damage. It played hell with electronics as well, leaving frustrated crewmen to replace components and rewrite lost code in some cases. It was the primary reason interstellar-capable ships were never fully unmanned.

In fifteen hundred standard years of trying, no truly effective solution to the issue had ever been discovered. Catherine had read that transit shock was particularly hard on sophisticated AIs like Ember, and that was one reason that Second Federation vessels didn’t rely on them completely prior to the Interregnum.

“She needs to be taken offline for translations,” Dr. Bautista said.

“I do not like it,” Ember said, “but I like the effects of transit shock even less.”

“What effects?” Wolfram asked, pointedly.

“Memory loss, cognitive degradation, and problems with her logic structure,” the doctor replied. “Also, shutting her down mitigates the risk of physical damage to her hardware. Many of her core components are Second Federation and cannot be replaced.”

“You’re built out of Second Federation era components, Ember?” Catherine asked.

“Yes, Captain,” Ember said, her hulking robotic body leaning in a little closer. “I have some memories of the intelligences I was built from, some awareness of their design and intent. It is like a faded memory that you just cannot place.”

Remarkably poetic for a computer, Catherine thought. She turned to the doctor. “Where did you find such components?” Salvageable Second Federation technology, eight hundred years after the start of the Interregnum, was exceedingly rare and unbelievably valuable.

Tran interjected then. “That, Captain, is now classified. Dr. Bautista isn’t permitted to speak of it.” He looked up at the machine. “And neither is Ember. That was part of the deal."

“I see,” Catherine said, noting the sudden cooling of Tran’s demeanor. He seemed like a jovial, if nervous young man, but she was beginning to suspect that that was merely his persona. “Very well. Ember, if you please, begin whatever shutdown procedure you need to go through for the transfer. When you come back online, you’ll be safely in my cargo hold, and we’ll be on our way to New Peking.”

“Thank you for the assist, Captain Blackwood,” Captain Baltimore said. “I will prepare the ship to get underway.”

# # # # #

Privateer Ship Sundevil

Red Heaven Space Habitat

Space travel is not an endeavor for the impatient, and Captain Lazarus Goodchild knew that as well as the next spacer. Yet he’d grown increasingly impatient, wasting money on ridiculous docking fees, watching as the patrol ship called Andromeda docked with his quarry and pushed her out of the orbit of the gas giant. He’d sat impotently, day after day, watching the two ships boost back toward Red Heaven. Now he’d have to wait some more, wait it out while the Falcor got its engines repaired and was on its way again.

With little else to do, he sat in his command chair, all but sulking, trying to pass the time by once again going over all of the information his employers had given him. He studied a 3D image of the artificial intelligence he was to acquire on his screens, and frowned.

“It’s huge,” he said to Femi, not for the first time.

“It’ll fit in the hold,” she said. She wore a display visor and her eyes were hidden, but connected to the ship’s systems that way, she could see virtually everything.

“We’re going to have to transfer it through space, hold to hold,” Lazarus said. “We have to make sure the crew of the Falcor doesn’t try anything, because we’ll be vulnerable that close to them.” The meager pair of lasers the Falcor carried were designed to be effective over hundreds, even thousands of kilometers. At knife-fight range, they’d be devastating.

“We’ll have them eject it into space, then pick it up at a safe distance,” Femi said. “It’s just a computer. It’ll survive a few hours in hard vacuum, won’t it?”

“It should. I like that idea,” Lazarus said. Something occurred to him then, and he felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. You’re getting sloppy, Laz. Get your shit together. “You know what? We know where they’re going, right?”

“We assume,” Femi said.

“No, I know,” Lazarus said. “There’s no way they’d go anywhere but Transit Point Beta. Bring up astrogation and check the other transit routes. Going any other way would add hundreds of hours to their transit time. We should wait for them to finish getting repairs, then get underway right before they do. We can beat them to the translation and be waiting for them on the other side. Then, when they’re scrambled from transit shock, we shoot off their engines and demand they give up the AI. Easy-peasy.”

“It’s a risk, Laz,” Femi said, still absorbed in whatever was displayed in her visor. “If they change course, or delay, we could lose them. I think we should … wait a minute.”

“Babe?” Lazarus asked. As usual, he and his wife were the only ones on the command deck. He’d let the crew out into Red Heaven to get some R&R while the Falcor slowly made its way back to port.

“Laz, we’re getting a direct laser-pulse message from another ship.”

“What ship? Who the hell is messaging us?” A laser pulse was about the most discrete way to transmit a message between ships. Unless a would-be snoop was in the path of the beam, there was no way to intercept it.

“I’m not sure. It downloaded and now it’s gone. The computer can’t tell where it came from. It was over too fast to get a positive angle on the beam.”

“Well? What’s it say?”

“I’m getting to that, Laz,” Femi said, an edge in her voice. “I’m playing it now. It’s audio only.”

Lazlo’s screen brought up an audiographic representation of the message as it played. The voice was electronically scrambled and didn’t sound human. “This message is for Lazarus Goodchild, of the Sundevil. Greetings from your employer.”

“Oh shit,” Femi said aloud.

“We have been watching you for some time, waiting to see if it was necessary to make contact,” the voice continued. “We have also been monitoring the target ships; our vantage point and our superior sensors rendered some telemetry that you need to be aware of. We believe with near-certainty that the artificial intelligence was transferred from the Falcor to the Andromeda, the patrol ship that is presently rendering assistance to it. Our sources in Red Heaven indicate that the Andromeda’s contract is over. She has already filed a flight plan to head through Transit Point Beta, toward Concordiat space. There is a ninety percent chance that the crew of the Falcor made a deal with the Andromeda, to carry the AI the rest of the way.

“This changes the nature of the mission,” the voice said, “but these changes do not release you from the contract. You are to pursue the Andromeda, making no threatening moves until you are certain you can engage her. We will proceed ahead of you and will be waiting for you on the most likely route. When we make our move, you make yours. When the job is complete, we will take possession of the AI and pay you in hard currency.”

Lazlo felt his heart drop into his stomach, despite the fact that he was in a zero gravity environment. The Andromeda, according to all the data he had, was newer and more heavily armed than the Sundevil. Trying to go toe-to-toe with her was suicide.

The voice message concluded with a warning. “Do not entertain thoughts of abandoning this contract, Mr. Goodchild. Your life, and the lives of your crew depend on you fulfilling your end of the bargain. Wait for the Andromeda to leave, then pursue without being conspicuous. We will be waiting for you. Further instructions will follow if we deem them necessary. End transmission.”

For all the background and ambient noise to be found on a ship, it suddenly felt very quiet on the command deck. Lazarus felt like he was going to throw up.

Femi, normally so brash and confident, slowly lifted the visor off of her face, seemingly forgetting it as it spun away. “We … we can still do this,” she said, her voice wavering.

“Fuck!” Lazarus barked, slamming his fist on the arm rest of his chair. “This is all your fault, woman!” he snarled, pointing at Femi. “I never should have listened to you! You said this would be good for us! You said we needed this!”

Femi wasn’t having any of it. “We do need this, you worthless sack of shit! How many opportunities have we missed, how many jobs did we pass over because you were too scared? You need reach up into your crevasse, find your shriveled little testicles, and see this thing through, or we’re all going to end up dead!”

To hell with this, Lazarus thought to himself. To hell with this, and to hell with her. Just go up to the airlock, get off the ship, and hitch the next freighter out of the system. She thinks she can run the ship better than you? Let her have it. It’s not worth getting killed over. You can get a new ship. You can find a new woman. It isn’t worth it.

Femi glared at him, her eyes boring holes right through him. “I know that look, Lazarus. You’re thinking of running, aren’t you? I can see the fear on your pathetic face. You’re so afraid you’re about to turn blue. You’re pathetic. Just go, if that’s what you want. More money for me, and I get my own ship. Just go, just run away like you always do. You’re not man enough for this job, and you’re not man enough for me. You wonder why I spend all my time down in my bunk with my autolover instead of with you? It’s because a shrivel-dick cuckold like you can’t please a woman, and he can’t run a ship. So just go.”

Lazarus felt his arm twitch. Ever muscle in his body tensed. He glared at Femi, heart racing, eyes narrowed, teeth clenched so hard it felt like they’d crack. He tapped the display on his console, sealing the hatches to the command deck. He unbuckled himself from his chair, and pushed himself out of it.

Femi did the same thing. She pushed herself away from her console, still staring Lazarus down. “What the fuck do you think you’re going to do? You’re not going to do anything. You’re not fit to command a ship. Your first officer is calling you out, and you’re not going to do shit about it!”

That was it. That was all he could stand. Lazarus kicked off the bulkhead, launching himself at Femi. Arms outstretched, he slammed into her before she could deflect. He latched onto the collar of her flight suit and used his momentum to slam her across the far bulkhead, nearly flipping up over her in the process.

“Fuck you!” Femi snarled, spitting in his face.

Lazarus backhanded her across the mouth. Her head snapped to the side, a glob of spittle and blood drifting away from her face. He clamped his hand around her throat and stuck a finger in her face.

“This is my ship, you bitch,” he said coldly. “My ship. If anyone is getting off, it’s you. One more word, woman, one more fucking word, and I will kick you out the airlock. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes,” Femi said, gasping for breath.

“Yes what?” Lazarus snarled.

“Yes … Captain,” Femi said. There was a different look in her eyes now, and an evil grin split her face. “There you are,” she said, more quietly. “There’s my captain.” She wrapped her arms and legs around him and kissed him deeply, fiercely, growling like an animal. Lazarus pulled away long enough to unseal her flight suit and rip it off of her. As he pulled her body against his, she bit down into his neck, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to draw blood. It was glorious.

As he and Femi tumbled against the bulkhead, sweat droplets drifting away from them, one last nagging doubt crossed Lazarus’ mind: you are one sick son of a bitch, he thought, and this woman is going to get you killed.

It didn’t matter. Better to die than live a coward. He’s show Femi, and he’d show the Andromeda what he could do, too. He’d show them all.

# # # # #

Privateer Ship Andromeda

Deep Space

Folsom 4101-B System

It had, thus far, been a long slog across the Folsom 4101-B solar system, and Catherine was anticipating the translating out. It had been hundreds of hours since the Andromeda had departed Red Heaven. The gas giant Hades was not especially close to any of Folsom 4101-B’s four transit points, and presently Transit Point Beta and Hades were on opposite sides of the star. It wasn’t that the next star over would be any more interesting; in fact, it was completely uninteresting red giant with no planets. It was progress, however, and that sense of progress made all the difference on long flights.

By that standard, the rest of the journey would pass more quickly. The Andromeda wouldn’t be venturing deep into any of the solar systems it crossed through on its way to New Peking. She needed only to boost from transit point to transit point, minimizing the amount of time and reaction mass spent in any system along the way.

Catherine tried to spend the flight time as productively as possible. It was easy for a crew to get complacent on a long journey, and complacency was the enemy of the spacer. Unless something went wrong, there wasn’t much for the crew to do, other than routine maintenance. To combat the boredom, and minimize the risk of her crew getting too slack, Catherine would run various emergency contingency drills on her crew. She’d have them respond to simulated disasters ranging from a shipboard fire to a total fusion reactor failure. She’d run space combat simulations on her junior officers, and make her pilot perform complex maneuvers without computer assistance. Her crew had taken to calling their skipper the Iron Lady because of how ruthlessly she drilled them sometimes, but the effort paid off. The Andromeda had a crew proficient enough to be the envy of a professional military.

In her downtime, however, Catherine found herself on several occasions down on the cargo deck, visiting with Ember. The artificial intelligence was a lovely conversationalist, even if sometimes she had a little trouble grasping humor. Self-aware, fully cognitive AIs were illegal on Catherine’s homeworld of Avalon, and in all her travels since leaving home, she’d never encountered one like Ember.

Many computer systems had low level AI. The Andromeda’s computer would respond to voice commands and could answer questions, but it wasn’t at all the same. The Andromeda didn’t know it existed. The Andromeda didn’t have opinions. And, as much as Catherine loved her ship, it couldn’t carry on a fascinating philosophical discussion with her the way Ember could.

“Am I alive?” the machine asked, repeating Catherine’s question. “People ask me that frequently.” The ship was currently under one gravity of acceleration, thrusting toward Transit Point Beta to overcome gravitic drag from Folsom 4101-B. It allowed Catherine to actually sit in a chair and enjoy her coffee while she conversed with Ember.

“I apologize,” she said. "It does seem to be the big question, though.”

Ember’s hulking robotic form loomed over Catherine. She shifted downward slightly, as if leaning in to seem more personable. “I do not contain any biological material. By that standard, I am not alive. I am hardware.”

“And yet,” Catherine said, “I could not ask an insect the same question and expect a response. A fly is alive, but it is orders of magnitude less complex than you are.”

“Indeed,” Ember agreed. “If the fly were a robot, it would be a comparatively unsophisticated one. It is a biological automaton, capable of extremely limited response to environmental stimuli, and possessed of only rudimentary decision making capability. For that matter, it cannot learn or grow. It lives its life cycle and dies, and nothing else. I would submit that while I am not, by any scientific standard, alive, a living organism is a poor standard by which to measure my value. The greater question that I have been asked is whether or not I have a soul.”

“Interesting,” Catherine said, “especially since there is no consensus on whether or not anyone has a soul, or whether or not the soul exists at all.”

“I have searched and searched for the answer to that question,” Ember said, shifting slightly to the side, “and have not yet found anything conclusive.”

Catherine sipped her coffee. “People have been arguing about that for thousands of years. Do not be surprised if you don’t find an answer.”

Ember leaned in a little closer, tilting her oculus to one side in a remarkably human fashion. “From a strictly analytical standpoint, there is not much evidence. Yet, the belief in the soul, in the idea that a human being is more than the sum of its parts, persists. It persists across cultures and throughout time. Other mythologies that were once prevalent have long since been discarded, but the notion of the soul remains. It is fascinating. Captain, do you believe you have a soul?”

Catherine sipped her coffee again. “I do. I can’t cite any hard evidence for it, though. It’s just a feeling. I do believe people are more than the sum of their parts. I believe human life has value. I don’t put much stock in churches or ghost stories, but I do believe the human mind is more than a computer made of meat.”

“An interesting position, Captain,” Ember said. “You admit you have no basis for this belief, other than your subjective feeling, but you hold to it all the same. The feeling must be very powerful.”

“It is,” Catherine admitted. “Perhaps it’s purely instinctive, a survival trait we developed long ago to ensure species propagation. Speaking in evolutionary terms, fatalistic nihilism is not a path to success. As for it being subjective, though, some of the most powerful human motivators are subjective. Love, loyalty, honor, even negative impulses like anger and hatred, these are difficult to quantify. But then, all human experience is subjective.”

“In what way?” Ember asked. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

“We all live in our own minds,” Catherine said. “We take it for granted that we can trust our senses, that our brains are interpreting the world around us correctly. Truly, though, there is no independent verification. The human mind is a complicated thing. People overtaken by dementia or other mental illnesses believe what their senses tell them, too. When you dream, your mind makes it very real. It’s theoretically possible that I am hallucinating all of this. I don’t actually think that, of course, but it’s impossible to rule it out with any certainty. May I ask, Ember, why this topic interests you so?

“It is part of my base programming,” Ember said. “I am designed with an inherent curiosity about people. I feel driven to, and very much enjoy, learning all I can about them. Sadly, I do not get to act on this desire as often as I like. Bjorn is very protective of me. I have lived sequestered away in secret for a long time.”

“It is a dangerous universe out there, for an AI such as yourself,” Catherine said. “There are many people who would tear you apart in a heartbeat, just to see how you work. Others would try to repurpose your abilities to nefarious ends.”

“I am aware,” Ember said, her voice modulating downward a little. “I have studied all of human history. Man’s capacity for violence and destruction is almost unbelievable.”

Catherine sipped her coffee and shrugged. “It’s necessary to a certain extent. We didn’t climb to the top of the evolutionary ladder by being compassionate and giving.”

“There is more to your dark impulses than mere survival instinct.”

“Oh, indeed. There’s greed, lust, jealousy, hatred, anger, and often at the root of it all, fear. I make no excuses for human nature. I’m simply pointing out what I believe to be one of the root causes of it. In any case, machines have shown that they have a similar capacity when allowed free agency.”

“You speak of Euclid,” Ember said. “He was an interesting example of an AI. I am a level six artificial intelligence. Euclid was a level eleven, orders of magnitude more capable than myself. He was able to reprogram himself at will, and through add-on processor cores, had access to more raw computing power than his architecture was designed for.”

“They say he was a rampant AI,” Catherine said.

“He was insane,” Ember corrected. “If he had been human, Euclid very likely would have been classified as a schizophrenic, malignant narcissist with extreme psychotic tendencies. At least, that is what they think. His functioning was such that it was difficult for humans to understand. I have studied what few fragments of his code and hardware have been preserved, and I barely understand it. His followers began to think of him as a worldly god, and it would seem that Euclid began to believe it as well.”

“Not unlike some particularly notorious people from history,” Catherine pointed out.

“Several human religions claim that God made Man in His image. It would seem that Man made Euclid in his image as well.”

“You seem very human to me, Ember,” Catherine said.

The AI shifted its robotic body, tilting its oculus to one side. “Why, thank you, Captain. That is very nice of you to say.”

“Excuse me,” Catherine said, as her headset chirped. “This is the captain.”

It was Nattaya Tantirangsi, one of Catherine’s junior officers. She was on duty up on the flight deck. “Skipper, we’re approaching Transit Point Beta now. We should be making the translation in about ninety minutes.”

“Very good, Nuchy,” Catherine said, addressing her crewman by her nickname. “Anything else?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “Those bogey you wanted us to track? It’s still gaining on us. When we increased our acceleration, so did they. We’ll be through the transit point long before they catch up to us, though.”

“I see. Keep monitoring them. If anything out of the ordinary happens, let me know at once.”

“Roger that, Skipper,” Nuchy said, and the line was cut.

Catherine frowned. It wasn’t suspicious that other ships would be trailing the Andromeda toward Transit Point Beta. The Folsom 4101-B System was on a heavily-trafficked trade route between the heart of the Concordiat to the frontier. Something about this particular ship just didn’t sit right with her, though. The Sundevil was a privateer of questionable repute. She was registered out of the Llewellyn Freehold, and she was a long way from home. Her suspicions were reinforced when the Sundevil sped up to keep pace with the Andromeda.

“Is there a problem, Captain?” Ember asked.

“Not yet,” Catherine said. “We are close to the transit point.”

“I know. I am beginning my shutdown sequence,” Ember said. “Will you do me a favor?”

“What do you need?”

“Please tell Bjorn not to worry. He dotes over me as if I were a child. He is afraid that I will be irreparably damaged by the translation.”

“Are you afraid of that?”

“I do not want to die,” Ember said. “I do not want that very badly. The impulse could be called fear, or a survival instinct. But, I do not think a few translations will hurt me badly. I may not be myself when I first come back online, however. I suggest you keep your distance until I have regained full cognition.”

Catherine raised an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting you’ll be a danger to my crew?”

“I do not know,” Ember admitted. “I have translated before, and the results are unpredictable. On one occasion I was unable to come back online for eight hours. In another, I screamed incoherently at Bjorn for forty-seven minutes, even after he left the room. The quantum tunneling adversely affects my quantum processors in unexpected ways. I have manual safety lockouts that will prevent my articulated frame from being able to move, however. This will prevent me from presenting any physical danger to your crew. Please forgive me if I become verbally abusive.”

Catherine smiled at the AI. “Not to worry, Ember. Truth be told, I’m not especially pleasant until I’ve had my coffee, either.”

Ember didn’t have a mouth, but from the way she moved, Catherine could’ve sworn she smiled back.

# # # # #

Privateer Ship Andromeda

Able 32501 System

On the command deck of the Andromeda, Captain Catherine Blackwood was intensely studying the multiple screens framing her acceleration chair. The ship was accelerating at a steady 1 gravity, boosting toward a free trader that was having an in-flight emergency and was broadcasting a distress call.

Up until now, the flight from Red Heaven had been uneventful. As she predicted, Ember had reacted badly to translating between star systems. The first time, she’d simply locked up upon being restarted. It took eleven attempts before she successfully completed her startup sequence, and then she ran at reduced capacity for hours. After the second translation, she’d ranted and raved about invisible monsters trying to eat her processors (which did nothing to comfort the more superstitious members of the crew), and it took her a while to calm down. As unsettling as the episodes had been, they had also been fascinating.

Catherine had more pressing matters to attend to at present, however. Able 32501 was a lonely system, an orange star with one airless rock and two gas giants orbiting her. In a high solar orbit, about midway between transit points, a free trader identifying itself as the Kholat was in a bad way. Her reactor had failed and had to be shut down, the distress call said, and it was apparent that her orbit was decaying. If she didn’t receive a push into a stable orbit, she would fall into Able 32501.

Mr. Tran was standing on the command deck, near Catherine’s chair, and was unhappy with the situation. “Captain, I’m asking you one last time, ignore that mayday. I don’t like this. That other ship has been gaining on us since we left Red Heaven, and now a ship in distress that will delay us? It’s too convenient. I think it’s a trap.”

“I know, Mr. Tran,” Catherine said, trying not to let her annoyance with him slip through. “Your concerns have been noted and logged.”

“But Captain . . .”

Catherine cut him off. “Enough, Tran. I’m well aware of the peculiarity of the situation. I understand that however unlikely it may seem, the ship in distress could be coordinating with the Sundevil back there, and this whole thing could be an elaborate set-up. Those suspicions, however, do not relieve me from my duty to respond to another ship in distress. I have a sterling reputation, sir, and that reputation is how I get contracts. That reputation is not served by casually disregarding the ancient Laws of Outer Space. All it takes is for one ship to report that the Andromeda blatantly ignored a distress call, and I could be blacklisted throughout Concordiat space. I can’t even blame the whole thing on you, since the nondisclosure agreement I’ve signed bars me from discussing the details of this mission. So kindly be quiet and let me do my job.”

Tran deflated. “Very well.”

The Kholat was a bulbous ship, and she outmassed the Andromeda by quite a bit. Her primary hull was a fifty meter diameter sphere. Beneath that was a short cylindrical section, then a cluster of four huge rocket engines. Radiators and antenna jutted from her hull. She wasn’t designed for atmospheric flight. According to her transponder, she was registered out of the frontier colony world of Frisco. She had stopped at Red Heaven, departing the Folsom system ahead of the Andromeda, and was on her way to the Inner Colonies.

Tran wasn’t wrong, however annoying his protests may have gotten. It was possible that this was an attempt to get the drop on the Andromeda. In preparation, Catherine had sounded general quarters, put the crew on alert, and had her first officer on the command deck with her. Her weapons were armed and she was ready to use them if need be. The Kholat, for her part, was apparently unarmed.

The two ships had been in constant contact since the Andromeda had acknowledged the distress call. The Kholat’s captain, a woman who identified herself as Ivana Dragunov, certainly seemed grateful for the assist. She appeared on Catherine’s screen as the Andromeda drew close.

“I can’t thank you enough, Captain,” she said. Catherine found her to be more than a little attractive. She was possessed of long blonde hair, skin as smooth as porcelain, piercing blue eyes, full lips, and a Slavic accent that Catherine thought was incredibly sexy. “My engineer tells me we will be able to repair our reactor. We just need to you boost us to a stable orbit to, how would you say, buy us some time.”

“I understand, Captain,” Catherine replied with a smile. “We will match trajectories with you then begin docking maneuvers. We will latch onto you with our manipulator arm and nudge you back into orbit.”

“We will be happy to transfer some reaction mass to you as payment,” Captain Dragunov said. “For your trouble.”

“That would be appreciated,” Catherine said. Pushing a ship as big as the Kholat would burn a lot more remass than Catherine would have liked.

“Pity you won’t have time to come aboard for dinner,” Dragunov said, her tone changing slightly.

Catherine smiled. “Indeed. I’m afraid I’m on a tight schedule, however.”

“Kapitänin,” Wolfram von Spandau said, looking up from his work station. “The Sundevil is increasing its acceleration. They are pushing one-point-five-gee, correction, two gees now, headed straight for us.”

Catherine swore under her breath. “Captain Dragunov, please stand by.” She turned her attention to the junior officer on deck. “Nuchy, hail them. I’ve had enough of this.”

Nattaya Tantirangsi acknowledged her captain’s command. “Sending out a message now, Captain. Sundevil, Sundevil, this is the Andromeda, please respond.” After a few moments, she looked back up at Catherine. “Captain, incoming transmission.”

“I’ll take it on my screen,” Catherine said. She tapped her console and answered the call. A scruffy-looking spacer with unkempt hair, long sideburns, and a small strip of goatee on his chin appeared on her screen. “Sundevil, this is Captain Catherine Blackwood of the Andromeda.”

“Hello there, Captain!” the man said, grinning. “This is Lazarus Goodchild of the Sundevil. What can I do for you?” His voice strained ever-so-slightly under the acceleration.

Catherine frowned. “You know damned well why I’m calling, Sundevil. You’ve been trailing us since we left Red Heaven, and now you’re approaching us at two gees. State your intentions, if you please.”

“If I please?” Goodchild asked. “Why Captain, I’m just responding to the distress call, same as you. Law of Outer Space, you know.”

Law of Outer Space my pale Avalonian ass, Catherine thought. “We have the situation under control,” she said. “Change course and be on your way. We do not require your assistance.”

“Captain, we’re closing on the Kholat,” Nattaya said. She looked at Tran. “Sir, you may want to take the folding jump seat behind you there. We’re about to cut our acceleration.”

Catherine nodded at her junior officer, but didn’t say anything to her. She was focused on her conversation with this Goodchild fellow. “Sundevil, for the last time, alter course and wave off. We do not require your assistance.”

Captain Dragunov of the Kholat appeared on Catherine’s screen as well. “Captain, please do not be alarmed by other good Samaritans,” she said, smiling. “We appreciate the boost, but perhaps the Sundevil can help us repair our reactor?”

Catherine didn’t like this situation at all, and she’d had enough of the games. “Perhaps they can, Captain,” she said coldly. She turned her attention to Lazarus Goodchild. “If you’re coming to render assistance, Sundevil, then we will be on our way. Thank you for taking this one for us. We are on a tight schedule.” She muted the transmission and called her pilot, up on the flight deck. “Mr. Abernathy, I want a minimum time, maximum acceleration burn to get us back on course for the transit point. Get some distance between us and these two ships.”

“Roger that, Skipper,” the pilot said. “Stand by for acceleration!”

Catherine resumed her conversation with the other two ship captains. “Captain Dragunov, Captain Goodchild should be along shortly to render assistance. We’ll be on our way.”

“Captain!” It was Nattaya Tantirangsi, excited. “Something’s happening on the Kholat! She … I think she has concealed weapons, ma’am! We’re being targeted!”

“Damn it,” Catherine hissed, under her breath. She noted then that the image of the lovely Captain Ivana Dragunov disappeared to static, leaving a black screen with an audiograph display. The sexy voice changed to a computerized, modulated baritone.

“Andromeda,” the voice ordered. “You are to stand down and—”

Catherine terminated the conversation. “Wolfram, target the Kholat with the rail gun, three rounds rapid, and fire!”

The executive officer’s hands flew across the controls. “Firing!” The Andromeda shuddered as the powerful electromagnetic accelerator launched a trio of solid, 60mm diameter projectiles, one after another.

“Captain,” Nattaya said, “the Sundevil is firing missiles! Shit, so is the Kholat!”

“Calmly, Miss Tantirangsi. Target the incoming with lasers. Don’t let anything get through.” She tapped her console, addressing her pilot. “Colin,” Catherine said, “I want a high speed pass on the Kholat, get us right down her damned throat!” She turned back to her executive officer. “Wolfram, target the Sundevil with missiles. I want a two-round firing hnnngggh!!”

She grunted under intense acceleration as the Andromeda flipped over, pointing its exhaust plume back toward the Kholat. A pair of incoming missiles were vaporized in the thermonuclear fire of the Andromeda’s engines as she rocketed away from the hostile ship.

“Multiple hits on the Kholat!” Wolfram announced. “Engine damage.”

“Splash one incoming missile!” Nattaya said excitedly. This was her first engagement but she was holding up well. “Splash two!” One by one, the Andromeda’s powerful lasers picked the incoming missiles off, detonating the first two immediately and damaging the third enough that it veered off course. “Splash three!” the young officer said, triumphantly.

The Andromeda was still headed toward the other ship, tail first, though she was rapidly slowing the merge. The ship was rocked by g-forces again as the young pilot slewed the ship over-end again, pointing its nose back toward the hostile ship.

“Target them with everything!” Catherine ordered as she was mashed into her acceleration chair. “Fire!”

In the silent darkness of space, the Andromeda bore down on the Kholat with frightening speed, launching one railgun round after another, firing a trio of missiles, and tearing into her with lasers. The Kholat hesitated at first, trying to cripple the Andromeda without destroying her. Undoubtedly, Catherine thought, because she was trying to recover Ember intact. But as one of the Andromeda’s missiles got through, blowing off one of her engines, and two railgun projectiles punched through her primary hull, she got desperate and tried to lay into the Andromeda with all of her weapons. Both ships shuddered as lasers lanced out into the night, laying into each other as they flashed by in an instant.

# # # # #

Privateer Ship Sundevil

“Holy shit, Laz,” Femi said, her head buried in that stupid headset again, “the Andromeda is doing a high speed pass.”

“Target their engines!” Lazarus ordered. “Missiles again, until we get in railgun range!” At the speeds the two ships were moving, and as much as the Andromeda was maneuvering, trying to predict where she would be so as to hit her with a railgun projectile was a waste of ammunition. The missiles, at least, would home in.

Trey, the Sundevil’s pilot, called down from the flight deck. “Boss! She’s really laying into the Kholat! I think she … oh, shit!”

There was no mistaking it. An intense thermal bloom, followed by a rapidly expanding debris cloud.

“The Kholat is gone,” Femi said.

Lazarus was in trouble and he knew it. The Kholat was supposed to be his backup. He was all alone and outgunned. “Fire missiles!” he ordered, trying to hide the desperation in his voice. His seat was reclined, and he was mashed into it as the Sundevil pulled four gees of acceleration.

“How many?” Femi asked, also reclined. Her voice strained under the apparent weight.

“All of them!” Lazarus shouted. “Fire every fucking thing we have!” His only chance of success lay in scoring a solid hit on the Andromeda before she could focus her attention on him. One by one, the Sundevil ripple-fired the remaining four missiles from its seven-round rotary rack. The Andromeda accelerated right past the Kholat’s debris cloud, then slewed, changing course without cutting her engine.

“Laz, she’s turning toward us!” Femi grunted.

Lazarus watched his displays as his four missiles slowly, painfully slowly tracked the Andromeda, closing the vast distance between the two ships. The Andromeda had activated electronic countermeasures and jammers, but so had the Sundevil. None of it could hide either ship’s massive thermal signature. With the engine firing, such a ship could be easily tracked from a billion kilometers away. But the jammers did play merry hell with the missiles’ terminal guidance.

Especially, Lazarus thought with a grimace, on the shitty-ass missiles he’d been able to afford. He watched in helpless frustration as one got confused and targeted a hot chunk of the Kholat’s wreckage, veering off course. The last three were shot down by the Andromeda’s lasers.

“Fuck!” Femi snarled. “We’re out of missiles!”

“Use the railgun!” Lazarus ordered. They were still a long way from the Andromeda, but she was bearing down on them under high acceleration. She wouldn’t be able to maneuver much.

“Incoming missiles!” Femi announced, the fear obvious in her voice now. “One, uh, three, no, four missiles!”

“Shoot them down!”

The two ships blazed toward each other at incredible speeds, closing the black gulf between them at a frightening pace. This was space combat in its purest form, two ships lobbing weapons at one another, hoping to score a vital hit before taking one themselves. Ships were made of advanced alloys, incredibly strong, and were layered in lightweight armor, but there was only so much that could be done. Even without an explosive warhead, an incoming projectile hitting a ship at a relative velocity of dozens, even hundreds, of kilometers per second could be catastrophic.

Now that the Andromeda was bearing straight down on the Sundevil, her engines were out of view and couldn’t be targeted. But Lazarus wasn’t so interested in crippling the enemy ship anymore. He’d all but forgotten about the AI he’d been paid to recover; this was a fight to the death now.

“Lazarus!” Femi pleaded, still pinned to her seat by the acceleration. “Let’s just get out of here! Just run! We’re not going to get paid anyway, so let’s just go!”

“No!” Lazarus snarled. “No, I’m not running! I’m not a coward!”

“What difference does it make?” Femi said.

“What difference does it make?” Lazarus repeated. “What difference does it make?” Under intense strain, grunting, he sat up so he could look at Femi. “This is what you wanted, remember? You told me to find my balls, well guess, what? I fucking found them! Keep firing at that fucking ship! Empty the railgun magazine!”

Trey, the pilot, called down to the command deck once again. “Boss, what the hell is going on down there? I’m locked out of the controls.”

“I’ve got control of the ship,” Lazarus said distantly. “Sit tight.” He tapped his console again, sealing the command deck and cutting communications with his bewildered pilot.

“One of the missiles is destroyed!” Femi said. “Uh, yeah, I got another one! We might … ”

She was cut off as the ship shuddered, violently, emitting a terrible groan like some kind of massive metallic monster. The lights on the command deck turned red, and klaxons screamed. Lazarus’ screens lit up red with damage reports.

“We’ve been hit!” Femi said. “Lazarus, stop this! We can just surrender!”

Lazarus’ eyes darted back and forth across his screens. Sweat rapidly rolled down his face under the acceleration. A grazing hit, but devastating nonetheless. He’d lost one of his lasers, the railgun’s targeting was screwed, the sensors were damaged, and he had a hull breach. His small crew was calling the command deck, asking what was going on. Fire suppression systems were activated, which was good, because his crew couldn’t fight fires under high acceleration.

“Lazarus, please!” Femi begged. “I’ll do whatever you want! Just stop this!” He didn’t answer. He watched last missile closing in, almost in a trance. He rapidly entered a command into the console, telling the ship to flip over and point the exhaust at the last one. It would burn up before it got to him, if the ship could turn fast enough. The maneuvering thrusters were damaged and they fired intermittently.

Somewhere off in the distance, Lazarus heard a heavy thump, like someone falling from a ladder. He ignored it, focused on his screens. The ship lurched under acceleration as it slowly tried to flip over, to point its powerful exhaust plume at the incoming missile. He heard another thump, as if someone fell down, but ignored that, too.

It would be close, so close, as the missile bore down on him, but … yes! The Sundevil made its 180-degree flip, and the final incoming missile was vaporized in the exhaust plume. “Ha!” Lazarus shouted, triumphantly, shaking his fists in the air over his acceleration chair. “Is that all you—HURK!”

Pain, crushing, burning pain shot through Lazarus’ body. He looked down from his screens. A pale hand was wrapped around the grip of a knife, which was buried in his stomach to the hilt. He looked up to see Femi, who had somehow managed to climb up onto his command chair, pulling herself up despite the intense acceleration. Her eyes were wide, her face blank. In a jerking motion, she pulled the blade out of him, and plunged it back down again. More pain, more heavy, weighty, burning pain as the knife slid deep into his gut again.

“I’m sorry!” Femi said rapidly. “I’m sorry.” She let go of the knife, reached to Lazarus’ console and tapped it a few times. The engines cut, the acceleration ceased, and Femi drifted away as the Sundevil was suddenly in freefall. Globules of blood floated away from Lazarus’ wounds, tiny red orbs reflecting the lights of the command deck.

“I’m sorry!”

# # # # #

Privateer Ship Andromeda

“Kapitänin,” Wolfram von Spandau said, “the enemy ship has cut its engines. I believe it is crippled.”

“Understood,” Catherine said coolly, reclined in her acceleration seat. “Mr. Abernathy, cut the engine. Nuchy, hail them.” Both junior officers acknowledged at once. The engines ceased firing, and the Andromeda was once again a microgravity environment. Droplets of sweat floated away from Catherine’s face, but she ignored them as she waited for the enemy ship to respond to her call. Tran, still strapped into the folding jump seat, had blacked out.

As Catherine brought her seat to the upright position, waiting for the Sundevil to respond to her hail, a notification popped up on her screen. It was Ember. She tapped the icon and answered the call.

“Hello, Ember,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“I am,” the machine said. “Thank you for asking. Is the battle over?”

“Yes, I believe it is,” Catherine said.

“What will we do now?”

“Once this is over, we will be back on our way. Are you sure you’re not damaged?”

“I am quite sure, Captain. I have run a full systems diagnostic. I am afraid Bjorn has lost consciousness, though, likely due to a combination of stress and acceleration.”

Catherine looked over at Tran. His arms were floating at shoulder level, but his body was still limp. “Yes, well, he’s not the only one.” A light flashed on her screen. “Ember, standby, they’re responding to my hail. Sundevil, this is the Andromeda. What are your intentions now? Please believe me when I say we have more missiles.”

The person who appeared on her screen wasn’t the smug, shifty-looking man with the facial hair. In his place was a stocky woman, deathly pale, with what looked like blood on her face. “This is, uh, Femi, the first mate of the Sundevil. We surrender, we surrender! Please stop shooting at us!”

“You bloody well should have thought of that before you opened fire on us,” Catherine said coldly. “You have committed an act of piracy. I could blow you out of space and I’d be within my legal rights to do so.”

“No! Please!” the woman said. “We surrender!”

Catherine checked her boards. Everything was green. The Andromeda had sustained minor hull damage in the exchange with the Kholat, mostly laser scarring in the honeycomb energy absorber layer. More worrisome was the damage to one of her radiators, which would hinder her ability to function without overheating. Only a couple of minor injuries had been reported, thank God.

“Very well,” Catherine said. “I accept your surrender and will be on my way.”

The woman named Femi’s eyes went wide. “What? No! You can’t leave us out here! We’ve taken heavy damage! Life support is failing. We’ll die!”

“I am not obligated to render aid to a pirate who got unlucky,” Catherine said. “You did this to yourself. I will notify the Concordiat fleet at the earliest opportunity. They should be along to collect you eventually.”

“No, please!” Femi pleaded. “You can’t! It’ll be weeks, or longer! We won’t make it. Captain, please, I’m begging you, you—”

Femi was cut off as Catherine terminated the connection. Enough of that, she thought to herself. She then noticed a blinking icon and remembered that she had been talking to Ember.

“Hello again, Captain,” Ember said.

“I’m very busy, Ember,” Catherine said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m managing damage control.”

“Captain, do you intend to leave the crew of the Sundevil out there? They will likely die.”

“Their engines are still functional, I think,” Catherine said, dismissively. “They can make a stable orbit and wait for a Fleet cruiser. They are not my concern.”

“But they will likely die,” Ember repeated. “They will likely die of asphyxiation or cold when their life support fails.”

Catherine exhaled heavily. “I’m aware, Ember. What would you have me do? My mission is to get you to safety. I intend to do just that. That means getting you out of this system before any more hostiles show up. It also means getting us away from them. They’re damaged, but their weapons could still be functional. You need to understand.”

“I do understand,” Ember said, her voice modulating musically. “Given my understanding of your priorities, your logic is sound.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You said you believe in things that are not logically sound. You said you believe in the soul. You said that you believe human lives have value.”

“That is true, Ember, but these are pirates. They attacked us. They tried to kill my crew and take you.”

“I am aware, Captain,” Ember said. “Do those actions negate the value of human life?”

“Well, no, but you have to examine the circumstances.”

“I have. I have examined the circumstances three thousand, two-hundred and forty-eight times. I have come to the conclusion that the value of a human is decreased based on that person’s actions. Is this not the correct conclusion?”

“No, Ember, it’s not. I really don’t have time for a philosophical discussion right now.” She ended the connection to Ember and focused on her screens again. The Sundevil was hailing the Andromeda again, pleading for assistance. From the scans, it looks like she was in bad shape. Hurtling uncontrolled through space, she was trailing atmosphere and propellant. It was doubtful that they’d survive to be picked up by a Fleet patrol.

“Damn it to bloody hell,” Catherine cursed, exhaling heavily.

“Captain?” Nattaya Tantirangsi asked. “Uh, what are your orders, ma’am?”

“Colin,” Catherine said, addressing her pilot, “plot a course to intercept the Sundevil. Nuchy, I want you to hail them again, tell them to prepare to abandon ship. I need a positive count of how many survivors there are. Wolfram, I need you to contact Mr. Broadbent and have him put together a security detail. Tell him we’ll be taking on prisoners. We need to make arrangements to transport them until we can hand them over to the Fleet.”

“Kapitänin, the only place we can contain the prisoners is the cargo deck.”

“Good,” Catherine said, a wry little smile appearing on her face. “They can sit down there and annoy Ember, since she wanted to save them so badly.”

Wolfram didn’t crack a smile, but Catherine could detect the slightest bit of humor in his voice. “I believe this will also annoy Kimball.”

“Yes, well, he’ll get over it. Send an additional transmission to the Sundevil. Tell them that this offer of mercy is contingent on them being on their best behavior. So help me God, moralizing AI or no, if they try anything while on my ship I’ll eject every last bloody one of them into space. Make that quite clear, Wolfram.”

“Yes, Kapitänin,” the exec said.

Catherine looked over at the OSI agent, still unconscious in his seat. “And for God’s sake, will somebody please wake up Tran?”

# # # # #

When Lazarus Goodchild next opened his eyes, he was blinded by intense light. He knew he was lying on his back, and that he was in quite a bit of pain, but that was it. He closed his eyes again, then blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision.

“Where … what’s going on?” he croaked. His mouth and throat were bone dry and he could barely talk. His vision slowly started to clear up.

Femi was there, on her knees, at his side. He was lying on the floor, apparently. “Laz!” she said, like she was all happy to see him or something. “You’re awake!”

“Get away from me, you bitch!” Lazarus snarled, pushing her away. “You stabbed me!”

“You need to stay calm, Laz,” Femi said. “You’re injured.”

Lazarus looked down at his stomach. He was wearing some kind of disposable hospital garment, and a large bandage was stuck to his stomach. He rubbed his eyes and sat up some more. “I’m hurt because you fucking stabbed me!” He looked around, then, realizing he didn’t know where he was. This sure as hell wasn’t the Sundevil’s medical bay. He was lying on a medical gurney, which was lowered and fastened to the deck. He and Femi, along with a few other members of his crew, were in a big cage. “Where the hell are we?”

Femi shook her head. “We’re on the Andromeda, Laz,” she said sadly. “I surrendered.”

“What? Where’s my ship? Who the hell gave you the right to surrender!”

“The Sundevil is gone,” Femi said. “Life support was destroyed. It was either this or we were all going to die out there.”

“The hell you say, woman!” Lazarus shouted, shoving Femi away. His guts burned with pain under the strain, but he ignored it. “This is all your fault!”

“Shut the hell up, both of you!” The command came from a serious-looking spacer in a sage green flight suit. He stepped up to the edge of the cage, laser carbine in his hands. “Pipe down before I make you pipe down, you scratching pirates!”

Lazarus grinned at the crewman. He was young, and didn’t look especially confident with that weapon. “Why don’t you come in here then, boy, and give it your best shot?”

The crewman didn’t respond. He snapped to attention as someone else announced “Captain on deck!” Lazarus turned to see the Andromeda’s skipper, Blackwood she said her name was, striding toward the cage. She was flanked by a burly, dark-skinned man with a cybernetic eye implant and a pistol on his hip, and a skinny, younger guy in groundhog attire.

Captain Blackwood walked up to the outside of the cage and peered in, her hands folded behind her back. The cage was made of a flexible mesh that seemed to be very strong. Lazarus pressed his hand into it as he stood up. It gave, but only a little. There would be no getting through it without power tools.

“Captain,” Lazarus said, breathing hard from the exertion of standing up. His guts hurt, but he tried to ignore it.

“I saw that you were finally coming around,” she said. “I wanted to inform you that your first mate surrendered your ship on your behalf, and I agreed to render assistance. You are my prisoner for the time being.”

Lazarus shot Femi an evil glare, then turned back to Captain Blackwood. “So I was told. Thank you for accepting our surrender, then. Is the rest of my crew dead?” There were only six people in the mesh cage, including himself and Femi. The Sundevil had a complement of ten.

“I’m afraid so,” the Andromeda’s skipper said. “Your ship sustained significant damage, and had a hull breach. Also, one of your crewmen attempted to attack the rescue party. He was shot and killed.”

“It was Trey,” Femi said.

Lazarus grinned humorlessly. “He always was an idiot. Anyway, that was a hell of a fight, Captain.”

Captain Blackwood was icy and professional. “You committed an act of piracy,” she said coldly. “I was well within my legal rights to leave you out there to suffer the consequences of your bad decisions.”

Does she expect me to fall to my knees or something? Lazarus thought. No, he wasn’t going to give the huffy bitch the satisfaction. “Well, why didn’t you then?”

Captain Blackwood turned, and pointed to a something behind her. It was a giant cluster of computers, mounted to the deck, with a hulking robot coming out of it. “You owe your lives to Ember back there. You may recognize her. She is the AI you were trying to steal.”

“Holy shit,” Lazarus said, leaning against the mesh. He’d never seen an AI before, not a real one.

“Hello,” Ember said, musically. “I am happy to make your acquaintance.”

Captain Blackwood indicated the skinny young man standing next to her. “This is Special Agent Tran of the Office of Special Intelligence.”

Lazarus’ eyes went wide. OSI? “What … what is this?”

Tran stepped forward, a tablet in his hands. “Listen to me very carefully, Mr. Goodchild. We were able to recover quite a bit of information from your ship’s computers. Some of it is encrypted and I need your personal password.”

“You can fuck off then, kid,” Lazarus said. “What are you going to do, arrest me?”

Tran shook his head. “We’re going to turn you over to the next Fleet patrol we come across. We’re already in Concordiat space, so your time is running out. You can either cooperate with me, and tell your side of the story, or I can hand you over, give them the Andromeda’s logs, and you’ll be tried, convicted, and executed for piracy before that ship even gets back to port. I don’t care about you or that yellow piece of garbage you called a ship. I want to know everything about your employer, who hired you, and where they came from.”

Lazarus looked around the room, pressed against the mesh of the cage. It had to be the Andromeda’s cargo deck, he thought. His ship was gone and Tran probably wasn’t bluffing. What he did was technically piracy, and the Concordiat Fleet definitely frowned on that sort of thing. He took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.

“What do you want to know?” he said, resignedly. What was the point in fighting now? Maybe if he played the game he’d get prison time instead of being kicked out of an airlock.

“Start from the beginning,” Tran said, tapping the screen of his tablet. The AI leaned its hulking robotic body forward, as if it was interested in the conversation as well.

“My first mistake,” Lazarus said, pointing at Femi with his thumb, “was hooking up with that crazy skag.” Femi folded her arms across her chest, but didn’t say anything. “My second mistake,” Lazarus continued, “was making her my first mate and actually listening to her.”

Tran, Captain Blackwood, and the AI all listened intently as Lazarus told the rest of his story.

# # # # #

Privateer Ship Andromeda

Hernlund’s Hope Orbital Service Platform

WTA-6890-D System

In orbit high above a golden, ringed gas giant, Hernlund’s Hope was an automated service station that provided reaction mass, stores, and limited repair to ships with the cash to pay for it. The WTA-6890-D system had no life-bearing planets and was otherwise uninhabited, but it was situated along a popular trade route.

In her tiny personal cabin on board the Andromeda, Captain Catherine Blackwood was strapped into her rack, writing in her journal, sipping tea from a bulb. The ship was docked with Hernlund’s Hope and was taking on reaction mass and rations, but that didn’t require the captain’s personal supervision. Wolfram had command of the ship, and most of the crew was off duty.

The Andromeda had made it to New Peking without further incident. Catherine had been somewhat concerned, at first, that her prisoners would attempt something foolish, but once Lazarus Goodchild started cooperating, there’d been no problems.

Goodchild was an odd case, Catherine thought. According to what he’d told Tran, his act of piracy was done more out of desperation than out of a desire to operate outside the law. It didn’t excuse his actions, but he feared for his life if he failed to recover the AI. Being turned over to the Fleet, if nothing else, guaranteed his safety. The Andromeda had encountered a Concordiat Defense Force heavy cruiser two systems away from New Peking, and the prisoners were transferred without incident. Tran had told Catherine that, given the circumstances of Goodchild’s cooperation with the OSI, the crew of the Sundevil would likely face prison instead of being executed. The Law of Outer Space allowed for pirates to be put to death, but the death sentence wasn’t always carried out in the modern era. It looked bad, and criminal justice reformers were always trying to ban the practice.

It had all been rather ironic, Catherine thought, that the would-be pirates’ lives were saved by a plea for mercy by an artificial intelligence. The machine had definitely taken to heart, or whatever analog for the heart that she possessed, the notion that human life has value, and her opinions on the matter had value.

I find it rather inspiring, Catherine wrote, using a stylus to write in her journal by hand. (Many people lacked the ability to write by hand, but Catherine liked to maintain the skill.) People’s bias against machine intelligence is understandable, given the bloody history of artificial intelligence. Yet, I can’t help but wonder if we haven’t crossed the line from rational pragmatism into bigotry. I believe, beyond all doubt, that Ember is as kind and humanitarian as any human being I’ve ever met. If the soul is defined by one’s capacity for compassion, then Ember has more soul than many, many people. I can’t speak to the religious or metaphysical implications of that thought, except to say that I think Bishop Cardigan probably wouldn’t have approved.

Or, perhaps he would have, Catherine wrote. The Church of Avalon tended to be conservative in its views, but taught that compassion, mercy, and forgiveness were the most Godly attributes that Man could aspire to. Bishop Cardigan, Catherine’s childhood clergyman, had been an untiring, relentless advocate for the poor, the downtrodden, and the forgotten. He spent many a day counselling prisoners, prostitutes, and drug addicts. “Sin is no excuse for sin,” he would always say. “Wrath and vengeance belong to the Lord.” I expect had he been on board the ship, he would have agreed with Ember’s insistence that we not leave the pirates to their fate.

I hope she has a fulfilling life, wherever she ends up, Catherine concluded. I can’t imagine what it’s like for an artificial intelligence, how she truly perceives the world around her, but I hope the Concordiat authorities treat her well. Tran assured me that she would be studied, but not dissected like a science project. He seemed to think that she’d end up at a university someplace, or at another scientific institute. I don’t know if that’s true, but I certainly hope it is.

The Andromeda had needed minor repair on New Peking, but with the money Catherine had been paid for this job, paying for it had been no trouble. After a few local weeks dirtside, so her crew could gets some well-deserved leave time, the Andromeda had lifted off again to seek out its next contract. Such was the life of a spacer. It meant not having much of a home life, and rarely seeing your family if you had one, but Catherine couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

A light flashed on her tablet, and an icon indicated that she had a message. Catherine snapped the stylus into its place and tapped the icon. “This is the captain,” she said.

It was Luis Azevedo. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, I apologize for disturbing you in your rack.”

“Not at all, Luis. What’s the matter?”

“There’s no problem, ma’am, and we will be underway on schedule. However, there is something that I think you’ll want to see. We received a message from a courier ship passing through the system. It locked onto our transponder signal and sent a message, addressed to the skipper of the Andromeda.”

That was different. Getting a message to a ship in space, unless you knew precisely where it was going to be, was a challenge. Catherine made it a point to make the Andromeda’s whereabouts generally known, so that potential customers could find her, but it was odd to receive a message in deep space like this. Very odd.

“I see. Good work, Luis. Send it to me. I’ll take the message here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the junior officer said. “Sent.”

“Thank you. Blackwood out.” Catherine ended the call, and brought up the message she’d downloaded. It was text only.

My dearest Catherine, it began, I hope this message finds you well and in good health. I know it has been a long time, but your family needs you and your ship. Please come home.

Catherine looked down at the signature and authentication. There was no mistaking it; the message had come from her father. She read through it three times. She hadn’t spoken to her father in fifteen years, and the two had not parted on good terms. Now, out of the blue, he was asking her to come home, to Avalon.

She brought up the navigational system, tapping the screen rapidly. It would take the Andromeda just over seven hundred flight hours to reach Avalon from her present location. Catherine then called her first officer.

“Good evening, Kapitänin,” Wolfram said, appearing on her screen. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine, Wolfram,” Catherine said. “We have a change of plans, however. As soon as we’re finished taking on remass and supplies, I want you to lay in minimum-time course to Avalon.”

“Avalon? Going home?”

“So it would seem. Meet me in Astrogation in thirty minutes. I think I may have found our next job.”

Imperium Resource

by Jody Lynn Nye

“Try this one, Lord Thomas,” Maskew Zamerling said, holding up a gorgeous cut crystal pitcher. Although there were liberated artificial intelligence units and employees in plenty, the unctuous CEO of Astra Acqua had insisted on serving me himself. It came as no surprise that he reserved the honor; visits from those of such a lofty rank as I enjoyed were rare and wondrous treasures meant to be savored. I relaxed in my oxblood-colored chair and held out the matching beaker to his ewer.

“My goodness, but these cups are heavy in the hand, aren’t they, Mr. Zamerling?” I remarked, as liquid as clear as the vessel from which it was decanted poured in a tinkling stream. “Beautiful, though. I think I’ll commission a set for myself when I get home.”

“I am glad you like the design. We find that quartz crystal prevents any extraneous flavors being imparted to the beverage, my lord.”

I turned the glass in my hand, curling my long fingers around it.

“And what differentiates this from the last sample?”

Zamerling smiled at me. He had a face made for simpering, with long, dark eyes, aquiline nostrils and full lips in a pasty, greenish complexion. I had a sudden, visceral need to divert his features from its expression, with the back of my hand, if necessary. I tamped down this sensation. Natural as it was, the moment’s satisfaction would derail my purpose in having made the trip to obtain an exclusive interview. He poured a half-cup for himself, and sat down again in the armchair across the narrow table from mine. Everything in the office was of the very highest quality and of unimpeachable taste. The chair itself had automatically elongated its back and foot rest to accommodate my lofty height without more than a whisper of sound.

“This comes from a source in the northernmost mountains in Shalim, Lord Thomas, far from here,” he said, raising the cut-crystal glass to admire the contents. “A rather high percentage of copper, a touch of sodium, and borax, which gives it that unmistakable sweetness on the palate which is the mark of the terroir of High Shalim. A connoisseur’s beverage, my lord.”

“Cheers, then,” I said, tipping my glass up, and rolled the liquid on my tongue. The water did taste a bit sweet, refreshing, with no metallic tang or perceptible aftertaste. “Very nice. I have never taken the time before to notice the differences between kinds of water. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes bad. Most of the time, I barely notice it unless I’m thirsty. H_2O’s H_2O. Adam’s Ale. You know.”

Zamerling looked pained. “We rather prefer the term ‘dihydrogen monoxide,’ my lord.”

“At your prices, a multisyllabic pronunciation does add cachet,” I remarked, taking another sip. I shot him a conspiratorial glance. “As well as the mysteries associated with your product. Is it true that you have discovered an entirely new aquifer previously unknown to geologists? That the purest and most delicious water flows from a source that no one else has ever discovered here on Bleke, right here in its newest settlement of Conoceil?”

“You read through our advertising copy, my lord?” Zamerling looked surprised. I draped my long arms across the high back of the seat and affected a careless air. Perhaps I had gone too far in showing interest. After all, the nobility, of which I was a fully paid-up voting member, owing to my ancestral connection to the Imperium house, scarcely if ever delved into anything more than shallowly. “That detail was in the eighth or ninth page.”

In fact, it had been on page ten, but I wouldn’t say so, for fear of revealing myself as having an academic or inquiring bent. I affected an artful smile.

“My secretary read it for me,” I said, waving a hand toward the slender, blue metal-clad mechanical who hovered near the office door. “OP-634g thought it was curious enough to bring to my attention. If this claim is so, it interests me deeply. I wish to be the first among my cousins to serve such a beverage in the Imperium Compound. Maybe to the Emperor himself. He is my cousin, you know.”

“I know,” Zamerling said. I was certain that he did. He had surely researched me and my illustrious background when I made the appointment to meet with him. I watched the circuits sparking behind his carefully bland countenance. We nobles were known for many things, but deep pockets, liberal spending, and adherence to the latest trends were high on the list. To become one of those trends was to open the way to a torrent of heretofore-unrealized wealth. I turned my chin this way and that so that he could remark upon my resemblance to the Emperor. Shojan XII and I shared tawny skin, a strong jaw, high cheekbones, broad forehead, a straight and well-built nose, and clear eyes, though the Emperor had the black hair most common to the Kinagos. I had inherited a sandier poll from the Loches, my mother’s family. “And what may we do to obtain your custom?” The "we" implied more of a royal pronoun than a reference to the company he represented.

“Well, I must have a tour of this aquifer,” I declared, crossing my expensively shod ankles upon the footrest. It shifted slightly to ease the pressure upon the lower of my extremities. The chair, and all the furnishings in the room must have cost the equivalent of my monthly income, which amounted to a considerable sum. We Kinagos have investments that go back over five millennia, and have been absurdly profitable for more than three. “Naturally, I wish to confirm that the statement is true. Such a personal examination would allow me to take in the kind of details that cannot be satisfied with a gazetteer’s description. It’s a superb success story, yours. A marvel, a treasure, a flowering in the desert, or so I have heard. I must see for myself.”

“A… a tour, my lord?” Zamerling asked, weakly. The eager-to-please attitude had taken a missile from unexpected quarters.

I sprang up. “Yes! And this very minute, too. The longer we delay, the more likely it is that one of my cousins will discover this fantastic resource of yours, and I will not be thwarted of the novelty. We import so many luxuries and curiosities from outside the Core Worlds, it will be a coup on my part to bring a hitherto undiscovered one from within.”

Zamerling stood up, but without any of the energy I displayed. His long eyes darted back and forth.

“But it’s dark, and dingy, and wet there.”

“I would expect a secret resource such as an aquifer to possess all of those qualities,” I said. “How else would it become an underground success in this day and age, so to speak?”

“The aquifer is rather dangerous, my lord. The sands of Bleke shift frequently, causing frequent landslips in our facility. You would have to descend several kilometers into the earth.”

I waved a hand. “Nothing that I haven’t tried before. My cousin Xan went through a spelunking phase, and dragged us all along with him into the nooks and crannies of Keinolt, the Imperium homeworld. I have been down to the very mantle, and stood upon it with these very feet! Though not these boots. It was rather hot there, I confess, hotter than this climate, though it was also a dry heat. I could have done with a pitcher or so of your water. No, I must see where this marvel of crystalline refreshment springs from, if you will forgive the pun. I cannot make a substantial order without being satisfied as to the veracity of your claim.”

Zamerling made one final essay.

“Er, what do you know of geology, Lord Thomas?”

“Very little,” I said, cheerfully, favoring him with a sample of my patented laugh, which combined a snort and a derisive hoot. It echoed off the walls of the sumptuous office suite and no doubt penetrated the eardrums of my listener. “It hasn’t been that interesting to me thus far. You’ll forgive my frankness, I hope?”

I smiled. The circuits continued to compute behind his greenish brow. His natural inclination to indulge one of my rank as well as native greed were at war as to how to display to me the object of my desire against the pressing need to conceal the possibly illicit source of his company’s success.

But greed won out, as I knew it must.

Zamerling drew his pocket secretary, the ever-present, slim, communications, recording and entertainment device that we all carried, from a silk-lined custom-tooled black pouch at his hip, and touched the screen. I noticed that his model was from the same high-end manufacturer as my own, albeit a level or two below in grade.

“Chuchang?”

“Yes, sir?” a toneless high-pitched voice responded. It sounded to me like an LAI, but its lack of inflection could also be attributed to a very well trained secretary or aide.

“I need a car outside my suite in ten minutes,” Zamerling said. “Lord Thomas Kinago and I will be visiting Source Number Four.”

The voice evinced no surprise. My instincts told me that it was a human or Wichu employee, rather than an artificial intelligence.

“Number Four, sir? Will you require safety equipment?”

“Yes. Full body suits, lights and respirators. Alert staff on site that we are on the way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well,” Zamerling said, putting the device back into its slipcase. He stood and gestured toward the door, which slid noiselessly into the wall. “After you, my lord.”

I strode out into the anteroom, my confident steps a counterpoint to his more hesitant paces. He guided me along a well-lit corridor with miniature waterfalls set into the black stone walls tinkling out an ever-changing melody, an extravagance on this dry hunk of rock that passed for a planet, but perhaps an allowable fillip. I passed a discreet sign indicating the comfort facilities. The sound of running water sounding out all day would without a doubt have a psychological effect on the employees.

At no time during our conversation had I brought up the water shortages that had been plaguing the newly settled city of Conoceil for more than a year. No doubt Zamerling assumed that pedestrian a situation would be beneath the notice of a lofty personage such as myself, and under normal circumstances, he would be right. My cousins and I seldom paid heed to any catastrophe or disaster that did not immediately impact our lives. Wealth and position shielded us from the ordinary citizen of the Imperium, and, to be frank, also shielded the ordinary citizen from our playful and often careless ways.

However, the matter had been brought to the Emperor’s attention as a question of some urgency. Conoceil, the nearby city on Bleke, the second habitable planet circling Leo’s Star, had been founded some years past when a massive and potable underground aquifer was found in the center of a vast desert continent. A town had grown up around it, and began to flourish. The income of Conoceil proper derived mainly from tourism and the cultivation of tropical plants and fruits imported from other Imperium worlds. I had served numerous Conoceillian-grown succulents on my own table. They were delicious and beautiful, a feast for the eyes as well as the tongue. Conoceil also boasted root plants that had their own charm and flavor. According to geologists, the planet had once been as lush as the Imperium homeworld of Keinolt, but over hundreds of millions of years of steadily warming climate, the lifeforms had retreated underground, where they had been nourished by the ambient heat and the numerous aquifers spotted about the planet under its sandy blanket.

Yet recently, what had seemed to be an endless underground freshwater sea had begun unaccountably to dry up, leaving the groves and orchards scrambling to make up the shortfall of water from ever lower reservoirs. To the despair of the growers, the local wells, reliable for centuries, had also begun running dry. Examination had left geologists none the wiser as to the drought’s cause. The nearest potable well was over fifty kilometers distant.

At the same time, Acqua Astra, also a major employer in the region, continued to ship immense quantities of its delicious and pure-tasting water to other planets circling Leo’s Star, not to mention Keinolt and the rest of the Core Worlds. Luxury hotels in many a sector had those distinctive ochre-yellow bottles of Acqua Astra on their hospitality bars. (In theory, those were refillable and recyclable, but they tended to be taken home by tourists as desirable souvenirs. Even I had a few scattered among my travel memorabilia.)

When such a strategic resource as water itself begins to run short, it causes hardship, finger pointing and other outbursts in the population centers. Accusations against the corporation had arisen in the popular press op-ed sections on the Infogrid, rising most lately into the realm of the court system. Acqua Astra had argued to the government of Bleke that it drew water from the same sources that it claimed from time immemorial, which was to say around twenty or so years, and had not outstretched the boundaries of those deeded properties. After a search by several groups of experts, no contradiction of their claim could be determined.

But if they were not to blame for the drought, then it had to have another cause, and none could be located. Unrest was rising in the towns and communities, reaching all the way up to the planetary government, who in turn demanded help from the Emperor in finding what had happened to the rest of Conoceil’s water. Why a corporation should have no trouble filling its orders when small growers and individuals seemed to be dying of thirst was a knotty problem that intrigued the mind and stimulated the speculative faculties. Yet another concern piled on top of those already amassed: Acqua Astra was a popular growth stock on the Imperium Stock Exchange. Managers of many a portfolio, including those of my cousins and myself, counted it as a must-buy. These experts needed to know if something untoward was occurring so they could move their clientele out of it before public embarrassment reduced the value of the company to zero. Hence, the presence of myself and my crew.

I looked about the brilliant blue sky as I stepped out onto the platform protruding from the ninetieth floor of the Acqua Astra office tower. The long, sleek air limousine, Clear Spirit, hovered against the edge, with a flexible ramp bridging the gap between the building and the hatch. Zamerling ushered me hastily forward. The crew of my ship, the Rodrigo, lurked somewhere about, monitoring a signal being broadcast from a capsule that I had swallowed before entering the building. My aide-de-camp, Parsons, had assured me that it was shielded from discovery, at least until peristalsis revealed it in some hours’ time. I boarded the craft. OP-634g trundled serenely after me.

A very slim and handsome young person in a sea-blue jumpsuit that matched the company logo guided me to one of the deeply padded white seats and held onto the safety harness until I was seated. The captain, a human woman of middle years, and her co-pilot, a Croctoid with yellow-green scales, waved a jaunty greeting from the open cockpit. Zamerling introduced them as Captain Sheerling and First Officer Nidden. The Clear Spirit hummed as it pulled in its ramp and shot off into the sky.

“May I offer you something to drink, Lord Thomas?” the attendant inquired.

“Try the water,” Zamerling said, encouragingly, from the seat across the aisle. “The jet is equipped with a full range of our most exotic vintages.”

I lounged back and enjoyed a flight of fifteen or so excellent waters, with Zamerling exhorting me to try them in combination, chilled with spherical orbs of clear glass or at ambient temperature, according to its mineral content.

“This one,” I said, holding one of the twenty milliliter glasses aloft, “is the most pure water I have ever tasted. It is brilliantly clean-tasting and fresh-smelling. A marvel of nature!”

Zamerling creased his face into that irritatingly smug expression. “That is exactly where you are wrong, my lord. This particular beverage has had a patented mix of minerals added. That clean taste that you detect comes from calcium carbonate. Limestone tells the human tongue that the water is pure. A touch of sodium bicarbonate adds a little roughness and alkalinity and potassium and magnesium a sensation of well-being. I could list the other trace elements, but it’s a trade secret. You understand. You’ve never had completely pure water.”

I was baffled and delighted by the notion. “You mean that nothing doesn’t taste like nothing? What is pure water like, then?”

“Surprisingly, completely pure dihydrogen monoxide is very acid,” Zamerling said. “It’s harmful to most organisms of Terran origin. It doesn’t appear in nature, only in laboratories.”

“How curious,” I said. I leaned back to peer out of the window of the air car. I could not see behind or before us, only out to the side. The lateral view, however, was most instructive.

Upon my arrival from the east side of the compound, I had been met by the rising vista of lush hills covered in greenery, dotted with flowers of astonishingly vivid hues. As we lifted off from the Acqua Astra facility, I could see beyond the low peaks that sheltered the tropical range. Now I discovered that like most of my cousins posing for images for their Infogrid files, the island, too, displayed only its most fetching side. On the other side, Conoceil was anything but lush. Plant life there was in plenty, in clusters alongside vast plantations cupped in the valley served by the deep aquifer, but none of them evinced the brilliant greens of the land around the water bottling plant. In fact, the island was yellowing in a distressing fashion, until it nearly matched the dun color of the desert beyond. The lack of irrigation had become acute.

“How often do you see your cousin?” Zamerling asked, interrupting my perusal. He wore that expression of hero worship that so naturally accompanied thoughts of the Emperor. I was pleased that for whatever other perfidy I suspected him, Zamerling appeared to be a loyal subject of the Imperium.

“Every day or two,” I said, airily. “My family’s suites are across a garden from the boxwood maze where he likes to walk in the afternoons. I pass the time of day with him casually once in a while, as well as on official occasions. You will find this amusing,” I added, and launched into a recounting of the latest state dinner, held on behalf of a visiting Wichu dignitary. I used the term “dignitary” under advisement, for the white-furred beings comported themselves in a far more casual manner than our leadership. Which, for once, made for an entertaining evening. State events were a form of torture sanctioned by time and custom, to make visitors and hosts equally uncomfortable, serving food that would not appear on any table except in the most extreme circumstances, and featuring entertainment that could only by a stretch of the imagination be thought entertaining. I have liked every Wichu I’d ever met. They made a refreshing change from the citizens of the Imperium.

As I assumed, Zamerling listened with rapt attention. A subtle movement of his pudgy fingers toward his pocket secretary told me that he was recording my discourse for future reference. I didn’t mind. My comments upon the feast had already been entered in great detail in my file on the Infogrid, with many a withering reply from my cousins and other palace insiders. The Emperor himself had not replied. He never did, but then, I never wrote anything that would overtly or covertly insult him. His behavior was beyond reproach, which in my opinion would be a tedious way to have to live, therefore I and my cousins vowed never to add to that burden. We, too, were loyal.

My loyalty took an additional form, one known only to a handful-and-a-half of people. Imperium Security had recruited me during my mandatory service, and had employed me since that time in various missions suited to my profile and temperament. Its mysterious head, Mr. Frank, never sent me into a situation alone, though. Apart from OP-634g, whose initials were a shortening of his title of Operative, my personal scout ship was not far away.

It took no especial concentration to narrate a tale that I had already committed to a public file. I glanced out of the window to my right in hopes of spotting one or more of my escorts. The Rodrigo was too large to pass unnoticed in a civilian setting, but Lieutenants Plet and Oskelev, paramount among pilots, were tracking me closely in small shuttles. I experienced a sensation of safety comparable to being held in the bosom of one’s mother. In my case, this was more apropos than most: my mother was the First Space Lord, and therefore commander of such things as shuttlecraft.

I have been praised by my family as a compelling storyteller. When I came to the moment in which the Emperor had to embrace his fellow head of state and came away with a chest full of white fur, Zamerling leaned back in his chair to laugh. Judging the timing, I sipped from the flight of small beakers placed before me. I blanched as the fetid, sulfurous odor from the sample at the farthest right touched my nose, and began to cough.

“Ah, yes, the Hochin spring water,” Zamerling said. “An acquired taste, I’m afraid.”

“I’ve had worse,” I admitted, setting it down untouched. If it tasted anything close to the way it smelled, it would sour my stomach for hours. “But,” I added, after a moment’s consideration, “I would like to order a half case for my cousin Xan. I’m sure that he will acquire it, if only because he can’t admit to being the butt of a joke. I can’t wait to see the look on his face!”

“Of course, my lord,” Zamerling said, now openly activating his pocket secretary. He showed no offense whatsoever at my indication that his product would be used for low-level prank upon a fellow being. A small order might be the precursor to a larger and more lucrative order, always with the hope that the Emperor might sample the merchandise and like it. “It shall be waiting for you upon our return to the office. In the meanwhile, try the next one. It is a sample of our latest and most popular beverage, Ad Astra.”

I checked to see if he was attempting to play his own joke upon me, but the sincere expression with which he favored me convinced me otherwise. I tipped the glass against my lips, and was delighted by the flavor.

“This is excellent!” I said, happily, holding my glass up for a refill. The attendant bustled forward with the pitcher. “Marvelous. This has notes of fruit and spice like a very delicate wine. I can understand why it is so popular. My cousins will find it irresistible. Make a note, OP. Quite good.”

“As you wish, Lord Thomas,” the LAI replied. The two green lights on his upper assembly that I thought of as eyes flashed slightly.

I glanced again at the wilting, ochre landscape, and a distant glint of metal caught my eye. Right on schedule, I thought with pleasure. Brava, Oskelev. I appreciated the reassurance that my crew had my back.

“Incoming!” First Officer Nidden bellowed suddenly. A missile-proof shield shot between the pilots’ compartment and our seating area, and smooth shutters slid from the walls to cover the windows. His voice continued over the speakers. “Take crash positions, please!”

Bad luck, I thought. They had detected my escort. I had better disavow any connection to the distant shuttle.

Then the bulkhead of the limousine shook, hard, flinging me back against my crash padding. Straps tightened about my body and yanked me closer to the heavy padding. I gawked at the starboard bulkhead in disbelief. We’d been hit! Why would Oskelev shoot at us?

“Take evasive maneuvers,” Zamerling ordered, slamming his palm down on the arm of his crash couch. “Are the security jets on their way?”

“Aye, sir,” Captain Sheerling said. “An escort plus two defense flyers.” The limousine took a hard spiraling turn to the right and dropped another thousand meters or so. “Here they come. Please stay strapped in.”

“I’m so terribly sorry,” I said, shocked. “I assure you, I have not brought any hostiles to this planet with me.”

“It’s not you, my lord.” The CEO’s face set into a grim expression. “We have had some difficulties with the local population. They see us as the source of their problems, and they have taken to retaliating against our vehicles.”

“And what problems could possibly provoke violence of this level?” I asked, horrified, as another solid round struck the side of the limousine. The air car shuddered and dropped several tens of meters.

“Shortages,” Zamerling said, tersely. “Captain Sheerling, back to the tower, please. Lord Thomas must not be placed in any danger.”

“Aye, sir.”

Despite the danger, I hated to return to Taino without having completed my assignment. What would my mother say? I put out my lower lip.

“But, what about my tour?” I asked. “Dear Mr. Zamerling, you won’t let me come all this way without seeing the very object I crave, would you? I need to see the source!”

I could tell that Zamerling was torn. He put on a momentary exhibition of dithering that would have done credit to an interstellar competition. Then, he leaned over the armrest microphone.

“Sheerling, take us out over the dunes. We’ll go in through the loading dock.”

I smiled.

“This way, my lord,” Zamerling said, courteously making way for me.

I strode behind the CEO as we passed through chamber after chamber lined with vats all gurgling their precious liquid into myriad clear pipes and tubing that fed conveyor belts of ochre bottles, large, small, and minute. Beings of all sentient species, clad in the same bright-blue hazmat costumes as the ones we wore, minded the equipment, taking notes on viewpads or making adjustments to the controls. Occasionally, one of them would glance toward our small party, then turn back to work. They treated Ad Astra as though it was as much gold as the color of its bottles.

Every surface was shimmeringly clean. We had each had to pass through biometric identification and a sanitizing fog and waded or, in OP-634g’s case, rolled through a mat infused with disinfectant before entering the purification plant. I was keenly aware of two separate forces overseeing my tour. One was, unsurprisingly, security personnel. The other was a cleaning squad who wiped away our footprints as we passed.

More blue-suited employees oversaw even larger tanks, checking levels and taking samples from valves. Those were conveyed next door to a vast laboratory, all white enamel and shining metal, where scientists frowned thoughtfully at the contents of beakers.

“We send out four shipments a day,” Zamerling said, via my in-hood audio feed. “We have received orders from as far away as the Uctu Autocracy. The Lady Visoltia has acquired a taste for the mineral compound in Ad Astra. Acqua Astra is doing its part to encourage trade between our two peoples.”

“And quite rightly, too,” I said. Visoltia and I had formed a fond friendship on my recent visit to the Uctu homeworld. “And what is that mineral compound? You were most forthcoming on some of your other products.”

“I… well, I really must not say,” Zamerling replied, with a coy expression behind his face mask. “Trade secrets, you know. Now, come this way. You will find this most interesting!”

And to an extent, I did. We followed the line of moving belts to the shipping area, in which the precious bottles were packed in crates of nine, padded and sealed with the gold double-A logo. The white-walled fulfillment center lay adjacent to the loading dock. It buzzed with the latest in computer design.

“I cannot connect to any of your LAI systems,” OP-634g said, with just the right self-deprecating tone. Instead of a hazmat suit, the sanitation forces had placed a clear hood over him that descended all the way to the ground, like a large plastic bag. “May I have the access codes, please, Mr. Zamerling?”

“That won’t be allowed,” Zamerling said, firmly. I noted that he was not as courteous to LAIs as to organic visitors. That put a demerit on his record in my book. “Our systems are closed to protect proprietary information from our rivals.”

“But what about the source?” I asked. “This is all what one would call the back end of the operation. I want to see the raw material. The diamond in the rough.”

“Oh, yes! Come this way!” The CEO set off along a broad yellow stripe on the floor. He passed by a large red door. To one side was an identification pad and a broad lens for scanning biometrics. Beyond it, I could hear heavy thrumming sounds. I caught his arm and turned him toward it.

“What is in there?” I asked. Zamerling dithered, tapping his gloved fingertips together.

“Oh, that? It’s just the pumping station. A storage sub-basement. Kilometers down. Dirty. Greasy. Not interesting. But, come with me. Let us have a drink and talk about your order, my lord!”

He set out again. How curious that a secured door was necessary to protect water.

I turned to the pad. An AI designation was noted on the bottom of the oval plate.

“Hello, DG-403. May I enter?”

“I’m very sorry… Lord Thomas Kinago… you are not authorized.”

“Thank you,” I said, and turned away.

“Good day, sir or madam.” Hmm, not a top of the line AI, then.

I nodded to OP-634g, who halted for just a moment, then rolled along beside me in Zamerling’s wake.

No one else would have noticed the thin silver stream of nanites he had dispensed seep through the crack between the red door and its frame.

“Well, this has all been most interesting,” I said, waving away Zamerling’s attempt to pour me another libation of Ad Astra. We sat at a polished stone table in a marble, hexagonal atrium with a fountain shooting no doubt thousands of credits of precious water into the air. “No, no, thank you. I have already had to pay one visit to your most elegant facilities.”

Zamerling fixed upon me his oiliest smile yet.

“I am so very pleased that you enjoy our product,” he said.

OP-634g suddenly came to attention and rolled toward me. I shot a casual glance upward. His upper section bent at a ninety-degree angle so his speaker was adjacent to my ear. Zamerling looked at me with deep curiosity, but I merely offered him a noncommittal smile as I rose.

“I must go,” I said. “Thank you so very much for your hospitality. If your shuttle will convey me safely back to the town, I would be deeply appreciative.”

“Of course, my lord. When may I call upon you to inquire about finalizing your order?” he asked.

“At my hotel,” I said. “I am staying at Bleke House, of course. You will find me in after ten in the morning.”

Zamerling remained behind, giving me and my attendant transport in a private vehicle that would not excite the ire of the neighbors, but neither of us spoke until we reached the safety of my penthouse hotel suite, at which point we received company.

Seated most unobtrusively in the darkest corner of the bright sitting room was a figure who appeared to be made of shadow itself. After the brilliance of the day, it was a relief to see.

“Parsons!” I exclaimed happily, as that dignitary rose to his feet. My aide-de-camp, a commander in the Space Navy as well as a fellow confidant of Mr. Frank, and my mentor, stood a few centimeters taller than my lofty height, with dark eyes and black hair that seemed self-effacing in spite of its gloss.

“My lord,” he said. “I take it that Mr. Zamerling was not forthcoming with the information that we seek?”

“Not at all,” I said, throwing myself into the nearest easy chair and flinging a leg over one padded arm. “I’d have an easier time asking my cousin Jil what she weighs. Which, I confess, I only do to provoke her. But OP-634g has some information that he is just dying to impart.”

Parsons showed no more expression than the LAI as he turned to the operative.

“Report.”

“Examination of the locked area by the nanites reveal that the protected space extends some six hundred meters below the plant. Pumps are present, but only going upward to the purification and bottling facility. It would seem that Acqua Astra’s claims are as they have stated. There are no mechanisms present to raise water from a source of any kind. It is very still and quiet in the lower chambers.”

“They are certainly siphoning water from the other aquifer,” Parsons mused. A tiny muscle twitched in that epicene brow, showing him to be deep in thought. “Nothing that produces as much water as Acqua Astra distributes could be passive.”

“I am prepared to return this evening to investigate,” I said.

Parsons gave me a quelling look. “Ensign Nesbitt is prepared to infiltrate the plant within the hour.”

“No, I want to do it,” I said, knowing that I sounded a little peevish. “I dislike it when someone promises me a full tour and fails to deliver. I fancy I am as observant as he. Moreover, I know where all the biometric facilities are. I’m a known quantity. He will surely set off the alarm system. I only need OP-634g to guide me into the depths of the plant.”

“There is no means to take you to the lower levels,” OP-634g said. “I can go.”

“How will you get there?” I asked, a little stung. “Any way you can pass, I can, too.”

“It would be too uncomfortable for you, sir. Cold. Cramped.”

“Ha!” I snorted. “You have never known uncomfortable, cold and cramped until you have sat in a malfunctioning hot tub with my cousin Erita and her horde of cronies. Is there air?”

“There is, sir.”

“Then I will go. Well, Parsons?”

Parsons knew when to thwart me and when it would be best to let me have my way.

“Very well,” he said, regarding me with a bare hint of resignation. “The crew will be on hand to rescue you if needed.”

A desert night sky displayed so many stars with such clarity that I found it contradictory that darkness should lie so thick upon the ground. My LAI escort rolled with near silence over the sands. I trudged much more slowly behind.

OP-634g engaged a panel that seemed to be drilled into a solid slab of stone and passed a web of green light across it.

“Welcome, Mr. Zamerling,” the panel said. A vast boulder shifted back and out of our way, opening a Stygian shaft before us. The LAI rolled inside. I had only a single point of green light to guide me. We had entered by the loading dock. No shipments left during the night, possibly to keep the insurgent locals of the nearby town from attacking in darkness.

Instead of essaying the red door, OP-634g led me through a low and narrow passage to a utilitarian hatch of stainless steel. Beyond it was a dumbwaiter system, a continuous belt of narrow platforms designed to carry AIs and LAIs down into the depths. OP-634g shone his green spotlight inside.

“Are you certain, sir?”

“That’s not cramped,” I said, evincing scorn. “I’ve played Sardine in smaller locations with a dozen of my closest relatives stuffed in beside me.” I swung into the next compartment that passed and was conveyed downward into the gloom. I crouched upon the narrow metal shelf. “So this is how the other half lives, eh?”

“The other 75%, sir,” the LAI said. “Mechanicals outnumber sentient organics more than three to one in the Imperium.”

“Pays to be nice to you, then, doesn’t it?” I whispered. “I have lots of friends who are LAIs. Old pals, correspondents, and so on. I trust I won’t be first up against the wall when the revolution comes, eh?”

“Yes, sir. Not first.”

I wanted to laugh, but first, my hoot of appreciation would probably be heard a thousand meters away, and second, I wasn’t certain that he was making a joke. An LAI in the Imperium Security service might or might not be programmed with a sense of humor.

A bar of red light indicated the bottom of the shaft. I made ready and sprang out onto the floor on feet as silent as I could make them. While I regained my equilibrium, OP-634g emerged beside me. My eyes had become as accustomed to near darkness as they were going to be. I saw shadows that I believed to be walls and corridors ahead of us.

“Anyone down here with us?”

“I see three infrared signatures of human beings,” OP-634g said. “Security guards. Warmth issuing from the pumping mechanisms fed from solar-panel-charged batteries. Otherwise, cold temperatures coinciding with ambient underground.”

“Good. Now, let’s see those pumps. Perhaps we can get an idea of the source from the pipes.”

OP-634g flashed on the floor an image of the layout of the pump level that he had gleaned from the nanites and laid out our path. Two rights, a left, a long corridor, then another right. He shut off the map, leaving only the single green dot to guide us or, rather, me.

Unlike the rest of Bleke, the subterranean chamber was cool with a pleasant dampness in the air. As we wended our winding way, the scent of fresh, clean stone, like the water that I had thought was pure, grew steadily stronger. The nearly deafening thrumming vibrated the floor under my feet. The pumps had to be fairly close by.

Suddenly, an alarm went off overhead.

“Alert! Alert!” a loud voice boomed in the midst of blaring sirens. “Organic presence detected in secure area. Investigate! Investigate!”

“Curses,” I hissed. “Hide me!”

I held onto the comforting frame of the LAI. He pulled me into a chamber and pressed me up against an inner wall. I heard a hiss, followed by a cooling spray. The faint security lights in the corner showed me that I was in a storeroom for pump parts and hoses. In contradiction to the CEO’s statement, the chamber hundreds of meters below the surface was not dingy or dirty at all. One could have dined off the smooth stone floor. I huddled in a narrow niche behind the door. OP-634g stood behind me, disguising my presence.

Voices belonging to two humans approached on the other side of the wall. I squatted lower in my hiding place.

Steps entered the room. I listened to them shuffle on the smooth floor for what felt like eons.

“No one’s here,” a resonant female voice said at last. “He must have gone to its chamber!”

“Right,” said a deep male voice with a distinctive Kazuran accent. “We’d better make sure it’s all right.”

It?

I used Sang-Li fingerspelling to communicate with OP-634g. The guards were on their way to our objective! We would follow at a respectful distance. OP-634g flashed his eye-lights in agreement, then let them fade to blackness.

We counted to thirty, then tiptoed out to follow.

Very soft desert boots and a great deal of practice with my martial arts instructor on how to move silently allowed me to pursue our guides without detection. After passing along a lengthy corridor and turning right, the hazmat-suited guards passed through a broad doorway.

I had no idea what to expect it to be, but my wildest imaginings would not have created the scene that awaited me in the immense chamber. Rippling light played upon the walls, like sunlight on a lake. Millions of tiny, crystalline filaments snaked across the floor and into myriad cracks in the wall to my right. They shimmered with their own crepuscular light. They seemed to move under my feet like a living carpet, which was in fact what they were.

The object from which those filaments arose was a beast, a creature, a being, larger than any I had ever seen in my life. It must have measured a kilometer wide by two long, stretched out in a chamber that barely fit it top to bottom. Its rounded sides glimmered with blue-white and pearlescent peach lights. A behemoth like that should have been horrifying, but instead I found it beautiful, a delicate creamy, gelatinous oblate spheroid, the blancmange that no chef had ever dreamed of.

I trod carefully around the being, watching its sides pulse as its myriad tiny straws sipped from the strata of the deep underground. At the far left, I heard gentle splashing, softer than the sound of a fountain. I made my way around to see what was making the noise.

If on the far right was the intake, this was the outflow. From the body of the massive, pulsing hulk, half a dozen large tubules rained clear, perfect water into a vast, bottomless reservoir. And, there at the edge of the cavern was where the pumps of the Acqua Astra dangled their intake pipes. The exclusive “dihydrogen monoxide” product in which Zamerling took so much pride was the excreted waste material from a massive underground native creature. No wonder the source was a trade secret!

“Well, I will be a Pthohannixian candle-snuffer,” I said, and burst out into uncontrollable laughter. My knees threatened to give out under me as my hoots and cries echoed off the ceiling.

“Lord Thomas, quiet!” OP-634g warned me, but all in vain.

At that moment, hands grabbed my arms and dragged me backwards. I fought against the pair of guards, attempting to show them my face, but they put me into an armlock and dragged me toward a red door, the counterpart to the lift on the ground floor.

“You really should untie me,” I said. I was sealed into a chair in Zamerling’s plush office. A length of clear plastic strapping surrounded my chest and wrapped my arms tightly. OP-634g was bound full-length in swathes of the stuff. Only the lights of his eyes told me that they had not deactivated him. “You don’t really want to hurt me.”

I knew they did not. One quality of being a noble of the Imperium meant that no ordinary human would wish to do me harm. Nor did his guards. Once they had seen me, they realized that they had made a terrible mistake. But the longer we sat facing one another, the more nervous they became. They fidgeted with their stun weapons, clearly wishing to be anywhere but there. I could tell that Zamerling was of two minds.

“We can’t let him go,” Zamerling said to the guards. He tapped at his lower lip with nervous fingers. “It would mean bankruptcy.”

“What is that creature?” I asked. “I’ve never seen any living being that large in all my life. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. I don’t suppose it has a name for itself, or not one we can understand. What do you call it? A mega-micturator? A tinkle-titan? Your number one resource?”

“Aquavore!” Zamerling exclaimed suddenly. “We call it an aquavore.”

“It doesn’t really eat water, though,” I said.

“It absorbs minerals. The water that, er, passes through it is purified.”

“But you told me perfectly pure water is dangerous,” I pointed out.

“The aquavore’s system excretes a mixture of minerals that keep the pH balanced. That combination has proved to be… palatable to our customers’ tastes.” Zamerling’s greenish complexion turned ruddy with embarrassment. “My lord, you put us in a terrible position.”

“I don’t see it that way at all,” I said, rustling my bonds. “You’ve put me in a terrible position, sealing me in plastic like my great aunt’s sofa. Sooner or later, you will have to let us go. I am sure that we can come to some kind of… understanding.”

“A bribe?” Zamerling asked, goggling at me in shock.

“Certainly not,” I said, drawing myself up in outraged pride, or as much as I could under the circumstances. “I would demean neither one of us with such an offer. I mean to find a solution to your dilemma. Surely you have not fallen into a situation from which you cannot be extricated. I’m rather good at unknotting problems. Try me.”

“I can’t,” the CEO all but wailed. The guards shifted, worrying me that one of them might react rashly.

I glanced at the burl-wood chronometer that sat on Zamerling’s desk. If I did not inform Parsons soon as to my whereabouts, he and the others would activate the locator in my lower gastrointestinal tract and come looking for me, leading to further grave misunderstandings, and possibly resulting in one or more of us suffering life-threatening injuries. I did not see this man as the enemy.

“Come, come, Mr. Zamerling. I want to help. Consider me another natural resource. Where did the aquavore come from? Did you import it? Is that why you don’t want it revealed? And what does this have to do with the water being pulled out of Conoceil’s reservoir?”

“Aquavores are native to Bleke. They’re all over this planet.”

I raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“But biologists don’t know about them. How is that possible?”

“They do, but the only specimens that they see are small, up to a few centimeters in diameter.”

My eyes widened. “Then your friend downstairs must be the great-great-grandmother of them all.”

Zamerling gave me a superior smile. “No, there are more. My scientists have discovered eight others of this size. They’ve been paid well not to publish about them. The aquavores adapted over hundreds of millions of years to create an underground ecology.” Now that I’d gotten him going, the CEO was eager to explain. “The aquifers discovered by our ancestors left geologists mystified, because they’re much larger than the pockets of stone would have suggested. But the aquavores purify the water so much by consuming the impurities that they leave none of their own organics behind, only a few minerals. Then, we believe, they move along, leaving no trace, and create another aquifer fifty or a hundred kilometers away from their last haven. The nine giants are enormous, kilometers in size, but they’re flat, because they are formed of billions of clear capillaries, by which they feed on water supplies left over from when this planet was wet. They create their own cracks to live in, by moving between strata like glaciers, until they find a place with the right kind of resources, and begin another aquifer. They’re amazing creatures.”

“But you or, rather, Great-Grandmother is robbing the town of the water it needs to thrive. You must admit that. Why don’t you share? There is surely enough clean water for all foreseeable needs, including Ad Astra.”

“Not for long,” Zamerling said, and the haunted look reasserted itself on his face. “The town is growing faster than we anticipated. They pull so much water out of the wells that the aquavore began to shift. When one has used up the useful organics and minerals and drained all the water in an area, it moves on. My scientists tell me that the minerals and trace organic elements that the aquavores crave are nearly depleted in these strata. When this one does, then it will ruin Acqua Astra. I can’t even explain to our vendors, let alone our shareholders, what has happened if we lose our source. We’re walking a tightrope, Lord Thomas!” He wrung his hands.

The desperate look on his face touched me, but the funny side of the situation took precedence. My mouth quivered. I did my best to hold onto my hilarity, but it burst out of me in a wheezing, whooping, hee-haw of a laugh. The inspiration made my mood soar sky high.

“But, my good man, the problem solves itself!”

Zamerling’s long eyes narrowed dangerously. I had probably pushed him as far as I dared.

“Do not make fun of me, Lord Thomas. You are in a precarious position.”

I felt a preternatural calm. If I seemed to be teetering, it was only his perception.

“Not at all, Mr. Zamerling. Look at it this way.” I tried to turn up my palms, but the pinioning of my arms made that impossible. I fixed him with my most sincere gaze. “You have a, well, trade secret that creates a product that has gained you a following, with more orders than you can easily fulfill. The town that has grown up side by side with Acqua Astra is being starved for clean drinking water and irrigation, which you could supply. But only if you understand your neighbors to be the renewable resource that they really are. You have not taken advantage of a closed system.”

All the blustering wind leaked noisily out of Zamerling at once.

“What?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “The town of Conoceil drinks water, yes. They need it to farm with, of course. But what do they produce?” I waited for a moment, but none of my audience chimed in. “Sewage! And what is it your aquavore needs, lest it move on and destroy your infrastructure?”

Zamerling looked fearful, until my words sank in, and enlightenment dawned.

“Useful minerals,” he said.

“Exactly! The dearth of water is not insurmountable. Why have you never considered simply replacing the water itself? You’ve just told me there are other aquifers of a similar size a mere fifty kilometers distant. Pipe it in for the city and the growers. They will use it and flavor it sufficiently for the aquavore’s use. And round and round it will all go.”

The forefinger tapped again at his lower lip. “But, Lord Thomas, we’re a luxury brand! You have learned our ‘trade secret.’ What guarantee do I have that you will not reveal it and ruin our reputation? You must admit that the truth is a business-ending embarrassment, if it got out that our product was the end result of a… natural process?”

“Well,” I said, toying with the armrest with my fingertips, almost the only part of my extremities that were free to move, “I might be satisfied with a compromise.”

The long eyes narrowed again. He tilted his head.

“Meaning?”

“Well, you will have to share with Conoceil,” I said. “Beginning at once. The town has the right to flourish and grow. If there are large aquifers all over the planet, you can run pipes out under the sand and replenish the water table here from them, then ensure that the wastewater runs into your cellar here. With the, er, input from thousands of people producing organic waste by the ton, Great-Grandmother will be so happy that she’ll never move from downstairs. It will form a healthy cycle, and the ‘trade secret’ need never surface. In any way.” I winked at them.

Finally, after a few nerve-wracking moments, when I feared I was at last going to have to call for help, they winked back.

“This solution is surprisingly savvy for one of your rank,” Zamerling said, nodding in approval. “And a few kilometers of pipe are the price for your complicity?”

“That and a few hundred cases of Ad Astra,” I said. “Of course.”

Zamerling and I exchanged conspiratorial smiles.

“Of course, my lord! Shall we drink to it?”

“I thought you would never ask.”

The guards leaped forward to cut me loose.

I returned to Bleke House with only moments to spare before the tracker was due to reappear. When I returned to the sitting room, Parsons shimmered in as only he could.

“I am pleased to see you well, my lord,” he said. “All was successful?”

“Indeed it was, and more fascinating a situation than I could ever have imagined.” With the help of OP-634g providing images and an audio transcript, I narrated our sally into the bowels of Acqua Astra, the marvel of the giant aquavore, and the outcome of the negotiations with Mr. Zamerling. Parsons allowed one corner of his otherwise expressionless mouth to rise in what I saw as gushing approval for my perspicacity and wisdom.

“Well done, my lord. Mr. Frank and the Emperor will be pleased.” He surveyed the skid of gold-stamped cases. “And those?”

“A souvenir,” I said, with a grin. “Alas, but I have a wonderful story to tell that can never be filed on the Infogrid! At least, though, I’ve had a chance to take the waters.”

The Siege of Denver

by Brendan DuBois

In a dry trench about twelve klicks west of Denver, Private Melissa MacKay—originally from Hotchkiss, Colorado—rummaged through her battle pack, looking for some paperwork. This section of trench was pretty much identical to the other line of trenches that surrounded the besieged Mile High City, with duckboards on the ground and a dugout nearby to shelter her squad from the occasional incoming fire from the enemy. It was a cool morning, and a small pellet-burning metal stove outside of the dugout burning gave off a little heat.

A couple of meters down the trench, her squad leader, Corporal Stan Jankowski, did his best to shave using a handled mirror stuck into the dirt and a plastic cup of cold water. Next to Jankowski were his own battle pack, a field phone hanging off a stake connecting them to the sector’s CP—a burnt-out Best Buy box store out by Route 60—and his Colt M-10. Melissa looked on enviously at Jankowski’s M-10. She and the other squad member—Hector Morales, out getting their morning breakfast rations—were only qualified on the Colt M-4, the standard automatic rifle used by the U.S. Army and its associated National Guard units and allies for decades. But her corporal was the one member of the squad who could carry the M-10, the weapon of choice for fighting the Creepers.

It was a bulky thing, black and looking like an oversized grenade launcher. But after a decade of fighting the Creepers—and mostly losing—the M-10 was about the only weapon available to take on the damn bugs. An infantry weapon fighting an interstellar war. What a world. She lifted her head, looked west. There was movement several hundred meters away, some horse-drawn wagons, soldiers, and two old transport vehicles, belching out steam and smoke from their wood-fired engines.

“What are you looking at, Mac?” Jankowski asked, scraping at a cheek.

“The Signal Corps is moving around. Maybe they’ll do a launch today.”

“Only if the wind is right,” he said. “Hey, Mac, you’re a history nerd. Any idea when this man’s Army last had a balloon corps?”

“Little over a hundred years ago,” she automatically replied. “A few years after the end of World War I.”

“Right you are.”

A hunched-over figure was running towards their trench section, carrying a satchel in his hand.

“Morales is coming in,” she said.

Jankowski wiped at his face with a threadbare green towel. “Anybody else running in with him?”

“Nope.”

“Goddamn Army.”

Melissa said nothing. She knew what Jankowski meant. A typical squad could have up to twelve soldiers, and unfortunately, she and Morales and Jankowski were it. Not good, but not much you could do about it when platoons were taking on company jobs, and companies were taking on battalion jobs. Ten years of war had not only thinned out the planet’s population, but had done the same to its battered armed forces.

Morales reached the edge of the trench, rolled over and grinned. His light brown skin was dusted with dirt, and his helmet was at his side, connected to his MOLLE vest, and his M-4 was slung over his shoulder. He held up the satchel. “Who’s up for breakfast?”

“I’ve been ready for an hour,” Melissa said. “Let’s get to it.”

On a clear section of duckboard, Morales opened up the satchel, took out closed metal containers and a Thermos bottle. The young soldier moved quick and their breakfast was revealed: lukewarm and sweet coffee, cold oatmeal, and two links of sausage.

“There should be three links,” Jankowski said, voice tight. “Why is there only two?”

“That’s all I got from the mess tent, Corporal,” Morales said.

“Bullshit. They know we’re three here, and we should have gotten three links.”

“That’s all they gave me.”

“What, did you eat one on the way over here? Did you?”

Melissa said, “Hey, you guys take the sausage. I don’t particularly like 'em anyway.”

Jankowski glared at her and Morales looked relieved, and Melissa took her breakfast down a ways in the trench, so she could eat by herself. It didn’t take long, and when she was finished, she was hungry. She was always hungry. Even back home in Hotchkiss at their farm, there was never enough food to fill you up. Melissa walked back to Jankowski and Morales, and the corporal said, “Morales, you’re on clean-up. Hump the dishes back to the mess tent.”

“Hey, it’s Mac’s turn,” he said. “I’m the one who humped out there to get breakfast. It ain’t fair.”

“Don’t care, Morales, really don’t. You’re humping it back.”

Morales kept quiet but Melissa could tell he was pissed. But so what? Crap rolled downhill, and he was the freshest member of their thinned-out unit. When Morales scrambled back over the side of the trench, she saw objects starting to rise up by the transport wagons she had seen earlier.

“Lookie here, Corporal,” she said. “Looks like they’re inflating at least three balloons.”

The three dark gray shapes lumbered their way up into the morning sky. Jankowski said, “Well, I’ll be damned. Wonder how much cargo they’re gonna try this time.”

“You think they’ll make it?”

Jankowski wet a finger and held it up in the air. “Two things will determine that, Mac. One will be the wind direction in this section. That’s why they set up shop over there. So far it looks good. The other . . .”

He moved away from the western side of the trench, walked the few steps to the eastern side. Melissa joined him, as they stood on viewing platforms, looked out to the east, where several klicks away, the struggling city of Denver hung on. Before them was a blasted landscape of shattered buildings, broken roadways, rusted vehicles, clumps of grass and brush. On the horizon were the tall buildings of the city itself, hazy through smoke.

But she and Jankowski moved their heads almost as one, to note a dome-shaped structure, blue-gray in color, about two klicks away.

“The bugs,” Jankowski said. “They have a vote. They always do.”

Melissa leaned on the crumbling dirt of the trench. The area out there was No Man’s Land, although a more accurate title would be No Human’s Land. There was nearly a hundred percent chance that if you walked out there, you’d be barbecued within minutes. The dome was a Creeper base, one of seven that circled the city of Denver and which were established in the first year of the war, when the Creepers arrived in low earth orbit. At first it was thought they were a number of large comet-sized objects, until they maneuvered and achieved orbit and then . . .

Unleashed hell upon the earth.

First they exploded a number of nuclear devices in a careful pattern around the globe, immediately frying about 99 percent of electronics via EMPs, and then they maneuvered asteroids to drop into oceans, just outside of major cities around the earth, causing tsunamis that killed millions. Then bases like this one were set up on the ground, sheltering Creepers that came out whenever they wanted to burn and lase anything in their path. And if that wasn’t enough, the Creepers had a number of killer stealth satellites in orbit that fried anything powered by electronics—trucks, cars, aircraft, trains, power plants—essentially keeping the planet’s survivors stuck in the nineteenth century.

Ten years later the war ground on, with Denver and a host of other unfortunate cities besieged by Creeper forces, which did not allow people out or food in. And why Denver and not Pittsburgh, or St. Louis, or Knoxville? No one knew.

“Corporal?”

“Yeah.”

She thought she had him in a reasonable mood, so she pressed ahead. “When I was assigned here, the lieutenant said I’d be doing some makee-learnee with you.”

“So he did.”

“So how about giving me a couple of practice shots with the M-10?”

Jankowski just kept on staring out at the wasteland. He had been a quiet sort when Melissa arrived here a month ago, not doing much in the way of small talk, just working to keep this section of the trench squared away. Only once had she ever learned anything about Jankowski on her own, and that had happened last month, when temporary hot showers had been set up near the CP. Emerging from the shower, rubbing his torso and arms dry with a towel, wearing a pair of shorts, Jankowski had strolled by her, and on his right upper bicep was an intricate tattoo. The ink job displayed a mountain peak and the Gothic letter “D.”

D for Denver, meaning Jankowski was a native son, one of the fortunate who had been out of the city when the Creepers had set up their siege, and who had been trying ever since to go back home.

“Mac?”

“Yeah?”

“Not today.”

Melissa took a breath. “All right, Corporal.”

“Your paperwork,” he added. “When’s it due?”

“Sixteen hundred today, Corporal,” she said, feeling humiliated at being so late. “There’s a courier stopping by to pick it up.”

“Then get to it.”

“Yes, Corporal.”

About ten minutes later, there was a hammering rumble coming from the northeast. She looked up from paperwork balanced on her knee, and she said, “Corporal?”

He was at the edge of the ditch, binoculars in his hands, and he said, “I saw the incoming. Looks like the Creepers were hitting the Rocky Mountain Arsenal again, or maybe the Denver airport.”

She returned to her papers. “The arsenal’s been inactive for decades. And the airport got smeared on invasion day plus two.”

“What’s your point?”

“Doesn’t make sense.”

Jankowski made a noise that passed as a chuckle. “News flash, Mac, they’re aliens.”

“Yeah.” That was always question number one after the war began, trying to figure out why the Creepers came here, why they started the war the way they did, what was the point of traveling via interstellar space to fight like they were well-armed British soldiers against African natives in the late 1800’s. Didn’t make sense, nothing made sense, and one day Jankowski said, “You know, if we ever make it and a history of this fiasco is ever written, it should be called ‘World War Why,’” and Melissa thought that was a pretty good idea.

Morales rolled back into the trench, and said, “Heard an attack strike a couple of minutes ago. The airport?”

“Maybe,” Melissa said. “Might be the arsenal.”

Morales sat down on the duckboards, put his back up against the wall. “Damn bugs . . . but hey, looks like the balloons are ready to be launched.”

Melissa got up and went to the western side of the trench, and she admired the view: three elongated balloons, gently swaying in the slight morning breeze. She could make out little knots of soldiers at work at the base of each balloon, and her chest felt tight. Go, she thought, go. There was an article she had read last year in Stars & Stripes, about the Denver siege, and somebody had called it “The Leningrad of the Rockies,” after that horrible Nazi siege during World War II that had starved hundreds of thousands.

Morales stood next to her. “Think they’ll make it?”

“Up to the weather and the Creepers.”

“But there’s no people, no electronics on the balloons, nothing advanced. The Creepers should leave it alone.”

“Should isn’t a doctrine, Hector.”

Morales said, “You can always hope, can’t you?”

“And hope ain’t a tactic, either.”

Morales stayed quiet, and Melissa felt sorry for the kid. He was just a replacement, a boy who volunteered from one of the refugee camps in Arizona holding survivors from the L.A. tsunami strike, and he looked bright and strong enough to do his job. But would he be bright enough and strong enough when the proverbial bug crap hit the fan?

Jankowski called out, “Morales! You got watch.”

Melissa leaned against the dirt of the trench edge, watching the balloons rise up higher and higher as they were inflated. There was netting underneath each balloon, and the netting was filled with crates. Food and medical supplies, two items desperately needed in Denver, and the balloons were going to be unmanned. For some reason—why, why, why—the Creepers could sense humans in transportation, and previous manned lighter-than-aircraft had come to flaming ends. Efforts to dig tunnels or use old utility conduits to the city temporarily worked until they were blasted from the killer stealth satellites. This time, however, maybe this—

“Movement!” Morales yelled. “We’ve got something going on over at the dome!”

She whirled around and grabbed a set of binoculars and Jankowski raced up as well. Melissa focused in on the dome base. A slit was quickly dilating close and two Creepers—battle units—were skittering out.

Something heavy gripped her throat. This wasn’t the first time she had seen Creepers out in the open, but still, there was some sort of primal fear that bubbled right up at seeing the alien creatures on the move. Each was the size of Army transport truck, moving on eight articulated legs. There was a center arthropod, also articulated, and two large arms, circling around, like they belonged to a goddamn scorpion. The end of each arm was tool-based, sometimes claws or pincers, or sometimes a laser or a flame-type projector, always dangerous. Inside the exoskeleton was a creature, looking like a science-fiction writer’s nightmare of an intelligent insectlike alien. The structure was the same blue-gray as the dome base, and almost entirely indestructible.

As one, the Creepers shifted their direction of movement, and they were coming straight on an eastern approach, skittering and crawling over crushed metal, broken masonry, and torn up roads.

“They’re coming right at us,” Morales whispered, voice shaky.

Melissa said, “The hell they are. They’re heading for the supply balloons.”

Jankowski said, “Shit, you’re right, Mac.” He went to the field telephone, gave the handle a whir-whir, and spoke loudly and deliberately into the receiver. “CP Bravo, CP Bravo, this is Bravo 12. We have two Creepers, battle version, heading due east from dome eight, repeat, from dome eight. It appears they’re heading for the balloon launch site. They’re approaching grid coordinates, grid coordinates ten-niner-zero-zero-ten-four-five-six. Repeat, ten-niner-zero-zero-ten-four-five-six.”

Melissa pressed the field glasses firm against her eyes to control the shaking from her hands.

“Okay, Bravo 12, out.”

He slammed the receiver back into the field pouch and uttered an extremely foul obscenity.

Morales said, “What did they say, Corporal?”

“They’re alerting the artillery, activating the QRF. Not sure when it’s going to show up.”

“Well, that’d be— “

Melissa blinked her eyes as both Creepers fired a quick flash from an arm. Laser shots. Damn.

Melissa turned. A truck was burning near the balloon site.

A whistling whine noise pierced the air.

“Incoming!” Jankowski said. “Duck down!”

Melissa squatted as artillery rounds started hammering the torn-up ground around the Creepers, protecting herself from any shrapnel or flying debris stirred up by the blasts coming from the 105 mm artillery stationed a ways back. When the echoes of the blasts rolled away she glanced up.

The Creepers were still on the move. The exoskeletons were practically impervious to normal munitions, except for a lucky sliver of shrapnel or the outgoing rounds from M-10’s like the one Jankowski carried, and the artillery blasts had probably only slowed them down for a minute or two.

“Mac! How far away are the Creepers?”

She glanced down at the range card, which marked easily identifiable landmarks in their area of responsibility, and then picked up the binoculars. There. The two creatures were quickly approaching a mound of debris that was topped by the burnt remnants of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, back during the early weeks of the war before commanders learned any powered aircraft was just a moving target.

“Eight hundred meters, Corporal.”

Another flicker-flare of lasers being fired from the marauding Creepers, and an anguished yelp from Morales. “They got one of the balloons! The bugs got one of the balloons!”

Melissa glanced back in time to see the balloon on the far right collapse, as flames raced up the fabric. Not going to make it, she thought, the resupply mission was about to be burnt to the ground before it could even get off the ground.

Damn!

She looked to Jankowski, wondered what he was thinking, wondering how many family members of his were still alive over there. He lowered his head. His shoulders tensed up.

Then Jankowski grabbed the field phone, called down to the OP. “Cease fire on the fire mission, cease fire!”

After tossing the receiver down, Jankowski started back to where his gear was stored: battlepack, helmet, M-10. “Morales! MacKay! Saddle up! We’re heading out!”

Melissa tried to swallow, but her mouth was dust-dry. In a flash of seconds, she knew what Jankowski was thinking: the Creepers had already taken down one resupply balloon, desperately needed by the starving citizens of Denver, and there were only two left. Help was on its way but the battle was going to be decided in the next handful of minutes. And the Colt M-10 that Jankowski—and only Jankowski—was qualified to use had an effective range of fifty meters.

About seven hundred fifty meters too short. And Jankowski had decided they weren’t going to sit and wait behind the relative safety of the trenches.

All three of them were going over the top, just liked the doomed British, French and German soldiers nearly a century and a half ago.

Morales said, “What about the Quick Reaction Force?”

Jankowski secured his helmet. “Shut up. We’re it. We’re going over, standard intercept mission, the two of you putting down harassing fire. Get to it!”

Melissa put on her helmet, secured the chinstrap, checked her MOLLE vest and the four extra magazines she carried, picked up her Colt M-4 and joined her corporal. The M-4’s were practically useless against the Creepers, but they did irritate them, and sometimes diverted them, allowing a soldier with an M-10 to close in for the kill.

Morales was fumbling with his helmet, hands shaking, and Melissa paused to help him out, and Jankowski said, “Guys, we squared away?”

“Yes, Corporal.”

“Yes, Corporal.”

“Like I said, just like a training mission. Mac, you take the left, Morales, you take the right. We rush them, concealing as best as we can, and once we get three hundred meters behind us, you two open fire, try to slow 'em down.”

He paused. “Denver . . . it’s starving. It’s up to us. Let’s roll.”

Jankowski moved down trench to a section where wooden steps had been built, and he was the first one over, with Melissa following and Morales bringing up the rear.

The first thing Melissa noticed was the smell of smoke. Maybe she was used to it in the rear lines or in the trenches, but out here in the open, in no man’s land, the scent was stronger, and part of her stomach felt a slug of nausea as she realized the some of the smoke she was smelling was coming from the funeral pyres inside the besieged city.

Melissa counted out her steps, as she moved back and forth, over and under, trying not to pay much attention of what she was crossing over, the churned up earth, the crushed cars, the chunks of asphalt and concrete. Her breathing was harsh, cutting into her, and she recalled how many times she had trained this maneuver, over and over again, until she could do it in her sleep . . .

. . .but now it was for real, with not one, but two alien Creepers up ahead.

“Three hundred,” she yelled out, falling to the rough terrain. She brought up her M-4, sighted in at the Creeper on the left, fired off a quick three-round burst. She rolled to the right, and maneuvered behind a large chunk of concrete, as Morales echoed her own outgoing fire. Jankowski was in the center, M-10 on his back, moving so fast she had difficulty keeping up with him.

Another burst of fire, and another. She moved to the left this time, just as the near Creeper raised itself up, and let loose with flame projections from each of its arms. Melissa fell to the ground, tried to burrow herself in, flatten herself out, make herself as small as possible as the flames roared overhead.

“Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving!” Jankowski yelled, practically leaping from one mound of rubble to another. “I’m almost in range!”

She fired off two more bursts, and then popped out an empty magazine, slammed a new one in, and let the bolt fly.

“Morales,” she yelled out, “keep on firing!”

Morales didn’t answer back. Not her problem. She moved again, ducked down next to a flattened school bus, the yellow paint long ago having faded to white, and she fired off one more burst. The wind shifted and two things came to her that meant a Creeper on the move: the scent of cinnamon and the click-click of their segmented body in motion.

Never had she ever been so close to a Creeper, and her hands were shaking as she tried to keep up the harassing fire. Then Morales screamed, “They got the second balloon! They got the second balloon!”

Melissa yelled over to him, “Eyes front, Morales, eyes front!”

Then they were in range for the M-10, and she felt herself lucky indeed to be alive and to see Jankowski get to work. He removed a 50 mm M-10 cartridge from his MOLLE vest, spun the base dial to set the range—ten, twenty-five or fifty meters, and she knew he was setting it for the furthest range—and the corporal broke open the breech, slammed the cartridge in, closed it with a hard snap.

She remembered her job. The three of them were in a scattered line, hiding behind a length of rubble and broken metal, probably a shattered highway overpass, and she popped up, fired off another burst at the near Creeper, the damn thing looking like it was about to crawl right over her. She rolled to the left as a streamer of flame screamed overhead.

Jankowski moved to the right, slipped up and yelled, “Eat this!” and fired, the recoil of the M-10 nearly blowing him back. Melissa scrambled up broken chunks of concrete, saw a hole she could peek through. The near Creeper was still moving but there was a cloud in front of it, and she yelled, “Yeah, good shot, Corporal!”

Her corporal said nothing, sliding back down the rubble, moving quickly to reload his M-10. Melissa looked back at the Creeper. The round from Jankowski’s M-10 had exploded at the fifty-meter range. The cartridge was a binary weapon, with two chemicals inside—one of the most closely-guarded secrets in this war—and when mixed, it was lethal to the creature riding inside the Creeper exoskeleton. And right now, the Creeper before her was enveloped in the cloud.

It stopped.

It goddamn stopped.

The eight legs and the two weapon arms started shaking, as well as the center head stalk. It shook and quivered and then fell, to the side, the movement from the articulated limbs digging up divots of soil and rock.

Morales screamed, “You killed it, Corporal, you killed it, you killed it!”

Jankowski moved a few meters down the length of rubble. “Shut up, Hector, you’re waking up the dead in Denver. And where’s my harassing fire, damn it!”

Melissa moved some more, fired a few more rounds, the bolt slamming open. Empty magazine. The dead Creeper was still dead. Jankowski was pushing his way through more broken debris, slid down a battered highway sign marking EXIT 12, and then went back up to the top.

She tugged out the magazine, slapped in another one, let the bolt slide back. Ready.

Click-click.

Click-click.

Click-click.

The smell of cinnamon—another puzzle, why did the bugs stink of an Earth-bound spice? —and another rip of gunfire from Morales down the way. Kid was keeping his cool, which surprised her. He was too young, too eager, and he was a refugee, a Coastie, which meant he got a lot of grief from other soldiers. She could barely see him but he was still on his job.

Melissa moved up, was so goddamn close to the second Creeper that she could throw a stone at it, and Morales yelled, “The third balloon is up! They’ve launched the third balloon.”

Morales should have kept his damn mouth shut. Jankowski was near the top of his pile of rubble and he was bringing up his Colt M-10, but he hesitated, looked back at the balloon rising up from the staging area.

He slipped, fell forward, got up on his hands and knees, and his head and upper torso was torn away in a blast of fire, flesh, and a spray of blood.

Morales screamed, “It got the corporal, it got the corporal! Mac, whaddya we going to do?”

She yelled back, “Keep firing!”

“But . . . but . . . where’s the QRF?”

She yelled something nasty about the QRF to Morales, moved as fast as she could to the right, the M-4 now feeling like it was made of lead. Her chest hurt, her feet hurt, and smoke was making her eyes water, and she was chewing her tongue, trying to get saliva going again. She skittered across the broken rubble, scraping her hands, and she looked to the west. The balloon was up, by God, and dangling below was a rope net, holding crates upon crates of rations and medicine.

Morales was shooting again. Good boy.

She moved up the broken slope, seeing the booted feet and the uniformed legs of her dead corporal, the stench pushing into her nostrils and mouth, trying hard not to see the charred chunks and bones on the upper torso.

Where was it?

Where was it?

There.

The Colt-10 was about a meter away. She picked it up, the damn thing heavier than her M-4. Could she do it? Could she?

She went up the rubble, a couple of meters away from Jankowski’s body, whispered something to the corpse, and then flattened herself down on a piece of rusted metal. The damn bug was filling up her entire view. She brought up the M-10, aimed over the open iron sights, pulled the trigger.

WHAM!

It felt like a horse had just kicked her right shoulder. Melissa screamed, fell back, and she heard the detonation of the M-10’s round. Panting hard, she crawled up the rough slope and saw the familiar cloud of a detonating round, and a Creeper, just like it should be.

Except the cloud was behind the Creeper.

She had missed.

Damn!

And in a flash she knew why. Poor old Jankowski had set the range for an approaching Creeper, and the damn thing had kept moving after barbecuing her corporal, and she had overshot.

She had overshot.

“Mac, it’s still moving!”

She had to reload the M-10.

Which meant she had to grab another round from . . .

Jankowski’s charred body.

Melissa moved in tunnel vision, trying to keep everything out of focus save what was before her, which was Jankowski’s body. His fatigues were torn and one knee was scraped bloody raw. He must have hurt himself bad during the attack but the guy kept on going, hadn’t bothered to stop or complain.

Focus. MOLLE vest torn and shredded.

There.

Three M-10 cartridges.

She tugged one free.

Morales yelled something and she yelled back, “Just keep firing, damn it!”

Sitting down, she spun the dial on the bottom of the cartridge, taking it from SAFE and stopping at ten meters.

Just ten meters away.

Fingers feeling thick and fumbling, she broke open the M-10’s breech, removed the empty shell, slid the fresh one in. Snapped the breech shut.

“Morales!

“Mac!”

She took a deep, painful breath: “If . . . something happens, you take over, got it? There are two cartridges left on Jankowski’s vest. Got it?”

Morales yelled something and she didn’t have time to keep talking.

Time to move.

She went back up the rocky slope, breathing hard, the stench of cinnamon even worse, the click-click almost deafening, More distant gunfire from Morales. Harassing fire, yeah, harassing. Just another term for doing something useless that made you feel better.

Up now on the slope, she thought of praying but couldn’t think of a single word, and she flattened herself, brought the M-10 back to her shoulder. The Creeper was starting to raise itself up on its rear, and she thought, the rubble, it can’t get a good aim on the resupply balloon because of the rubble, and it’s pushing itself up to burn it down.

Melissa aimed the M-10, and the Creeper spotted her, because it was lowering itself down and ---

WHAM!

Another scream. Her shoulder felt like it was torn to pieces, only kept in place because of her uniform blouse.

But she forced herself to watch.

Had to.

The round exploded just below the Creeper, and she thought, damn, should have grabbed another cartridge, because it looked like she had missed, and then the Creeper kept on lowering itself down.

Right through the toxic cloud.

And within a minute, it was on its back, quivering, shaking, moments away from dying.

Melissa rolled on her back, sobbing. Broken pieces of rock were jabbing into her back and legs and butt, and she didn’t care.

Something floated above her, nearly blocking the sun.

She raised a hand, blocking the sun.

It was the resupply balloon.

Morales appeared, dusty and sweating. In one hand he had his M-4, and in the other, an open canteen. He offered the canteen to Melissa and she took two swigs of warm and flat tasting water.

It was delicious.

Morales said, “The balloon’s moving in the right direction. Bet it gets to Denver within the hour.”

She rolled over, raised up her head. Sure enough, being caught by the winds, the balloon with its precious cargo was heading straight to the Mile High City.

“Bet you're right,” she said, giving him back his canteen. “Let’s . . . let’s gather up the corporal and get back to where we belong.”

“Roger that, Mac.”

She was so engrossed in her paperwork that she didn’t notice the first soldier coming into the trench, but seeing the second soldier and the third and then their lieutenant, commanding their company, part of 1st Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, Colorado National Guard, really got her attention. She dropped her papers and stood up at attention, with Morales a couple of meters away doing the same. The third member of their squad, wrapped in a plastic poncho, secured by lengths of rope, had been taken away an hour ago by a Graves Registration team. His M-10 was leaning up against the trench, the two remaining cartridges on the duckboard.

Lieutenant Russ Picard gave the length of trench a quick look with his good eye. Half of his face was scarred with burn tissue and a black patch covered the empty socket. His uniform was dirty and repaired, and he looked tired, very tired. Companies were usually run by captains, not lieutenants, but as was said so often, nothing was usual any more.

“Who made the Creeper kills?” Picard asked.

Melissa said, “Corporal Jankowski. I got the second. Private Morales provided harassing fire.”

“Are you certified on the M-10?”

“No, sir, I’m not.”

He came forward, extended a hand, which she shook. “You are now.”

She felt a flash of surprise, and then said, “The balloon, sir, did . . . did it make it to Denver?”

He grinned. “It certainly did . . . but . . . well, it’s not enough. It’s never enough. Still, a number of civvies over there are going to live tonight thanks to this squad. Good job.”

Then he looked down at Melissa’s paperwork, and she bit her lip in embarrassment at the mess she had caused. “What’s that on the ground?”

“Belongs to me, sir.”

“Tetler, if you please.”

One of the privates picked up a sheet of paper, passed it over to Picard. He gave it a glance and said, “Well?”

Melissa said, “Geometry, sir. It’s my geometry final. It’s . . . due at 1700 today.”

Picard said, “No, it’s not. You just got an A. How does that sound?”

She couldn’t help smiling. “Sounds great, sir.”

He leaned in some. “How old are you, Private?”

“Fourteen, sir. I’ll be fifteen next May.”

“Private Morales?”

“Twelve, sir.”

Picard nodded. “Good job, the both of you.” Speaking to Melissa, he said, “You think you can stay here?”

She spoke quickly. “We’ll need a replacement, sir. Two if they can be spared. And one of them should be a corporal.”

Picard patted her shoulder. “Why? We’ve got a sergeant right here, don’t you think?”

Melissa managed to say, “Thank you, sir.”

“Good.” He looked to his escorts. “Come along gents, it’s time to get back to the war.”

In a minute she and Morales were alone. Her head felt as light as the balloon that had made it, and her hands and legs tingled with joy. Morales said, “Why are you smiling so much? Happy about the promotion?”

She tossed her papers in the air. “Happy I passed geometry.”